Back in the earliest days of D&D, before modules, before campaign settings, D&D relied on two other games, the wargame Chainmail, and Outdoor Survival.
Today you can find everything you need to play a game of Dungeons & Dragons in a simple boxed set–whether that’s one of the starter kits like D&D Essentials or The Lost Mine of Phandelver, or one of the core gift sets that comes with all three of the core rulebooks and some dice–whatever you choose, you get the rules of the game and a world (big or small) to play them in. But back in the dawn of D&D, when the original boxed set was first released, it didn’t even come with everything you needed to play the game. Right there in the first booklet, Men & Magic it says you need two other games: Chainmail, TSR’s wargame of medieval combat, and a game by Avalon Hill called Outdoor Survival.
Published in 1972 and then updated in 1973, Outdoor Survival was “a game about wilderness skills.” It said so, right on the box.
Lost and alone, you must survive and escape the woods. There are 5 different scenarios from inexperienced hikers lost in the woods to a rescue party trying to find a lost person. You will have to deal with animals, finding food and water, mother nature and sickness without dying to win.
The original game was set in a modern wilderness, where players were tasked with surviving i…
Source: Bell of Lost Souls
