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How do you handle the shift play in camp when you start picking up stragglers, refugees, fellow soldiers and those "only one character can make the roll for this per shift" situations when you have to scare up food for 10-15 people? Do you break them up into their own parties or when everyone becomes starving you need to build a base?
How do you play this out in your campaigns?

Well, from what I've read, those "only one character per shift" notations also include "in this hex" and "others can help".

Let's say you have 15 people in your group (5 players 10 refugees).

So... first of all, you have 4 shifts per 24 hours.

That means you can make 4 rolls in a full 24 hours.

that's 4 rolls in the same hex, right there (although subsequent rolls after the first one get a -1 cumulative modifier, which can be offset by more people helping).

So, that would require 5 people to just get 4 unmodified rolls in a 24 hour cycle. Maximum dividends from that would be 16 units of food (if you're lucky and roll 4 successes each time). More realistically it would be around 5-10 units.
Also, you can march 1-2 hexes per shift, so anyone not scavenging in the same hex can go to another hex (and there's 6 hexes around the one you're in now) and scavenge and come back before they need to rest.
That's 6 more rolls for just 6 characters.
That leaves you with 4 characters who can do something else.

And you'll be getting 10 unmodified rolls for food in just one 24 hour cycle (and that includes sleep).

That should net you at least enough to survive.

Also, if you're planning on staying in that camp for more than a day, you'd have to go further out to scavenge.

Personally, I've lightened up those rules a bit, so I don't have the "only one person can scavenge the 10x10Km size area in a day" rule, because I think it's kind of BS.
I mean, if you're in doubt about how big 10x10 km is, just go to google maps, find your home town and measure a distance of 10 km and look at how large that is, and then ask yourself if no more than one person could search that area in an 8 hour timespan.

And I've found that in-game this hasn't actually changed much. My players are constantly on the brink of starvation, just because there's so much else that has to be done outside of scavenging.

Hell, they're lucky right now because they got a weeks worth of food for their group (5 players and 8 additional soldiers) just because they managed to hunt down a moose and then kill a bear as well within the timespan of a day.

But that food will be gone soon and they have just picked up 8 more civilians. But they've decided to build a base on an island that's pretty well hidden, so food will hopefully not be an issue for long.

So... first of all, you have 4 shifts per 24 hours.

If we want our characters' daily activities to bear some relation to reality, we're not going to be foraging by night!

Personally, I've lightened up those rules a bit, so I don't have the "only one person can scavenge the 10x10Km size area in a day" rule, because I think it's kind of BS.
I mean, if you're in doubt about how big 10x10 km is, just go to google maps, find your home town and measure a distance of 10 km and look at how large that is, and then ask yourself if no more than one person could search that area in an 8 hour timespan.

This is a good call ... I made this point on the release of the beta. I get that these rules are really intended to keep the party moving, but they're unreasonable & incompatible with transitioning into a base of any kind. Better, in my mind, is to impose a negative modifier which accumulates weekly, so you get diminishing returns from staying still.

I feel like the transition from mobile/fugitive life to a base is intended to be accompanied by a transition from foraging/hunting/fishing to agriculture. Whether that's PC-driven farming or the PCs "adopting" and "protecting" a mob of NPC farmers is open to discussion, but my inference is that living off the land is only a short-term solution.

The farming rules, such as they are, are admittedly inadequate to really support community management. The other missing piece is food preservation as an available action. It seems the first things to become lostech in the Twilight War were smoking, salting, and canning.

- C.

If we want our characters' daily activities to bear some relation to reality, we're not going to be foraging by night!

That all depends on how you view foraging...

If you're in the complete wilderness, sure... foraging at night will be next to impossible.

But if you're near a ruined village or town, you can definitely forage through those ruins during night using a flashlight or other source of light.

And since I'm playing a campaign set in Sweden, there's not that many 10km² areas that don't have a village next to them (IRL, not on the *highly inaccurate* map that comes with the game... according to that one, Sweden is just wilderness).

EDIT: For example, right now my group has started building a base on an island right next to the town of Nora in Sweden. That's a town of around 6300 people in the year 2000. Sure, in my version of events, that town was the site of a large battle and most of it is in complete ruins. But even so, there should be enough edible conserved food for the players to find to last them for at least a while. And it should take the players more than an 8 hour shift to search through that 6km² area, so I'll be allowing them to search through it a certain number of times before each cumulative negative bonus to the roll.

That means that if they decide to send out the entire group (now up to 21 people) to search through the town in one go, they'll be getting negative modifiers really quickly (in fact, half the group will be hit with negative modifiers immediately), but if they instead send a few people to scavenge there once a day, it'll take longer.

Either way, that town will most likely (barring really bad rolls) give the group a week or so worth of food for the entire group.

Add to that the fact that they're on an island where there's plenty of fishing opportunities, they can hunt in the surrounding forests, they can start growing food (it's April in-game still), there's an Apple orchard on the island and so on, they should be on the brink of starvation, but won't have to move for the forseable future.

Also, I just noticed that all the cumulative negative effects are reset after a week in the rules (except fishing, which is reset after a day).

I feel like the transition from mobile/fugitive life to a base is intended to be accompanied by a transition from foraging/hunting/fishing to agriculture. Whether that's PC-driven farming or the PCs "adopting" and "protecting" a mob of NPC farmers is open to discussion, but my inference is that living off the land is only a short-term solution.

The farming rules, such as they are, are admittedly inadequate to really support community management. The other missing piece is food preservation as an available action. It seems the first things to become lostech in the Twilight War were smoking, salting, and canning.

- C.

I remember thinking "Can't you rig a smokehouse from a wet tent over a small fire" or just carry some aluminum sheets and 2x4 in a pickup and set up a portable smoke house next to the still?

I kind of agree that the PCs are going to need to find a farm in need of protection if they want a shot as stability. If they start picking up stragglers (mainly remnants of their unit as they would be in the area) it'll become impossible to support these people unless you break them up into their own "parties" but 20 people in a 10km hex in groups of 5 kind of stretches my verisimilitude (and I've already come to peace with FL's wrong take on rabies)

Edit: and from Oddball_E8

I mean, if you're in doubt about how big 10x10 km is, just go to google maps, find your home town and measure a distance of 10 km and look at how large that is, and then ask yourself if no more than one person could search that area in an 8 hour timespan.

I agree, I think bending the RAW to fit what me and my group feels right. Something to consider is that there are soviet forces close to you at the start (at least in Poland) and they're doing the same thing as the group so that might initially be the impetus to "get the heck out of dodge!"

Edit: and from Oddball_E8

I mean, if you're in doubt about how big 10x10 km is, just go to google maps, find your home town and measure a distance of 10 km and look at how large that is, and then ask yourself if no more than one person could search that area in an 8 hour timespan.

I agree, I think bending the RAW to fit what me and my group feels right. Something to consider is that there are soviet forces close to you at the start (at least in Poland) and they're doing the same thing as the group so that might initially be the impetus to "get the heck out of dodge!"

I'm currently planning the next session, and here's the rough area they're in (around 15x15km in that view). It encompasses 1 large town with 6300+ residents in 2000 and at least 2 large villages and 7 smaller communities. I'm definitely going to do this one by RL map, not grid.

As for Soviets, the group is now almost 100km away from where they started out. In my setting, most of the larger military units that survived Operation Reset have settled into their territory and aren't really moving around that much. Smaller groups are, though, so that will be an issue for my group soon enough.

EDIT: For example, right now my group has started building a base on an island right next to the town of Nora in Sweden. That's a town of around 6300 people in the year 2000. Sure, in my version of events, that town was the site of a large battle and most of it is in complete ruins. But even so, there should be enough edible conserved food for the players to find to last them for at least a while.

Ah, yes, gotcha. Yes, with a huge chunk of the population gone or displaced, there ought to be a few cans of Spaghettios lying around.

The other missing piece is food preservation as an available action. It seems the first things to become lostech in the Twilight War were smoking, salting, and canning.

... or the writers didn't think about how people will get through the winter.

But people know how to do these things and you can bet they're doing them. Canning is the biggest problem because of the supply of suitable containers.

There is a band of salt mines running across central Poland, and in my mind, salt becomes a valuable commodity. Unlike in my teenaged 1E games where you ambush the convoy and capture tons of ammo, in my grownup mind you ambush the convoy and capture ... many bags of salt.

I feel like the transition from mobile/fugitive life to a base is intended to be accompanied by a transition from foraging/hunting/fishing to agriculture. Whether that's PC-driven farming or the PCs "adopting" and "protecting" a mob of NPC farmers is open to discussion, but my inference is that living off the land is only a short-term solution.

The farming rules, such as they are, are admittedly inadequate to really support community management. The other missing piece is food preservation as an available action. It seems the first things to become lostech in the Twilight War were smoking, salting, and canning.

- C.

There's always this

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/39 ... ars--Jerky