Bookkeeping Made Fun
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I can’t tell you how annoying it is to keep track of torches, arrows, and trail rations. I mean sure, they’re fun to think about — but a video game is a way better medium for that kind of survival minutiae. On paper, that kind of bookkeeping isn’t just hard to do — it’s hard to remember to do.
I once tried to track my arrows used and recovered — every battle was like, “I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, did I fire five arrows or six?” Except that no one else was paying attention to my arrows, and I was no Clint Eastwood.
And it isn’t fun to just do away with consumable items either — they’re part of the survival aspect of the game. Getting from settlement to dungeon, and back again without succumbing to monsters or some horrible disease.
That doesn’t even take into account the fact that at any given time, only a few players at the table are even going to care about that level of detail.
I could go on about the problems of gear minutiae — there are the times when you’ll want to argue for the utility of rope or a mirror, but the rules won’t give you a bonus for those kinds of things.
There’s carry weight and encumbrance — because it’s all kinds of fun to be told that you’re going to have to choose between essential gear and shiny loot.
But now that I’ve gone over all the things about this bookkeeping that is totally un-fun, what if there were a way to get everyone at the table engaged, eschew encumbrance, make sure your gear is always relevant, and get that hard-to-attain fun that only comes from a good survival situation?
…This, is where having group-based skills really shines.
We begin with the assumption that at any given time, there’s a chance that the PCs have the gear they need, and part of that assumption is that any of the PCs could be carrying it — not just the PC who needs it right now.
I saw this method described on another blog — used for tracking wand charges — a Cascading Depletion Method. The player making the Skill check rolls a die which is shared by the party. Let’s say a d12 for the Crazy-Prepared adventurers.
He uses the result for his Skill check, and if he happens to roll a “1,” the die degrades to the next lower type (d12>d10>d8>d6>d4). The smaller the gear die gets, the greater the probability it’ll degrade again (8%, 10%, 12%, 16%, …). Now since the party shares the die, there’s a feeling of dwindling supplies…
You don’t have to track carry weight anymore because you can assume the party divides the gear among those who can best carry it — and the party can decide how much gear they want to carry when they load up in town, so you can set a party-wide encumbrance. Can I get a huzzah for pack mules?
So when the Skill checks start flying, you can almost imagine the PCs tossing necessary gear back and forth where it’s needed — and when they’re scavenging gear from fallen foes, you don’t have to roll for recovered arrows.
I’m still working out the implications across the system.
Y’know, one of the things that always struck me is that an attack roll in melee represents abstract action while an attack roll for a missile attack represents concrete action. In earlier editions, you could fudge this, but the various missile feats in 3e rigidly codify the 1 roll = 1 arrow model. If one were to roll things back a bit and put the two types of attack on par with one another, a more abstract accounting system could be put into place. Lots of arrows d10, plenty of arrows d8, some arrows d6, a few arrows d4. Finding caches of items can bump things up to the next quantity tier.
after combat, make a roll for each character using that missile type, or one roll -1 for each missile user over the first, to determine (in an abstract sense) how many arrows were used, recovered, broken, etc. A 1 would mean that enough were lost or broken that the cache size would shrink.
I’m thinking that each fight the PCs go through is going to deplete their resources somewhat — let’s say a minimum of one die. I’m fundamentally changing how combat works from deadly last-stands to skirmishes. NPCs and intelligent monsters are ASSUMED to flee after X rounds.
PCs are assumed to need wet-stones, bandages, torches, arrows, etc. after every fight, and the only way they can recoup any of those losses is by cornering and defeating a monster/NPC party — or they have to suck it up and take the hit to resources, and hope they don’t run out before they complete whatever they set out to do.
I don’t think I’ll actually have ammunition, or even *potions* subtract from equipment, since swords and spears likely require just as much care as mages need reagents and assassins need poison… hence the automatic deduction at the end of an encounter instead of per-use depletion.
Skill checks are a different animal though — that’s where the cascading depletion comes into play. A lot of skill-oriented gear like ropes, poles, and mirrors are good for multiple uses — and that’s why we roll for those.
So encounters over time work like this:
ENC1: NPCs retreat; d12 gear > d10
ENC2: NPCs retreat; d10 gear > d8
ENC3: NPCs defeated; d8 gear = d8
ENC4: NPCs retreat; d8 gear > d6
ENC5: NPCs retreat; d6 gear > d4
ENC6: NPCs defeated; d4 gear = d4
Party takes an extended rest; the Ranger replenishes arrows (d4>d6), the Fighter sharpens the weapons (d6>d8), the Cleric gathers some curative herbs (d8>d10), and the Wizard recharges his staff (d10>d12).
The above example assumes the party has Trades that enable them to recover or replace gear; it’s entirely possible to have a party with zero self-sufficiency get repeatedly hamstrung or just operate with NO gear. There might be room for a “MacGuyver”-like Trade. ;)
If Skill checks are incorporated into any of those encounters, then you’re looking at a possibility that PC supplies will deplete FAST. Generally, when you’re using gear, the important stuff goes fast. Stuff that you *don’t* need sits on your character sheet unused, week after week.
The place where I see some imbalance there is most people don’t play with reagents and material components to begin with, but now the fighter has to scrape the rust off his sword in a way that affects gameplay.
Part of it might just be that I’m one of those players who actually records all of that weird miscellaneous adventuring crap from 3e on my character sheet. I end up being super useful every now and then cuz I’m the only person who thought that having a mirror, half a dozen pieces of chalk, a tin-whistle and 3 empty map-cases was a good idea.
I wouldn’t discourage anyone from keeping track of the bric-a-brac found during an adventure, I’m primarily concerned with systems that penalize players for not wanting to make this a part of their game, or which are somehow “incomplete” without them.
For example, Cover and Concealment in 3e/4e add a lot of depth to both combat systems but are unwieldy to use in play. Drawing imaginary lines for Cover is tedious and un-intuitive, and keeping track of light levels and senses is maddening for players and the GM alike.
And both games are markedly poorer for their absence. The Cover and Concealment rules just require too much investment to master and use effectively — and when they’re missing you can FEEL their loss.
Little pieces of gear like spikes for doors, oil for lanterns, and lockpicks… don’t get me started on lockpicks… are a lot of fun to play with, but the majority of people I’ve played with don’t have the presence of mind to consider them as gear — if only a couple players care enough to track equipment, they’re poorer for everyone who doesn’t care.
Functionally, you could look at this system as the Skill equivalent of 4e’s [W] notation for weapon attacks. It’s basically [G] ‘Gear’ whenever you make a Skill check. A typical combat encounter might not use the die, unless one or more PCs are trying to do something like negotiate a ceasefire while the party is trading blows with the opposition.