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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7949356" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes. I agree with this.Just focusing on this, there are a bunch of ways to respond to it.One is to more-or-less assume that the PCs bathe, polish their armour, etc - as a GM, just narrate all that stuff, or narrate other stuff in ways that take it for granted (eg "OK, so you're washed and dressed and ready for the Duke's ball.") Either ignore gp costs for this stuff, or set things up so the PCs are hosted by someone (a local personage of some sort) who meets the costs, or whatever. In 4e this is easy enough because these basic costs don't scale much where as treasure values scale rapidly. So at a certain point "Knock of 10 gp for the day's upkeep" might be slightly annoying record-keeping but doesn't actually matter to the players' positions.Prince Valiant makes this even easier, because it only includes a money sub-game as a tip of the hat to RPGer expectations. There are no rules for acquiring more money, nor for spending it. (In our game we use the Pendragon price lists when necessary.)Another way is to make repairing gear, keeping clean etc itself something that matters in play. Burning Wheel does this; so can Rolemaster and probably RQ. But on this approach it's not just a matter of GM "gotcha"-ing but of mechanics and frameworks to support it. (Eg in the BW game where I'm a player, I had to use a Duel of Wits to persuade my irritated wizard sidekick to repair my dinted armour. That wasn't a distraction from play; that was play.)For me, at least, the idea of introducing baths and polishing rags and the like purely as immersion-inducing colour seems like the least appealing option. Because it does't matter to play and isn't very interesting in itself.Which is also great. And can itself be part of play - both fiction and system - if we want it to.But if the players want their PCs to be normal people, and don't want to dilute their valuable treasure (= victory points in much D&D play), then just going with assumptions and narrations seems like the easiest approach.</blockquote>

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