Is Resource Management “Fun?”

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Not in my experience. The spell bloat in D&D came long after I quit that system in the early 80s.

Continual Light and Tenser's Floating DIsk are 1E spells in the 1978 Player's Handbook. They are 1st/2nd level. This isnt some high level munchkin nonsense. The default state is "torches no longer matter at 3rd level", and likely far before that, given that 1e adventures are dripping with items as well.

This fetishization over grubbing for coppers and counting sticks seems pretty revisionist when you actually look at the game and the published adventures.

 

[James Gasik]

Continual Light and Tenser's Floating DIsk are 1E spells in the 1978 Player's Handbook. They are 1st/2nd level. This isnt some high level munchkin nonsense. The default state is "torches no longer matter at 3rd level", and likely far before that, given that 1e adventures are dripping with items as well.

This fetishization over grubbing for coppers and counting sticks seems pretty revisionist when you actually look at the game and the published adventures.

I can assure you, however, I've played under more than one DM who absolutely wanted players to grub for coppers and count sticks at all levels of play.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Continual Light and Tenser's Floating DIsk are 1E spells in the 1978 Player's Handbook. They are 1st/2nd level. This isnt some high level munchkin nonsense. The default state is "torches no longer matter at 3rd level", and likely far before that, given that 1e adventures are dripping with items as well.

Not back when I played it. with a 24 hour recenal of spell slots, you didn't see many non-combat spells.

 

[bloodtide]

I can assure you, however, I've played under more than one DM who absolutely wanted players to grub for coppers and count sticks at all levels of play.

This is a common enough game style. I still do it, as do some other DMs I know. Plus all the DMs I trained do it. It's a great and near perfect way to move a game forward.

So, as the internet tells me: some games have amazingly active players that move the game forward every second on game play. I find such players a bit rare. Some of my players are like this, and two of my groups, but the rest are something else.

The rest of the players out there are stuck in neutral. They will say the want to "do things" in the game, but when the game starts they don't do that at all.

Low or No Resources is a great way to move the game forward. If the characters want to do anything, they need resources to do so.

 

[James Gasik]

If that works for you and your players, great, but I've had different experiences- when players are always struggling to gain any meaningful resources, it can be pretty demoralizing. It can stop feeling less like a game, and a lot like being an ant under a cruel child's magnifying glass.

Especially when you suffer a TPK largely due to not having the resources to deal with ever escalating threats, and the DM just shrugs and tells you it's your fault. For what? Going on an adventure?

 

[loverdrive]

Well, it depends. Do the benefits of tracking the resource outweight the tracking itself?

There's this category of resources that are just annoying and don't do anything — and this isn't endemic to TTRPGs, vidyagames have them too: hunger in Fallout: NV, weapon condition in Dark Souls, encumbrance in pretty much every damn game that has this mechanic, the list is pretty long.

They are annoying not because there's some kind of fundamental law that makes tracking hunger tedious. They are annoying because they are managed so easily that the worst consequence of mismanagement is, well, annoyance. You see a hunger icon/!!!WEAPON AT RISK!!! text/overencumbrance message/whatever, open a menu, click a button, make the icon go away. Much depth, so engaging.

In tabletop games, this issue is compounded by lack of a computer that does all the tracking, but that's not the root cause.

In D&D, nobody complains about tracking HP or spell slots. Nobody would complain about tracking ammo if it was an actually worthwhile endeavour either.

RPGs, just like all other games, benefit from design. Artificially restricting some parts of the game will go a long way to make things more fun, and improvements in "UI", like replacing pen and paper with, say, cards or tokens or whatever can help to make tracking less tedious, but, again, will be pointless if the resource itself ain't worth tracking in the first place.

 

[loverdrive]

Specifically encumbrance, in my opinion, should be designed around the idea that you can't carry e everything you'll need. Well, if you have encumbrance at all.

A meaningful choice is, first and foremost, a sacrifice. If tracking a resource doesn't lead to sacrifices, then you can safely ditch it and nothing will change.

 

[reelo]

The default state is "torches no longer matter at 3rd level"

Right around when gameplay transitioned from dungeon delving to wilderness (h)exploration.

 

[James Gasik]

Right around when gameplay transitioned from dungeon delving to wilderness (h)exploration.

Well, for some people. Others look at the name of the game and say "man, more of this, please". Then again, wilderness exploration is also pretty much solved by level 5 at the very latest, though cracks appear at 1st level!

 

[Lanefan]

This fetishization over grubbing for coppers and counting sticks seems pretty revisionist when you actually look at the game and the published adventures.

You'd think, right?

Yet for the last 40 years and counting I've seen characters who were richer than kings still scrape every copper out of the dungeon. And I don't give xp for treasure.