Help tracking time, food & water

[T-Bone]

I know in most games, things like tracking time is pretty much a judgement call, and it is left up to the players to loosly keep track of things like food and water. That is how I have played it for many many years myself.

But lately, it seems like the characters are unconcerned with time for the most part, and are willing to stop and camp for the day if they don't have the right spell prepaired, or rest multiple days to heal everyone back to full. Also, many skill checks like Search are abusing the "take 20" rule. Sometimes in a 60' x 60' chamber, they want to "take 20" on every 5 foot square, "take 20" on the chest, "take 20" on the torch sconse, etc.

The only balancing factor I can think of is time. But what is a good way to track time. Does anyone have a "daily time tracking form"??

The other balancing factor is, on a long dungeon crawl, stopping and resting for 3 days after EVERY random encounter, they should run out of food and water fairly quickly. They can only carry so much. When they are in town, I ask if they are buying rations and everyone says "yeah, I buy 7 weeks worth" or "I buy 2 weeks worth" but no one marks off any gold.

How much space does a days worth of rations take & how much weight? How much water can they carry and how? A water skin holds how much? How much water does a person need in a day?

How should I track it without it becoming a paperwork nightmare? Should I pass out glass beads (blue for water, red for food) according to how many days worth of food they have, and they turn them in as they are used? I will have to track encumberance closer as well.

Any suggestions? How do you do it?

 

[Creamsteak]

Rations and food won't be such a problem if you have a 5th level Cleric or higher. They can provide these resources.

The real disadvantage to "taking your time" is that your giving precious seconds to your enemies to get organized, rig a trap, cave in an exit, burn down a house, summon a balor, or what-have-you.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

If the adventure involves no time table, then there's no reason not to rest after every fight in a D&D environment.

So the first solution against excessive resting is a time table. There are several variants:

-The villain has won unless stopped within 4 day. That's pretty straigtforward : you can't rest more than 4 time.

-The PCs are in pursuit of a villain.

-The villain is gathering strenght for a big coup. Tell them that, for example, every other day the villain his recruiting one additional cohort randomly picked from a list including ogre magi, frost giant, necromancer etc.

Sure, it's metagaming, but it'll give a strong incentive to the party to reach the villain ASAP before the fight becomes impossible..

-While exploring a dungeon, consider the fact that some dead monsters could be replaced during every day of rest the party takes. Allow no XP for these monsters and no additional treasure beside what they might be carrying. Then give the PCs an XP bonus to account for these monsters at the end of the adventure if you feel they've been fast enough.

-Zero rule spell that conjure food. To be consistent, you'd need to zero rule every spell that summon stuff on a permanent basis but I don't think there's that many of them. And add that organic stuff is spoiled when stocked in a bag of holding

You don't need to start micro-managing food supply. Just assume that everyone can carry about 4 days worth of food on themselves plus X amount on pack animals or whatever tickles your fancy.

That means player on a dungeon crawl in a dungeon a week away from civilization are on a time limit. And if they keep making the trek back to the city, reset the whole dungeon and award no additional XP or gold.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

If they're getting cocky about resting and taking their sweet time to finish the adventure, make them pay for their arrogance. Hammer them and hammer them hard with encounters. Have the enemy start coming to them. And hit them in waves. Pretty soon, they won't be able to get their spells back b/c they can't make it through the night without being attacked.

I don't think micro-managing their food supply is the right approach. You're better to make them WANT to get moving. Set deadlines and make the world dynamic so if they sit around they're missing out on important events.

IMC, my players would LOVE a breather. It's one crisis after another. They're finally on the cusp of some downtime and they all have laundry lists of stuff they want to get done. But they also know that the downtime won't last and they'll be back into the thick of things in no time...

 

[Silveras]

I know in most games, things like tracking time is pretty much a judgement call, and it is left up to the players to loosly keep track of things like food and water. That is how I have played it for many many years myself.

But lately, it seems like the characters are unconcerned with time for the most part, and are willing to stop and camp for the day if they don't have the right spell prepaired, or rest multiple days to heal everyone back to full. Also, many skill checks like Search are abusing the "take 20" rule. Sometimes in a 60' x 60' chamber, they want to "take 20" on every 5 foot square, "take 20" on the chest, "take 20" on the torch sconse, etc.

The only balancing factor I can think of is time. But what is a good way to track time. Does anyone have a "daily time tracking form"??

The other balancing factor is, on a long dungeon crawl, stopping and resting for 3 days after EVERY random encounter, they should run out of food and water fairly quickly. They can only carry so much. When they are in town, I ask if they are buying rations and everyone says "yeah, I buy 7 weeks worth" or "I buy 2 weeks worth" but no one marks off any gold.

How much space does a days worth of rations take & how much weight? How much water can they carry and how? A water skin holds how much? How much water does a person need in a day?

How should I track it without it becoming a paperwork nightmare? Should I pass out glass beads (blue for water, red for food) according to how many days worth of food they have, and they turn them in as they are used? I will have to track encumberance closer as well.

Any suggestions? How do you do it?

Well, it is a paperwork nightmare most of the time.

Suggestions:

• Draw a grid for the calendar and mark off the round/minutes/hours/days as they pass. If you have a word processing program, there is a small square symbol in the Wingdings font. Use it to make record sheets for things you want to keep track of.
• You are also within your rights to say that they cannot rest more than 12 hours out of a day; only people with sleep disorders sleep 20+ out of 24 hours (on a regular basis).
• Make them account for encumbrance. This usually stops being an issue when they get a bag of holding.
• Weights for trail rations are in the PH, as are the weights for things like "chunk of meat" and "cheese". Water weighs a lot, too. As noted, this stops being an issue with create food and water. Read up on the requirements for the mounts, too. In 2nd Ed, warhorses could not just graze - they needed 10 lbs of grain (oats, barley, etc) per day, which the traveling party had to carry. I think 3rd Ed is more lenient on this point, but I don't recall specifically.
• Divine casters recover their spells once per day. They can "stop and rest" all they like, but they won't get that spell until tomorrow.

 

[Kershek]

If you want them to use a spell to automatically stay nourished, make them mark off that spell.

If they are staying in a dungeon for hours, then have a wandering monster table to roll every hour, half hour, or whatever. I know it sounds old-school, but they do need to realize that life goes on while they're checking every nook of a dungeon.

Also, play up the boredom the characters will have while they spend an hour sitting around waiting for the rogue to finish searching. Maybe have the hot-headed fighter-types start making will saves before they start getting upset at the delays (that's the GURPS in me talking).

 

[Wolffenjugend]

That last post gave me an idea. If your players insist on constantly resting, have them role-play the downtime with a topic relevant to their characters.

"So, the P is resting for the third time in the past 24 hours. Character X, tell the rest of the P a little bit about your native land and how you got to be where you are now..."

When players find out that resting excessively means more than just refreshing their spells, they'll think twice...

 

[reiella]

The other balancing factor is, on a long dungeon crawl, stopping and resting for 3 days after EVERY random encounter, they should run out of food and water fairly quickly. They can only carry so much. When they are in town, I ask if they are buying rations and everyone says "yeah, I buy 7 weeks worth" or "I buy 2 weeks worth" but no one marks off any gold.

Random encounters during their 'rest' period messes with that. Run a vengenance session, where the party is unable to sleep due to a semi-constant rate of attack.

After say 4 to 8 days out of town, have one of the enemies cast a mass curse water on their water stock or other spells to contaminate their food stock.

EVERY Take 20 check is 2 minutes, have critters interupt their search attempts regularly.

Personally, I've forgone micromanaging food/water in my campaign (it's chump change) which works out nicely since I abstract the party rewards (both xp and gold).

I haven't had a problem with time though, party doesn't like using Take 20 that much unless they know they're in a secure location, and rest often isn't too much of a problem (then again, I haven't run sessions where they were getting encounters more than once or twice a day in a long time).

 

[Matafuego]

When they are in town, I ask if they are buying rations and everyone says "yeah, I buy 7 weeks worth" or "I buy 2 weeks worth" but no one marks off any gold.

Tht used to happen in my games quite often... until I decided that if they weren't going to play fair I wasn't going either... so I started robbing them with high level thieves.
It took a few pick pockets to make them realise (and one player out of the party, he was a player problem anyway) that if they weren't playing fair I wasn't either

 

[evileeyore]

The other balancing factor is, on a long dungeon crawl, stopping and resting for 3 days after EVERY random encounter, they should run out of food and water fairly quickly. They can only carry so much. When they are in town, I ask if they are buying rations and everyone says "yeah, I buy 7 weeks worth" or "I buy 2 weeks worth" but no one marks off any gold.

How much space does a days worth of rations take & how much weight? How much water can they carry and how? A water skin holds how much? How much water does a person need in a day?

Any suggestions? How do you do it?

One healthy Adult requires roughly 1/2 gallon of water per day to remain healthy, while not engaged in heavy labor. This 'water' often comes as soda and such to most people these days (we are so unhealthy). Hard work will double or triple this water requirement.

Reference desert survival: "Best of all, plan ahead, and allow one gallon per person a day. This does not include your needs for cooking, pets or auto maintenance."

As per Players Guide 3.0, Trail Rations are 1lb. So 7 weeks worth is 49lbs. Not including water. And IMHO 'Trail Rats' should be very dry. Like ever had those Trail Mix bags of salted nuts, raisins, and candies. Very thirsty stuff. Oh, or beef jerky. Very tasty but dehydrating.

And remember 1 gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. So lets recap. Assume no source of food or water outside of what is brought. Every days worth of rations will weigh 5 pounds (food 1+ water 4). Is there a rule about starvation in the DMG...

As for the "I buy 2 weeks worth" and then cheat and not mark of gold spent. Well cheat right back. Give them less gold and loot. They don't want to pay for food, equipment maintenance, etc. Then account for it and give out less rewards.

Or talk to them about it. Ask them if they like cheating, and if you need to factor that into the game.

As for the time constraints, I have nothing to say that has not been said.


On a personal note. Our group often handles this differently. We keep a seperate fund for the party. Out of which we buy food, party needs (battering rams, mounts, ammo, etc) presuming everyone needs such things and keep a stock. Our party 'accountant' generally keeps a running tally of what is used and replenishes our supplies as is needed. Of course we generally run as more of a mercenary kinda setup (team maintenance costs, team shares, etc) regardless of the genre (every game has run this way, comes from having 1/2 our PCs being ex-Army).

TTFN

EvilE

Editted for inclusions of water weight.