I think you took the abstract adventuring gear idea a tad too far. Simplifying inventory, weight management, and shopping by flattening the prices and weights of tools into one thing? That sounds like a helpful expedient which decreases complexity a lot without reducing depth. Where I draw the line is simply saying "I bring 15 pieces of Adventuring Gear" and then, as problems are encountered, simply declaring that one of the pieces of gear you brought solves the problem. Interesting puzzles and conundrums become bland toll-booths. I think there are two reasons we love using tools to overcome problems in OSR: Anticipation payoff, and bounded creativity.
By anticipation payoff, I mean that when the player is shopping for gear, they anticipate using it. The thief salivates as they purchase their ball bearings because they have already imagined a bakers-dozen situations they can deploy them in. Using the ball bearings later feels much more satisfying because it is the payoff to the anticipation you felt when you bought them. Abstract adventuring gear removes the anticipation because the gear could be used for *anything*, and without anticipation there is no payoff.
By bounded creativity, I mean being creative within a set of limitations. In this case, the limitations are the gear that the party brought with along. This kind of exercise is one that, I think, our brains are particularly suited for. A blank pages is terrifying, but a writing prompt is fun. Abstract adventuring gear replaces the concrete list of tools available to the party with an open-ended question of "what will the GM let me get away with". I also see potential for player-GM conflict here, because again, ultimately the only limit on what adventuring gear can be is whatever the player could imagine having in their backpack at the time.
You're totally correct - you lose both of the things you mention. So that's the cost. The benefit is that, if you think exploring dungeon rooms and solving the problems you encounter is more fun than buying a bunch of adventuring gear, you're now gaining fun there. More of your session is spent exploring/solving/fighting, and less is spent on the expedition-prep-phase.
The size of these costs and benefits will vary by table. Some tables love shopping (mine doesn't), maybe even love it more than using what they buy or the actual exploring bit. For them, the costs are minimized. The opposite can also be true!
The real dealbreaker for me is that I genuinely think that normal OSR rules are incompatible with "I have to make due with these random tools" style problem solving.
It's very cheap to buy every item, and very cheap to hire people to haul it around for you. As soon as you do that, both the fun of "oh wow, this thing I specifically bought paid off", and the fun of "I have to solve this bounded creativity problem" both become equivalent to adventuring supplies, since you have every item.
To reiterate, the very first room in barrows in the Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, before you run into any threats, has more money in it than the entire BX adventuring equipment list combined. "Limited stuff" is just not a concept except before your very first adventure.
> Interesting puzzles and conundrums become bland toll-booths.
I don't think they become a bland toll-booth! Take, for example, the coffins with skeletons inside of them in tomb of the serpent kings. The players might want to say that they have a mallet (1 Supply), 12 spikes (1 Supply), a hand drill (1 Supply), and then 1 flask of oil per coffin (4 Supplies). So they erase 7 Supplies, and write that they have those things. Then, they enact this plan where they hammer shut the coffins, drill holes into them, and then pour oil inside and light it on fire.
I'll grant that it's less fun than if you specifically said you had all of those things 2 weeks ago during trip-planning, but definitely not "bland". It's just a different sort of optimization problem where they're trying to figure out how to spend the least number of supplies (okay, so that plan uses 7, can we do better?), balanced against risk.
> A blank pages is terrifying, but a writing prompt is fun. Abstract adventuring gear replaces the concrete list of tools available to the party with an open-ended question of "what will the GM let me get away with". I also see potential for player-GM conflict here, because again, ultimately the only limit on what adventuring gear can be is whatever the player could imagine having in their backpack at the time.
Ah! So imagine that there is a concrete list of mundane equipment that an adventuring supply can be, similar to the adventuring equipment list found in most books. Now it's no longer a blank page, if you want to bring things that aren't on the list, you have to bring them ahead of time (holy water for example).
Yknow what? I went too far in my criticism. The "bland tollbooth" scenario was the extreme case I jumped to. With a list of agreed-on Adventuring Equipment, and sufficiently interesting problems to solve, this seems like a good compromise to enable more time spent in the thick of it and less in town.
You mention the dichotomy between exploring/solving/fighting (lets say adventuring for short) and prepping, and that you prefer to focus on the former. One of my formative gaming experiences which influences my philosophy is the XCOM series, which features a lovely gameplay loop:
1. Tactical squad combat with aliens to earn money and materials
2. Return to base to spend money and material on new weapons
3. Before the next mission, spend some time picking your squad and outfitting them for the mission
This creates a fantastic anticipation/payoff loop. I can't wait to get back to base and spend all these alloys on plasma guns > I can't wait to show those mutons what-for with these new plasma guns > I can't wait to get this berserker corpse back home and autopsy it > repeat. It's also great for pacing, because the tactical combat is fun but also tense and high-stakes enough to wear you down. Taking a break to spend your greebles and order the engineers around is refreshing. Capturing that same feeling is one my goals. OSR dungeon crawling isn't a perfect environment to do that in, but I have to try!
The economy problem you describe is a tough nut to crack. I assuming we don't want to take the Knave 2E approach by making everything very expensive. One approach to adventure-design that alleviates this problem could be to provide fewer fungible rewards. For instance you could replace gold with unique items, favors from NPCs, changes to the environment (you killed the orcs that were pillaging our trade routes, so now you can buy more items at the shops!), etc. Of course this violates OSR gold = XP conventions but I think it could work for a dungeon-crawling adventure design that is less attached to some of the more archaic OSR mechanics.
the party needs something, so they go to a dungeon, search for the something (treasure, an ancient artifact, etc), find it, take it (risk), return to town, and come back different (more powerful, wealthier, injured, etc)
The buying stuff for the next expedition step is a really big part of "change". If all that happens is that the characters have a higher gold number on their character sheet, there is little change, both in terms of their place in the world and also what their next expedition will feel like. It's really cool to imagine how, with this new stuff, your next expedition can be different, or the new sorts of problems you can solve.
The anticipation/payoff loop is featured pretty heavily in basically every RPG I can think of; from gaining new abilities in final fantasy 6 to getting more powerful gear in world of warcraft for the next raid or dungeon.
I want to preserve it! It's just that I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze for *mundane adventuring gear* specifically.
> One approach to adventure-design that alleviates this problem could be to provide fewer fungible rewards.
I think this only very slightly delays the problem. Say that instead of hauling back a bunch of gold, they earn a favor from the baron. The players say "can we call on the baron to provide us with a cart full of adventuring equipment and some lackeys to haul it around for us?"
Like, from the characters (not players) perspective, they're going to keep exploring dungeons, and are motivated to decrease their chances of dying as much as possible. It seems *really* hard to prevent such characters from obtaining equipment and lackeys in order to enforce a "you have to make due with what you have" style game.
> I think it could work for a dungeon-crawling adventure design
For sure! The trouble I have is that in writing a system that is explicitly designed to be totally compatible with old school modules, I have to account for what actually happens in old school modules.
The best solution I've seen for this is making sure that early game adventuring takes place near illiquid markets. IE:
So if you start the players out in a village (brandonsford, blackapple, etc), there are plenty (15 each) of stuff like waterskins, lamp oil, torches, rope, poles, spikes, and crowbars, but only 1 lantern, hammer, flask of burning oil, or surgical saw. There's a low chance (10% each) of having something more fancy, like thieves tools, a mule, a lock, an ironbound chest, a disguise kit, a listening horn, or holy water.
I think you took the abstract adventuring gear idea a tad too far. Simplifying inventory, weight management, and shopping by flattening the prices and weights of tools into one thing? That sounds like a helpful expedient which decreases complexity a lot without reducing depth. Where I draw the line is simply saying "I bring 15 pieces of Adventuring Gear" and then, as problems are encountered, simply declaring that one of the pieces of gear you brought solves the problem. Interesting puzzles and conundrums become bland toll-booths. I think there are two reasons we love using tools to overcome problems in OSR: Anticipation payoff, and bounded creativity.
By anticipation payoff, I mean that when the player is shopping for gear, they anticipate using it. The thief salivates as they purchase their ball bearings because they have already imagined a bakers-dozen situations they can deploy them in. Using the ball bearings later feels much more satisfying because it is the payoff to the anticipation you felt when you bought them. Abstract adventuring gear removes the anticipation because the gear could be used for *anything*, and without anticipation there is no payoff.
By bounded creativity, I mean being creative within a set of limitations. In this case, the limitations are the gear that the party brought with along. This kind of exercise is one that, I think, our brains are particularly suited for. A blank pages is terrifying, but a writing prompt is fun. Abstract adventuring gear replaces the concrete list of tools available to the party with an open-ended question of "what will the GM let me get away with". I also see potential for player-GM conflict here, because again, ultimately the only limit on what adventuring gear can be is whatever the player could imagine having in their backpack at the time.
You're totally correct - you lose both of the things you mention. So that's the cost. The benefit is that, if you think exploring dungeon rooms and solving the problems you encounter is more fun than buying a bunch of adventuring gear, you're now gaining fun there. More of your session is spent exploring/solving/fighting, and less is spent on the expedition-prep-phase.
The size of these costs and benefits will vary by table. Some tables love shopping (mine doesn't), maybe even love it more than using what they buy or the actual exploring bit. For them, the costs are minimized. The opposite can also be true!
The real dealbreaker for me is that I genuinely think that normal OSR rules are incompatible with "I have to make due with these random tools" style problem solving.
It's very cheap to buy every item, and very cheap to hire people to haul it around for you. As soon as you do that, both the fun of "oh wow, this thing I specifically bought paid off", and the fun of "I have to solve this bounded creativity problem" both become equivalent to adventuring supplies, since you have every item.
To reiterate, the very first room in barrows in the Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, before you run into any threats, has more money in it than the entire BX adventuring equipment list combined. "Limited stuff" is just not a concept except before your very first adventure.
> Interesting puzzles and conundrums become bland toll-booths.
I don't think they become a bland toll-booth! Take, for example, the coffins with skeletons inside of them in tomb of the serpent kings. The players might want to say that they have a mallet (1 Supply), 12 spikes (1 Supply), a hand drill (1 Supply), and then 1 flask of oil per coffin (4 Supplies). So they erase 7 Supplies, and write that they have those things. Then, they enact this plan where they hammer shut the coffins, drill holes into them, and then pour oil inside and light it on fire.
I'll grant that it's less fun than if you specifically said you had all of those things 2 weeks ago during trip-planning, but definitely not "bland". It's just a different sort of optimization problem where they're trying to figure out how to spend the least number of supplies (okay, so that plan uses 7, can we do better?), balanced against risk.
> A blank pages is terrifying, but a writing prompt is fun. Abstract adventuring gear replaces the concrete list of tools available to the party with an open-ended question of "what will the GM let me get away with". I also see potential for player-GM conflict here, because again, ultimately the only limit on what adventuring gear can be is whatever the player could imagine having in their backpack at the time.
Ah! So imagine that there is a concrete list of mundane equipment that an adventuring supply can be, similar to the adventuring equipment list found in most books. Now it's no longer a blank page, if you want to bring things that aren't on the list, you have to bring them ahead of time (holy water for example).
Yknow what? I went too far in my criticism. The "bland tollbooth" scenario was the extreme case I jumped to. With a list of agreed-on Adventuring Equipment, and sufficiently interesting problems to solve, this seems like a good compromise to enable more time spent in the thick of it and less in town.
You mention the dichotomy between exploring/solving/fighting (lets say adventuring for short) and prepping, and that you prefer to focus on the former. One of my formative gaming experiences which influences my philosophy is the XCOM series, which features a lovely gameplay loop:
1. Tactical squad combat with aliens to earn money and materials
2. Return to base to spend money and material on new weapons
3. Before the next mission, spend some time picking your squad and outfitting them for the mission
This creates a fantastic anticipation/payoff loop. I can't wait to get back to base and spend all these alloys on plasma guns > I can't wait to show those mutons what-for with these new plasma guns > I can't wait to get this berserker corpse back home and autopsy it > repeat. It's also great for pacing, because the tactical combat is fun but also tense and high-stakes enough to wear you down. Taking a break to spend your greebles and order the engineers around is refreshing. Capturing that same feeling is one my goals. OSR dungeon crawling isn't a perfect environment to do that in, but I have to try!
The economy problem you describe is a tough nut to crack. I assuming we don't want to take the Knave 2E approach by making everything very expensive. One approach to adventure-design that alleviates this problem could be to provide fewer fungible rewards. For instance you could replace gold with unique items, favors from NPCs, changes to the environment (you killed the orcs that were pillaging our trade routes, so now you can buy more items at the shops!), etc. Of course this violates OSR gold = XP conventions but I think it could work for a dungeon-crawling adventure design that is less attached to some of the more archaic OSR mechanics.
Thanks for saying all of this!
The narrative experience of a dungeon expedition is extremely similar to dan harmon's story circle https://boords.com/blog/storytelling-101-the-dan-harmon-story-circle
the party needs something, so they go to a dungeon, search for the something (treasure, an ancient artifact, etc), find it, take it (risk), return to town, and come back different (more powerful, wealthier, injured, etc)
The buying stuff for the next expedition step is a really big part of "change". If all that happens is that the characters have a higher gold number on their character sheet, there is little change, both in terms of their place in the world and also what their next expedition will feel like. It's really cool to imagine how, with this new stuff, your next expedition can be different, or the new sorts of problems you can solve.
The anticipation/payoff loop is featured pretty heavily in basically every RPG I can think of; from gaining new abilities in final fantasy 6 to getting more powerful gear in world of warcraft for the next raid or dungeon.
I want to preserve it! It's just that I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze for *mundane adventuring gear* specifically.
> One approach to adventure-design that alleviates this problem could be to provide fewer fungible rewards.
I think this only very slightly delays the problem. Say that instead of hauling back a bunch of gold, they earn a favor from the baron. The players say "can we call on the baron to provide us with a cart full of adventuring equipment and some lackeys to haul it around for us?"
Like, from the characters (not players) perspective, they're going to keep exploring dungeons, and are motivated to decrease their chances of dying as much as possible. It seems *really* hard to prevent such characters from obtaining equipment and lackeys in order to enforce a "you have to make due with what you have" style game.
> I think it could work for a dungeon-crawling adventure design
For sure! The trouble I have is that in writing a system that is explicitly designed to be totally compatible with old school modules, I have to account for what actually happens in old school modules.
The best solution I've seen for this is making sure that early game adventuring takes place near illiquid markets. IE:
https://gist.github.com/beaurancourt/9fb53d684d2e2592663bca1c873f6f62#monthly-availability-by-price-and-population
So if you start the players out in a village (brandonsford, blackapple, etc), there are plenty (15 each) of stuff like waterskins, lamp oil, torches, rope, poles, spikes, and crowbars, but only 1 lantern, hammer, flask of burning oil, or surgical saw. There's a low chance (10% each) of having something more fancy, like thieves tools, a mule, a lock, an ironbound chest, a disguise kit, a listening horn, or holy water.