What Level of Detail Do You Like in Your Games?

[haakon1]

I love detail. I play an email campaign where I track everything, and require the PCs to tell me exactly how many arrows and rations and so forth they have. It allows that sort of thing to become a plot point on occasion (pitons and food have been issues) and it makes getting Create Food and Water as good as getting Fireball, and a Portable Hole or Bag of Holding truly Wondrous Items.

However, in tracking a live game, I'm less precise, and don't have control over the character sheets. This means I'm forced to wing it more, since it's unclear what people actually have sometimes.

As a player, I love detail, but I've normally had DMs who either don't care or are sporadic about it. In the World's Largest Dungeon, we made our own plot of scrouging for food (dead rats), etc.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I don't like to track minutiae in the middle of the game.

As a player, I had tried to accurately account for every small detail - if you do it for yourself only, it doesn't eat up too much time - but noted that in the heat of an encounter I fell back to the basics.

As a DM I even tried material solutions like equipment cards with a height according to the encumbrance value of the item. The players woulkd each have an 'Encumbrance track' on which the equipment cards were placed. This encumbrance track told you at a glance how encumbered the character was. Nice concept in theory, but much too fiddly at the table.

Maybe I try again in 5e with the advent of fully automatized character scheets.

 

[genshou]

As a side-effect of my obsessive-compulsiveness, I have to track every detail of every aspect of everything. As a player, I always end up in charge of keeping track of party resources, especially if a castle is involved. Even if it's someone else's PC who is in charge of financial tracking/decisions IC, I always end up the accountant OOC.

As DM, I tell the players to mark off a day's rations and tell them I expect them to keep track of their own arrows. If they don't, no big deal, as long as they aren't magical arrows, or they aren't in the middle of a desert (or sailing). The players who love to do that kind of fine-toothed accounting get to have their fun, and the players who really don't care won't be reprimanded, because I don't check to make sure they're doing it with trivial items. Just the important stuff, like their daily spell lists and healing potions/wands.

In my online games, though? I go through the IRC log each week and mark off every change to the characters, then put it all at the bottom of the log as a reminder when I post it on the campaign wiki. My players have always been good about keeping their sheets nice and updated for me, especially since they know I track their encumbrance using spreadsheets.

 

[Mallus]

Personally, I like detail in the sense of interesting, vividly-presented setting details. Bean-counting my character's arrows remaining and coppers-in-purse, not so much.

As an observation, most editions of D&D make resource management outside of 'spell slots remaining' trivial/inconsequential after several levels.

 

[Wootz]

I like detail that gives more options, but not detail that simply makes the game harder to play.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I really was into the minutiae of it all until one time, in a game wherein I was a player, we were walking for several days in the wilderness, when suddenly, the DM asks us all for our character sheets. He looks them over, gives them back, and announces: "None of you have food in your backpacks. You've been walking for several days. You're all dead of malnutrition" (He was serious, but he was a noobie DM).

After that, I realized that minutiae shouldn't be important for me. The characters know to bring the essential stuff (they're professional adventures, for crying out loud!). I make sure sometimes that the players don't abuse this (especially for encumbrance... "what do you mean, you carry the 20 bandits' armor and weapons back to town?")

AR

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I hate tracking anything. HP, encumbrance, ammo, money, etc. I don't even want to touch "uses per day". I don't have the patience for it.

 

[kitsune9]

Hello Everyone,

I'm just wondering what level of detail you guys like in the games you play and DM. By this, I mean the minutae from tracking encumberance, wealth and other statistics to the little accounting things that need to be done behind the screen. Are you the type of player who can't stand the thought of bothering with superfluous little details, such things getting in the way of the story or rolling dice and smashing face? Or are you the type of player who loves sweating on the little stuff and can't stand it when the DM starts hand-waiving things?

For myself, I love the small details. The finer points of the game - such as tracking the current hit points of my character's weaponry and so on - are all part of enriching the gaming experience for me. I love experiencing the struggle, and making the small victories sweet. I suppose I'm like the guy who'll order his dinner and then order extra bread to clean up every dreg on the plate. In essence, I love my gaming. At the same time though, I can imagine those who would look upon such accounting as the complete antithesis of gaming for them.

So, which side of the fence do you stand on?

As an aside, I think 4E has trended away from this style of gaming - although there are still enough accounting bones in it for those like me who enjoy such things. I was just wondering whether other players had found this too.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I can go both ways. I like to play in RPGs where I would need to do a lot of bookkeeping, have eight page character sheets, and so on. Every once in a while I like to play in a simple game where I just roll dice and blast stuff. Lately, I've been getting my blow up stuff fix through video games while I tend to get my minutae tracking fix in table-top rpgs.

When I run Pathfinder, I keep track a lot of stuff and have my players do the same. I don't get down to keeping spell component lists unless it's costly (100 gp or more), but if they plan on trekking through a desert, I better see provision lists, preparations, etc or they're dead.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'm just wondering what level of detail you guys like in the games you play and DM. By this, I mean the minutae from tracking encumberance, wealth and other statistics to the little accounting things that need to be done behind the screen.

The detail found in D&D 3.xe pretty much hits the sweet spot for me.

(And I do love tracking every last cp, encumbrance, and "if it's not written on your sheet, you don't have it". Awesome.)

 

[maddman75]

Tracking the small stuff is boring. Get me to action or drama. I'd rather the GM handwave equipment. Most games I play have some mechanic to let me decide if they have something questionable on them - spend a story point, roll for Luck, whatever.