Playing "Adventurers" As Actual Adventurers

[The Firebird]

If I was going to try to abstract it, I would probably combine food and water for one day into a ration unit that would weigh 15 lbs (extra weight is for the containers).

Tempting. But suppose they are traveling along a river with abundant fresh water. Does it make sense to count water weight? Having a clause like "rations take up 1/5th weight when along fresh water" means division, which I think should be avoided.

 

[Celebrim]

Tempting. But suppose they are traveling along a river with abundant fresh water. Does it make sense to count water weight? Having a clause like "rations take up 1/5th weight when along fresh water" means division, which I think should be avoided.

Problems like this are one reason I don't think it's practical to abstract things to "supply". To continue the "Oregon Trail" analogy, the game doesn't attempt to bundle everything into a single resource, but has a small but reasonable number of categories of items representing the things necessary to overcome obstacles. You can easily find yourself in a situation where you are supplied with one item but not with another more immediately necessary one. That's a huge part of the gameplay. Can you get away with selling your spare wagon parts in order to get more food? It's easy to imagine mishaps or events that concretely threaten one portion of the supply. If you have a generic thing like, "Find a fresh water oasis: replenish 12 supply", it doesn't really capture the problem of, "We still have water, but wild animals or insects ate our food supplies". It also doesn't really express how important that is if you have plenty of everything else but not the 1000 pounds of water the expedition needs. It also in an RPG context doesn't deal with returning to revisit a known oasis, since unless we apply some judgement one supply source like that could represent effectively infinite supplies. It's more realistic if we separate animal fodder, water, food, light sources and what not because then having a nigh infinite water supply doesn't mean you are just set for all manner of supply. Any attempt to abstract away these problems is just going to result in artificialities and complexities that mitigate against any value in "keeping it simple".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Problems like this are one reason I don't think it's practical to abstract things to "supply". To continue the "Oregon Trail" analogy, the game doesn't attempt to bundle everything into a single resource, but has a small but reasonable number of categories of items representing the things necessary to overcome obstacles. You can easily find yourself in a situation where you are supplied with one item but not with another more immediately necessary one. That's a huge part of the gameplay. Can you get away with selling your spare wagon parts in order to get more food? It's easy to imagine mishaps or events that concretely threaten one portion of the supply. If you have a generic thing like, "Find a fresh water oasis: replenish 12 supply", it doesn't really capture the problem of, "We still have water, but wild animals or insects ate our food supplies". It also doesn't really express how important that is if you have plenty of everything else but not the 1000 pounds of water the expedition needs. It also in an RPG context doesn't deal with returning to revisit a known oasis, since unless we apply some judgement one supply source like that could represent effectively infinite supplies. It's more realistic if we separate animal fodder, water, food, light sources and what not because then having a nigh infinite water supply doesn't mean you are just set for all manner of supply. Any attempt to abstract away these problems is just going to result in artificialities and complexities that mitigate against any value in "keeping it simple".

Yeah, if I had my way I would use more detailed rules for Supply than those to which Level Up defaults, but I don't have the right players for that unfortunately.

 

[LordBP]

Tempting. But suppose they are traveling along a river with abundant fresh water. Does it make sense to count water weight? Having a clause like "rations take up 1/5th weight when along fresh water" means division, which I think should be avoided.

Well, to me, tracking them separately would make the most sense, but I don't mind tracking everything.

If I was abstracting it some, then I would split rations and water into two separate items which you could then combine or not depending on the circumstance.

As for fresh water, I would boil/purify anything I drank as you do not want to catch a bug from even a clean looking source (had it happen before and you would not want to experience it even with magical healing ).

 

[GrimCo]

Just to add a bit, from personal experience with mountains. When you do everything right and things out of your control don't screw you (planing, choosing time of year, having right gear, having luck with good weather, luck in that no one steps wrong and gets hurt), it can be pretty uneventful. It's demanding physically, experience in itself is awesome, but you go up, soak the view and enjoy achievement, then you go down. That's it. Other times, you do everything right, start ascent, sudden storm hits, you hunker down in shelter for day or two, eat, sleep, talk, wait. After coupe of days, if bad weather persists, you look at your supplies, calculate how many days you can hunker down and still have enough to get to top and back, if it's not enough, or if the conditions are not great, you pull the plug, descent and that's it. On smaller peaks, its even sooner, measured in hours, not days. No drama, nothing exciting, just rational decision and slow trek down, thinking about how weeks of preparation had gone to waste.

 

[LordBP]

Just to add a bit, from personal experience with mountains. When you do everything right and things out of your control don't screw you (planing, choosing time of year, having right gear, having luck with good weather, luck in that no one steps wrong and gets hurt), it can be pretty uneventful. It's demanding physically, experience in itself is awesome, but you go up, soak the view and enjoy achievement, then you go down. That's it. Other times, you do everything right, start ascent, sudden storm hits, you hunker down in shelter for day or two, eat, sleep, talk, wait. After coupe of days, if bad weather persists, you look at your supplies, calculate how many days you can hunker down and still have enough to get to top and back, if it's not enough, or if the conditions are not great, you pull the plug, descent and that's it. On smaller peaks, its even sooner, measured in hours, not days. No drama, nothing exciting, just rational decision and slow trek down, thinking about how weeks of preparation had gone to waste.

I always like the old saying of "Plan for the worse, hope for the best".

It's served me well while hiking/camping.