With a few changes you could make a new boardgame with how complex that was

@DannyboyO1

11 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure one exists that's not very different. I recall one... either you escape from the troll or you fight it. >_< Unfortunately, "vague memory from half a year ago" isn't easily googled.

@MegaOttaviano

11 ай бұрын

My thoughts exactly hahaha

@eriekaiser2121

11 ай бұрын

Yeah wtf he should spend time on that, I know I would buy it, very interesting concept

@la8ball

11 ай бұрын

What I'll change is instead of disadvantage rolls use a point system. Go a day without food or water -3 to whatever you roll and -5 for no sleep. Not just rolls for exhaustion but any encounters. Go 3 days with no food & water is -18 and need 19 or 20 to succeed.

@thaynelybbert3197

11 ай бұрын

Almost a darkest dungeon vibe for a board game.

Imagine you prep everything and the party decides to make an ambush for the pursuers instead.

@adamloga3788

11 ай бұрын

Judging by how he was talking, I'm guessing that they'd only make that mistake once.

@Candlemancer

11 ай бұрын

@@adamloga3788 yeah, it sounds like the point of this is when it's obvious that you can't possibly win against the pursuers. The best you can hope for is to escape the encounter alive

@tobylegion6913

11 ай бұрын

Perfect location for that: near the mimic house.

@dodhethompson4841

11 ай бұрын

​@@CandlemancerThat sounds like something someone that doesn't know how to set up an ambush would say

@naomihatfield3015

11 ай бұрын

It’s almost like you know my players…..

The next cold road?!? Do my ears deceive me?!

@imasspeons

11 ай бұрын

I am as excited as you - nay, more!

@kacpadestro8086

11 ай бұрын

Cold Road? On this time of a year ? In this place ?

@Ink_Wielder

11 ай бұрын

​@@kacpadestro8086 Localized entirely on this channel??

@pdomo415

11 ай бұрын

May I see it?!

@imasspeons

11 ай бұрын

@@pdomo415 ... No.

This is a perfect follow-up to Zee's video on the worst spell in survival games - Goodberry.

@Ike_of_pyke

11 ай бұрын

Yep , a good berry user would sap like 1/3rd of the difficulty of the situation away

@yuvalgabay1023

11 ай бұрын

Add the ranger class ans tiny hut and you can pretty much ignore survival

@jettlucashayes8508

11 ай бұрын

​@Ike_of_pyke or just beating the shit out of your pursuer since its probably easier then running from them

@aa-tx7th

11 ай бұрын

all survival hand wave spells are banned from my games like goodberry, create water, that dimensional mansion one, ect.

@Ike_of_pyke

11 ай бұрын

@@jettlucashayes8508 depend on the encounter make up and level of group, if it's suppose to be a notable challenge or like a literal miliary platoon(18 to 50 people) who's been sent to hunt the group , then a Goodberry (a lv1 spell ) is a good trade off

you call this awful but, maybe with a few small adjustments to scale it back a touch, this actually seems like a great option for a table that wants more trackable progress on survival elements that normally get handwaved or glossed over. I'd definitely prefer this over 5e's default nonexistent "chase" and tracking rules.

@Sheeprwer

11 ай бұрын

It's a little strange unless the party has means of tracking their pursuers though. The players know how far away the enemies are because of the tokens

@asitallfallsdown5914

11 ай бұрын

Scale it back? Scale it UP DOT MAPPING. NODE TO NODE TRAVEL, BRANCHING PATHS, RETURN BY DEATH RESET LOOP FOR PARTY WIPE. New D&D game mode, "A Travel-Node Campaign".

@zachhaas1075

11 ай бұрын

@@Sheeprwer yeah thats most abstracted chase systems its really not a problem.

@DanielLCarrier

11 ай бұрын

Chase rules are important. Without them, you can kill a Tarrasque with a repeating crossbow infusion and a horse.

@Zedrinbot

11 ай бұрын

@@DanielLCarrier That sounds like a problem with mounted combat rules in 5e, which are equally terrible. But 5e's chase rules are just "hey what's your con score? okay that's how long your can run, basically." It is one of the driest and least interactive things you can run in 5e.

This actually makes the Ranger’s new tireless ability very good, as they can effectively skip sleep and gain lead tokens with no consequences, as long as they can take at least an hour break every day

@RoninCatholic

11 ай бұрын

And Rangers are the class that _should_ do best in a situation like this, followed by Druids and Barbarians.

@theactorsdungeon3898

11 ай бұрын

I find a lot of the time the Ranger's unique survival abilities don't always have a use.

@RoninCatholic

11 ай бұрын

@@theactorsdungeon3898 Exactly why a campaign like this is the perfect place for them to shine. Just like how a monk will shine extra bright in a campaign that routinely features being captured and separated from your equipment, or where fights break out when you're at parties like high society balls or whatever where it's inappropriate to wear armor and carry weapons.

@theactorsdungeon3898

11 ай бұрын

@@RoninCatholic oooh, that's clever!

@o98z

11 ай бұрын

@@RoninCatholic and dont forget that monks are generally applied wrong, they are not a bruiser class like fighter paladin or barbarian, treat them more like rouges/your dedicated anti spellcaster measure

Between this and the Animated Keg, we can see Zee's love of visually representing aspects of D&D, which I fully support.

YOU HAD ME AT NEXT COLD ROAD

"D&D Combat doesn't take that long" _Monkey Side Eye Meme_

@blacknight6147

11 ай бұрын

Well, in-universe time wise it doesn't, players exist outside their flow of time and experience it much differently

@Vatis93

11 ай бұрын

Hours can pass in seconds, and seconds can take hours.

@restlessfrager

11 ай бұрын

Dude a 20 turn combat is 2 in-game minutes.

@Alex-cq1zr

11 ай бұрын

To be fair, dnd combat shouldn't be all that slow if players act fast. Like, implement 1 minute turns and a round is 5-10 minutes?

@Candlemancer

11 ай бұрын

In-universe D&D combat is extremely fast and brutal. Almost all fights are over in less than 2 minutes

More Cold Road? YAY! always good to see more content from you my man.

I know it's a more complicated random encounter table, but it's probably the only random encounter table I'd be able to use while being able to keep track of everything, so good job!

Zee: "I've made a complex minigame as an abstraction for survival/pursuit in 5e, but I hate it" Me: "I don't even remember what half the weather does RAW, but I'm gonna add some wacky shit anyways like Wild Magic Storms"

This seems really cool. Reminds me of those traveling movies where the heroes are trying to reach a location as the bad guys follow their trail. Like the Indiana Jones movies where people are trying to find an ancient temple as the bad guys pursue them or track them so they get lead to it

This is basically adding an entirely new game to a D&D campaign - and I would TOTALLY play it. It seems fun and exciting, and a great example of resource management and risk calculation in gameplay. Serious credit for innovative DMs.

I honestly really like this! As long as most encounters are fast to resolve (they're short and self-contained, or handled via montage), I think you avoid most of the pacing issues you'd otherwise run into by getting into granular timekeeping. You still need to come up with about 8*days prompts, but you could probably crowd source a bunch of them. My one gripe is "D&D combat is pretty fast" , but if you aren't getting regular long rests maybe you can get tension from shorter combats.

@Manoplian

11 ай бұрын

He meant that dnd combat doesn't take much in-game time, so it doesn't matter to the chase.

@AFnord

11 ай бұрын

@@Manoplian I was irked by the "fast" bit as well, but you're probably right about that being what he meant, that the time spent fighting is so small it's not really worth tracking, not that you get through combat encounters fast when they happen (because in my experience D&D has some of the longest combat encounters of any RPG that does not go full on simulationist)

Watching this in the middle of my Stormlight Archives re-read and I spot "Stormfather" on a drawing?! Kudos for the easter egg

I like it because the players are aware and complicit in the random encounters instead of just not knowing what happens. More tensions built that way. Also, very glad to hear the cold Road is not dead!

It's got some fundamental differences with a random encounter chart. Previewing the rolls needed is one. Another is once they avoid an obstacle it's something already generated that was avoided vs having to roll on random encounter. If you dodge the tarrasque encounter and it was the only time it showed up that's different then having to dodge a 1/100 chance of that fight every failed roll. I think more asymmetry and assorted nature on the day to day would help. Don't have encounters listed every day. Have some rolls affect the odds and rate. "Took wrong path, add 2 encounters to next 2 tiles" for example would change the difficulty of next two days. Maybe have some encounters be "face up"; after all some things don't require dice roll. A face up encounter could be obvious signs of bear in the woods but can you avoid the bear successfully. Another key thing to add is more player choice and agency. If it's just down to die rolls of course it feels like a random encounter chart. Take a lesson from something like slay the spire. A random layout of paths where players can choose which path they're taking. In slay the spire, the first act 1 elite fight is random chance out of 3 options. However, the player knows its an elite and can learn what all 3 fights are. So they have a lot of information to work with when deciding to path into the elite fight. One other potential idea to handle the "random encounter chart" feel is pre-trip research. Have some ahead of time rolls that can reveal what exact encounters exist along the path. Going from City X to City Y in a desert? Wouldn't city X have information on the giant monster scorpions that are usually in groups of 2, bandit activity, and rumors of a caravan finding an artifact indicating a dungeon in the sands? So now players can know one of the encounters is a giant monster scorpions, and another is bandits but not when/where on the path.

Honestly even if it's not the best way to run survival mechanics it is always good to get more videos from you

While yes, the end result is still random encounters, it's random encounters decided by how the party chooses to explore and spend resources, increasing agency and immersion. Not bad if it doesn't get too fiddly

Can I just say that, Bashew your art has improved so much and it’s amazing to see the progress you’ve made over the years, I always rewatch your old episodes and I’m always overjoyed when you upload new ones, thank you so much for all you do

HOLD UP, a new Cold Road episode is being released? I thought it had been shelved. Looking forward to it, that story had great ambiance.

Wait wait wait, a new cold road episode is coming ? That's the best news of the week \o/

Gonna have to rewatch Cold Road in prep for the new episode! Been waiting for this for a while! Looking forward to it!

If you now think this system is awful, I'd kind of like to see one of the un-animated discussion videos on what you see the issues with it being and how you'd improve it if you were running it now, because on the face of it, it doesn't seem inherently terrible. The biggest issue I see with it is more just that having a high CON save lets you not engage with the mechanic at all, which isn't a fatal flaw by itself.

@novacorponline

9 ай бұрын

I would assume it's a balance issue. Exhaustion is an extremely severe condition in DND, even just one level of it gives you disadvantage on skill checks. It can easily spiral into a viscous cycle where your exhaustion leads to failing to gather resources, which leads to you failing the exhaustion check again the next day.

@OzixiThrill

9 ай бұрын

I think Zee made it quite clear why it was a fairly awful system. It's basically just an over-complicated encounter table.

Honestly reminds me a lot of Band of Blades, which is a ttrpg built around the idea of the players leading a mercenary company across a kingdom in a panicked dash away from an army of the undead after the real party of adventures TPK'd against the big bad evil lich.

I don't know, I like it. I think this gives players A lot more information up front to make decisions and then they can't complain about it when they say they didn't know that that would happen. Having a board game like setup for this helps with keeping track of very specific rules

As a DM who enjoys wilderness survival, resource management, and exploration, I actually liked all of this!

He took "running down a hallway" and made an entire game out of it. I really like the sound of it.

Don't apologize, lol. This is great. It's DND Death Road to Canada.

you had me at 'the next Cold Road'.

Ah heck yeah. Loved the cold road series, excited to hear we get to learn more

I'm super excited for when Zee inevitably just makes his own RPG

Love the updated version of the classic see Wizard design.

Yes! Another one. Love these bro keep ‘em coming

It's so complex, and yet I love it so much

Nice Cosmere reference at 2:33 Stormfather!

@bobbybyrne1899

11 ай бұрын

caught that too lol

someone needs to make and sell this. fully release this to the world.

@aa-tx7th

11 ай бұрын

be the change you want to be in the world my man my grandparents made board games all it takes is some scrap wood and paint

@ADayintheLifeoftheTw

11 ай бұрын

I mean, I thought when I clicked on this video it as a product he was selling. Seems like I will need to craft this on my for my party. I think anyone who likes resource management games like Dead of Winter will appreciate this. Especially because I made a homebrew of Golden Kamuy, I can rework this to match the more travel aspects.

Even if it's just a more complicated version of encounters, it seems more immersive and much more exciting

You sir, have me excited for the next telling of Cold Road. I have sorely missed hearing the brutal campaign where a couple bad rolls turned the campaign for the worst.

It honestly doesn't come off as that complicated, you really just wanted to incorporate resources into a long form chase in a digestible way. I guess we'll see the result in the next Cold Road, but I can seriously imagine running this with great success in my group. If anything it inspires more ways to gamify resource management, it reminds me of a very similar game I used when my players got hit with community service after being arrested for their shenanigans and it ended up being my favorite session in the whole campaign.

@mooncrime4998

11 ай бұрын

For a second I thought you meant your players had to do community service and not player characters, which, look, I'm not going to judge anyone for needing to serve a sentence, but ALL of them??

@DB-ku7vu

11 ай бұрын

@@mooncrime4998just a lil B&E with the boys never hurt anybody

@dysenteryking9034

11 ай бұрын

@@mooncrime4998 it's been a while but if I remember correctly they all broke into a guy's house and assaulted him, they had their sentence drastically lightened through the use of some favors and better call saul chicanery in the court. They were still surveiled after this because they were affiliated with a violent street gang but it wasn't provable

This honestly doesn't seem that bad, complicated yes but not awful by any means.

@uberculex

11 ай бұрын

A little too punishing IMO. Feels like one of those board games where you only win 20% of the time. You don't get enough lead tokens to search basically anything and if you play a character with a middling-low CON just go ahead and kill them.

@aa-tx7th

11 ай бұрын

imo its horrendus the LAST thing most dnd games is; 1. more freaking math 2. more tokens 3. more crap on the table 4. more dice rolling 5.. more distractions from the storytelling and improvisation if you want numbers and stats go play a final fantasy or world of warcraft. if you want dice and tokens go play a board game. if you want to improvise a story with your friends while playing a game, play dnd. dnd is not a video game and its moving away from being a board game. and its better for it.

@aa-tx7th

11 ай бұрын

complicated = bad ESPECIALLY for an already complicated game like dnd

@llewelynshingler2173

11 ай бұрын

As he noted, this boiled down to a random encounter chart with extra parts

@supremeplatypus7192

11 ай бұрын

@@aa-tx7th complicated = not your preference

I love it zee, please keep up the longer videos!

turn 1: "I'm not running. I spend my lead and resources preparing to ambush the pursuing force. Better than dying from an arrow in the back, exhausted from running for days."

So…you made a new ttrpg?

Awful? Or ingenious! This system is the core for an entire game

@thekenyonsquad5672

11 ай бұрын

I think that's part of the problem. it's stopping the D&D gameplay loop for a whole new game. that could work well for some groups, but for others it would be more fun and faster to just use random encounters.

@Anonymouthful

11 ай бұрын

I thought this sounded like nonsense, then I thought about a massive underground dungeon thats basicly just a straight line between two massive long forgotten underground civilizations.

I'm all for anything that adds a fun mini-game into a DND session.

This is awesome. I might have to try this in my game. Thank you for sharing, Zee. I've always had trouble trying to keep track of how rations are used in games. Your way seems to make that easier. And it makes encounters travel have some worthwhile meaning to them.

Tbh this to me feels a bit better than how the 5e regular rules would have you run survival. This feels like it could be fun and not just a painful slog where every few minutes people have to do really menial tasks without much excitement involved.

@louiesatterwhite3885

9 ай бұрын

True, 5e regular rules have survival being completely trivial. Although in order to still not trivialize this system, some spells would need to be banned. Goodberry, Create Food and Water, etc.

yooo new cold road announcement

Honestly, this has the bones of a great minigame to shake things up a bit!

Thank you for this, everything you've provided us, and for everything yet to be seen. Most excellent, always.

I could see players enjoying this *specifically because* it's more complexificated than just a roll table. Same as how folks will play a TTRPG system instead of just doing freeform, just a variance of degree. Or how some wizard players would gladly, happily play a wizard who somehow is less powerful than the simpler barbarian they could play. More "Rules Toys" to play with. What you did was take a roll table and add *decisions* for the players. Built-in points of choice to play with.

@fizzlock

11 ай бұрын

Right? I thought this was cool. It adds decisions about how long you can afford to stick around in an area, and can force the party to move onwards. Downside is you may have prepped a dungeon for nothing if they don't have the spare lead tokens to explore it lol

@kane2742

11 ай бұрын

Yeah, it seems more interesting than a table to me.

@youtubeuniversity3638

11 ай бұрын

Reposition dungeon elsewhere. Maybe even save it for after hunt over.

Omg!! New cold road!!!!!

great video as always I can't wait to watch the next cold road video.

CoC chase system: "look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"

Oh god, you basically invented a board game. I used to do stuff like this too but stopped doing long wilderness journeys/encounters entirely at some point. I just describe the journey now so we actually get to play meaningful content every session.

@aa-tx7th

11 ай бұрын

yep. while i enjoy explorative microadventures like the first hour of final fantasy 12 and the first few hours of hyper detailed games like witcher 3, story will always trump immersion. story is the meat, world building and immerssion are the seasonings. the world building is supposed to bring out the flavors of the story and not the other way around.

That seems extremely fun as a one time high stakes chase. At least if the encounters and findable things are interesting. A lot of work for the dm, but should really pay off.

“The cold road” is amazing! I can’t wait to watch it over and over!

Great video Super excited for the next cold road

One modification. Dont let the players know their "Lead/Time" token count. When being chased, unless they SEE how far the pursuers are behind, the players have no idea how much time/lead they have on the threat.

@izaakburningham3188

11 ай бұрын

Depending on the situation, there are ways to have an obvious indication they're being chased. If it's an orc hunting party or something going for them, maybe they see smoke in the distance, always on their trail

@nooneyouknow4312

11 ай бұрын

change the word SEE to PERCEIVE and that is exactly what I said.

@TlalocTemporal

11 ай бұрын

It might be a good idea to force lead tokens to be one pool for the group. Since this is a multi-day thing, one player having more lead than another insinuates splitting the party, and anyone overspending dooms everyone anyway.

@nooneyouknow4312

11 ай бұрын

@@TlalocTemporal Assuming that the party stays together, a parties strength is as high as its weakest link, so only the minimum lead count of the group is considered when testing if the pursuers catch up because the week would be holding everyone back.

What a great intro to make us watch this affront to RPGs. Great video as usual :D

"what do you mean I have to eat and drink?" - the one guy who wasn't paying attention during session zero You would not believe how many people cycled in and out of my pick up game of Dark Sun back on Mythweavers because they didn't read the GIGANTIC BOLD TEXT saying "SURVIVAL THEME".

Amazing animation as always!!

Hell yeah! I've been waiting for more Cold Road!

Keep it up Zee, love your videos man.

this sounds like you just made the darkest dunegon inventory mechanic for 5e.

Every time zee makes a video my day gets better.

Been watching (and lurking) for a few years and came to the realization I never subscribed! I'd always just seek out your videos manually or get them recommended to me due to my D&D related viewing history. A few years late, but subscribed! o7

I heard "next cold road" and now I'm excited

That sounds fun as hell dude. That makes travel time way more interactive then just rolling on a chart.

Hearing “next cold road” definitely woke me up.

I'm just about to run an oregon trail game and was looking for survival videos. Thank you zee for hearing my cries!

I’m new to being a DM and your videos are helping me make my game fun

Zee, I don't understand half your mechanics, nor have I played D&D since the days when I played it religiously back in the 2nd AD&D days. But your videos are my favorite things on KZread It's literally the only videos I'll stop what I'm doing and watch several times. So Thank you man

I can only read "mimic house" as the dean yelling "ROBOT HOUSE!" from that episode of futurama.

I look forward to seeing the next episode!

Considering I like intricate homebrew (especially with my monsters), this sounds like a blast. Thanks for giving me more of your stuff to steal, Zee!

Wait… Did you say next Cold Road???!!? LETS GO!!!! Love those!

Really appreciate the return to 2d with these recent vids.

YOU HAD ME AT “NEXT COLD RUN”

This is very inspiring. I will be incorporating this into my games.

no wait. this all makes some semblance of sense. I WAS PROMISED ANGER

For a quick and easy setup i would use Settlers of Catan resource cards for food, water, shelter, monster encounter, and travel delay. Pull 4 from the deck face down (or behind the DM screen) and Roll 4d6 with each d6 representing the task (choose 6 skills to use in your specific scenario) to acquire the resource or avoid the obstacle/monster. I really like this and will definitely use it in my next campaign.

@ADayintheLifeoftheTw

11 ай бұрын

I did something like this for an adventure hex crawl.

@marshall104

11 ай бұрын

@@ADayintheLifeoftheTw How'd it go? Any hiccups or things you would change or tweak?

HA! This is wild! Really cool ideas! I like how it makes the tension the fiction match the transparent mechanics of the game!

This honestly looks like a lot of fun. I might give it a try!

Nice! I dig it. Always a pleasure!

Cold road? COLD ROAD?!? What beautiful news, my day just improved significantly!

thank you for the hitpoint press ad, bought one straight away XD

Much more interesting and engaging than a random table though, and lots of incorporation of the players' skills and choices. I love it.

This sounds really fun!

this looks very useful, i might borrow this and tweak it heavily to run the sometimes boring 'going from point a to point b' game sessions

I just rewatched Cold Road a bit ago so hearing that there's gonna be more is exciting

Looking forward to the next episode of the Cold Road!

Come back from the Northern wilds to a new episode. It's a good welcome back to civilization

you could use this for like a one-shot the survivor lives on the tell the tale and sets up a future quest for a main D&D group

Ooh! Looking forward to the next cold road

Honestly this sounds like a really fun set up for a short 3-5 session long mini campaign. I can see it being a cool break from a longer higher level campaign where the group makes some level 5 characters that are trying to get something to the main party within a time period with the mini campaign ending with the side party and main party teaming up to fight the bad guys chasing them

Dude, this is so cool!!

I love how you just made an entirely new board game for this one encounter. Seriously, it wouldn't take much to make this playable as a separate game.