More new purchases, courtesy of eBay.
I've long been wanting to get a look at the Avalon Hill old chestnut Outdoor Survival, pretty much since it was suggested as a resource in the last few pages of Wilderness Adventures, the third booklet that came in the box that held the original version of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax suggested using the Outdoor Survival map board as a campaign map for D&D, retasking the various features on the board as castles, baronies etc.
When the chance came to buy the game I jumped at it, and scored a copy that by the looks of it had never been played. I, of course, plan to ruin the collectibility of the thing by punching the counters from the sheet and actually playing the game. It looks to be an odd beast, where the players are actually playing however many simultaneous games but not actually doing much in the way of co-operating. The conceit is that players are lost in the Great American Outdoors and must survive and navigate their way to safety. To simulate being lost in confusing territory while at the same time having a bird's eye view of the whole terrain, the players do not have complete freedom of movement, but must move in straight lines largely in accordance with instructions randomly determined according to how dilapidated the player characters are. If a counter crosses a trail, the player may decide to follow it instead of beating through the bush, but that's about all the discretionary movement one is allowed if my cursory reading of the rules is right.
The different counters show the same characters in steadily decreasing state of health, from striding along confidently to staggering and even crawling desperately. It is all very amusing, in a life-or-death way.
The game came with an actual wilderness survival booklet too, the game having aspirations to be a teaching tool as well as a good way to kill a couple of hours on a rainy day.
Looks like fun.
