Have you landed on some mechanics you like for player characters "creating and growing a town"? Or are you thinking it could it be as simple as a table of cost / time required per settlement category?
I'm keen to have more things the PCs can spend money on. I've tried a carousing system but my players bounced off it pretty quickly after some mishaps.
Separately, there might be a small typo in the second example under your linked Monthly Availability By Price and Population table. My read of the table is a village of 408 would have a 1% chance of being able to buy that 2,000g chalice.
I didn't flesh out what the different sorts of units do (like the difference between light infantry and heavy infantry), but I think that's enough to go on and start play-testing (and iterating on points/gold values)
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> I'm keen to have more things the PCs can spend money on. I've tried a carousing system but my players bounced off it pretty quickly after some mishaps.
I *sort of* use carousing in my arden vul game. It's totally handwaved and more a roleplay prompt than anything, but the idea is that for ever 10g spent uselessly (buying art, donating to the church, giant parties, etc), the *player* gets 9 "reserve xp". If their character dies, their next character comes into play with their reserve xp. Reserve xp only goes up (in a campaign), it's not spent. Reserve xp can't be higher than their current character's xp. This is lifted straight out of ACKs 2e
The players just describe how they want to waste the gold, we all laugh and they one-up each other, spend the gold, increment the reserve, and get back to dungeon delving
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> Separately, there might be a small typo in the second example under your linked Monthly Availability By Price and Population table. My read of the table is a village of 408 would have a 1% chance of being able to buy that 2,000g chalice.
Have you ever examined the Total Party System? Aside from the layout of their books being somewhat lacking, the game design itself addresses most of the issues you raise here. The magic system is truly different from anything else I’ve ever encountered.
I haven't, but "The magic system is truly different from anything else I’ve ever encountered" isn't a good sign! I need it stuff to be *very* compatible with these old school modules
edit: looked up a preview on dtrpg
> Characters have three core defining Attributes: BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT. An Attribute Score is a number between 1 and 3 that determines the number of six-sided dice (d6) that a player rolls when attempting to use a skill, make an attack, or perform another type of action on their Turn that has some chance of failure. The numbers generated by rolling these dice are then added together, and the result compared to a Difficulty Number determined by the rules or by the Game Master. If the result of the roll is HIGHER THAN the Difficulty Number, the attempt is a Success. If the result of the dice rolled is EQUAL TO or LESSER THAN the Difficulty Number, the attempt Fails
Do you have any experience with Dolmenwood as a system? I think I agree with you when it comes to bean counting not being fun, but if you aren't tracking rations than you probably aren't engaging in foraging, hunting, or fishing during overland travel in Dolmenwood. And if you aren't engaging with those systems you miss out on some cool things like rare mushrooms or the hunter class abilities that make them better at these activities.
Also, not tracking torches removes some time pressure from dungeons and makes light spells way less useful. It makes sense that your players might farm wandering monsters in the dungeon is they don't need to worry about how many torches they are using. Have you experimented with slot based encumbrance as a middle ground? I believe it can reduce the meticulous bean counting while retaining some of the pressures that influence play in positive ways.
"Most designers, content with AD&D-style wilderness movement, tend to place the meat of their hexcrawl system here. I think a lot of systems go wrong with this by trying to make the system itself be the source of entertainment, when the content you encounter as a result of the system is really what's compelling. D&D's dungeon exploration rules are, at their root, quite simple: they aren't in-depth on their own, but they facilitate the distribution of in-depth content: traps, rooms, and encounters.
What's worse is that the system that designers often go with for their source of wilderness entertainment are focused on procedural survival realism. That means weather, watches or other segmentation of the day, hunting, fishing, foraging, crafting, disease. However, in my experience survival elements become their own minigame but do not, through their results, make players want to actually do something wilderness-related.
In short, though frequently confused, survival and exploration are not the same thing. Survival rules don't actually facilitate exploration. In fact, they make exploration more onerous: mechanically more difficult and, in terms of the metagame, often outright tiresome. As old-school games aren't averse to adversity, greater difficulty isn't necessarily bad, but tiresome always is, and even if one doesn't find it tiresome, conflating survival and exploration is unlikely to make wilderness exploration compelling: you still need a reason for players to bother facing off against the dangers of survival in the first place."
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> And if you aren't engaging with those systems you miss out on some cool things like rare mushrooms or the hunter class abilities that make them better at these activities.
Yeah - can drop the hunter class and give them the mushrooms other ways :)
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> not tracking torches removes some time pressure from dungeons and makes light spells way less useful.
I've played strictly raw encumbrance rules for *years* and running out of torches hasn't come up once. These games always have *some way* to get around it. Lamp oil lasts *a long time* and is not heavy. The continual light spell exists in most of these games.
I'm totally fine if the time pressure comes from random encounter checks rather than relying on torches dwindling.
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> Have you experimented with slot based encumbrance as a middle ground?
Yeah, imo it creates more problems than it solves. These old school adventures don't give the weight of treasure or items in terms of slots, so now I'm doing weird conversions. HIstorically my players (plus the hired help) have always had enough slots to make stuff not matter. In addition, the first main area of Arden Vul has a bag of holding with a 500lb limit, so it all collapses pretty quickly anyway in my experience
I'm curious, do you use an encumbrance system at all? You mentioned scraping abstract adventuring gear because it resulted in players utilizing gear even less. What's stopping players from just buying one of every item available in the players book? I believe having some restraints on how many items can be carried makes players more ready to use the tools that they have chosen to carry with their limited inventory space.
I find that slot based encumbrance is really quick to judge in practice and I find that it solves the above problem for me. You mentioned that you find it onerous to adjudicate the slot size of various items and treasure in modules. I use a simple system: everything is 1 slot unless it's bulky, then it's 2 slots. Gems and coins are 100 per slot (admittedly tracking this is the worst part of slot based encumbrance). I've never had an issue determinin how many slots an item occupies.
I am hesitant to start hand waving these mechanics at my table because I believe they were designed with each other in mind. I believe encumbrance is a load bearing system in OSR style play where treasure = XP. Take it away and other systems start to have less value. I think this line of thinking is what resulted in some of the choices that the designers of 5e made. If we don't want to track encumbrance, than treasure = XP becomes less meaningful. If treasure for XP is out, one of the big motivations for the dungeon crawl is removed and it becomes just a place to fight monsters. If we're not focusing on finding holes in the ground and we aren't tracking rations, what's the point of wilderness travel? Just skip over that to get to the next story location.
I've played every game I've ran RAW, so encumbrance in 1e, pathfinder 2e, OSE, ACKS 2e, etc.
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> You mentioned scraping abstract adventuring gear because it resulted in players utilizing gear even less. What's stopping players from just buying one of every item available in the players book?
this line here: "go slower when you’re carrying a lot (more than 40ish pounds of non-armor). Be mature about it."
The "be mature about it" and "carrying a lot" is doing a lot of work there; it's a lot like how the supreme court decided that porn was defined: "i know it when i see it". By not drawing hard boundaries, the GM gets some leeway to be merciful when that behooves them, and disincentivizes the players from trying to toe right up to the line.
----------
> I find that slot based encumbrance is really quick to judge in practice
That's great!
> You mentioned that you find it onerous to adjudicate the slot size of various items and treasure in modules. I use a simple system: everything is 1 slot unless it's bulky, then it's 2 slots.
> Take it away and other systems start to have less value. I think this line of thinking is what resulted in some of the choices that the designers of 5e made. If we don't want to track encumbrance, than treasure = XP becomes less meaningful.
Why does it become less meaningful? I'm not suggesting to stop tracking treasure weight, I'm suggesting to not track torches, rations, and arrows. If the party finds 120lbs worth of treasure we need to figure out how that can be carried (diegetically) and who it's going to slow down (because of the 40lbs = slow thing)
> If treasure for XP is out
Treasure for XP is definitely not out. This post actually suggested the opposite, removing monster XP so it's *just* XP for treasure
I find that Arden Vul example a little frustrating for introducing a bunch of coins of irregular weights. I have no interest in running AV for a number of reasons, but for this example I'd probably just treat the coins like any other coin and let them stack 100 a slot. Those coins that are 75x heavier I guess would be a single slot. The statue doesn't need a slot value because it isn't fitting into a backpack or sack. The jewelry takes up 1 slot each. Pretty much every thing else is one slot each, but the banded mail is 2 slots.
I guess my point was predicated on not tracking encumbrance at all. It just seems arbitrary to me to track the weight of treasure but not the weight of equipment.
Hi Beau, thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Have you landed on some mechanics you like for player characters "creating and growing a town"? Or are you thinking it could it be as simple as a table of cost / time required per settlement category?
I'm keen to have more things the PCs can spend money on. I've tried a carousing system but my players bounced off it pretty quickly after some mishaps.
Separately, there might be a small typo in the second example under your linked Monthly Availability By Price and Population table. My read of the table is a village of 408 would have a 1% chance of being able to buy that 2,000g chalice.
Howdy Matt, welcome!
> Have you landed on some mechanics you like for player characters "creating and growing a town"?
I have a simple version with just the market class for gosterwick that I use in my arden vul game. I just spun up a design doc for you that fleshes out the idea https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FJFEEfss6LaT7WdOLb3l6nbaHamjrzSXeaXAFRERkGg
I didn't flesh out what the different sorts of units do (like the difference between light infantry and heavy infantry), but I think that's enough to go on and start play-testing (and iterating on points/gold values)
----------
> I'm keen to have more things the PCs can spend money on. I've tried a carousing system but my players bounced off it pretty quickly after some mishaps.
I *sort of* use carousing in my arden vul game. It's totally handwaved and more a roleplay prompt than anything, but the idea is that for ever 10g spent uselessly (buying art, donating to the church, giant parties, etc), the *player* gets 9 "reserve xp". If their character dies, their next character comes into play with their reserve xp. Reserve xp only goes up (in a campaign), it's not spent. Reserve xp can't be higher than their current character's xp. This is lifted straight out of ACKs 2e
The players just describe how they want to waste the gold, we all laugh and they one-up each other, spend the gold, increment the reserve, and get back to dungeon delving
---------
> Separately, there might be a small typo in the second example under your linked Monthly Availability By Price and Population table. My read of the table is a village of 408 would have a 1% chance of being able to buy that 2,000g chalice.
Fixed! thanks; great catch
Thank you for making and sharing that sample implementation!
No problem! Felt good to gather/synthesize/demonstrate the idea
Have you ever examined the Total Party System? Aside from the layout of their books being somewhat lacking, the game design itself addresses most of the issues you raise here. The magic system is truly different from anything else I’ve ever encountered.
I haven't, but "The magic system is truly different from anything else I’ve ever encountered" isn't a good sign! I need it stuff to be *very* compatible with these old school modules
edit: looked up a preview on dtrpg
> Characters have three core defining Attributes: BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT. An Attribute Score is a number between 1 and 3 that determines the number of six-sided dice (d6) that a player rolls when attempting to use a skill, make an attack, or perform another type of action on their Turn that has some chance of failure. The numbers generated by rolling these dice are then added together, and the result compared to a Difficulty Number determined by the rules or by the Game Master. If the result of the roll is HIGHER THAN the Difficulty Number, the attempt is a Success. If the result of the dice rolled is EQUAL TO or LESSER THAN the Difficulty Number, the attempt Fails
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
Do you have any experience with Dolmenwood as a system? I think I agree with you when it comes to bean counting not being fun, but if you aren't tracking rations than you probably aren't engaging in foraging, hunting, or fishing during overland travel in Dolmenwood. And if you aren't engaging with those systems you miss out on some cool things like rare mushrooms or the hunter class abilities that make them better at these activities.
Also, not tracking torches removes some time pressure from dungeons and makes light spells way less useful. It makes sense that your players might farm wandering monsters in the dungeon is they don't need to worry about how many torches they are using. Have you experimented with slot based encumbrance as a middle ground? I believe it can reduce the meticulous bean counting while retaining some of the pressures that influence play in positive ways.
Hello Dylan!
> Do you have any experience with Dolmenwood as a system?
I've read it a handful of times, pulled some rules from it, but haven't run it yet. It's next after Arden Vul, though!
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> if you aren't tracking rations than you probably aren't engaging in foraging, hunting, or fishing during overland travel in Dolmenwood
I consider this a positive! https://rancourt.substack.com/p/a-survey-of-overland-travel
I'd rather spend table time on the interesting content instead of engaging with procedural survival mechanics. There's a quote from https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/05/making-wilderness-play-meaningful-system.html that I think is directly applicable
"Most designers, content with AD&D-style wilderness movement, tend to place the meat of their hexcrawl system here. I think a lot of systems go wrong with this by trying to make the system itself be the source of entertainment, when the content you encounter as a result of the system is really what's compelling. D&D's dungeon exploration rules are, at their root, quite simple: they aren't in-depth on their own, but they facilitate the distribution of in-depth content: traps, rooms, and encounters.
What's worse is that the system that designers often go with for their source of wilderness entertainment are focused on procedural survival realism. That means weather, watches or other segmentation of the day, hunting, fishing, foraging, crafting, disease. However, in my experience survival elements become their own minigame but do not, through their results, make players want to actually do something wilderness-related.
In short, though frequently confused, survival and exploration are not the same thing. Survival rules don't actually facilitate exploration. In fact, they make exploration more onerous: mechanically more difficult and, in terms of the metagame, often outright tiresome. As old-school games aren't averse to adversity, greater difficulty isn't necessarily bad, but tiresome always is, and even if one doesn't find it tiresome, conflating survival and exploration is unlikely to make wilderness exploration compelling: you still need a reason for players to bother facing off against the dangers of survival in the first place."
----------
> And if you aren't engaging with those systems you miss out on some cool things like rare mushrooms or the hunter class abilities that make them better at these activities.
Yeah - can drop the hunter class and give them the mushrooms other ways :)
----------
> not tracking torches removes some time pressure from dungeons and makes light spells way less useful.
I've played strictly raw encumbrance rules for *years* and running out of torches hasn't come up once. These games always have *some way* to get around it. Lamp oil lasts *a long time* and is not heavy. The continual light spell exists in most of these games.
I'm totally fine if the time pressure comes from random encounter checks rather than relying on torches dwindling.
----------
> Have you experimented with slot based encumbrance as a middle ground?
Yeah, imo it creates more problems than it solves. These old school adventures don't give the weight of treasure or items in terms of slots, so now I'm doing weird conversions. HIstorically my players (plus the hired help) have always had enough slots to make stuff not matter. In addition, the first main area of Arden Vul has a bag of holding with a 500lb limit, so it all collapses pretty quickly anyway in my experience
I'm curious, do you use an encumbrance system at all? You mentioned scraping abstract adventuring gear because it resulted in players utilizing gear even less. What's stopping players from just buying one of every item available in the players book? I believe having some restraints on how many items can be carried makes players more ready to use the tools that they have chosen to carry with their limited inventory space.
I find that slot based encumbrance is really quick to judge in practice and I find that it solves the above problem for me. You mentioned that you find it onerous to adjudicate the slot size of various items and treasure in modules. I use a simple system: everything is 1 slot unless it's bulky, then it's 2 slots. Gems and coins are 100 per slot (admittedly tracking this is the worst part of slot based encumbrance). I've never had an issue determinin how many slots an item occupies.
I am hesitant to start hand waving these mechanics at my table because I believe they were designed with each other in mind. I believe encumbrance is a load bearing system in OSR style play where treasure = XP. Take it away and other systems start to have less value. I think this line of thinking is what resulted in some of the choices that the designers of 5e made. If we don't want to track encumbrance, than treasure = XP becomes less meaningful. If treasure for XP is out, one of the big motivations for the dungeon crawl is removed and it becomes just a place to fight monsters. If we're not focusing on finding holes in the ground and we aren't tracking rations, what's the point of wilderness travel? Just skip over that to get to the next story location.
> do you use and encumbrance system at all?
I've played every game I've ran RAW, so encumbrance in 1e, pathfinder 2e, OSE, ACKS 2e, etc.
----------
> You mentioned scraping abstract adventuring gear because it resulted in players utilizing gear even less. What's stopping players from just buying one of every item available in the players book?
this line here: "go slower when you’re carrying a lot (more than 40ish pounds of non-armor). Be mature about it."
The "be mature about it" and "carrying a lot" is doing a lot of work there; it's a lot like how the supreme court decided that porn was defined: "i know it when i see it". By not drawing hard boundaries, the GM gets some leeway to be merciful when that behooves them, and disincentivizes the players from trying to toe right up to the line.
----------
> I find that slot based encumbrance is really quick to judge in practice
That's great!
> You mentioned that you find it onerous to adjudicate the slot size of various items and treasure in modules. I use a simple system: everything is 1 slot unless it's bulky, then it's 2 slots.
Can you slot out for me this treasure hoard? https://rancourt.substack.com/p/table-talk-treasure-hoards
----------
> Take it away and other systems start to have less value. I think this line of thinking is what resulted in some of the choices that the designers of 5e made. If we don't want to track encumbrance, than treasure = XP becomes less meaningful.
Why does it become less meaningful? I'm not suggesting to stop tracking treasure weight, I'm suggesting to not track torches, rations, and arrows. If the party finds 120lbs worth of treasure we need to figure out how that can be carried (diegetically) and who it's going to slow down (because of the 40lbs = slow thing)
> If treasure for XP is out
Treasure for XP is definitely not out. This post actually suggested the opposite, removing monster XP so it's *just* XP for treasure
I find that Arden Vul example a little frustrating for introducing a bunch of coins of irregular weights. I have no interest in running AV for a number of reasons, but for this example I'd probably just treat the coins like any other coin and let them stack 100 a slot. Those coins that are 75x heavier I guess would be a single slot. The statue doesn't need a slot value because it isn't fitting into a backpack or sack. The jewelry takes up 1 slot each. Pretty much every thing else is one slot each, but the banded mail is 2 slots.
I guess my point was predicated on not tracking encumbrance at all. It just seems arbitrary to me to track the weight of treasure but not the weight of equipment.
> It just seems arbitrary to me to track the weight of treasure but not the weight of equipment.
Hah! Tell that to 0e and BX
https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Time,_Weight,_Movement
https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/05/across-clones-encumbrance.html for more