Which survival stats to track?

There’s a survival rule called the rule of 3 -

You can not survive more than

• 3 minutes without air

• 3 hours in extreme temperatures

• 3 days without water

• 3 weeks without food

For this reason, I’ve chosen to focus on:

• thirst,

• hunger,

• temperature,

• along with the common game stats: energy and health.

  • Energy can be considered a composite of the first three plus potentially more, e.g., amount and quality of sleep, body fitness level, type of food, etc.

  • Health can be considered a bit of a wild card where it tracks the damage to one’s body, e.g., perhaps due to weather, insect bites, poisonous food, physical injury, etc. Basically, anything that can be addressed by first aid should be in this category.

(Air is fairly critical, so it might be included in the future, should your character fall into water. I’m still not sure yet.)

I believe that these stats are fairly important to monitor when (trying to) survive, and so, it makes sense to bring them in-game. A follow-up question might be whether one needs to bring in more granular stats? It’s always a fine art between balancing abstraction vs specifics, and for now, I’d stick with these stats, unless there’s reason to change them.