Resource Management, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Rations and Love Mana

[haakon1]

This is the TTRPG forum, not the DnD one.

I missed that. My bad.

Secondly, this thread is mostly about trying to understand  why amateurs love to think about tactics instead of logistics.

My bad. I focused on the “I think ration counting sucks” theme, rather than the WHY do you think that question.

Play culture has just as much of a hand in making logistics less important than rules designers have, moreso I think. So it's not just a rules issue

Agree.

However, I would like to know your view on us 'proud amateurs' since it might give some insights I haven't considered.

I think what you said in the original post was close to answering your own question.

Namely, it can be tedious and accounting-like. Most folks would rather get on with other aspects of the story. Spectacle and splashy stuff, not simulationist grubbing over details.

My favorite D&D is low level, when you’re poor, poorly equipped, and are in editions without unlimited cantrips.

My favorite war novel: The Things They Carried - Wikipedia

Guessing you would prefer other kinds of stories.

 

[zakael19]

I actually do like some of the systems that make “consumable management” a somewhat abstracted thing, like Load in FITD or similar in Stonetop. Mainly because in those cases it’s something which feeds back into space for interesting moment to moment consequences and play. Or they’re usable as fictional positioning - you went out in summer with a Heavy Load and Hot armor? Cool, what do you do when the sun is beating down on you and beasts are howling in the distance and your sweat is bleeding through your padding.

Like, that’s an interesting situation. I’m totally down to track stuff when it can add drama and moment to moment intensity; not when it’s just “oops we need more arrows.”

 

[Autumnal]

I like resource management at the level of Ironsworn’s Supply trait. It’s on a 1-5 scale and covers most consumables. What’s interesting is that you sometimes have the option and sometimes have to lose some of it in combats going badly, injury, travel mishaps, and the like. And it’s included as a consequence in the description of various moves - you don’t roll separately for in almost any situation. That integration and simplicity combine to make it something that feels like no special burden to use and interesting in outcomes and challenges when it comes up.

No implication here that anyone should feel an obligation to like it. I’m already not playing with y’all, you should please your own tables.

 

[Enrahim]

But I don’t see why everything must be random generation.

Seem like I have been unclear. Let me clarify. Everything do not need to be random generated. Indeed the meat of the game style I described is typically predetermined location information. The method of "generation" of this is irrelevant. It could be random, but most often it is the GM or a third party designing it intelligently before players make contact with it. However for there to be the sense of a qualified gamble there need to be some notion of randomness involved, and where the players has some ground to reason around the odds.

I also want to add that what I described was the kind of scenario where I personally would very much like detailed rations to be tracked. You are outlining some other scenarios where food is clearly important to the game, but where I would prefer to use other mechanism than ration tracking to account for it in a TTRPG context.

For instance in the siege scenario I would likely have preferred some abstract series of clock ticking down to various bad stuff that alters the situation (for instance: tight rationing -> civilians start fighting over what is left -> nothing is left -> people start dying of hunger)

The wilderness survival scenario also typically triggers first when traditional ration have run out. For that situation I think I would again want to track the "food" state as an abstracted nutritional stat, that slowly ticks down and reduces the effectiveness of the characters, but that can be replenished on successes related to gathering food.

The goal would be to reduce the spreadsheet feel of the game. Computer games can more readily keep track of more detailed food information for you, but in a TTRPG being mindful of only tracking the things that really matters is a virtue. As an aside, board games often can thrive a place in between, as more limited scope and pretty tangible physical artifacts often can justify a bit higher level of detail tracking than what a TTRPG normally supports well.