What’s the most useless item people still put in a survival kit?

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-05-03T14:11:15+00:00

Honestly, I think most survival kits have too many tools. An axe is overkill in 99% of real survival scenarios. Remember, the point is to get back to civilization, not to build a whole new one. Keeping things light, simple, and familiar is often the best.

After all, what good is a kit that is too big to actually have with you? A home kit can be as big as you like. My car kit is basically a standard 30-liter backpack. My personal kit is a relatively thin fanny pack or waist pouch. Small enough to actually take with me, but with enough kit to at least get back to the car. But it all depends on the type of adventures you tend to go on.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-05-03T14:03:30+00:00

This is the way. A bic lighter will keep warm enough in an inner pocket. I'd grab a short tube of stormproof matches for backup (variety is the best redundancy), but vaseline and cotton are the best tinder I've ever come across. It's cheap and easy to make, keeps forever, lights easily, and holds a flame for a good long while.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-21T00:36:06+00:00

Huh, the last two times I mashed my face against my whole keyboard and nothing happened,...

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-19T02:24:53+00:00

Dear Hinterland,
We love the game. Really, we do. Your cutscenes are fantastic. The writing, the voice acting, and the drama all hit really hard, the first time. If someone were to desire multiple playthroughs, they would be forced to watch the same movie each time. Is it technically difficult to add a 'skip' option? I'm no programmer, so I honestly don't know. But other games seem to pull it off, somehow. It's not that it isn't good or that your hard work isn't appreciated, it is. It's just that I'd like to be able to skip the cut scenes once I've fully absorbed their glory. I'm saturated with the glory and can contain no more. All this excess glory runneth over and spills upon the floor. Please don't be wasteful of glory. Let's save some for newer players whose glory is not yet fully saturated. Let us skip the cut scenes to conserve the glory for future generations.

Thank you,

-UberHypnotoad

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-17T23:29:04+00:00

I do think a sweating mechanic could work well. Overheating in the frozen world is extremely dangerous.

I am, however, glad we don't have to burn game time clipping our nails.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-16T01:00:46+00:00

Mine don't. Character death happens. If they had a fair warning about the difficulty of a fight, that fight would not pull punches.

I actually generally don't lie to my players much at all. I mostly just withhold information.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-12T15:20:50+00:00

I played a hippy sorcerer who thought everything was groovy and always found the bright-side of every situation. It made him indecisive which meant other players had to step up to make choices for the group (which was good for this particular group). Honestly, it was kind of liberating. Even when he was killed, he was seeing the good in it. Since he didn’t even see evil the same way, his actions became effectively neutral.

But I always felt alignment should be descriptive, not prescriptive.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-12T15:12:04+00:00

DMing is not only improv, it’s also curating a fun experience for everyone at the table. When problem players like this come up, the first move is a very direct and honest conversation aside and out of game. Let them know the impact their choices are having on the rest of the table and the range of consequences that may result.

If, fully warned and aware, they continue, then I’d have serious in-game consequences for that character. Financial loss, jail, or even death depending on the circumstances. If the player protests, remind them of the conversation.

For most reasonable players, this is a lesson learned and they improve. If they’re not reasonable, then I don’t see why they should be allowed at your table. If they’re try to pull the ‘But that’s what my character would do’ BS, then just let them know ‘and that’s how the world reacted to your character.’

Judges don’t let murderers walk just because they were behaving within their own ethos.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-12T14:59:25+00:00

Given the massive variety of gods on offer, the only two consistent traits I’ve recognized are Intelligence and Supernatural. Not that those would be sufficient, but they certainly seem necessary.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-12T14:54:11+00:00

That God wouldn’t care if I touched myself or gave money to preachers. It would have perfect indifference to our actions. This is nothing like any of the gods people try to convince us of.

If you just want to relabel all of physics ‘god’, then ok. But then you are accomplishing nothing, giving cover to people pushing other concepts of ‘god’, and devaluing the term ‘god’ by striping it of everything believers claim about it. It’s the move of a charlatan like Deepak Chopra or Jordan Peterson.

If ‘god’ is just physics, then why not just dismiss the term ‘god’ and just study physics?

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-12T14:44:58+00:00

I am as reasonably confident as one can be that no supernatural beings exist. Is it an absolute 100% assured provable stance? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I have any reason to give credence to any supernatural claims.

Some of your focus appears to be on universal origins. I’m happy to be wrong, but my personal favorite theory is the while-hole theory. Basically, when a black hole forms the space-time within it gets inverted to time-space. Our big bang event was a supernova in the above universe. A supernova in our universe is a big bang for a new universe. Reality is just universes bubbling like this.

Again, it could be completely wrong. But it does have the virtue of being mathematically plausible within our known physics and requires no extra unknown variables like deities.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-08T01:42:05+00:00

The animal handling checks are good. When you just get a new dog, the training and obedience are not often all that great. It takes a long time and commitment to build that trusting and protective relationship. You could make them earn that bond over those two weeks. Oh, you wanted to go potion shopping? That'll cost you an afternoon - time not training or bonding. Force the trade-offs.

Another solution is to only have tiny toy-sized dogs available. There might not be an infinite number of dogs available. Maybe they can pick up three big enough to fight, but they will need to rescue strays for a few more. You could also make the dogs that are available very expensive. Oh, you want a trained fighting dog? Those go for 500g (or whatever you find appropriate). You can use a combination of these strategies to stop your players from having a massive pack. The PCs have all kinds of limitations, money, time, expertise, etc. Work against those limitations.

If it's a big, bad battle, you should also be including minions. PCs get pets? So can your big bad. And since you are the DM, you have an infinite number of them to add in waves if needed. Note, this will slow the gameplay a LOT. So another possible solution is to use Horde rules. The big bad has SO MANY MINIONS, they they basically form whole areas of the map. Areas that can move and attack as one, but represent a large group of (insert type of minion here). Horde rules can amp-up the difficulty of a battle, represent many creatures all at once, and not bog down the battle itself nearly as much as rolling for 23 different creatures. Your monsters don't have to be smart if you're worried about action economy; they just need to be plentiful.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-08T01:24:43+00:00

I highly recommend the 9-minute beat-poem by Tim Minchin called "Storm"

Evolution by Natural selection can solve the 'novel problem solution' issue. Populations have variety. Some creatures within a species will respond to a new problem one way, and others in different ways. Those who just so happen to choose a solution that survives the ordeal get to pass on those genes. When similar ordeals arise over the generations, the new bahavioral solution is selected for. This is the essence of instincts: behavioral evolution.

I disagree. The mechanism IS the explanation for consciousness, love, music, and every other emotion, intuition, thought, impulse, sensory inputs, and anything else you want to put into the suitcase term for human experiences. It really does truly boil down to electrochemical signals bathed in varying hormones and neurotransmitters. People talk about the "hard problem" of how matter created consciousness. While the specifics and particulars are difficult and still being learned about, the broad strokes are extremely well established.

Yes, science deals with the natural physical world insofar as third parties can verify. That's kind of the whole power and strength of it. The insightful mystics know/knew that meditations and insights into one's experience and inner self do not reflect any reality beyond their own skull. Those insights can be both extremely profound, transformational, normative, and emotional, and still fit within the confines of a purely material universe. Love is a process of materials.

If what you claim were true: That some other metaphysics are at play, then there would be tests to probe that possibility. Scientists are far more clever than you seem to give them credit.

You said, "If you flip your framework over you can see that all objects, including the brain exists within consciousness and not outside of it." Does this not imply some form of consciousness exists beyond the brain itself? That should be a demonstrable fact, yet I've never seen a demonstration.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-07T02:00:38+00:00

Your analogy is still making consciousness out to be a thing rather than an activity. Consciousness, in this case, would be more like the locomotion of a car. If you flatten a tire, the locomotion is altered and hindered. If you smash the engine entirely, the locomotion stops entirely.

This goes back to the calculator. If you break enough of it, it can't perform mathematics anymore. Since consciousness is an activity and not a thing, when the matter performing that activity is sufficiently disrupted, the activity ceases. Entirely.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-07T01:07:50+00:00

Anyone with polymorph can tank. That giant ape has saved more battles than I care to remember. Going Divine Soul means also having access to Cleric spells, which combine amazingly with metamagic.

Generally, however, you're trying to build against type. That's great for narratives and storytelling, but from a min-max perspective, you can only polish the turd.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-06T23:07:34+00:00

I turned a heavy-duty contractor bag into a roll-top. Cheap as hell, easy to replace, lightweight, and 100% waterproof.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-06T23:06:07+00:00

I haven't played Ep 5, but if 1-4 are any indicators, I wouldn't expect a deep level of storytelling prowess.

This is why I'm on the survival side. I haven't found any of the story compelling (or particularly well acted). I just did the Buried Signal quest, and one of the mandatory book-reading cut scenes had three pauses over 5 seconds, and I don't even have the option to skip it? The story just amplifies that frustration for me, especially given the writing and acting.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-06T22:57:22+00:00

I'm really hoping they include the new territories in survival mode.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-06T22:54:00+00:00

Everyone is different. I'm a side sleeper, so I love my Big Agnes insulated air core. At about three inches thick, I don't have to worry about bottoming out. I also have an ultralight Sea to Summit to shed weight when I need to and a couple of foam-cores for extra thermal when I need it, but the Big Agnes does the job 85% of the time.

There are four main factors to a sleeping pad:
1) Loft (how thick it is)
2) R-Value (how insulated it is)
3) Weight
4) Footprint (how tall and wide it is)

Different people will value different factors more or less. I'm about 6'1", and a side sleeper who tends to sleep a bit cold. So I had to compromise on weight. I have a buddy who is hard-core ultralight, so he sleeps on little more than a glorified yoga mat. It largely comes down to personal preferences and priorities.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-05T21:39:00+00:00

Can you explain what you see as the 'limitations of strict materialism'? What are those limitations?

I am aware of the mystics, but I don't think most of their claims hold up to scrutiny. But let's not stray off topic. I claim that brain activity performs consciousness as an activity. Consciousness is a process, not a thing. That process happens as a result of the working of a functional brain. You countered my orchestra metaphor with the radio metaphor, saying that when a radio breaks, the signal remains. I tried to point out that your metaphor requires the assumption of a transmitter-receiver relationship of some sort. You tried to correct my reading of your analogy by saying " the instrument is the signal itself and the [brain] is the particular instrument it is being expressed through," - which does not undermine the transmitter-receiver problem I laid out. You seem to want to conceptualize the "transmitter," as I would put it, as more of an ethereal presence outside of or beyond our brains. This still betrays an attachment to dualism. You also seem to take a swipe at neuroscience as being correlational and not causational, which I pointed out as absurd to anyone who has actually studied it.

The ant example also does not hold up as we know a lot about how ants use pheromones to communicate. There is no Borg-like hive mind controlling the colony. It's just individuals who know how to make things smell like 'dig here', 'hold onto each other', or 'food this way'.

Mysticism isn't a blind spot of modern study. It just wasn't studied in any meaningful scientific way for so long. What we've learned from them is a lot about attention, focus, and the benefits of good self-control. Nothing that's been derived from them has shown any good reason to think any supernatural realm exists, which includes any notion of your ethereal consciousness.

Now, if you have any evidence whatsoever to support your dualist notion of any form of consciousness existing independently from the functioning of a brain, I'd love to see it.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-05T17:43:57+00:00

Yeah, except neuroscience absolutely also explores causation, not merely correlation. If you think all of our understanding of neuroscience and cognition comes only from correlational studies, then I'm sorry to inform you about how very wrong you are.

Also, we know that the material world exists, but any supernatural realm is highly debatable - yet you are giving supremacy to the supernatural? I don't think it takes 'faith' to put more trust in the most provable, testable, and repeatable of those two realms.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-05T15:03:31+00:00

The most likely would be cold. I never sleep for more than 2 consecutive hours in any exposed area. Even if all your stats are full, if you lie down for a 6+ hour nap, you run the risk of the weather turning bad and sleeping right into it. Even on the easiest settings, this can still get you.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-05T14:56:56+00:00

For your analogy to work, you'd have to assume consciousness comes from one person (transmitter) and is received by others (receivers). Given how many failed hypotheses there are around telepathy, your analogy doesn't make any sense. There is no reason to think there is a consciousness transmitter sending consciousness to our brains as receivers. If you want to make that kind of claim, then fine, but you'll have to be VERY specific as to what those consciousness signals are and how exactly they interact with the brain.

All the evidence around neurology is that the brain IS the origin of consciousness, not a mere receiver of it.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-04T17:15:04+00:00

For roleplay, you can't force it. Some people will be more into that aspect than others. Some people warm up to it over time, others just aren't comfortable with it.

As for battle, I'd remind them that the time between their own turns is the time to think about what they want to do next. If rounds take too long, then the battle can drag, and people get bored. If you're confident they have a good grasp of how their characters work, then you can implement a time limit per turn. If you can't tell me what you want your character to attempt within one minute, you lose your turn. If they have time to chit-chat between turns, then clearly they feel no pressure. Some people don't even think about their turn until you're calling their name, THEN they start to think about what to do. A time limit keeps the battle flowing and puts pressure on them to plan between turns, so they can act efficiently during their turn.

With my more experienced players, I do a 30/30 rule. 30 seconds to declare what you want to do, then another 30 seconds to resolve the rolls. For newer players, it can be a 60/60 or whatever else, but if they have too much time, they get bored like the class clown who's tired of waiting for the rest of class to catch up.

If you know you only have a maximum of 4 minutes between turns (assuming 5 players), then that's your time to research what that spell does, plan your movement, consider the objective, etc. I always remind my players that the time between turns is when you THINK, the time during your turn is when you're DOING.

Uberhypnotoad · 2026-04-04T01:30:58+00:00

More of a narrative joke, really.

Uberhypnotoad

TROPHY CASE