FIELD NOTES
The five-chapter Keep the fire going story is available throughout your journey. It includes Shoestring, a first-night plan, consent and inclusion, practical skills, a consensus camp council, climate resilience and community continuity. Story visits cost one day; their choices do not cost extra days. Replay conversations without farming rewards.
The climate panel is a teaching schedule, not a live forecast or a regional prediction. Heat, smoke and cold rain affect travel; a flooded route blocks travel for that day. Weather refuge uses a day and protects against extra exposure during the following game day. Resources and energy still matter.
Choose your travel style, experience and route. Daily actions take one day. Call a Mom is a short check-in with no day cost. Some choices show additional days explicitly. Each day consumes one food and one water; a dog needs one extra food.
Make miles, find supplies and rest before you burn out. Pantries close every third day. Your route and day change the weather. Storms slow travel; heat uses extra water.
Vans need fuel and repairs. Freight-train movements sometimes stall. Hitchhiking sometimes means waiting. Leather tramps can walk or try hitchhiking. Walking takes much more energy. Each walking move takes one day, usually 9–18 miles before experience, weather and fatigue adjustments. Rest and supply days add time. Hitchhiking is a separate choice; walking never includes an automatic ride. Routes remain simplified, not pedestrian navigation.
Road encounters ask you to make a choice before continuing. Reach the last city to finish. If health reaches zero, your character dies and that journey ends. Your save and journal remain until you choose a new trip.
Choose rubber tramp (vehicle), leather tramp (boots and hitchhiking), or train rider. DKCSC is part of your road family: check in with the Mama Team, ask about a couch, use community tables, or share supplies. Couch availability varies. Community support helps you survive; giving back builds your mutual-aid count.
Spend a day at DKCSC road school to learn first aid, edible-plant facts and resource finding. Each new correct lesson adds skill and survival points. First aid improves recovery and reduces minor travel injury penalties; resource knowledge helps with closed pantries; two plant lessons unlock mentored foraging. The field notebook keeps source-linked notes. Learning costs a day of supplies, so plan ahead.
Food options include pantries, flying a sign, buying groceries, community meals, dumpster checks and asking restaurants about a meal or authorized surplus. Donations depend on the location. Chick-fil-A Shared Table serves through community partners; direct help is not guaranteed. Food-safety encounters teach why unknown refrigeration history matters.
Road-health encounters include suspected staph/skin infection, cellulitis and possible brown recluse bites in appropriate southern/central route regions. Delaying care can worsen health each day; Seek medical care begins a game treatment and recovery period. Rest is not a substitute for infection care. Real diagnosis and recovery are individual. Jail is a separate legal event: an unplanned camp can lead to a local enforcement encounter and, in one possible game outcome, detention. Check camping options protects your next camp in the game; actual rules vary. Detention costs days, energy and morale without consuming another normal action’s upkeep.
Make camp now opens an explorable hobo jungle after resting, unless another encounter needs your attention. Three activities fit into each visit: barter, a new haircut, a hair wrap, fishing with a full tackle kit, gardening, a shared outdoor kitchen, music, making trade goods, or time with Rainbeau Weaver. Browsing is free. Your pouch and look save with the trip. Shared gardens and kitchens stay in their towns. Plantings need at least four game days and a later watering; real growing seasons are much longer.
Busking takes one day to set up. Choose an original game song, then an approach for the crowd. Skill, energy, morale, song and approach fit, and luck determine your performance and rewards. Preview the three original instrumental tunes, or hear your chosen tune when you perform. Music starts from your button taps. Sound controls mute or stop playback and remember your preference. Practice builds music skill. Trades show exact costs and require enough supplies. Camp life includes rowdy drunk campers, jam circles and strange deals; you can set boundaries or walk away.
Carry naloxone and learn overdose response. Two emergency stories let you use Narcan, call 911 and stay until help arrives; no money or score is awarded for an overdose. Cities now offer real sights and facts, local jam scenes and collectible postcards. Each city postcard is worth 30 points once. Receiving support stays available; helping earns at most 3 aid credits per town. Quick results lets you keep playing without a result pop-up.
Create a road name, background and look. The practical workbench adds staged shelter, water and power projects: one day starts a project, and its choices do not cost extra days. Apply skills in new places to gain practice. Inspect your equipment, revisit Moss, Sol and Wren, and open illustrated field cards in your traveler panel. The changing route regions and all resource quantities are simplified game systems, not live local conditions.
Your trip saves after every move and encounter choice and reopens automatically on this device. Each move shows a result with exact net resource changes. Daily upkeep is included; gains can be limited by full meters. A backup keeps the previous save. Use Download save to keep a copy, Import save to load it, or Recover previous save to roll back a turn. New journeys require confirmation. This dramatized game uses real places and simplified routes. Dialogue and arrangements are simulated; no real people are contacted. The train-rider path represents unauthorized freight hopping. Travel is abstracted and contains no boarding instructions.
Open the DKCSC network for Anisa, Call Your Mom camp, recurring friends and meals. Connection remembers supportive ties; zero Connection never blocks food or compassion. Try the seven community scenes without changing your main save.