How do you deal with food and shelter?

[Mallus]

If you take away the food/water resource challenges, the tracking of time, and the mapping, then the game becomes just a series of combat encounters... like MageKnight or something.

You might prefer old-school resource challenges, mapping, and the like. Which is cool. But suggest without them the game is nothing more than a series of brawls displays a certain... lack of imagination, with regard to what some people do with D&D.

Click the link in sig that reads The Chronicles of Burne... for a demonstration of how mistaken you are. It's the story based on a 4-year campaign of mine which never once featured mapping, food/water challenges, or time-tracking.

And yet it was a lot more than combat encounters. In fact, there were many a session with no combat at all. Go ahead, click the link, at the very least, the stuff you'll find is funny.

 

[fumetti]

You might prefer old-school resource challenges, mapping, and the like. Which is cool. But suggest without them the game is nothing more than a series of brawls displays a certain... lack of imagination, with regard to what some people do with D&D.

Click the link in sig that reads The Chronicles of Burne... for a demonstration of how mistaken you are. It's the story based on a 4-year campaign of mine which never once featured mapping, food/water challenges, or time-tracking.

And yet it was a lot more than combat encounters. In fact, there were many a session with no combat at all. Go ahead, click the link, at the very least, the stuff you'll find is funny.

I can't possibly be "mistaken." It's just my point of view on what makes a roleplaying game the best it can be.


I don't understand why my expression of an opinion somehow gets construed that I'm telling others how they must play as well...

 

[fumetti]

Actually, getting completely rid of resource tracking means that combat encounters are effectively removed from the game as well (or become pretty pointless), since hp measure a resource, too

In other words: Every game group needs to decide for themselves which resources they're interested in tracking.

Where did I say otherwise?

 

[fumetti]

By what you say here, your game only consists of food/water resource challenges, tracking time, mapping, and a series combat encounters. I give you enough credit to guess that this is thoroughly inaccurate. But it also means your assertion is also inaccurate.

Can't be inaccurate. It is precisely how I feel about the issue.

And nowhere did I say my game "only consists" of anything at all. Please don't attribute things to me that I don't say.

 

[Mallus]

I can't possibly be "mistaken."

That's true, but you can be uninformed, or at least under-informed about how some people play the game. Lord knows I'm uniformed about certain styles of play, which is one of the reason I hang out here on ENWorld.

I don't understand why my expression of an opinion somehow gets construed that I'm telling others how they must play as well...

I didn't think you were telling anyone how to play. But I did want to offer an example of people playing differently from you, yet in a manner that was much more than combat encounters strung together.

edit: a more germane example...

Imagine a poster calling AD&D is a shallow hack-and-slash game. Not hard, right? It's a charge that's been leveled at the system many times. More importantly, it's how some people actually played the game. Now that poster can't be wrong in their opinion. But other posters just might chime in with their personal experiences of AD&D, which describe a different, far richer game.

 

[shadzar]

You are playing mortals, because they CAN die; so if some namby-pamby Queen of England in a parade handwaiving of things mortals require is going on I won't be playing or running the game.

If you don't have proper shelter from the "elements", then you are going to have some problems for a few days to recover from possible misgivings if you happen to roll and get them.

If you dont eat, then you are going to be weaker as well.

Don't sleep, again expect to be weaker.

Requirements are based on your chosen race as to how much of these you need.

My games are played as mortal characters rather than pieces on a chessboard, so therefore mortal considerations are taken into account.

This can be complex or simple depending ont he detail wanted by the players at the time, and the environment requires.

Get lodging at the inn, the you have your shelter and food, just you need to remember to sleep.

Say you prep and make camp in the woods, the you need to hunt or eat some rations, and make sure to sleep.

My games have time flowing forward, so these things take time and if you run out of say food, then you have to hunt, forage, or fish for it that may cost time you cannot afford, but that is life.

No RPG (involving mainly mortals) has zero resource management, as you run of out various things all the time.

Like all equipment, these thigns are for the players to keep up with. You wouldn't forget your sword, so why forget food or water?