You Think Survival Is Scarcity. It Isn’t.

This is part of my ongoing series on system structure and pressure models—see my previous: Heroic Fantasy TTRPGs: The Real Test (And So Many Games Fail It)

You think you know what a survival game is: tracking rations, counting torches, rationing ammo, worrying about encumbrance. So if a game makes you track supplies, it’s survival, right? Forbidden Lands? Mutant: Year Zero? No sir.

Survival isn’t scarcity. It’s trajectory. This post is not about flavor or tone. It is about survival as a game structure. A survival TTRPG is one where playing the game steadily costs more than it gives back, so “doing fine” is the victory condition. The question is what the rules incentivize, not what the tone is.

Tone is easy. Any table can roleplay desperation for a few sessions—you can make D&D or Pathfinder feel like a survival game if you want. But as soon as the party can rest for free, conjure food with magic, or stockpile wealth the survival idea falls apart. If the rules don’t make scarcity part of the basic math, then survival is just a layer of story on a game that’s actually about getting stronger.

The core test is this equation: dC/dt ≤ 0. C is your group’s capability: health, gear, ammo, money, mobility, skill, etc. dC means the change in capability, and dt means the passage of campaign time. It states that your capability cannot reliably increase over the course of the campaign. At best, it stays steady. Real survival systems replace the ladder of heroic growth with a treadmill of attrition: you can slow the belt, you can balance on it, but the rules fight you every time you try to get ahead. In heroic systems, C goes up over time—you get tougher, richer, safer. In survival systems, C is flat at best and usually drifts downward. Scarcity is the input. Decline is the output. Staying even is the win condition.

The Five Structural Criteria

To qualify mechanically as a survival TTRPG, a game must pass all five tests. Miss one, and you’re looking at resource-management flavor layered onto a heroic or flat-lethality core.

1. Playing the Game Costs Resources. Does playing the game cost more than it pays? Normal play must burn consumables or capability faster than the system naturally replenishes them. This isn’t about tracking rations; it’s about direction. Heroic systems convert play into net gains. Survival systems convert play into net depletion. If engaging with the system reliably produces surplus, it’s not a survival system.

2. Recovery Isn’t Free. Is healing a reset button or a transaction? Returning to baseline must itself consume scarce resources, time, risky rolls, or trigger further losses. Heroic systems treat recovery as a pause button: rest for free, wake up restored. Survival systems treat recovery as another transaction you can’t afford. If recovery is cheap, reliable, or faster than depletion, it’s not a survival game because the system stops penalizing you for attrition.

3. Setbacks Make Things Worse. Does failure make future success harder? Setbacks must increase the expected cost or risk of future actions, not just impose temporary inconvenience. This manifests as death spirals (stat damage making you roll worse) or economic traps (narrowing options until bankruptcy). In heroic systems a fighter at 1 HP attacks at full strength. In survival systems, wounds make you worse at staying alive.

4. Time Itself Is Hostile. Do resources deplete when nothing is happening? Attrition must be inescapable. You can’t route around it by playing carefully, moving slowly, or waiting it out. In survival systems, just existing costs something. If careful play can stop resource drain completely, the game is high-lethality but it’s not survival.

5. You Can’t Outgrow the Scarcity. Can wealth or infrastructure eventually make you safe? Over campaign time the system must prevent you from becoming rich, safe, or self-sufficient enough to ignore resource pressure. Skilled players can stay even, but the rules resist letting you pull permanently ahead. Survival systems make maintenance the victory condition, not accumulation. If infrastructure or wealth eventually solves scarcity for good, you’ve exited survival and entered a different game.

Note: C1 tracks per-session flow, while  C5 tracks campaign-long trajectory. Passing C1 alone isn’t enough—if infrastructure eventually breaks scarcity, the system fails the survival contract.

The fastest way to identify a false survival game is to check what happens when the party sleeps. In a survival game rest is a transaction: recovery must cost a finite resource that competes with other survival needs. If you can heal for free by just waiting, you’re just playing heroic fantasy with a slower clock.

Methodology

These five criteria aren’t arbitrary. They are the pattern that emerges when you systematically examine what games enforce through their rules, not just their resource-tracking mechanics. I researched systems labeled “survival” across the gaming history, going as far back as The Morrow Project (1980) and Outdoor Survival (1972)! I identified mechanical threads that distinguish true structural survival from games that merely feature scarcity but restore capability on demand. What you’re reading is not my personal preference for what survival should mean. It is a description of what the subgenre has been doing mechanically for decades, made visible and coherent for the first time. This framework captures the engine that was already running; I am just giving you the blueprint.

The Material Downward Pressure Loop

Survival systems don’t just make things scarce, they engineer the dC/dt ≤ 0 condition directly into play. Capability does not reliably increase over campaign time. This isn’t difficulty. This is trajectory.

The core mechanical loop looks like this: Engagement → Expenditure → Degradation → Maintenance → Engagement. You act. Action costs resources—time, consumables, wear, economic stability. Those costs accumulate into damage, scarcity, debt, or exhaustion. You pay to stabilize instead of advancing. Then you act again.

Every action burns capability; even success doesn’t create net gain. Failure accelerates that burn, like pouring gasoline. Recovery is not a reset, it is a transaction that competes with forward progress.

This loop structure matters because it changes what the game is about. Heroic systems give you a ladder: climb higher, get stronger, shape the world. Survival systems give you a treadmill: you can stabilize, you can slow the belt, but the system fights any attempt to permanently get ahead. “Doing fine” is already a victory condition.

That’s what separates survival from other pressure models:

Heroic systems: Setbacks wound you. Recovery restores you. Growth makes you stronger.
Grimdark systems: Fighting evil corrupts you.
Horror systems: Seeing monsters breaks your mind.
Survival systems: Existing costs you.

In heroic systems, the question is “How high can we climb?” In survival systems, the question is “How long can we keep the lights on?”

Who Would Want to Play Survival Games?

Survival isn’t just counting rations. It’s making hard choices when every action burns resources you can’t fully replace, and recovery itself costs something. Decisions have real consequences because the system pushes against you: every choice—fuel or cargo, ammo or medicine—affects whether you make it through the next challenge.

The reward isn’t growth or power, it’s keeping your group alive in a world that doesn’t care if you do. Playing well can slow the decline, but the rules ensure scarcity always bites back. When you have to choose between carrying a week’s rations or the treasure that pays for retirement you’re betting your life against your future. Where heroic systems ask how high you can climb, and grimdark systems ask who you become under pressure, survival systems ask one simple question: can you stay in the game at all?

Survival Game Systems

Most games marketed as “survival” fail this test. They track rations and ammo but let you recover on demand, turning scarcity into bookkeeping instead of trajectory. Those are heroic or flat-lethality games with extra tracking. Real survival systems are rare because they require designers to give up the power fantasy and accept that just holding the line is the reward. These are the only five I’ve been able to find:

Red Markets (2017, Caleb Stokes)

Red Markets is a singular game, as it fully meets the structural criteria for both a grimdark game and survival game! RM is about surviving as a wage-slave in a collapsing economy. Every mission risks draining capability: recurring Upkeep (rent, food, dependents) and in-mission Gear Charges (ammo, batteries, durability) can leave you poorer even after success.

Recovery, such as healing, repairs, and psychological care costs Bounty, creating a constant tradeoff between surviving today and affording tomorrow. Victory isn’t wealth or power—it’s keeping your crew functional long enough to take another job. If you enjoy games that treat money, equipment, and mental stability as weapons in their own right, Red Markets delivers a dense, tactical, survival-driven narrative where every choice has cost.

Begin with the free Quickstart Guide, and run a short first job. There is also a great, self-contained Session Zero a fellow blogger wrote that I recommend. You may also consider an extremely useful actual play podcast called The Brutalists which demonstrates the system.

Torchbearer 2nd Edition (2021, Olavsrud/Crane)

Torchbearer 2e is about surviving dungeon expeditions when time itself is your enemy. Every four Turns, the party accrues Conditions (Hungry, Thirsty, Exhausted, Sick, Injured) that reduce your capability. Actions cost time and resources, and careful play doesn’t stop attrition. The clock ticks regardless. Recovery is transactional: camping consumes Turns and requires Checks that may fail. Survival is about keeping the group alive long enough to stabilize and try again, not about looting or growing stronger.

For players who like tense resource management and constant pressure, Torchbearer turns dungeon crawling into a survival puzzle. You’re balancing risk, time, and limited supplies, and small victories feel deeply earned. Download the free Dread Crypt of Skogenby! introductory adventure. There’s also a nice YouTube video of a conflict demo.

Twilight: 2000 4th Edition (2021, Härenstam/Lites/Keeling et al)

Twilight: 2000 is about surviving the collapse of military infrastructure after World War III. Each day is divided into Shifts where actions like marching, scavenging, and repairing drain fuel, rations, and clean water. Success can degrade weapons and tools, forcing repairs that consume scarce resources. Recovery is slow, and critical injuries can impose long-term penalties. The game’s challenge is maintaining capability over time; you can build stability, but you can’t eliminate attrition. Safety is never guaranteed; stability is a constant, precarious achievement.

Players who enjoy strategy under relentless pressure will find every decision consequential. Twilight: 2000 turns logistics, exploration, and combat into a tense survival calculus where maintaining capability is the game itself. The starting scenario: Escape from Kalisz included with the book. If you want an actual play podcast, here you go.

Miseries & Misfortunes 2nd Edition (2023, Luke Crane)

Miseries & Misfortunes is about surviving life in 1648 Paris when your lifespan itself is a resource. Using Exertion to reroll failures or survive dangers subtracts years from your Mortal Coil. Recovery is slow and costly, whether bed rest, skilled treatment, or social expenditure. Rising in status increases required upkeep, so that even advancement compounds attrition. The survival question is simple: can you carve out enough life to keep going, knowing every choice eats into your finite existence?

If you want survival to feel personal and existential, this is your game. Progress exists, but every gain comes at a tangible cost. You’re not just surviving the city, you’re surviving yourself. The first books are enough to get you started, but if you want more detail try the book Paris 1648.

Coriolis: The Great Dark (2025, Kostulas/Karlén/Grip/Härenstam)

Coriolis: The Great Dark is about staying operational in a collapsing interstellar infrastructure. Ship crews explore alien ruins and must pay Slipstream Fees, Docking Fees, and supply costs for every journey. Supplies deplete on travel and cannot be fully restored without risk. Recovery is partial, and failures leave long-lasting physical and spiritual consequences. Survival is not exploration or loot; it is preserving capability enough to make it back for the next expedition. You cannot outgrow the scarcity, only plan to afford one more jump into the dark.

If you like exploration under tension, where every mission risks permanent loss, you will love Coriolis. The game turns travel, supply management, and environmental hazards into a constant, high-stakes challenge. Begin with the starter adventure contained in the book. I found an actual play video for this one as well.

Emerging Contenders: The 2025–2026 Survival Convergence

The last year or two has clarified something: instead of ‘grim tone + supply tracking,’ newer indie survival games are building hard contracts. These are rules that treat capability as something you spend, lose, and can’t reliably rebuild.

The current trend is to treat ‘pushing’ as a kind of mortgage, and inventory as your health. In these games, pushing a roll is not a heroic act but more like taking out a loan. You get success right away, but the game makes you pay for it later with things like Blight, Stress, or even death spirals. By turning attrition into slots or cards, the pressure to survive becomes more physical and immediate. Getting hurt, going thirsty, or pushing further means you have less space to carry the things that keep you alive.

What Gets Mislabeled as Survival (And Why That Matters)

Understanding why games fail the survival criteria is as useful as knowing which pass, because it reveals what players actually want versus what survival delivers. This framework classifies what the rules incentivize, not what a skilled GM can impose through tone.

Shadowdark is a high-lethality exploration game, not a survival system: it contains one excellent survival mechanism but not a full survival contract. Its real-time torch rule makes time an ambient, inescapable cost. If the table spends 20 minutes debating, they burn 20 minutes of light, and when the light dies the dungeon becomes brutally more dangerous. That cleanly proves C4 (Ambient Pressure). But it doesn’t enforce C2 (frictional recovery), C5 (no late-game escape from scarcity), or the compounding economy treadmill that defines true survival. It’s lethal OSR with teeth, not scarcity.

Forbidden Lands starts out as a survival game but later turns into a domain campaign, failing C5. It begins with real attrition, but collapses once Stronghold infrastructure comes online. Strongholds allow production chains (hunters, tanners, workshops) that generate income passively, letting the party stockpile rations, replace gear freely, and hire protection. At that point scarcity becomes optional and danger becomes a purchased service. Infrastructure doesn’t stabilize survival, it solves it–so it’s not survival game.

Mutant: Year Zero starts as a survival game and then evolves out of it. Early play features brilliant attrition: Resource Dice degrade, the Zone is hostile, and mutations impose permanent costs. But Ark Projects converts recurring scarcity into permanent infrastructure, solving food and trivializing gear maintenance. The design intent is to rebuild civilization, not sustain equilibrium, so the campaign naturally shifts into a post-apocalyptic settlement sim. This isn’t a flaw—it’s the point—but it’s a clean C5 failure: if infrastructure can eliminate scarcity, you’ve exited survival and entered accumulation.

Salvage Union shows how a game can feel harsh without being a survival system. The Crawler’s upkeep forces constant scrap runs, so the campaign always needs another expedition; C1 passes cleanly. But after each run, downtime on the Crawler restores core mech resources and lets you repair, washing out a lot of attrition between expeditions. Some character options can even eliminate Crawler deterioration during downtime, turning long-term pressure into a solvable problem. C2 fails (recovery resets too much) and C5 fails. It’s tense on the road, but the screws don’t stay tightened.

ALIEN RPG (campaign mode) is survival-adjacent horror that fails C3 (Setbacks Make Things Worse) in a specific way. Stress is the core pressure track, but it’s double‑edged: adding Stress dice to skill rolls can make immediate success more likely, not less. The catch is that any Stress die showing a 1 triggers a panic roll, turning pressure into a rising chance of sudden severe fallout rather than competence penalties. Pushing failed rolls adds Stress and improves reroll odds simultaneously, so the immediate response to failure is often “better chance, worse consequences.” Failure doesn’t narrow options, it gambles them on a roll of the dice.

Zombicide: Chronicles fails C1 (Playing the Game Costs Resources) despite its survival aesthetic. Campaign play has a Shelter Phase, but it’s described as an abstract downtime for restocking and planning, not a punishing upkeep ratchet. The real engine is Adrenaline: as you succeed, you earn Adrenaline that unlocks stronger skills as the mission escalates. When you return to the Shelter, Adrenaline resets—yet long-term Experience upgrades remain across missions. So “playing the game” reliably converts action into greater capability. That’s heroic slasher growth with a safehouse wrapper, not structural survival.

Conclusion

​Survival TTRPGs aren’t defined by rations, torch counts, or gritty tone. They’re defined by trajectory: the rules engineer dC/dt ≤ 0, so capability cannot reliably increase over the course of the campaign. Play converts into attrition; recovery is a transaction; doing fine is the victory condition.

That’s what separates survival from high-lethality or scarcity-flavored heroic games. If the system has an entropy eraser—free recovery, setbacks that don’t compound, time you can wait out, or wealth that can buy safety—it’s not survival. When the party can permanently escape the pressure, they haven’t “won survival.” They’ve exited it.​

Real survival systems are rare because they require designers to abandon the power fantasy and accept that maintenance is the reward, not accumulation. Most games marketed as survival fail this test, turning scarcity into bookkeeping instead of trajectory. So when someone calls a game “survival,” the useful question is not “Does it track supplies?” It’s “Does the system make just holding the line the win condition?” That’s survival as structure. Anything else is survival as aesthetic; same props, different game.

Please, if you know a game that meets all five criteria that I missed, I want to hear about it! Tell me about it in the comments below.

For those interested my next post will be: Horror Systems

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