D&D General Taking the "Dungeons" out of D&D

[reelo]

Here's an excerpt from an RPG blog. Granted, it's about AD&D, but I think it makes it abundantly clear how ressource-management is baked i to D&D and how handwaving it away can dramatically alter a campaign:

... So if you enforce encumbrance, food, time, distance, etc. rules the characters have to be prepared and the players have to plan. This is a perfect excuse to make them interact with the world you’re building and toss in tons of details they will get no other way.
The players will need to find sources for food and equipment, like torches or oil. This makes everyone think - where does the oil or resin come from? Can I get more/a better price if I go to the source? Are there limits? What food is available? In what season? How much? Where? etc.
As the party prepared to the mapping expedition, a full year in the Briars with a base camp in the Mountain the party had to source 13 months worth of food, water, light sources, etc. and get it to the mountain. The result?

Most of the light sources in the Mountain ended up being torches, then candles because they bought all the oil in the region and the few torch makers couldn't keep up with demand. Food prices in Esber skyrocketed because they bought all the smoked ham, salted fish, and cheese to be had for ever-increasing prices. They also stripped the area of oats and sheep tallow, making the local favorite breakfast (unleavened oatcakes fried in sheep tallow) rare and angering many. The price of mules and pony carts went through the roof because they bought every one they could find in the kingdom for the bi-weekly caravans to the mountain. Independent merchants from Adrian started making runs up the Old Road to try to sell to the base camp (even though 3 in 4 vanished, never to be seen again).


In the end the increased demand opened up trade and diplomacy between Seaward and Banath for the first time in a generation, all because the party was feeding 25 people and 20 horses in a remote area for a year as well as stocking up a mountain hidey-hole for future expeditions.
I'd also like to note that the party did fun stuff like replacing or repairing a number of strategic doors and putting locks on them; hiding huge stashes of food, water, torches, lamp oil, candles, rope, spikes, etc. in several places; and conducting regular patrols in the upper levels. they effectively added treasure and random encounters to my dungeon.
The party also hired factors (merchants that buy and sell for you) in 5 towns and cities, bought an inn within Esber as a base and storehouse; met with the local Baron and Bishop to smooth things over with them, and; gave generously to the poor affected by the lack of food.
They also then had to use the mule train to get the loot from the Briars and the Mountain down to Esber, then sell everything off (taking a loss) before feeding the mules wiped out their treasure.

If I simply said,
"Don't worry about food, water, light, or time. Let's just play."
None of that happens. They don't have ties to NPC factors in five towns and cities (that have already triggered 3 more adventures), no meeting with the baron and bishop, no interaction with farmers, or the beggars, no long argument with the muleskinners about if they should get paid as much as light infantry if they also fought the kobolds, no stash of 3,000 gp worth of gear on Level Three, none of it.

The resource portion of AD&D is there for reasons, and the reason isn't to annoy you. It is to point out that the characters live in a world that is supposed to make (at least internal) sense and provide a non-combat challenge for players to overcome with wit and skill.

The full entry can be found here: If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important

 

[Ancalagon]

Here's an excerpt from an RPG blog. Granted, it's about AD&D, but I think it makes it abundantly clear how ressource-management is baked i to D&D and how handwaving it away can dramatically alter a campaign:



The full entry can be found here: If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important

An interesting read, but 2 things

1: This GM has a pretty poor grasp of economics.
2: The most valuable resource is player time. Is this the best use of your players' time?

 

[Ovinomancer]

An interesting read, but 2 things

1: This GM has a pretty poor grasp of economics.
2: The most valuable resource is player time. Is this the best use of your players' time?

Without disagreeing, player time is a meta resource that belongs to all games. At the same time. It's the meta-meta resource.

 

[Asisreo]

Without disagreeing, player time is a meta resource that belongs to all games. At the same time. It's the meta-meta resource.

Technically, life is a resource management game.

 

[Arlough]

I guess it really depends on what your players find "fun".

This is where I find the 8 kinds of fun useful. It lets me target different kinds of gameplay for different players, and allows me to direct players with similar profiles to form gaming groups (trust me, you don't want to bore most your players while your expressionist shops and haggles for just the right "look" for your covert infiltration of the ball.

So, if you have a player who loves logistics, you can have them do most of the book-keeping. And you can even include the minutia of shopping, offline, which could then lead to resource gathering plot hooks like spell components, or cloth and pitch for torches.

Then again, I am of the philosophy that the game is for the players. The GM is doing a public service to facilitate fun (and can hopefully find enjoyment and fulfillment in doing so.) Kinda like hosting a party. The host prepares the setting, usually doesn't have time to socialize deeply during the party, and then has all the cleanup afterwards. If the guests decide to help, that is great, but the host has to be comfortable with the possibility that all the work will be on him/her, and little of the partying.

 

[Oofta]

I guess it really depends on what your players find "fun".

This is where I find the 8 kinds of fun useful. It lets me target different kinds of gameplay for different players, and allows me to direct players with similar profiles to form gaming groups (trust me, you don't want to bore most your players while your expressionist shops and haggles for just the right "look" for your covert infiltration of the ball.

So, if you have a player who loves logistics, you can have them do most of the book-keeping. And you can even include the minutia of shopping, offline, which could then lead to resource gathering plot hooks like spell components, or cloth and pitch for torches.

Then again, I am of the philosophy that the game is for the players. The GM is doing a public service to facilitate fun (and can hopefully find enjoyment and fulfillment in doing so.) Kinda like hosting a party. The host prepares the setting, usually doesn't have time to socialize deeply during the party, and then has all the cleanup afterwards. If the guests decide to help, that is great, but the host has to be comfortable with the possibility that all the work will be on him/her, and little of the partying.

Maybe I'm just missing the point, but just because I don't do dungeons it doesn't mean that we spend time shopping. I guess it happens once in a blue moon, but if something is boring I just hand-wave it. On the other hand I find old school dungeons illogical and I run event based games, not location based games.

On the other hand, I will agree that the entire group (including the DM) need to have buy in to the style and assumptions of the campaign. No DM can be the right DM for every player and vice versa. Hopefully you can come to a compromise if it's not a good match, but sometimes you just have to accept that it doesn't work and move on.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Nothing needs to change. I’ve had all sorts of gaming experiences using various iterations of D&D tiles where there was very little “dungeon crawling”.

All of these games featured fairly heavy doses of combat, just not much dungeon delving.

If one was planning to run a game far more focused on politics and social interactions or large battles than small scale combat, then I’d suggest considering another rule set.

But you can use D&D for a lot Beto d just dungeon crawling.