Exploring the World #2: Camp and Survival Part 1

You’re an adventurer. For most of the time, that means, being a traveler. And you can’t just keep walking all day long and then on through the night. So what do you do when you reach a clearing in the woods at dusk and have no idea how much longer you will have to walk until you may reach another city? Camping is what you do. You pitch a tent for the night and you try to get some rest.

For most D&D-based games, resting was an extremely important feature because it enabled you to recharge your spells. Aside from the elementary feature of memorizing spells or powers, in Realms Beyond, your party members will be able to use the time during an encampment to cook, eat, hunt, collect food, cure wounds or to identify items.

But encampments don’t come for free. There is always an inherent danger in staying out in the open at night, such as surprise attacks. As a result, setting up camp will become this balancing act because the longer you travel, the more it tires out your party members. Eventually, they will be exhausted, and once they are exhausted, they will become easy prey for a horde of Goblins that they would otherwise take with one arm tied behind their backs.

The key feature that is at play here can be called Resource Management. You have to weigh the dangers of resting in an unknown area (and risking a random encounter) against the downsides of forcing your party to press on. It adds just one more consideration to the list of things you have to contemplate before leaving a town and setting off into unknown territory.

As mentioned above, setting up camp can be a risky undertaking. You are never alone in the woods and whatever monsters are roaming the dark, just outside the circle of light from your campfire, might consider you easy prey. But not all dangers come with the falling of darkness, even during the day, a camp may find itself the target of a surprise attack by roaming monsters.

In certain areas, it might make more sense to rest at night, since humanoids like Orcs and Goblins prefer to sleep during those nighttime hours. But there are others. Creatures of the night, and it might be safer for you to travel under the cover of darkness when the air carries sound better and you can hear every noise. It may just save your life when something awful decides to leave its lair where it hides during the day in search of prey.