What mechanics or subsystems do you use regardless of the game you are running/playing?

VHawkwinter said:

How do you decide what to price that as and what do you charge them to refill it?

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Why should they cost anything? Its a standard adventuring thingy. The main reason why I would use this is NOT to need to track tedious things, so having to track small amounts of money for it kind of goes against the purpose.

DEFCON 1 said:

Nope, never concern myself with playing a game "as written". Because RAW is overrated. To me, RPGs are story-generators, not board games. So hewing only to the game mechanics misses the point in playing RPGs in my opinion. Different RPGs give us different ways to generate stories, sure, but none are so precious that I can't futz with them at any point in the process.

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Even in boardgames its possible to see rules and immediately know that some changes would be better. Not always, and some things are harder to estimate how it would run, but in general with enough experience in games its not hard to figure out parts one might not like about it.

Tigris said:

Why should they cost anything? Its a standard adventuring thingy.

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Same reason you track ammo.

Tigris said:

The main reason why I would use this is NOT to need to track tedious things, so having to track small amounts of money for it kind of goes against the purpose.

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Ah. I would want it only to streamline the shop and prep phase and to marginally reduce the planning burden in town. Tracking money spent and gear weight carried is something I definitely still want to do.

VHawkwinter said:

Same reason you track ammo.

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So in order to annoy players as a GM in a case of demonstrating your power?
I dont see any other reason why one would want that. (I mean there is a reason why almost no one does that anymore.)


Or can you give any valid reason?

VHawkwinter said:

Ah. I would want it only to streamline the shop and prep phase and to marginally reduce the planning burden in town. Tracking money spent and gear weight carried is something I definitely still want to do.

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If you want to track weight carried then a "general adventure box" which has not even defined what items are in would not be the ideal then to begin with, for me it makes most sense if you want to strap away all unneeded tedious tracking. I mean in the end you can just give players a bit less gold then you would normally, and then you have the same effect of people tracking small amounts of gold without having any of the tedious.


The same with arrows, unless you want as a GM punish the specific player using arrows, you would normally drop enough arrows that that player can do the thing they want anyway, so there is no need to tracking. And if you as a GM randomly want to take away fun from a player you can still break/ steal the bow.

Tigris said:

So in order to annoy players as a GM in a case of demonstrating your power?
I dont see any other reason why one would want that. (I mean there is a reason why almost no one does that anymore.)

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Tigris said:

The same with arrows, unless you want as a GM punish the specific player using arrows, you would normally drop enough arrows that that player can do the thing they want anyway, so there is no need to tracking. And if you as a GM randomly want to take away fun from a player you can still break/ steal the bow.

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Yikes that's a lot of baseless bad-faith hostile strawman projecting. I'm not touching this junk to try to pretend it's anything but namecalling. You can pick fights with someone else. Have fun.

I've been on this merry-go-round many times before.

1. You project wild baseless character attacks onto me because I said something you don't like. (Your last post, in response to me running games with tracking money / ammo / carry capacity / other stuff)
2. I deconstruct them and try to get you to engage in good faith civil discussion.
3.You likely (once out of the dozens of times I've found myself in this word twisting and projection attack script thing this did not occur, so I'll admit it's possible but unlikely you would stop at the initial salvo of projections) continually twist my words and fabricate imaginary subtext that never existed to project more baseless character attacks.
4. Over 4-7 posts, the specific nature of your word twistings lead to me highlighting what is your particular type of projection-based dishonesty in the interaction but not always the motive behind why you started the fight to begin with.
5. After its over I mute or block you and move on with my life.

But this isn't Facebook. ENWorld has strict civility enforcement. So when I lose my patience around post 5 and start using accurate but colourful language when responding to you, the moderators would get angry with me as well.

So, no thanks; I'm going to skip going through the motions of that messy and tired old routine and mute you here at this step, rather than 3 hours from now.

Have a good night.

VHawkwinter said:

How do you decide what to price that as and what do you charge them to refill it?

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All adventurers start with one for free and it refills as part of the PCs paying living expenses via an occasional tax between adventures

VHawkwinter said:

Same reason you track ammo.


Ah. I would want it only to streamline the shop and prep phase and to marginally reduce the planning burden in town. Tracking money spent and gear weight carried is something I definitely still want to do.

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I have never found tracking the cost for items costing so little to be worth the effort in any game beyond level 1 characters. By the end of an adventurers first dungeon they are so rich that mundane items like rations and torches and arrows become rounding errors in their money pile. Outlets for spare change.

I don't want to devote a single moment of table time (a rare commodity for a group of adults) to haggling over silver pieces or tracking arrows or torches or rations. I also don't want to spend the time it takes for a player to perform an exhaustive search through the scribblings on the back of their character sheets to try to determine if they have 2 or 4 torches still available. I prefer my games to be more cinematic and fast paced, keeping the players engaged and focused on the story amd cinema versus numbers on a piece of paper.

If one were to enjoy a different style or pace of game then the SAP would no doubt run counter to the experience they were trying to craft. I personally have had my time playing games where resource tracking was a source of the fun, but now that itch gets scratched with board games that center on and are devoted to resource management.

I just prefer to engage with RPGs to lean into collaborative storytelling.

JiffyPopTart said:

I have never found tracking the cost for items costing so little to be worth the effort in any game beyond level 1 characters. By the end of an adventurers first dungeon they are so rich that mundane items like rations and torches and arrows become rounding errors in their money pile. Outlets for spare change.

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Alright. Fair enough. My interest in this idea was not to reduce tracking, it was for moments of "I didn't think to buy that, but my character would have".

JiffyPopTart said:

I don't want to devote a single moment of table time (a rare commodity for a group of adults) to haggling over silver pieces or tracking arrows or torches or rations.

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I normally handle all shopping between sessions. Level-ups as well. No haggling over silver occurs. But I do normally track carry weight and consumables.

JiffyPopTart said:

I also don't want to spend the time it takes for a player to perform an exhaustive search through the scribblings on the back of their character sheets to try to determine if they have 2 or 4 torches still available.

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We have been using digital character sheets through laptops (usually in spreadsheets) since we were in University in '09. So they have unlimited lines for items, the carry weights are auto calculated, and the items can be auto sorted by name or weight or whatever.

JiffyPopTart said:

I prefer my games to be more cinematic and fast paced, keeping the players engaged and focused on the story amd cinema versus numbers on a piece of paper.

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Okay. That's fair. I prefer the slightly slower fantasy world sim exploration sandbox type of play, and tedious stuff like shopping lists are normally done at home between sessions, then at the table they're handled with the single line "It's the morning. You buy the things on your shopping lists after breakfast. Then it's lunch, update your inventories and tell me what you do next." wherein the players can quickly toggle their items from pending to wherever they're storing them, and subtract the pending total from their current funds (I may make this a macro for my next game to save a couple minutes for everyone every couple session, but my old process was pretty quick). I've been considering adding in haggling to that process but it seemed too tedious so I just give them the catalogue price. If I make it a macro I may add haggling into it as something to be done automatically at the moment they click a "buy my shopping list" item. Maybe uncommon items will get rarities like Shadowrun and I'll make it automatically roll to see if they find someone who carries them.

JiffyPopTart said:

If one were to enjoy a different style or pace of game then the SAP would no doubt run counter to the experience they were trying to craft. I personally have had my time playing games where resource tracking was a source of the fun, but now that itch gets scratched with board games that center on and are devoted to resource management.

I just prefer to engage with RPGs to lean into collaborative storytelling.

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Fair enough. Thanks for the reply.

VHawkwinter said:

Alright. Fair enough. My interest in this idea was not to reduce tracking, it was for moments of "I didn't think to buy that, but my character would have".


I normally handle all shopping between sessions. Level-ups as well. No haggling over silver occurs. But I do normally track carry weight and consumables.


We have been using digital character sheets through laptops (usually in spreadsheets) since we were in University in '09. So they have unlimited lines for items, the carry weights are auto calculated, and the items can be auto sorted by name or weight or whatever.


Okay. That's fair. I prefer the slightly slower fantasy world sim exploration sandbox type of play, and tedious stuff like shopping lists are normally done at home between sessions, then at the table they're handled with the single line "It's the morning. You buy the things on your shopping lists after breakfast. Then it's lunch, update your inventories and tell me what you do next." wherein the players can quickly toggle their items from pending to wherever they're storing them, and subtract the pending total from their current funds (I may make this a macro for my next game to save a couple minutes for everyone every couple session, but my old process was pretty quick). I've been considering adding in haggling to that process but it seemed too tedious so I just give them the catalogue price. If I make it a macro I may add haggling into it as something to be done automatically at the moment they click a "buy my shopping list" item. Maybe uncommon items will get rarities like Shadowrun and I'll make it automatically roll to see if they find someone who carries them.


Fair enough. Thanks for the reply.

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I do still have room in my game for those oddball items that players want to pick up to do tricky things....like excessive amounts of hot peppers to make tear gas or lots of grease to make slippery traps or whatnot.

The SAP doesn't account for things that are exceptional along those lines, but more for the things that literally every character would have like rope and rations, bandages, survival gear, arrows or whetstones or pouches...etc.

Recently someone in my campaign asked if ball bearings were part of the SAP and they were told no. I know that's an ages old trick amongst players but it's not something that I see in universe starting adventurers think to bring with them.

Similarly I was asked if a small mirror was part of the SAP and I agreed that it was. I picture the adventurers using the mirror as part of shaving or applying makeup or any other such tasks while travelling. I myself always have a small mirror in my SAP (my purse)!

JiffyPopTart said:

I do still have room in my game for those oddball items that players want to pick up to do tricky things....like excessive amounts of hot peppers to make tear gas or lots of grease to make slippery traps or whatnot.

The SAP doesn't account for things that are exceptional along those lines, but more for the things that literally every character would have like rope and rations, bandages, survival gear, arrows or whetstones or pouches...etc.

Recently someone in my campaign asked if ball bearings were part of the SAP and they were told no. I know that's an ages old trick amongst players but it's not something that I see in universe starting adventurers think to bring with them.

Similarly I was asked if a small mirror was part of the SAP and I agreed that it was. I picture the adventurers using the mirror as part of shaving or applying makeup or any other such tasks while travelling. I myself always have a small mirror in my SAP (my purse)!

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Fair enough. I've had similar convenience bundles at times, which just give you a precalculated list of items, and which would serve a similar purpose to how your SAP works, but individually added to the inventory.

I was absolutely thinking of a pack for more uncommon stuff like your ball bearings trick.

Anyway - I don't care for the at the table tedium of updating paper sheets either, but I came to a different conclusion to fix it.

Tigris said:

So in order to annoy players as a GM in a case of demonstrating your power?
I dont see any other reason why one would want that.

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Mod Note:
And you figured that making things insultingly personal was going to be a good play here?

Hint: it is not. It is a gambit that gets you moderator attention.

That you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't valid. Nor does it mean that it means something negative about the GM (or player, whatever the case may be).

It does mean that you don't currently understand. If you take a position that is more about listening, and less about judging, maybe you can learn something here.

But that means you'll need to be rather more respectful of others. Hopefully you're up to that.