Survival: Making the game funner

[sabinati]

personally i joined for other aspects of the game than permadeath. but i agree that permadeath is one of the many components of the realism of this game.

[Potjeh]

I support JTG in this matter.

[Crow]

If you want realism then lets do these things:
1) Vitality and Wounds system instead of hit point system. Vitality is a buffer for your wounds and Wounds determine if you die or fall unconcious. Vitality is removed before Wounds and represents a character's ability to dodge and "roll with the punches" when hit. After awhile even the most veteran character gets worn out and can no longer block. At this point he takes wounds. When wounds are 0 the character is unconcious and at negative wound equal to max he is dead (so if the character has 50 wounds then at -50 he is dead). This system plays out well in many PnP RPGs and I think is very realistic.

Wounds are a function of constitution and only increase slowly over time (with the way stats work now, 1 point of wounds per 10 points constitution would work fine) and Vitality is a function of Strength and Agility and could increase one point per each 10 points of those two stats. Make the starting Vitality 40 and the starting wounds 20 and you would have a scenario where even at 300 for every skill (a high level character) would only have 100 Vit and 50 wounds. That means a high level character can only take 2.5 times more damage (which seems fairly accurate, some of the ancedotal evidence given in this thread suggests that a veteran warrior could likely surive 2.5 times the wounds that a normal person would be killed/KO'd by). This also means that a high level character can still be killed by a group of low level people (also similar to real life where even a very strong man can be overcome by multiple assailants).

I think this system is pretty realistic and fixes a lot of the problems with the current stat system. You could even forego the vit/wounds system and just use the starting numbers and increase rate that I provided (so HHP would start at 40 and gain slowly to 100 at 300 con).

2) Animals that kill in real life, kill here.
Bears and boars really. No other animals in the game are really going to attempt to kill a human when threatened.

3) Make the animal count realistic.
Animals are very territorial and limited resources/competition, harsh weather, and low intelligence/reliance on instinct mean that animal populations are fairly spread out. All animals should appear about as frequently as boars and only sheep, cows, and deer should be seen more than one at a time.

[Crow]

Also, don't fool yourselves. Not everyone comes to this game for the combat and adventure experience. I do like these aspects, but I would never touch this game if that's all it had to offer. It's more about the free form ability to craft and the interesting player interaction and economic experience. Careful when you say that the game needs to be super real to provide a fun or interesting experience.