Quote from: RPGPundit;1033233Or do you actually want to defend the random ammunition dice idea?

I'll defend it -- at least for certain types of ammo.

1) Ammo where the player doesn't know how much he has to begin with. Example: charges in a wand or staff that they've found and are using but have no idea how many charges are left in it. Rolling "depletion dice" after its used is less work than having to keep track of it myself as I have enough to track as GM.

2) Ammo like arrows or crossbow bolts where the characters try to recover spent ammo for reuse. To track it I as GM have to either decide on an arrow by arrow basis where an arrow is recoverable or not -- or (much more likely) roll for each arrow. Since by rolling I'm already introducing randomness to determine where each arrow is recoverable, depletion dice might as well be used as it requires less die rolling.

We track most everything.  Ammo, rations, water, ale, light, time, hireling wages, room rentals, equipment upkeep, the weather, the seasons, age, the relentless entropy of the world.

Quote from: RandallS;1033407To track it I as GM have to either decide on an arrow by arrow basis where an arrow is recoverable or not

Why do you as GM have to deal with that?  Players can manage their own resources.

Quote from: under_score;1033409Why do you as GM have to deal with that?  Players can manage their own resources.

The GM has to either whether each arrow/bolt fired is recoverable/reusable or rolls need to be made for each to see if it can be reused. If left to the players, they are going to (naturally) decide that all arrows they used can be recovered and are in good enough shape to reuse -- if for no other reason than it makes bookkeeping easier.

Quote from: RandallS;10334072) Ammo like arrows or crossbow bolts where the characters try to recover spent ammo for reuse. To track it I as GM have to either decide on an arrow by arrow basis where an arrow is recoverable or not -- or (much more likely) roll for each arrow. Since by rolling I'm already introducing randomness to determine where each arrow is recoverable, depletion dice might as well be used as it requires less die rolling.

I've certainly played without tracking ammo at all, and even sometimes in games with high tracking, I don't track ammo for everyone all the time but sometimes use the GM guesstimation "system" unless/until it matters.

On the other hand, sometimes it can be enjoyable and interesting to track arrows in detail. Also I have had players who get really into their arrow tracking, and want to know where each arrow went, what it hit and how broken it is, etc. Fortunately, that's fairly easy to do especially since I use hex map combat. Some obsessive players end up making decisions on where to fire from, who to fire at, and whether to fire based on what's behind them, where they're wearing metal armor, etc.

Quote from: Graewulf;1033357Honestly, I don't see that bookkeeping is that difficult to manage. Is it really so hard to keep track of a few numbers?

It's not a question of difficulty, it's a question of enjoyment.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1033233Or do you actually want to defend the random ammunition dice idea?

Moved to the front of quote because is an aside to main theme.

No. The roll-a-dice-to-see-if-you've-run-out mechanic was used for gas in Atomic Highway (an otherwise very solid simple/osr-level-simple post-apoc game that is a nice alternative to GW or GW-alikes), and it did not add to the game.



 

QuoteI've seen some allegedly-osr games, like the 'black hack', where even things like arrows are handled abstractly (with a die that will randomly result in you being out of arrows).  But I think that most OSR gamers think resource management is very important.

Do you agree?

To what extent do you think it's important? Do you have players keep meticulous track of food rations and arrows? More than that?

As usual, the most important thing is shared understanding and agreed-upon assumptions. If the DM is not asking us to track our rations (or encumbrance down to the pound), I will half-ass it (and probably pay for it by buying a whole 'as-much-as-I-usually-carry's worth of rations every time we hit town, regardless of whether my old stock would have been used up). If the DM wants the game to be about tracking food and rations, then I am all for it (and regularly do so when I DM BECMI or BtW).

The thing for me is--OSR gaming is highly focused on tracking and managing scarce resources, but what those scarce resources specifically are is less important.

I started with BECMI. XP was how much gold you could successfully drag out of the dungeon (and thus your encumbrance total going into the dungeon was fairly important. But, up until you were looking to buy your castles and pay for your armies, once you got the gold out of the dungeon and to town, what you did with it was relatively unimportant. Thus If you wanted to consistently block out a block of encumbrance for 'more than enough' of rations and arrows,' and also over-spend on them when you get to town, you can make it not a big deal.

Someone who started with (or transitioned to) 1e AD&D, with the level-up training costs (being right around to just a little more gold than you'd earn to get the xp to get to that level-up point) might see it differently. There, any gold you waste on over-buffering your arrows and rations is gold taken away from your training. And the training costs just roughly equaling xp-to-level is supposed to be one of those hard decisions (and what I feel OSR gaming is really about is those tough decisions one has to make with managing scarce resources) about things like 'do I sell this magic item to afford to pay for training, or do I instead keep the magic item and do some adventuring where I can't earn xp to get gold to pay for the training?' Both are valid, just incentivizing different things (being a pre-name-level adventurer to me is all about gaining vast fortunes and then squandering it on beer and women and song or diamond encrusted servants or whatever, and the penny-pinching model breaks that emulation).

I feel, as long as you are managing scarce resources (be it every arrow and pound of encumbrance, or just very rare Hit Points, healing potions, and gp coming out of the dungeon), and making important cost-benefit decisions, then you are living by the spirit of OSR-style gaming, regardless of the specifics.

Quote from: RandallS;1033416The GM has to either whether each arrow/bolt fired is recoverable/reusable or rolls need to be made for each to see if it can be reused. If left to the players, they are going to (naturally) decide that all arrows they used can be recovered and are in good enough shape to reuse -- if for no other reason than it makes bookkeeping easier.

We're currently using an abstracted model for this, borrowing from DW systems a bit. "Ammo" has basically 5 (sometimes more) "tick marks." At the end of combat, you normally tick off one Ammo, regardless of how many shots you actually fired. Then you roll a d6 for recovery. Bows/Bolts have a good chance to be recovered, negating the tick mark (arrows of better make [i.e., "Elvish arrows," for ex], have a better chance of being recovered). Our firearms (pistols and rifles) are tagged "ammo eaters," so you always tick off an ammo. Your roll determines whether you tick off a second Ammo blip. It a complete abstraction, which only exists to grant an advantage to using a Bow/Crossbow (you buy less ammo). Our guns also have a chance to jam/malfunction, etc. The upside to guns? More damage, naturally. The advantage is no tracking of ammo during an encounter. The disad is that it's not realistic, but that's okay, because resource management isn't a primary aspect of our play. We DO track encumbrance, though, and that has very much come into play, with the consequences of overloading one's self being severe.

Every game I have ever been in did in some detail that being said my old group had long stretches where we would be adventuring in town or what have you and in situations like that we didn't track trail rations because it was assumed we where eating out as it where.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1033274I find resource management to be part of the fun. Don't run out of food, light, water, ammunition, etc.

My players want to hand wave all of that and also any overland travel, etc. They are only interested in playing the "mission", don't trouble them with logistics, etc.  They are all avid video game players and I am not. I wonder if CRPGs feature logistics or if it is straight to teh fighting?

Honest anwser depends A lot on the game money is pretty much always tracked same with useful items. Food and water don't get tracked in A lot of games but in A lot of games it wouldn't make much sense to track it take persona 4 for example the characters are highschoolers fighting monsters in an extra dimension after school and then go home so an dungeon delve is maybe 3 or 4 hours max (not irl play time) then they go home need less to say they aren't counting trail rations(though there is soda and snack food that count as healing items and get tracked). Ammunition is kind of an odd one because weather of not it's tracked tells you A lot about the game and it's intended form of play your average final fantasy or tails game dosen't but thoughs games arn't about logistics at heart they are about exportation of an amazing world and storytelling (not as strange as it may sound) and don't track them. on the other hand you have games like crimson tears or gorky 17 that track ammo on A pershot basis and make it very important to manage it properly.

PS: on food and water there are also A few games I have played that had running out of food / water effect regeneration in A negative way.

Hope that helps and other questions or would you like some clarification on some details?

I'm still a stickler for resource management.

I tend to be really detailed about it narratively, not just how many days worth of rations but what kind of rations. Mainly because I wanted my players to understand the conditions of travelling/adventuring life vs. life in the city so they'd appreciate it more. Sure you can say you're eating "hard tack" but explaining what that is vs. going to an inn and having an actual meal, where you can describe those differences between eating sizzling greasy meat off of a roasted pig over mold-scrapped hard salted beef strips tougher than your boiled leather... has a psychologically pleasing touch.

Likewise with being covered with road-dirt, and smelling like shit, and being mud-spattered, while townsfolk might be a lot cleaner. It prompts players in my games to interact with things - getting bathed and cleaned up, actually wanting to relax and not be in dungeon murder-hobo mode. It gives a lot of opportunities for simple roleplay that can turn "things to do" into adventure seeds.

I might mention that after weeks out in the field dungeon-stomping, only one PC actually mentioned "taking care of their armor" - so I'll tell the rest of the mail/plate wearers that they have some rust-spots or whatever (unless they're magic) and their armor needs scouring, or maybe some detailing or whatever - so off the to local smith. Then that becomes a potential intrigue, contact, point of exchange for news etc.

Gotta get those arrows replaced? Local fletcher might have something special on hand. News of a predator that is plaguing the town or whatever.

Resource management is a means for me to get the PC's to interact with the world *at their discretion*. A lot of my players, for this reason will make characters of great self-sufficiency, as they know what level of detail I'll put the PC's through. Which makes it more amusing for more casual players that never consider *any* of these things and it gets them pulled deeper into the game when forced to deal with these issues. The goal for me is to use resource management not in a tedious manner, but as a method of detail that forces more interaction within the game. I *want* my players to enjoy the detail in contrast with what their PC's are doing. Not just "I have X amount of arrows", "I have x amount of rations." - I want those things to exist in context with the setting and for it to matter, if even only in a narrative way.

Philosophically, I think that resource management can be a key part of the RPG experience. Hit points are very important. Spell slots are very important. Those elements are a big part of my campaign.

Realistically, it comes down to the specific campaign that I'm running. Sometimes I will do something post-apocalyptic and tell my players to count ammo and gallons of gas. Sometimes I will do something where gold is scarce and I tell them to track their gold, silver, and copper coins. I might track water use in a desert, but I don't bother to count fish caught in a seafaring game. For me it's a decision of what is important for that game and I choose carefully what ought to be counted and what ought NOT be counted.

Just my two cents.

Quote from: tenbones;1033985I'm still a stickler for resource management.

I tend to be really detailed about it narratively, not just how many days worth of rations but what kind of rations. Mainly because I wanted my players to understand the conditions of travelling/adventuring life vs. life in the city so they'd appreciate it more. Sure you can say you're eating "hard tack" but explaining what that is vs. going to an inn and having an actual meal, where you can describe those differences between eating sizzling greasy meat off of a roasted pig over mold-scrapped hard salted beef strips tougher than your boiled leather... has a psychologically pleasing touch.

Likewise with being covered with road-dirt, and smelling like shit, and being mud-spattered, while townsfolk might be a lot cleaner. It prompts players in my games to interact with things - getting bathed and cleaned up, actually wanting to relax and not be in dungeon murder-hobo mode. It gives a lot of opportunities for simple roleplay that can turn "things to do" into adventure seeds.

I might mention that after weeks out in the field dungeon-stomping, only one PC actually mentioned "taking care of their armor" - so I'll tell the rest of the mail/plate wearers that they have some rust-spots or whatever (unless they're magic) and their armor needs scouring, or maybe some detailing or whatever - so off the to local smith. Then that becomes a potential intrigue, contact, point of exchange for news etc.

Gotta get those arrows replaced? Local fletcher might have something special on hand. News of a predator that is plaguing the town or whatever.

Resource management is a means for me to get the PC's to interact with the world *at their discretion*. A lot of my players, for this reason will make characters of great self-sufficiency, as they know what level of detail I'll put the PC's through. Which makes it more amusing for more casual players that never consider *any* of these things and it gets them pulled deeper into the game when forced to deal with these issues. The goal for me is to use resource management not in a tedious manner, but as a method of detail that forces more interaction within the game. I *want* my players to enjoy the detail in contrast with what their PC's are doing. Not just "I have X amount of arrows", "I have x amount of rations." - I want those things to exist in context with the setting and for it to matter, if even only in a narrative way.

1st off I just got to say cool stuff.
Next if you get in to describing your travel food in detail I suggest taking A look at the townsends youtube channel he covers all sorts of historical recipes and have done several videos on soldier food and travel food on the 1700s and 1800s.
https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos
A few good ones are potted beef, portable soup, hardtack(there some historical stuff on it that could be very useful like how it had 20+ different names) ,pemmican , no meat survival food part 1 and 2,and standing crust pie.
I would also point you to the soldier food videos he has done but there names escape me.

Quote from: kosmos1214;10340261st off I just got to say cool stuff.
Next if you get in to describing your travel food in detail I suggest taking A look at the townsends youtube channel he covers all sorts of historical recipes and have done several videos on soldier food and travel food on the 1700s and 1800s.
https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos
A few good ones are potted beef, portable soup, hardtack(there some historical stuff on it that could be very useful like how it had 20+ different names) ,pemmican , no meat survival food part 1 and 2,and standing crust pie.
I would also point you to the soldier food videos he has done but there names escape me.

Oh Lord Arioch, I want to make out with you Kosmos, in a totally Platonic way. Wait I guess that doesn't work.

Great link! thanks!

Quote from: tenbones;1034034Oh Lord Arioch, I want to make out with you Kosmos, in a totally Platonic way. Wait I guess that doesn't work.

Great link! thanks!

Glad it helps

I'm somewhere in between. I find very meticulous resource-management over-complicated, while on the other hand things like random rolls to see when you run out of arrows is totally unsatisfactory.

In our most recent session zero we agreed to track treasure and potions but not arrows and rations. And we're not tracking encumbrance at all, we've just agreed to not take the piss. It's early days but no problems so far.