Iin a game about travelling through a wilderness, shoes might matter more than wealth.
And wealth can be "tracked" without a mechanic. I can just write down that someone is rich, or poor - much as I write down that they are young or old, tall or short, amusing or boring, clean-living or a drunkard.
How rich? If hiring a couple of porters to carry my heavy stuff through the jungle is going to cost me 2 g.p. per day per porter, I'd like to be able to just look at my character sheet, see I've got 105 g.p. right now, and know I can confidently hire these guys for 20 days (80 g.p.) and still have a bit left over. (and next I'll be on to the DM for some geography in order that I can - using maps and local knowledge/lore - make a reasonable estimate of how long this trip is gonna take and whether paying my hirelings is going to run me out of money before we even get to the adventure)
Or how poor? Can I afford to buy a spare set of good shoes at 3 g.p. or am I restricted to the cheap ones at 12 s.p. that'll wear out faster?
In Cortex+ Heroic, if a player wants a piece of gear for his/her PC s/he can spend a plot point to create a resource (eg the player of the swordthane can spend a point to gain a riding resource, typically a horse). Assets can be created. Etc. The game doesn't use equipment lists. It simply isn't about gear in the D&D sense.
Again, absolutely unrealistic.
The more you tell me about this game the more it seems like the game completely turns its back on any sort of realism, or resource management, or small-scale grittiness. Yes I know it has "Heroic" in its name and that alone should red-flag me as to what to expect but come on, man: even heroes have to pay for food and count their arrows.
I sure hope these resources can only be created when it makes sense they be available e.g. if you can create a horse while on a ship at sea that's right over the top.
And what happens if while deep in a dungeon somewhere it suddenly becomes extremely important whether or not someone has some particular piece of mundane gear e.g. iron spikes to wedge a door shut? They can't be allowed to 'create' them there and then; they either had some all along or they didn't, and if they did they'd be noted somewhere and if they didn't then they're out of luck. Otherwise it'd be like these plot points are almost like little tiny Wishes - bleah.
Let's put to one side that D&D actually has no mechanics for the dropping of swords overboard, or the soaking of spellbooks.
Depending on system or houserules either of these could be a fumble result; and the spellbook mishap could also be a result of a failed item save:
Halfred, this isn't your day: a tentacle sweeps your backpack overboard! The backpack gets a save each round to see how long it can keep the water out, but after that fails anything in it that could be damaged by water will need to make its own save.
There is no reason inherent in RPGing why a random encounter with a sea monster should matter more than a random encounter with a striking individual. THat's a purely wargaming instinct.
If the random encounter with a striking individual has the potential to make significant changes to the party e.g. someone might get charmed out of the group, or killed, or said striking individual might end up joining the party, I'll run it longhand. But a friendly gate guard (the original example) most of the time doesn't count as "striking".
The thing is, stuff like your cliff can be made up as needed. Stories of magical geology can be made up as needed. Your Godswall doesn't become more ridiculous, or less, because it is authored at time X rather than time Y. And it doesn't become more exciting as an element of the fiction because a reason has already been made up by the GM. It might be exciting even if no one has authored a reason yet!
You've either ignored or missed my point. Sure things like this could be made up on the fly, but doing so gives no opportunity to think it through ahead of time and work out the possible consequences (both in and out of fiction) and-or rationales.
Putting the Godswall where it is makes east-going non-magical travel extremely difficult. If anyone at the table (including me as DM) has any reason for the party to go east or for anything to have been coming from the east that trip just became a lot more challenging. I've also just munged up the climate and weather patterns over about a quarter of a continent, retroactive through every minute of the PCs' played careers.
Guys, remember that days-long rainstorm and flood you hit while you were out chasing down the Kapoor Crystal last year? Yeah, well that massive cliff I threw in last week means there's no possible way that rainstorm could have happened as putting the Godswall where it is means - now I've worked out the climate patterns - it simply can't rain there that much. Ever. No. Just no.
And if I don't catch this sort of thing, chances are a player will; which would in this example probably lead to either a demand for a retcon of the Kapoor Crystal adventure (or at least of the flood part if said flood had any lasting effects) or - more likely - an unspoken invalidation of that adventure and maybe of the whole campaign.
This stuff has to be got right the first time. Making it up on the fly might work out once in a while if you get lucky with it but in the long run is just asking for disaster.
Lan-"regarding the Godswall retroactively changing the weather during the Kapoor expedition, before anyone even thinks of suggesting I should just gloss it all over and hope nobody notices: forget it. I'll have noticed, and I'm not the kind of DM to bury a mistake like that"-efan
