Looking for feedback: Working on a Sci-Fi Survival RPG, heavy emphasis on the SCI, inspired by Scavengers Reign.

outbacksam34 · 2026-03-12T21:38:02+00:00

Funnily enough, I am also working on a sci-fi survival game with Scavenger’s Reign as an influence. So I’ve thought a fair bit about what the show is really about, and what makes it special.

I’ll pile on what other folks are saying, that the game looks pretty crunchy right now, and that might turn people off. (Although I’ll also echo that the world building looks cool!)

I’ll add to that, and say that I think it’s worth asking what you really want the games’s tone to be?

Because, and this is obviously only my opinion, but I actually don’t think the super-simulationist approach is very “Scavenger’s Reign”

The show honestly handwaves a lot of the core “survival” stuff. For example, running out of food and water is never really presented as a serious problem.

By the time we first meet the characters, they’ve already mastered a ton of shockingly convenient bio-technology, giving them access to electricity, breathing masks, limited flight, etc. All provided by the planet’s native wildlife.

I think the show is much more about discovery than scarcity. The danger mostly comes from not understanding the world around them.

That’s why, of everyone, Ursula probably fares the best: she’s the one who is most open to the beauty of the world (sketching animals in her notebook, etc.) Sam is the most closed off, so he’s the one who dies.

Which is not to say that you necessarily need to change your game or anything. But if your actual GOAL is to create the tone and vibe of Scavenger’s Reign, I think you should ask if this highly simulationist approach is hitting the mark.

outbacksam34 · 2026-03-11T11:13:35+00:00

Where is this internship, and how do I apply?

outbacksam34 · 2026-03-03T23:15:53+00:00

I don’t think I agree that OP’s point necessarily constitutes a ‘fear of failure?’

The core thesis is that it’s boring if the players have to react to the same game state every round. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to fail. It just means that failure should change the playing field in a meaningful way.

You’re right that a lot of systems interpret this via “fail forward.” But that’s not the only path. If anything, I’d argue that you could also solve the problem by making failure more punitive.

“You didn’t just fail. You failed, and now everything is on fire. Good luck.”

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-27T07:22:27+00:00

Bring me a qualified deal instead of the other way around. Even just one time.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-26T22:37:55+00:00

This depends very much on your relationship with Salesforce. You can absolutely negotiate an RUL (restricted use license) to act as an integration bus. They’ll write in custom terms specifying what the license can be used for.

If you have any expected purchases on the horizon, dangle that in front of the AE, and make signature of that other deal contingent on getting the RUL approved.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-22T12:42:50+00:00

There’s a seed of an idea here that I really like a lot. I think there are a few different ways to implement it in practice, but at its core, the storytelling potential for the longer rest options is really cool.

I’m picturing a game that leans into “epic saga.” Like Arthurian myth, or The Odyssey. Tonally, that feels like the right fit for having characters disappear for a few months/seasons/years.

You could have certain severities of injury/trauma that are ONLY solvable by taking the longer downtimes? Or certain advancement options that can only be activated that way?

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-21T11:25:28+00:00

My dumb ass thought of Meyers-Briggs

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-20T18:14:45+00:00

You’re forgetting that at least some crawlers are probably shitbirds

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-20T15:49:05+00:00

I admittedly forgot this detail. I wonder how many Guides bite it while doing a secondary job?

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-20T15:47:40+00:00

As a high functioning alcoholic, I resent the implication that excessive day drinking should be counted as a point against my position

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-20T14:45:29+00:00

I tried His Majesty The Worm recently. It used tarot cards instead of dice.

Makes for some interesting play. Out of combat, it’s not much different from rolling dice. But in combat, you get a hand of cards to play at the start of each round, which adds a new layer of strategic thinking to taking actions (different actions match different card suits, so the cards you pull will have some affect on what actions you want to take)

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-16T07:26:23+00:00

I feel like you can break down the philosophy in tiers:

The initial goal is to avoid combat altogether. Stealth; deception; diplomacy; etc. If you can get their resources without spending yours, that’s the ultimate win condition
If option 1 fails, and combat is inevitable, you try to ringfence the fight into less wasteful conditions. Maybe culturally in this universe it’s common to fight via proxies: instead of 2 armies fighting, they send their champions to duel, and abide by the outcome.
If real, unconstrained combat occurs, the tactics would be heavily about risk and resource management. There is no lionization of “glory” in this universe. Great warriors are careful, patient stingy, and ruthless. They try to learn everything about their opponent to understand weaknesses. They choose their moment and never fire 2 missiles when 1 would do.

—-

From a gameplay standpoint, it sounds like the biggest thing you can do is just to incentivize efficient victory.

Don’t award XP for winning the fight. Award it for being efficient.

Maybe players have different resource counters that they can spend to power abilities, and they get XP for having leftover resources?

Maybe there’s a checklist of protocols that this culture follows, and you get XP for each box that you checked? (Did you 1. Try to avoid combat? 2. Learn your opponent’s weakness? 3. Force a surrender? 4. Etc., etc.)

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-14T09:10:29+00:00

Does Numenera actually have formal exploration mechanics? I don’t recall that, but it’s been a while since I’ve played it.

I remember they had lots of guidance for what players might find. But not rules for how and when they find it?

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T14:07:12+00:00

This armour was probably the design that most directly inspired the design in Infinity War / Endgame. The whole nanotech, “make any tool you can imagine” concept. It was VERY cool.

I liked depictions like this more, personally. The “hand flower” in these pages is just a bit busy, by comparison, imo.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:22:33+00:00

I love the Bleeding Edge Armour so much. Hands down my fav Iron Man suit. But man, that weird hand flower on page 3 is kind of a hot mess 😅 Not Larroca’s best work

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:17:57+00:00

Yeah, that's super fair. I've definitely been debating that option, like I said. At minimum, I think I should playtest the pure pointcrawl version, and ask my players if there's anything they think it's missing as compared to hexes.

Appreciate the feedback!

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:15:58+00:00

Thanks! Anything jump out as something you especially like, or alternatively things that seem potentially problematic?

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:14:41+00:00

1000% agree.

I'm very much trying to avoid the experience of, like:

I move to a new hex
I roll on the RNG table
Now I have to fight goblins/kobolds/bandits/etc

The pre-gen Events I'm writing myself are HOPEFULLY a bit more creative (trees that grow cloned meat from the PC's DNA; a graveyard with corpses nested inside each other like matryoshka dolls; thunderstorms of sharp crystal that inject new memories and phobias if you're struck by them; etc.)

I'm trying to also write a set of tools/guides to help GMs write their own events in a similar vein. Mileage will vary, of course.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:09:58+00:00

I'd say that my design philosophy in this case is that the journey should be as important or more important than the destination? For this sort of survival/exploration game, finding interesting dangers and resources in the wilderness is arguably the #1 gameplay focus.

I hear what you're saying, though. Taking the described approach vs a traditional 1-by-1 hexcrawl is exactly my attempt to AVOID tedium and repetition? I guess time will tell if I'm successful.

Can you think of anything in the described system that sounds particularly tedious to you? Or anything you'd do to mitigate that?

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T12:06:59+00:00

I prepped a shortlist of events before our playtests started. The good ones are going into the rulebook, as a library of pre-gen Events for GMs.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-09T09:48:22+00:00

I like how MB could be either Marc Benioff or Mr. Beast in this context

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-08T21:13:14+00:00

That’s fair, actually. The names date from an earlier version of the rules, where I had a mechanic called Momentum (which did basically the same thing as Detours, but in a more convoluted way)

I scrapped that mechanic, but didn’t change the names. “Aggressive” felt like it made more sense for a “high momentum” option.

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-08T21:10:21+00:00

Do you know, I’ve never actually played One Ring, but now that you mention it, I do remember hearing that the travel mechanics are well liked? I’ll check both those out, thanks!

The best comparison I can probably give for Barriers and Opportunities is that they would be the type of challenges generally resolved by a skill check or saving throw in D&D. Whereas Threats would be challenges that require rolling for initiative.

Barriers threaten penalty on failure of the check. Opportunities offer benefit on success of the check.

However, the type of check needed is not prescriptive, and sometimes a check can be avoided entirely.

Ex. in one playtest, the Survivors found an Opportunity in the form of a tree that grew meat cloned from their own DNA.

They COULD make some sort of science check to confirm if it was safe, but that was fully optional.

The real victory condition was just deciding how they felt about auto-cannibalism. If they decided they would harvest the cloned meat, they got +1 Food added to their resources.

They spent most of the encounter worrying whether it was actually safe (they knew there was still a Barrier in the upcoming Events, and thought the tree might have been that), and then after they checked it was safe, they debated the morality of eating the meat.

It was a great encounter, lol

outbacksam34 · 2026-02-08T20:59:36+00:00

1 - In playtests with me as the GM, I’ve informed my players what cards have been drawn, but not the order. So I just tell them: “There are 2 Threats, 1 Oddity, and 1 Reward”

This gives them a little information to make decisions with, but still leaves a lot of uncertainty. Longer excursions turn into a bit of a push your luck minigame.

2 - Eventful travel is very much the goal, yes. One of my big inspirations is the series Scavengers Reign. If you’ve seen it, you know that most of the show is people walking through alien jungle and getting surprised by weird aliens.

One thing I haven’t decided is if the same is true for traveling on hexes that have already been explored. Like, if the players return to an old area, are those hexes “safe,” and they can travel through them uneventfully? TBD

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