I've been talking a bit about how the hobby seems to have settled into the view that not playing games-as-intended is mildly transgressive.
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I think one of the single most upsetting approaches to this is the random crit-fail event one.
"You have run out of ammunition"
"Your lantern is out of oil"My players of wtf about this indicated it was never going to fly at the table. It would lead to doubling down on demanding a mechanical inventory system to avoid it indeed.
@Printdevil @Taskerland @malin life surely is different in isolated Deep Ones county
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T Moreau Vazh shared this topic
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@Printdevil I mean, DnD 5e still does a lot of this stuff and it leaks outward but when you take a look at what designers, actual players, showrunners, and even youtubers develop is either totally moving away from it or, in case of OSRish circles, try to come up with procedures and processes and rules that would bring the same notion of play with minimised burden.
The whole "procedures not mechanics" movement was all about "how to keep the torches without counting torches"
@vdonnut Procedural play is squaring 'Rulings not Rules' with wanting very clear rules on torches and how long it takes to walk to the dungeon. Rules you can make rulings on. Procedures must be obeyed to the letter. @Printdevil @malin
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@vdonnut D&D 3/ Pathfinder already did this. I once joined a table as the only person without a tablet and had to hard-crunch level gain and loss.
This is the only real horror in RPGs. Never again.
@Taskerland @Printdevil@malin Yeah... pathfinder involves loads of bits-and-pieces conditional modifiers that expand as you level up. three +1s here, five -1s there, nightmare fuel. @vdonnut @Printdevil
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@vdonnut Procedural play is squaring 'Rulings not Rules' with wanting very clear rules on torches and how long it takes to walk to the dungeon. Rules you can make rulings on. Procedures must be obeyed to the letter. @Printdevil @malin
I'm not at home to it.
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@Taskerland Oddly I love the scarcity of resources in games, like food/water/air etc, but not items. Which confuses some people because they assume if you care about some granular aspect you should care about them all. So I really don't care about how many arrows you have, but I do vaguely care about lantern oil.
The best way to not worry about torches and lantern oil is of course to never go anywhere made dark by ceilings.
@Printdevil @Taskerland it has to be what's fun for the table right? My current campaign the players wanted to track ammo, but not food - I'm cool with that if that's what they enjoy; and if they get fed up of counting arrows I'm cool with that too (between dungeons obviously, not just when they've fired the last one!)
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@Printdevil @Taskerland it has to be what's fun for the table right? My current campaign the players wanted to track ammo, but not food - I'm cool with that if that's what they enjoy; and if they get fed up of counting arrows I'm cool with that too (between dungeons obviously, not just when they've fired the last one!)
@Printdevil @Taskerland that said, there are some genuinely scarce elements to the world - magic being one of them - so at their current location every time they use a spell they add to their bill, which will need to be cleared before they head off. So they have a spaceship (sort of - Spelljammer variant) but can't take it out of dock until they've worked enough to raise the coin. Whichbalso gives them a chance to get some insight into how things work before setting off into the black...
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@Printdevil @Taskerland it has to be what's fun for the table right? My current campaign the players wanted to track ammo, but not food - I'm cool with that if that's what they enjoy; and if they get fed up of counting arrows I'm cool with that too (between dungeons obviously, not just when they've fired the last one!)
If my players asked to track arrows or ammo, but not food, I'd be fine. But I do think it's about the background and the game, I think if you're playing Survivor Island the Game of Only Having Rocks or something and insisting on using procedural rules with no inventory management you're sort of missing out on a stress-factor that's meant to be enjoyable in those sorts of games.
But I think if I was playing James Bond RPG and had to track ammunition there'd be a fracas
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If my players asked to track arrows or ammo, but not food, I'd be fine. But I do think it's about the background and the game, I think if you're playing Survivor Island the Game of Only Having Rocks or something and insisting on using procedural rules with no inventory management you're sort of missing out on a stress-factor that's meant to be enjoyable in those sorts of games.
But I think if I was playing James Bond RPG and had to track ammunition there'd be a fracas
@Printdevil @Taskerland there's something here too about character abilities e.g. it's cool if you have to count arrows generally if yiur character has an ability that means they don't. Or the other way around I guess - last campaign one character was a warforged who suring the campaign had lanterns retrofitted behind his eyes, running from an hour's oil reservoir... it became quite important how long they were on, because it was important to them particularly not the world generally
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@Printdevil @Taskerland there's something here too about character abilities e.g. it's cool if you have to count arrows generally if yiur character has an ability that means they don't. Or the other way around I guess - last campaign one character was a warforged who suring the campaign had lanterns retrofitted behind his eyes, running from an hour's oil reservoir... it became quite important how long they were on, because it was important to them particularly not the world generally
@Printdevil @Taskerland also was important how visible they were when turned on, something else not always figured in...
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@Printdevil @Taskerland there's something here too about character abilities e.g. it's cool if you have to count arrows generally if yiur character has an ability that means they don't. Or the other way around I guess - last campaign one character was a warforged who suring the campaign had lanterns retrofitted behind his eyes, running from an hour's oil reservoir... it became quite important how long they were on, because it was important to them particularly not the world generally
If you don't measure or need certain things, it makes domestic level spells a bit "meh"
Like Light and Continual Light.
"Everfull Quivers" and such are a bit meaningless. Another thing is there is a shift from "not keeping track of it" becomes weird when the GM gives you 14 magical arrows of Frog Marching in treasure because you have to keep track of those I assume.
A lot of people argue these changes are about alterations in time keeping. We used to 10 min turns etc.
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@Printdevil @Taskerland also was important how visible they were when turned on, something else not always figured in...
That's Fallout 3 for me, wandering around with my radio on or a light, trying to be stealthy. I think a lot of that is lost in games where you don't pay attention to the players light sources and the like.
But, I re-emphasis there are games that seems important and games it doesn't. I'd never in a million years worry if a CoC player had filled their car up. However terrifying "your petrols runs out as you drive from the Cult Meeting" might be
(unless it was a spell)
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I've been talking a bit about how the hobby seems to have settled into the view that not playing games-as-intended is mildly transgressive.
I don't buy this as two of my formative gaming experiences were so wildly off-book that buying the games turned out to be a real anticlimax.
In one, we were peasants in a tiny village who had to travel to the city to sell components to wizards (Ars Magica) and in another we were veterans doing jobs for land owners in order to get off planet (Traveller)
@Taskerland Your corner of the woods sounds perplexing. Here, I have never once seen a gaming table that actually plays a game as intended (let alone R.A.W). No in all my decades in the hobby.
