I don't fuss over it too much. I mean, my GPs are not 1/10th of a pound so things don't get too crazy, and generally parties go into the dungeon for the day and withdraw to a little camp at night.

I love the survival stuff in computer games - I play "survival" difficulty in Fallout 4 - but it's tedious in tabletop stuff. I've done it once or twice but it was a postapocalyptic game and one-on-one, you don't have other players' discussions and arguments to slow you down so putting in more complications in other areas is okay.

In my Land of Ice and Stone supplement for Legend, food is of prime importance. It is set in the Old Stone Age and has rules for tracking food consumption as many PCs are on the edge of starvation. A post-apocalyptic game might have similar requirements.

Most games don't need this level of detail, however. If I play a fighter in a D&D game, I can shoot some game and roast it on a fire. Alternatively, I can go to a tavern and get a cheap meal, unless I have absolutely no money and nothing to trade for food, in which case the next scenario is about getting money to buy food.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935337Aw how cute.  Why not just sit in a circle and diddle each other's happy bits if all you care about is FUNZ without any actual relation to the setting the characters are inhabiting.  Go live in Japan, I hear suckshops are $20some bucks for two cumshots.

Quote from: LarsdanglyYou are a useless sack of shit.

A discussion of food and encumbrance in rpgs has led to two guys angrily abusing each-other.

I do love a good session of shaking my fist in righteous nerdfury. Keep it up, lads!

My issue is food and water is heavy and requires storage. If you are not bringing a supply wagon, you need a train of mules. That's why Drive Cart is a skill in Warhammer. Carts are the medieval pickup truck.

I agree with Opa on the packmaster concept. If the PCs don't want to deal with the supply aspect of adventuring, they can hire people who will do it for them. For me, that's a fine way to handle abstraction.
In fact, there would probably be a Guild who supplies exploration ventures in game worlds where adventurers were a thing.

Hmm...that's also a good way to suck money off PCs too.

Quote from: Spinachcat;935852My issue is food and water is heavy and requires storage. If you are not bringing a supply wagon, you need a train of mules. That's why Drive Cart is a skill in Warhammer. Carts are the medieval pickup truck.

I agree with Opa on the packmaster concept. If the PCs don't want to deal with the supply aspect of adventuring, they can hire people who will do it for them. For me, that's a fine way to handle abstraction.
In fact, there would probably be a Guild who supplies exploration ventures in game worlds where adventurers were a thing.

Hmm...that's also a good way to suck money off PCs too.

In our world deep exploration -- unless funded through trade along the way -- habitually needs upfront investment on speculation, from our ancient past to present. Anything from government, mafiosi, trade guilds, religions, scientists, etc. can be used because they've all been well known ideas in our real world. It's extremely easy to create a coherent setting justification for this in a low frequency magic setting.

I could easily see the party's in-town adventures in trying to get expedition sponsorship alone.

(If you're really evil, and the players are up for a challenge, you could make them part-time ad hoc traders, reluctant evangelists, or even walking sponsor advertisements... all well established ideas as of now in reality.)

This is why my characters tend to buy a caravan style wagon home ASAP and stock up on foods that wont go bad anytime soon. At least four players I've known had goals of getting a ship for much the same reason. A mobile base to carry supplies.

Water is the big weight issue. But with a well distributed backpack its not so much an issue. Getting a super-science dimensional backpack was one of my Gamma World characters early goals and most valued item afterwards.

Quote from: soltakss;935752In my Land of Ice and Stone supplement for Legend, food is of prime importance. It is set in the Old Stone Age

You had me at Mammoths. Purchased.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935897You had me at Mammoths. Purchased.

Remember, not all mammoths were woolly mammoths. Even 65 million years ago, Texas was too hot for that.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;935844A discussion of food and encumbrance in rpgs has led to two guys angrily abusing each-other.

I do love a good session of shaking my fist in righteous nerdfury. Keep it up, lads!

I like the IDEA of encumbrance, but how do you do it in 5th edition and actually track it without it being a huge hassle?

Even just looting a corpse becomes a big science project as you have to compare the weights of each new item against what you currently have.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;936111I like the IDEA of encumbrance, but how do you do it in 5th edition and actually track it without it being a huge hassle?

Even just looting a corpse becomes a big science project as you have to compare the weights of each new item against what you currently have.

Not much worse than juggling spells. The main thing is that it usually doesnt happen often enough to be onerous. That was the trick in Dragon Storm and BX. You just ticked off a unit of supply each day of travel or every seven days or whatever works. Same with encumberance. You usually dont see it come into play again till the end of an adventure.

But this is also part of why phasing out retainers and hirelings was a bad idea as it introduced this logistics problem. Players wanting to haul stull back with 4 people that before took a dozen or more.

In 5e your carrying capacity in pounds is STR x 15. 50 coins weighs 1 pound. A longsword weighs 3lb. So fairly easy to frontload your capacity and then note the initial adventuring weight during chargen. After that it doesnt factor for a while usually. (usually)

Quick rundown with my Warlock.
Step 1: STR 16 = capacity of 240. Encumbered at 80. Heavily encumbered at 160.
Step 2: Shield = 6lb.(technically weighs nothing once attuned) Leather armour = 10lb. Clothes = 6lb. Waterskin = 5lb, 10 iron spikes = 5lb. 3 flasks of(lantern)oil = 3lb. Lantern = 2lb. 50ft of Rope = 10lb. Backpack = 5lb.
Step 3: Total 52 out of my 240 = 28 till encumbered and 102 till heavily and a max of 188 left.

So I find a chest with 1000 silver in it? Thats 20lb. How hard is that to parse out what to drop or not?

Quote from: Omega;936113How hard is that to parse out what to drop or not?

You...you...you did like Math, like actual numbers and stuff, like from 3rd Grade, but you actually were capable of it still...and these items...you kept track of them...as if those items were...real and actually existed to your character...and your character actually thought of things that people in books never do...

BX D&D was really easy since everyone had the exact same carrying capacity. And they gave a general adventuring gear weight too. 1600 coin was the max (160lb) which even a STR 3 character can carry. Adventuring gear was 80 coin (8lb) Since my magic user was had the lightest gear requirements usually I ended up the spare pack mule. (Literally if I had Polymorph self handy...)

Well, we've had the expected pissing matches, the obligatory real-world comparison, and some one-true-wayism. No surprise. Keep up the good work. The only thing I'll contest is from the OP:

Quote from: Omega;935177This and encumbrance comes up now and then and I think its a feature that has faded from use in RPGs that can be a useful mechanic.

Really? I know "there's nothing new under the sun" is part of my schtick, but I'm curious. Why do you think this? Just within D&D/OSR, I see rations, encumbrance rules, and wilderness/survival mechanics in every edition I can pull off my shelf. Likewise, not just whether the rules are available, but whether people bothered, I think it was "it depends" back in the day (my own back in the day not as far back as some here) and "it depends" now. Do you have any games specifically in mind when you say this?


Anyways, my answer: If you and your group consider resource management to be an interesting facet of the game, you utilize that functionality. If not, then you tend to hand-wave it (especially once you hit the point where rations and pack animals/henchmen become relatively cheap compared to your income). There are some games where ignoring the resource management side changes the game significantly (not having to defend the henchmen and mules does make life easier, encumbrance changes combat statistics), but a lot of them, the rest of the game flows the same, in which case it should simply be a group choice on whether it is fun and no further judgment should be cast.

The only game I can think of off the top of my head where managing food is effectively required, or else it fundamentally upsets the rest of the game, would be Vampire: the Masquerade.

We follow CRKruger's don't be a dick policy but I will do spot audits from time to time to keep the players honest.