@Ominous said in Running Wilderness Adventures:
Anyone have some suggestions on how to marry the exploration and resource management of OSR D&D and the narrative focus of most MU*a?
Most Mu's are not ready to handle random exploration and resource management, travel oriented or not. If they are, they already have some +scavange/search/explore code that runs, lets PC's know what they turn up. Most do not have great loss/gain opportunities, of that which I'm aware at least. I'm might scavenge some bullets on an apocalyptic Mu' that doesn't track bullet consumption, but the chance of stumbling upon an operational nuclear power plant (or stumble on the adventure to recover one/take one over from outland bandits and roadwarriors) is usually zero because they don't allow the chance to just find that.
Not to argue tight meta control vs. world reaction to what players are doing as what Staff should/shouldn't be doing. However, most places generally are set up with indicators how, why and to whom one should work with/on/for in creating a TP in the environment. Most seem open to small scale things that do not tip balance and only want more opportunity for wider player-base and thus why they ask for TP. To help promote it and/or direct inquiries related to said TP to the player runner/storyteller. Again, if a MU* doesn't have it or has it for other control reasons, I'm not making the argument either way as that's not the intent of the question from my perspective.
All that said, I would measure the necessity to all players involved in the story of running an Oregon Trail overland haul to get to X location, and/or return. If pausing a day to fix the wagon wheel causes a food shortage and they need to hunt, is the resource management necessary or just a story driver. If its a story driver and there is no need to work with staff to assure any loot from the hunting adventure is allowed or whatever ... have at it, so long as the players are all on board.
That's what I wanted to get at, introduce encounters as 'x happened, you are low on y resources' for them to consider their next step. You can set it up at the beginning, you have X supplies to make the trip to Y and back, you have enough space to house it all in your wagons/cars/caravan/space ship. They know up front that this could be important. Thus you can plant other encounters into your table - meet gypsies, meet space ghosts, find shipwreck, whatever. And they have their counter of supplies to think about. They can trade with gypsies, get location of actual stuff from ghosts they communicate with, or scavenge the shipwreck looking for what they need, etc.
Going back to the bolded stuff above, is travel time required or necessary on said Mu? This goes into are players on board, will they think they're missing out on events back in the main locations by being on the Oregon Trail? Is handwaving the recommended form of distances between locations? Then just make sure players are on board.
And as much as I enjoy random encounter tables, set up by environment/location/population density/whatever, do the players involved enjoy them? If it was me, and I was in some plot with another player to travel two weeks to remove location, do the thing, then come back and I knew we would off-grid for that time (required by the MU* or the storyteller), I think it might be just as beneficial/fun to handwave going/coming back and focus the time 'off-grid' on all adventure and story for whatever we're doing at the location too.
Then again, random encounters could be fun, so long as its not 'your stuck in scene for four hours discussing how to fix the real axle' then waiting for players to realize 'we need to discuss ditching the wagon and loosing a week of supplies, hopefully recover that to get back home after we get to River Dale, or take a day out and have to hunt now for food to even reach River Dale, or sending scouts ahead'. The later could be fun yes, but if players don't realize that's the intent of the broken axle random encounter either due to culture on the MU' in question or unrealized expectations from storyteller, it could go south just the same.
Spammy, but all that said, if everyone is on board, do what others are suggesting as they're all good stuff. Pick a system that already does this they way you like and adapt it to the MU' you are on, just let folks know what to expect so they don't feel rail-roaded into something they didn't realize they're signing up for.
Edited to remove asterisks and fix italicized words.
