1. damn, this is good. Go read it. I’m adopting it or something like it for this other thing IMm writing for Paolo Greco
2. this:
We have this gift of D&D – a game where we have unlimited creative budgets because we have imaginations – and instead we waste our time tracking hexes, miles, minutes, torches and pounds. Disgusting.
I just got finished writing a draft of some rules that suffer badly from this. I was vaguely unhappy with the beancountiness of them but this throws it into sharp relief.
Man oh man this is a hard problem to fix, though.
Originally shared by Luka Rejec
Over verbose post on the art of supplies.
http://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2017/37-long-distance-gritty-realism-ii-supplies/
This cracks open some setting rules I’m working into the UV Grasslands over on the WizardThiefFighter patreon.
http://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2017/37-long-distance-gritty-realism-ii-supplies///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js
Tattered Remains of Tartary 
I disagree you know.
The fallacy here is that “tracking” involves minutiae instead of organization. Keeping a strict time record and not handwaving what the party is carrying (eve if that is 6*d20 in supplies) is what makes a campaign meaningful.
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But I like tracking hexes, pounds, and torches, albeit I appreciate the value of a more abstracted system for the scale being discussed.
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Meaning is where you find it. For me it is the actual adventure and consequences thereof that I dig not the supply chain, but I also don’t think there is any right way to do it–and I can see for some sorts of games (gritty, survival, etc.) how close counting is important.
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Sure, everyone gets different things out of the game. You absolutely can have a meaningful campaign without strict time records, but obviously not the particular campaign that Gary wanted to run.
The trick, I think (when writing rule books) is not to exclude anyone by demanding they jump through hoops they don’t want to.
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Obviously I’m being hyperbolic 😉 – I’m not a one-true-wayer*.
but – and here’s the gauntlet for fans of tracking: make the organization of record keeping easy and fluid.
As it is, every single edition of Dnd has presented every DM with an accounting challenge. If the accounting is important, give me a workbook.
Or, you know, something else.
*just kidding. I’m a 7.5E zealot lvl 5 multi-classing as a war-lemur.
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I played GURPS for years. I am not afraid of Excel.
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…or the tax code
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Richard G then I want that game to ship with automated excel spreadsheets! 😀
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I find it useful if this can be linked to character role/profession – it can be a pain, but most of my groups have an accountant/wizard player who relishes optimising this kind of thing. Also lets the GM delegate a bit. Also supply shortages generate meaningful plot (yay). I’m currently in a WFRP game where this is terrifyingly apparent.
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Jamie Stevenson I suppose that can work, but I’d argue it should be optional. Not all my groups have had “accountant” players, and I certainly am not.
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Luka Rejec I concur, if no-one wants the job it can be eliminated – I suppose it depends how big a part of the game economics are going to be.
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Luka Rejec I know you’re joking but I’m thinking seriously about a software component – the trouble is it completely changes the lifespan of your product, even if you’re trying to futureproof it, even if you insist on writing only in java or relatively basic html, you enter the territory of “forever or 5 years.”
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Jamie Stevenson actually, I want economics to be a big part of the game. However, in pen-and-paper territory that runs into the economics of prep-and-game time. Likewise resource management.
Richard G I’m not joking – a software, or even a physical / .pdf workbook component for the DM would be a godsend. We continually make player character sheets and maps, but we never make adventure sheets for DMs to use up and dispose of as they run an adventure.
Likewise, a software almanac, NPC party behavior tracker, something like that would be great – but the event horizon of software decay is terrible.
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Richard G Open source or something like it is your friend – as long as you make it clear what the software is doing, the fan-base will maintain/fork the thing. I have several widgets that are automated rules from games (excel, and more meaty code). Will the software component contain any information that is not in the published rules?
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Jamie Stevenson I don’t anticipate that it would, no: the whole system is pretty easy, actually, but it’s awkward enough to benefit from a calculator, which means it fails Luka’s sniff test.
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Richard G the lazy imagination forward test.
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I think this is where some expertise from board-game design might be helpful – they often have large amounts of state that is all visible and interacting at once.
An abacus, rather than a calculator?
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an abacus would be a good idea …
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