Encumbrance, hunger, and less gold = more immersive roleplaying...?

[Dr Midnight]

Hi everyone, I've been away for a while, but the D&D thing came back and smacked me in the face with a hearty dollop of loooove.

Now, I'm looking at starting two campaigns soon. I look forward to keeping up some ideas I've had for the months since my last campaign ended. It was what I've always known D&D to be- we ignored encumbrance and the needs of food, drink, and comfortable rest, and after the first adventure the players didn't want for any money, save for to buy powerful items. I want to change that in the future.

Mostly, I'm looking to grasp and hold that feel that the Knights of the Dinner Table seem to have. Yes, I know it's fictional, and not really the best example of a gaming group. Still, I think there's some great stuff to learn from all that I've read in those pages. The players in KoDT say things like "I'm hungry, let's stop into that tavern," or "Do they have any more of that dwarven firemead? That stuff was awesome!" or "I only have seven silver pieces. Man, we need some money, fast."

I'm planning to try some new things. Some of these are in the rules books, some are things other DMs have done, some are things I think D&D should correct in future editions:

All income halved
Characters must eat & drink regularly
Encumberance will be noted and used
PC skills kept and rolled solely by DM
Overland movement taken seriously and roleplayed
Shops only have a handful of items, based on their likelihoods, and few
special weapons
New skills, feats, etc. must be earned and justified

Nothing groundbreaking there. I feel that every one of these concepts will make the game more immersive, if something more of a hassle to keep up with. I believe the players will be far more interested in the world around them. What I'd like to know now is if anyone has suggestions for how to go about using some of these concepts in-game. My specific questions follow.

1. How do you keep track of a character's hunger? Do you just say "you're starting to get hungry, better find some food," or are there decent penalties you can impose on a character who's gone too long without food or drink?

2. Is there a downside to a DM rolling all PC skills, beyond his players whining about it?

3. Shops having only so many varied items is something I remember best from the FINAL FANTASY games, and I've been sad that every weapons shop in every town can likely sell you a Holy Avenger, because the DM doesn't want to spend the time determining what each shop has/hasn't that other shops do/don't. Is there a system for this, besides just rolling percentile each time a player asks if there is a certain kind of item?

Finally, does anyone else beside me think that the above ideas will really contribute to an immersive game, where your head is in tune with the character and the world around him/her? Will it all be worth it?

Thanks for your time.

 

[JDragon]

I think your ideas could really work, with the right group and the right DM.

From everything I have read in your SH's, I think you could pull it off from the DM side, and your group from your Knights of the Silver Quill/Spellforge Keep should be able to handle it.

To me the big thing is to make sure they all know completly up front what you are planning so no one is surprised.

For the equipment part, it will make your job harder as you will have to know every single store in a given town and have a way to determine what they carry. (this could be very tuff)

I'm not sure how to take care of the food issue or what penelties you would apply. Maybe penalties on Diplo checks if its been a while since they ate as people seem to get grouchy when going long times with out food.

Encumbrance should not be hard to do, just start it at the begining and keep it up to date, and it will not be an issue.

As for the skills and feats, you just have to make sure to provide the chance for them to encouter the sills/feats so they can choose to learn them.

I think I've rambled enough for now, hope it helps some.

JDragon

 

[babomb]

The DMG has rules for hunger/thirst on page 86 (3.0) and 304 (3.5).

Basically, after 3 days of no food or 1 day plus [Constitution score] hours of no water, start making Con checks (DC 10 +1 per previous check) or take 1d6 subdual damage and become fatigued (-2 to STR and DEX). This can't be healed even by magical means until the character gets food or water as needed. If the character is lacking food AND water, he is exhausted (half speed and -6 to STR and DEX). It doesn't say, but I suppose if your subdual damage gets to your HP total + 10 you die.

Medium characters need a gallon of fluids and a pound of food per day; small characters half that. Double or triple water requirements for hot climates.

 

[Kilmore]

Spoil them first. Have a few of them develop a fondness for some finer wines and liqueurs. Invite their characters to parties and fine dinners where their clients pay for everything. Have them sleep in the finest hotels.

Then hit them with the bitter winds of change. THAT should bring out some character.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I would suggest, instead of doing the (frankly horrendously tedious) accounting of food and water, you simply use the "lifestyle" rules from the DMG.

Next up, basically prohibit the trafficking of magical items. If you want to find someone to buy that sword, then it's going to take a trip.

Finally, make the bulk of most treasures difficult-to-trade items. Items which are worth many, many times more than what most merchants would be able to afford.

Basically you'll be slowing the accumulation of money, while not making adventuring a stupid and worthless pursuit (hey - they DO have treasure if they can sell it off...). Additionally you'll be incurring costs. This should keep players low on readily-useable funds, while not descending into "tick off your day of food, tick off your day of water".

If the players are in a situation where accounting of food and water will actually matter (like an uninhabited wasteland), then just get them to tell you how much food and water they put on board in the first place. Then you only need to worry about it when something obviously goes wrong with their journey.

Finally note that there's a good chance that any druids, rangers or barbarians in the party will basically always be able to find plenty of food and water with wilderness lore checks. Druids and clerics will both be able to MAKE plenty of food and water.

 

[jollyninja]

number 2

other then whining, rolling the player's skills for them can lower the immersion level and lead to a lack of focus. for alot of players it is just not the same if they are not rolling for their character's actions. they want to know that both THEIR poor rolling and THEIR poor planning got THEIR characters killed.

 

[UrathDM]

Re: Buying and Selling items

The difficulty here depends on where they are trying to buy/sell things.

The DMG, under generating towns (both 3.0 & 3.5 p. 137), covers the cash on hand in town and the most expensive item you can purchase. It also covers, in a simple way, telling how many of any given item are available in town to purchase (gp limit divided by item price), if any. Using these rules, for example, in a Thorp (40 gp price limit), you can't buy nonmagical Masterwork weapons (300+ gp), and no one there can afford to buy them from you (the whole Thorp, if they got together and pooled their resources, might be able to -- but you'd be getting paid in chickens and pigs, not gold). Also, you could play more with the notes at the beginning of the Equipment chapter in the Players' Handbook -- about how people trade in commoddities, not cash.

For a more complex approach, you can also look at "A
Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" from Expeditious Retreat Press... it has a more complex "Economics Simulator" (as well as being a fantastic book on generating your own Kingdoms, Cities, small Holdings, and understanding how it all fits together).

As to the variety in a shop, there were no (or VERY few) "general stores" in the middle ages. Everyone made a few things, and sold them personally. A Blacksmith had tools and farm goods; a weaponsmith had weapons (but not tools); an armorer had armor (but not weapons or tools); and so on. Naturally, a magical world is a little different, but social factors will tend to keep that part sort of the same.

Finally, if there is no one in town capable of making a magic item (no one of the appropriate level), it stands to reason that there is not likely one to be had for sale.

Re: Skill checks
I would advise against making skill checks for the PCs unless it is something where failure means they would not be aware of it. Skill checks like Wilderness Lore (3.0)/Survival (3.5) for finding food in the wild... Spellcraft to identify the spell being cast... you do not need to hide those. Spot, on the other hand, you should make because they would not know there was anything to see if they failed.

Making their own skill checks is as much a part of the participation as making their own attack rolls.

Re: Food and Water
For in town, as Saeviomagy suggested, the "lifestyle" rules work fine. For wilderness journeys, food and water can play a big part in encumberance (especially for low-level parties). When planning a long journey, parties sometimes need to purchase an additional mule or other pack animal

Re: Encumberance
Encumberance is a LOT easier if your players have access to a spreadsheet program that can automatically adjust the sums. If not, "ballparking" and "does this look reasonable" makes it much easier. 3.0 and 3.5 assume that armor is the bulk of the encumberance, so the penalties on the armor are not (usually) cumulative with those for encumberance.

Hope that helps

 

[PattonDM]

As a DM, I would rather cut out the accounting aspects of D&D and concentrate more on story and action. I have played in a couple campaigns where the DM loves going on and on about the types of beer at the tavern. It takes an hour or two just to make a stupid equipment run at a town. Don't get bogged down in the little details, as it detracts from the overall adventure---Of course, if your players are into it, go with it.

Food and Water: is assumed due to the cleric in the party. However, to make things more difficult, I raise the level of the create food/water spell in desolate areas like the desert and the underdark.
Basically, you have to "pray much harder" for your god to grant you water in a desert.

Encumberance: I check this at the beginning of every adventure and apply penalties, but don't keep track during the adventure. Gave my PC's a bag of holding early on.

PC skills: I roll the important ones such as Spot, Listen, Search, Bluff, Hide, Disable, etc... Remember that players love to roll dice. The DM should only roll for them when the result should be a secret.

Stores/Shops: I create 3 types of lists of equipment, small, medium, large town. I update each list every 3-5 adventures. I also use the Volo's guides frequently to borrow names and ideas for shops. The DMG has rules on putting a GP limit on expensive items in smaller towns which should help you out.

Environmental Encounters: Along with random encounters, I have a random table of mishaps and obstacles that can occur while travelling. This allows me to add flavor to wilderness travel without taking much time. The encounter could be a snare, a chasm the players have to climb, a roll to avoid getting lost, heatstroke, skunk in the bedroll, disease, food spoilage, horse broke its foot and other things that players must deal with immediately and aren't combat oriented. I do work out overland movement rates ahead of time and will tell the players that from point A---B will be ~20 miles or 7 hours on horseback. Then I roll random/environmental encounters. If none come up--they arrive at their destination after a brief description of the landscape.

Hope these ideas help

 

[Agamon]

Unfortunately, I have little time to add to something useful to this thread, but I did want to tell the good Doctor that I enjoyed his guest stint on PvP last month.

 

[Spatula]

All income halved
Characters must eat & drink regularly
Encumberance will be noted and used

Not a big deal. You should trust the players to keep track of encumberance on their own, which shouldn't be a problem.

PC skills kept and rolled solely by DM

This is something that I wouldn't like as a player. Maybe you just mean skills that the players shouldn't know the outcome of, like Search, which isn't AS bad... but it basically says that you think your players aren't good enough RPers to seperate player knowledge from character knowledge. But then, maybe they aren't.

Overland movement taken seriously and roleplayed

It's hard to make overland movement engaging - unless something interesting is happening, of course, but the movement is not interesting on its own.

3. Shops having only so many varied items is something I remember best from the FINAL FANTASY games, and I've been sad that every weapons shop in every town can likely sell you a Holy Avenger, because the DM doesn't want to spend the time determining what each shop has/hasn't that other shops do/don't. Is there a system for this, besides just rolling percentile each time a player asks if there is a certain kind of item?

Get a program to generate the items for you, and a laptop to run it on during the game. This is a cool idea, though, if you can pull it off during the game without dragging things down. Perhaps waive it for mundane items, unless there's a good reason not to. But for magic items you can develop a simple method for figuring out the number of items the shop has on hand (modified by the size of the city and the character of the shop), and then randomly determine the items using the DMG tables. If the players want something not on-hand they can have it custom made (which could provide some valuable down time for characters that need it, like wizards). Player participation could be increased with Gather Info or Knowledge (local) rolls that could result in a better chance of finding what they're looking for.

Finally, does anyone else beside me think that the above ideas will really contribute to an immersive game, where your head is in tune with the character and the world around him/her? Will it all be worth it?

Depends on what the players expect out of the game. It definitely moves away from grand epic gaming, towards a more "gritty" feel.