The Shadow
Hero
I think the increasing tendency to abstract away exact counts of supplies (which I thoroughly approve of) is part and parcel of the increasing tendency to separate character from player (which I mostly, but not entirely, approve of).
In the old days, a puzzle was there for the players, not so much the characters. Nowadays, you're more likely to see people roll on character skills to figure things like that out.
How does this apply to supplies? Simple: My character is the expert in adventuring, not me. He's the one who is handling all that side of things, and he's better at it than I am. I'm fine with letting him handle it in the fiction, frankly. A generic, abstracted cost of X per Y time to handle depleted stuff is fine with me. (Or, as someone mentioned, Ironsworn's rather fun, but still punishing, Supply mechanic!)
The one part of player/character separation that I do still have occasional issues with is interaction skills. Presumably, since this is a game about playing roles, we don't want to handle all interactions with die rolls in the absence of any roleplaying. At least, I sure don't! But then, there's a valid point to be made about characters more charismatic than their players, or vice versa. I don't entirely know where the happy medium is.
In the old days, a puzzle was there for the players, not so much the characters. Nowadays, you're more likely to see people roll on character skills to figure things like that out.
How does this apply to supplies? Simple: My character is the expert in adventuring, not me. He's the one who is handling all that side of things, and he's better at it than I am. I'm fine with letting him handle it in the fiction, frankly. A generic, abstracted cost of X per Y time to handle depleted stuff is fine with me. (Or, as someone mentioned, Ironsworn's rather fun, but still punishing, Supply mechanic!)
The one part of player/character separation that I do still have occasional issues with is interaction skills. Presumably, since this is a game about playing roles, we don't want to handle all interactions with die rolls in the absence of any roleplaying. At least, I sure don't! But then, there's a valid point to be made about characters more charismatic than their players, or vice versa. I don't entirely know where the happy medium is.