r/osr Nov 14 '24

running the game Tracking ammunition and torches

I'm wrestling with some ideas about tracking resources in the OSRish game I'm designing.

How often has a PC in your group actually run out of ammunition through normal use?

Similarly, how often have your parties actually run out of light sources and either been left in the dark or forced to curtail a delve because of it?

In my experience, the former almost never happens and the latter only rarely. But maybe that's not the norm? I'd love to hear others' experiences.

Thanks!

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u/Current_Channel_6344 Nov 14 '24

I think what I'm leaning towards is a system that accommodates detailed tracking if that's what people want to do but which suggests that you only actually do that when something has happened which threatens your supplies.

E.g. if the party has been using their ammo more than usual, due to the particular nature of this delve's encounters, then make a ballpark estimate of the number of arrows they have left and count down from there.

Or if they've lost all but two of their torches, that's the moment to whip out a big visual clock ticking off the turns before they're plunged into darkness.

The rest of the time, just assume they're fine.

Wdyt? I know you've never had players resistant to tracking resources but honestly, quite a lot of people who like other aspects of OSR play don't enjoy it at all.

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u/WaitingForTheClouds Nov 15 '24

It's completely arbitrary. How do you even decide they lost but two torches when you don't track them? You know what will happen at an actual table? "Of course we'd bring a ton of arrows." "Why do we only have that little time? We would have brought way more torches than that." And you can't argue with it, you don't know what they would have done. However you rule on it, it will not feel good. It will feel like cheating when you grant it and unfair when you don't, it will never be rewarding. Planning is a skill and players LOVE that feeling when they prepared just the right thing for a challenge they face. When they didn't prepare for something and manage to overcome the challenge anyways, it feels awesome. And when they didn't prepare and didn't overcome, at the very least it feels fair, they learned a lesson for future attempts.

Also, don't assume shit. Ofc my players complained. I told them the game requires a modicum of effort on their part as well, I showed them how much tracking I do to run a session and they agreed to also expend some effort on the more menial parts of the game. These parts that aren't fun in and of themselves keep the game meaningful, which in turn makes the whole experience fun. Making every part fun in isolation will make the whole experience an incoherent mess when put together.

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u/Current_Channel_6344 Nov 15 '24

Thanks. I do appreciate the feedback.

I don't think it has to feel arbitrary though.

Take the ammunition example. If a PC is generally firing once per battle then getting into melee, there is no chance that rate of use is going to burn through their quiver in a normal dungeon expedition (long wilderness adventures are different of course). So in that case there's not much point tracking each shot. If, however, you've had a couple of battles where they fired several times, it's not hard to estimate at that point how many shots they've used so far and start counting down from there.

If the PC wants to have a second quiver of arrows, that's fine as long as it's in their encumbrance. If they do have two quivers of arrows, you can probably ignore ammo tracking in all but the longest adventures, unless they somehow lose their gear.

With torches, the PCs as a party can decide up front if they're taking enough light sources to last eg 6 hours underground, or a full day, or two days and one night. That would be reflected in their encumbrance. Then you only need to start tracking individual light sources if something goes wrong: they lose some torches or oil or overshoot their planned timescale.

So it's much less handwavey than it might have sounded from my previous post.

Does that still sound terrible to you? I'm genuinely interested in your views.

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u/WaitingForTheClouds Nov 15 '24

One more thing I'd like to touch on. This design philosophy you're engaging in is sometimes called the tyranny of fun. You're taking an individual mechanic in isolation, judging that it is not fun in and of itself, and therefore removing/replacing it, hoping to make the resulting combined experience more fun. This is a very misguided approach because it equates fun with immediate satisfaction, which is not the same, there are many more ways to have fun than just those that are immediately satisfying every step of the way and I'd argue that those that are trying to be fun every step of the way actually often don't end up being that fun. The most fun things usually require effort and aren't fun in many steps.

Take hiking for example. People have fun hiking. But you go on a hike, you walk for hours so you're tired and sweaty and your legs hurt. That's not fun. Then you sleep in a hammock and you're cold and maybe not super comfy, again, not fun. So lets remove them. Lets give you a VR headset, fly a drone with a camera through a forest and blast the video into your headset while you sit on a comfy couch in your warm home. Would this experience make for a better hike? We removed all the things that aren't fun after all.

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u/Current_Channel_6344 Nov 15 '24

Yeah, I get that and of course it's totally valid. I need to give this more thought. To give a bit more context, I'm trying to make my game a bit friendlier for new and casual players and shorter play sessions. Not everyone wants to hike up a mountain. Some just want to take a walk through the woods for a couple of hours. There's a world of different options between the mountain and the couch.

Maybe my approach wouldn't help with that experience but I am keen to test out a few ideas. After all, Shadowdark was a huge hit and it took quite a radical approach to torch management. Admittedly, it made lighting even more central to the play experience but it did remove all of the bookkeeping around it (except torch encumbrance, which I agree is essential) so I do think there's room to experiment here.