I'm getting ideas together for an ORPG based on survival skill.

Players essentially will have a series of stats (your standards like health, stamina etc...) along side things like slowly depleting hunger and hydration. The players' bodies will be subdivided into limbs and so on, which if damaged badly enough will effect other stats like health, recorvery and speed.

The object of the game will be to survive and fend, two main focuses of this will be the need to hunt/gather and the need to choose between building a shelter/home or existence as a nomad.

The environment will play a big part in these factors, the plants and animals which are foraged and hunted will vary depending on climate - as will the player's ability to pass/ travel to /stay in one place. I like the idea of a player who becomes adept at surviving hot desert areas being out of their depth in colder wastelands and so on.

I was going to organise climates in horizontal bands on the map like so (Their width is denoted by their percentage of the map's length):

North.

Arctic Conditions 10%
Baron, Formerly Urban 10%
Boggy Marshland 10%
Jungle 10%
Desert 20%
Jungle 10%
Baron, Formerly Urban 10%
Arctic Conditions 10%

South.

These regions are meant to vaguely reflect some kind of equator-to-poles climate balance. Oceans and lakes will intersect the above areas in well balanced moderation (for instance, water will be sparse in the desert).

I though I'd put it to the community, what kinds of perils could you brainstorm to exist within these areas? (Yetis where it's cold, snakes where it's hot...)

The game will be set in an unexplained post-apocalypse, I don't really want much in the way of backstory or plot, at the very most, vague hints, simply to encourage emergent storytelling. (I am hoping to give players the ability to craft signposts, so that they will map and name the game themselves). Therefore - the perils ought to be vaguely beliveable within the realms of sci-fi.

(Radiation cultivated zombies = fine, Magic summoned fatasy bollocks = not fine).

So what perils? I like the idea of a wide variety of wildlife - perhaps a wildlife system that evolves, not sure. GO!

Mutated polarbearwhales. The ice stuff at the poles melted once in a while because of climate change or something, so polar bears became really good swimmers :3

In the desert there could be a huge worm or something that digs in the sand, so that its mouth is at the middle of a deep pit and if you fall in it opens its mouth and consumes you. (i think i watched some nature doc with some fancy bug like that)

Also, huge swarms of some kind of bugs that arrive once in a year at some area and eat stuff.

In the desert there could be a huge worm or something that digs in the sand, so that its mouth is at the middle of a deep pit and if you fall in it opens its mouth and consumes you. (i think i watched some nature doc with some fancy bug like that)

Sandworms? Or maybe a Sarlacc...

But of course, the one antagonist (or protagonist if you're unfortunate enough to be one) that all games should have, all over the map, in varying concentrations is...