Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 wayfaringfellow Feb 03, 2011 12:10:05	Edit: What the! How did I end up on DnDI general?  I meant for this to be on the regular General board, my apologies for the mistake. By which I mean, playing out (to a minor degree) daily events.  I don't know if other groups already do this, but oftentimes my friends and I have just played where we assume food and water is probably taken care of, and maybe dropped a few gold pieces to assume we covered fare.  And that means probably not counting our trail rations, or nonmagical ammunition, and often times being pretty lenient with our weight limits (until it becomes rather obvious that we're over it) A few of us have mentioned it might be fun to try it, which would bring foraging skills back into the game, and slow the pace down a bit- perhaps even drive a RP-focused game.  Now I'm not saying we want to count our coppers to the last one, but I'm looking for advice. Has this sort of setting worked for you and your group before?  Or do the mundane details of making sure you have enough trail rations to make it to the next settlement frustrate you more than enrich the experience?  Will it be worth it to the players to discover a variety of mysterious gems and art without instantly knowing the price tag, or will these things bog them down with "going-through-the-motions" blues? Obviously the ultimate decision comes down to my group and I, but I'd like to see what others feel about the idea, and furthermore, if they have any secret recipes to enrich the atmosphere of their own games?  Any and all suggestions or constructive criticisms welcome! Thank you!
#2 x3nth10n Feb 03, 2011 13:04:36	Normally (in most campaigns and especially settings), I find those kinds of things to be rather... tedious and boring, and ultimately essentially unimportant/illogical.  For example, in the modern world, you can just go to the store, and while yes, you have to figure out when you run out of food, getting it is easy.  Likewise (imo) most DnD settings have enough population, magic, technology, and/or economy such that most of the time you should be able to do just fine going to "the grocery store" of the game.  Sure, you can track those things, but ultimately, it almost universally ends up being like real life- kind of annoying but not a big deal. That said- if your setting is much lower (population, magic, tech, economy) and you are much more in the hunting for yourself kind of world, or if the world between towns is wild and harsher than normal (or the distances are much much greater), I have found that something akin to the Survival Days mechanic in Dark Sun works quite nicely.  The key I think is in the telling more than the specific minutia of exactly how many pounds of trail mix and jerky you have.  When I have played in Dark Sun, the world is harsh and barren, and a good DM tries to insert subtle ways to emphasize your characters' discomfort.  The idea of a survival day is that it is an abstract concept to represent how much food it takes to survive the day without undue hunger.  Typically there are load constraints (like carrying more than 4 survival days without a wagon/cart/animal/magic bag) that will make it harder to move, and you can have scavengers in the wasteland that attempt to steal the food from you.  You may end up with uneven amounts of food among the group, and you have to decide if it is worth sharing.  Further, because food is a valuable resource, it is often a point of contention both among the party, and with enemies.  A small oasis in the middle of the wastelands?  Very likely it is guarded fiercely by nomads, monsters, or both. The key I feel is that it can't be too easy to get.  Once it is easy to get food, then it becomes essentially a pointless exercise to track.  It is like making a DC10 skill check at level 30.  You can't fail, so why bother rolling?  Once food is easy to either obtain, carry, or both, it stops being an interesting resource.  If it can't be stolen, you can be very complacent.  Ultimately, in most settings, you just have so many tools to create, store, find, and purchase food, especially at higher levels, that it seems like it is hard to sustain that feeling of interest. As a side note, I have always hated tracking things like arrows, especially in 4e where not only do magical characters not have to worry about arrows or spell components, but also that thrown weapons automatically return if they are magical.  We always go with the theory that if a +1 dagger returns to your hand instantly, a +1 bow/crossbow spawns its own arrows, because why penalize an archer with an annoying mechanic.  Not to mention it has the same problem as food. After a couple low levels, it is so trivial to buy arrows and  so trivial to store them, it isn't worth tracking. I don't hate the idea of tracking rations, I just think that it has to be done very carefully or it will turn out like it seems to in your experience (you just stop doing it).  If you want to try a world where day to day life is a huge struggle, and one where the RP options are very different from the norm, and it makes sense to track rations, you may want to give Dark Sun a try, or create a world founded on the same principles.  Perhaps the world isn't a wasteland, but is filled with savage forests and mountain ranges, and travel between cities is a true struggle and often deadly.  Hope that helps!
#3 wayfaringfellow Feb 03, 2011 13:35:20	That advice is very helpful!  And addresses some of the concerns that I had with the implementation.  It *does* seem rather tedious, but you have offered some good insight: 1) This sort of "keep an eye on your resources" game *can* be implemented the correct way, but only when certain circumstances are true (i.e. don't nickel and dime them in the midst of a metropolis, but a month-long trek through the mountains or desert could make for an interesting setting, especially introducing NPCs who are fighting over food the PCs would like) 2) The best time to implement this sort of thing is when it would actually be a challenge to obtain.  Therefore, plaguing epic characters to say "Okay, I search for food, 40 check, we eat" is just annoying, but 1st level wanderers might find it more engaging since they can actually fail. Makes sense, and I'll talk with my group about it, see if it's something they're interested in.
#4 x3nth10n Feb 03, 2011 14:04:18	Awesome, I'm glad that helped.  As an anecdote of an effective usage of this system, I felt that the DnD Encounters season for Dark Sun was pretty awesome.  We started out as part of a large caravan across the tablelands to head to the newly freed city of Tyr.  The journey would be long and perilous, but we were in the company of a large caravan, and several elite guards of (what was essentially nobility).  We didn't have to worry about rations at the outset because as a caravan, we could store as much as was needed for the journey. Part way through the crossing (a many-day journey), we were beset by a magical rain of obsidian shards.  The somewhat molten obsidian sliced through our caravan, instantly killing most of the members, and upturning our wagon that we were in.  Thus we started the first combat encounter. We were all trapped underneath our wagon, which was both a blessing and a curse.  Due to the fact that we were in a caravan, we weren't personally carrying any survival rations, but there were some in the upturned wagon.  Being in the wagon, we were somewhat shielded from the obsidian... for the moment.  However, not only was the storm getting thicker, the wagon was deteriorating, and we were set upon by silt raiders (think kind of like kobolds that lived in the wastelands).   So here is the dilemma: We need food to survive the rest of the jouney.  It took a (move?) action  to pick up one day's rations for one person.  Carrying more than 3 days' rations would overburden you, making you slowed.  Staying in the wagon meant that we couldn't attack effectively, especially melee characters, and the enemies had a shaman of sorts that could hit us with area of effects. Leaving the wagon meant being exposed to potentially the storm, all the raiders, and potentially not getting rations.  The wagon was deteriorating, and if the wagon was destroyed or overcome more by the storm, any unclaimed rations would be forever lost.  Oh, and did I mention that reinforcements were on the way for the raiders and the storm was closing in from behind to lethal levels?  It was an intense situation, and we knew that we likely would have to try and get as much food as we thought we could spare, while not being killed by a storm or the enemies, or both, and then run like there was no tomorrow. This situation was extremely suspenseful, and above all else, it really made us value our food that we got away with.  Some of us got 2 days of food, some got 3, and I believe one person only got one.  If I recall correctly, there was not enough total food for us all to have 3 in the first place (adding yet another dynamic amongst the party).  Eventually, we found a small sheltered area.  Of course you know by now what that must mean.  It was defended by local monsters, because shelter is valuable.  Now, being attacked for trespassing is understandable.  However, they sent out a trained flying creature that proceeded to steal a food ration from us.  Now, it didn't attack us, but after we had worked so hard for that food, and we had none in sight, we felt far more personally affronted  by that little flier than by being attacked.  He was stealing our long term livelihood.  We could have run and ceased trespassing and probably been fine.  But losing food? Not an option at all.   I think you have the gist of what makes it good/tedious from your last post.  Hope this example showed how it can work in practice.
#5 wayfaringfellow Feb 03, 2011 21:08:27	Wow, I think that's exactly the sort of scenario I want to create.  That's very rich and I can see how different it would be from having someone randomly steal a trail ration to having someone randomly steal a ration that you fought with your life for, hoping to endure another day.  I can already see the desert and tundra terrains getting far more interesting than they were before!