FASA Games, Inc.

Much like movement in a Combat Round, a lot of this is abstracted. It's not assuming eight intensive hours of trying to survive followed by eight hours of loafing around twiddling your thumbs followed by eight hours of sleep -- it's two hours of intensive trying to survive followed by getting a bit of rest because that was a lot of work; finding a new area to look because, well, you already looked here and apparently didn't find what you needed.. etc. If you want to spin it differently -- the eight hours represents *useful* time. If you've already spent eight hours looking and didn't find anything, then you can spend the next eight hours searching the same area all you want, but the freshwater spring that wasn't there this morning probably isn't going to be there in the afternoon either.

Even if it is your whole plan for the day, if you're going for realism... no, spending sixteen (or, good heavens, are you seriously proposing twenty-four?) hours actively hunting, without pause, is... Not Going To Happen.

I suppose in some ways it might be more realistic to abstract it as four hour pieces with interruptions... but that would, for example, make it impossible to Meditate if you *do* get everything you need, and make being The Wilderness Survival Guy much more of a burden.

It's not a bad rule. Just because two things don't add up (that aren't meant to add up) doesn't make it a bad rule.

As with other questions you've had in the past, you are extrapolating conclusions based on things that have no connection within the rules.

The "16 hours" meditation thing is assuming the character is in a situation where there aren't likely to be interruptions (or hazards) they need to deal with. That is, comfortably at home or perhaps at an inn or other place where they can take 16 hours to sit around.

If somebody is in a situation were they need to use Wilderness Survival, they have other concerns, and the circumstances are different.

Instead of trying to draw some kind of organized crime syndicate layout, assuming connections between different things (and the fact that 'both of these talk about how much time is spent doing them' is not a connection), why don't you think about the circumstances under which these things would be used and use your judgement?

The rules are not a computer program that cover every minute detail. They are meant to provide guidance on how to adjudicate the circumstances under which they are used. The rules and time limits for Wilderness Survival do not come into play when you aren't in a situation where you aren't surviving in the wilderness. If you're trying to survive in the wilderness, it is very unlikely you are going to be concerned with maximizing your meditative time.

Surviving in the wilderness is hard, and yes, somebody would fight as long as they could to do so, but it takes its toll.

Also, keep in mind the section in the GM's Guide that talks about this:
"The system is intentionally abstract, allowing the larger picture of survival to be resolved with a few dice rolls. The consequences of failure, however, could be significant. The degree to which the gamemaster invokes the need for characters to live off the land will depend on the theme and focus of the campaign. Even If the minutia of foraging for food and water don’t appeal to you, long overland travel is not an easy thing. ..."

++The maximum amount of time a person can use Wilderness Survival per day is 8 hours, what happens with the other 16 hours of the day? Why can't that character continue to look for the required food, water and shelter?++

This is similar to the "why can't I just keep rolling lock picking until I succeed" question. In this case it is because the Failure Result is not a non-result ("nothing happens"). It is a negative result: a complication, obstacle, etc. It means something, specifically: you've just spent 2 hours exposed to the elements and burning calories with no result to show and you are still in the same section of terrain. The fact that this abstraction limits this to 4 "meaningful tries" per day means that we have tense moments when you simply can't find the water/food/shelter you need, and have to try again the next day. The Fatigue and Injury rules should definitely be used, but as with the advice above it should depend on the theme and focus of the campaign on how much they get used.

We used to like Dual Survival -- but sure, they actually are good base to start thinking about this. It's a little hard to say given that they have to compress several days down to around 40 minutes of show, but think about how much they actually *get done* in one day.

Does that feel like sixteen hours of solid, fruitful effort? Generally, I would say, no. It always seemed to me that they measured out their time carefully. Indeed, they talked a lot about conserving calories.

I can see a case for arguing that a use of Wilderness Survival should take more than two hours, and to that, I do fall back on, "It's a game; it's meant to be fun, too, and not many people are actually interested in a game that turns out to be *nothing but* rolling to see if you have enough food and water and a place to sleep tonight, and there's no time to, like, explore or adventure or fight monsters or anything." Granted, way back when we first got Skyrim, our daughter spent several months playing for hours a day.. chopping wood, gathering flowers, and taking them into town to sell, then going back to her Abandoned House (this was before the Hearthstone DLC) to sleep, and then doing it all again the next day. So I can't say that game wouldn't appeal to *anyone*, but then, someone who does want that for their game probably wants that process to entail more than a couple of Wilderness Survival rolls.

But maybe that feels like an excuse for a bad rule to you. If you want the realism, go for it. One Wilderness Survival roll for each of the main facets: Finding/crafting shelter, creating heat, finding food and finding shelter. Between them, they take all day, though the activities (especially searching for food and water) are presumably intermixed. If you fail at any, you suffer penalties tomorrow, and start taking damage depending on which failed. Unless you reach a town, you can never do anything else, because you're too busy fighting to survive.

Have fun. I'll be over here, playing Earthdawn.