QuoteThe main issue with that approach is that it makes the PCs look incompetent; that they just guess how much food or ammunition they're carrying.

It's more putting this aspect on meta-level. Character knows how much he bears, Player know whether he is close to running out, or not.
You have just d4 of food, or water - you forage to get more, and so on. Easier than counting every ration separatedly, while still making it resource than can run out.

QuoteBecause your hero is a cautious sort who stocks up a LOT of arrows (enough for that d12), but on his first shot rolls a 1, then a 2 on his second (d10), a 1 (d8), 2 (d6) and a final 2 (d4). So our extremely prepared archer only brought FIVE arrows with him into a dungeon because random dice said so.

But chances for it are rather low.
And then you can say arrows were subpar and they did not survived harshness of travel or smth.

There is chance 1 per 720, your d12 quiver shall allow you for only 5 arrows. That's not much.

The way to make the die "ammo use" mechanic work in D&D is to not roll every arrow but at the end of each fight.  Obviously, you use a smaller die for this.  Then the GM makes a judgment call for special situations.  Take one or two shots, don't roll.  Shoot like mad all fight, make 2 or 3 rolls.  Then the players know between fights what kind of situation they are in.  For magic arrows, I used a larger die, on the grounds that it is more difficult for them to break.  It gives a little shoot out vibe where the characters can't keep track of the shots during the excitement of combat.

I used this for some time and got the effect I wanted (players being careful about resources but not paranoid).  Then I started using the "mark it off when you miss" technique which gives that same effect (if a different vibe) with about the same overall results, but the players understand it better.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on December 13, 2020, 11:34:34 AM
"Forbidden Lands" have interesting quite abstract way to count food, water, arrows and torches.
Each time you use one - you rolled a dice written in your card (max d12).
If you rolled 1-2, you were changing dice to lower 12->10->8->6->4.
Roll 1-2 on d4, you're out of stuff.

That's more work than ticking off an arrow as you use it.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 12, 2020, 11:24:09 PM
Where does resource counting 'end'? Every arrow? Every bowstring? Every use of the bow before it needs maintenance? Every type of arrow? Every type of bowstring? Every microgram of food compared to output to measure cramps relative to muscle mass and height and dietary requirements?

I could imagine that in an Archery enthusiasts game, tracking all bow related stuff is great fun. But not everybody. And even the people that insult others for not tracking ammo have a limit where they just finally handwave SOMETHING.

And if they don't, then present them to the physics convention for discovering how to perfectly simulate universes without mega-scale computers.

I draw the line by only counting things that are easy to count; like arrows. The standard issue for an archer in the English army in the 15th century was one bow, 2 to 5 bowstrings, and two sheaves of 24 arrows. Why would they ever need more than 1 bowstring?

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on December 13, 2020, 01:51:24 PM
But chances for it are rather low.
And then you can say arrows were subpar and they did not survived harshness of travel or smth.

There is chance 1 per 720, your d12 quiver shall allow you for only 5 arrows. That's not much.

1 in 720 is actually A LOT, particularly when there's a lot of rolls being made. A thousand tables that play once a week will have that result somewhere among them about 70 times a year and that's if there's only one person making one set of five rolls each session.

Also, it also ignores the odss of getting six or seven shots total from a d12 worth of arrows which is still way less than just having 20-40 arrows.

In fact, just for kicks, I just used the rules on my dice roller app starting from a d12 and got 10, 12, 20, 18, 20, 26 and 35 shots out of a d12 worth of arrows (with screencaps available if needed). So the best result was still less than just two sheafs of arrows and the average was barely one sheaf from the max the system allows you to carry.

And you still have to track which die you need to roll on.

So it's more work (roll vs. tik mark) AND gives you fewer shots at max load than just an archers' standard two sheafs of 20 arrows (not even taking into account arrow recovery after a battle).

That is the textbook definition of a bad mechanic; needless complexity that doesn't even provide a benefit for using it.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on December 12, 2020, 09:07:55 PM
The difference of RPG is bringing characters some artificial persona to live. And that's why this aspect dominates more and more strongly - everything else is somewhere else.

The artificial persona included in an RPG need not be literary. In fact, in many (maybe most) cases I see, players treat their character's individual role as purely (or primarily) mechanical, and it doesn't make the game any less interesting or engaging.

In my experience, players who are thoroughly engaged with their own character as a literary vehicle are not necessarily more engaged with the game world around them, or even the immediate scenario. They aren't more likely to notice relevant details, or to come up with clever strategies or to solve puzzles. Nor in my own experience does a more theatrical "attitude" (not necessarily "demeanor", a la Critical Role) result in better stories. The best stories I've experienced have emerged from players noticing relevant details, devising clever strategies, or solving difficult puzzles.

What sets RPGS apart for me is the immersion factor, and here again my own experience is that immersion is best served by a sense of danger via potential loss, and the strategic engagement therefrom. My own experience with more story based games has been that they result in a more disjointed and narcissistic sort of immersion, as each player dwells more on how their own character looks in the story, rather than what their character might achieve in the game.

As to what aspect of RPGs is currently trending towards domination ... I think evaluating that based on what is popular to watch might be drastically misleading.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 12, 2020, 11:24:09 PM
Where does resource counting 'end'? Every arrow? Every bowstring? Every use of the bow before it needs maintenance? Every type of arrow? Every type of bowstring? Every microgram of food compared to output to measure cramps relative to muscle mass and height and dietary requirements?

I could imagine that in an Archery enthusiasts game, tracking all bow related stuff is great fun. But not everybody. And even the people that insult others for not tracking ammo have a limit where they just finally handwave SOMETHING.

And if they don't, then present them to the physics convention for discovering how to perfectly simulate universes without mega-scale computers.

I'm your huckleberry for this one. It depends on the kind of game you're running.

Something gritty and serious -- say, Twilight 2000 -- yeah, you're gonna have to track every bullet, bean, and bandage. Part of the game and part of the setting. Deal with it.

Now, if you play something high-fantasy or cinematic -- a superhero RPG, maybe, or Exalted, or something else -- then yeah, tracking mundane ammunition can be handwaved. Ever notice how the Punisher never seems to run low on bullets except as the plot demands?

It's all in the playing of the game.

Quote from: mightybrain on December 13, 2020, 02:58:21 PM

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on December 13, 2020, 11:34:34 AM
"Forbidden Lands" have interesting quite abstract way to count food, water, arrows and torches.
Each time you use one - you rolled a dice written in your card (max d12).
If you rolled 1-2, you were changing dice to lower 12->10->8->6->4.
Roll 1-2 on d4, you're out of stuff.

That's more work than ticking off an arrow as you use it.

Apparently hash marks are difficult.

Quote from: Zalman on December 14, 2020, 10:11:05 AM

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on December 12, 2020, 09:07:55 PM
The difference of RPG is bringing characters some artificial persona to live. And that's why this aspect dominates more and more strongly - everything else is somewhere else.

The artificial persona included in an RPG need not be literary. In fact, in many (maybe most) cases I see, players treat their character's individual role as purely (or primarily) mechanical, and it doesn't make the game any less interesting or engaging.

In my experience, players who are thoroughly engaged with their own character as a literary vehicle are not necessarily more engaged with the game world around them, or even the immediate scenario. They aren't more likely to notice relevant details, or to come up with clever strategies or to solve puzzles. Nor in my own experience does a more theatrical "attitude" (not necessarily "demeanor", a la Critical Role) result in better stories. The best stories I've experienced have emerged from players noticing relevant details, devising clever strategies, or solving difficult puzzles.

What sets RPGS apart for me is the immersion factor, and here again my own experience is that immersion is best served by a sense of danger via potential loss, and the strategic engagement therefrom. My own experience with more story based games has been that they result in a more disjointed and narcissistic sort of immersion, as each player dwells more on how their own character looks in the story, rather than what their character might achieve in the game.

As to what aspect of RPGs is currently trending towards domination ... I think evaluating that based on what is popular to watch might be drastically misleading.

Bingo!

There is a difficulty in discussing the concept of immersion, because of a variation in the personal definitions of the term.  I agree with your statements that suggest play-acting or story-generation are not helpful, necessary, or exclusive components of immersion.  I find that immersion works far better as a concept when it describes players that are focused on the imaginary world as described by the DM  (as opposed to focusing primarily on themselves or their characters).  Additionally, the focus on the character's choices or moral systems as guides for choices seems the best method of achieving immersion, as opposed to the character-behavior focus I see on internet "shows" about gaming.  I don't have to be "in the moment" in my characters head, or talk in funny voices, to be immersed in them.  I need to understand how they would react to the present situation, what choices and priorities they would make, and how those choices relate to their moral and personal goals.  That's what "playing your character" looks like to most players, I think.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 14, 2020, 11:11:30 AM
Apparently hash marks are difficult.

In one homebrew I ran, you had a percentile skill, and difficult/good circumstances acted as a multiplier. Say you had 50% rifles, you fire one-handed that's x1/2, you fire in poor light that's another x1/2, but you take an action aim that's x2, and so on.

Now, if your roll succeeded and got doubles (11, 22, etc) you had a critical success; if your roll failed and got doubles, you had a critical failure. For firearms the critical failure was, "You now have to spend a round reloading or clearing a stoppage."

So a "to-hit roll" wasn't necessarily a single shot - it was firing a number of rounds to try to get a hit. If you blaze away blindly you tend to go through your mags quickly, if you take careful well-aimed shots you tend not to. Likewise an unskilled person needs more shots to strike the target than the skilled one.

I've taken a similar approach in the rpg I'm writing now.

Looking at boring old reality (lengthy but interesting pdf link) we find,

QuoteOfficers involved in gunfights fired, on average, 7.6 rounds, compared with an average of 3.5 for officers who fired against subjects who did not return fire.

Between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate was 18 percent for gunfights.

Between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate in situations in which fire was not returned was 30 percent. In 2006, the hit rate against subjects who did not return fire was 27 percent.

Accuracy improves at close range, with officers hitting their targets 37 percent of the time at distances of seven yards or less; at longer ranges, hit rates fall off sharply, to 23 percent.

If you're only hitting 18% of the time in a firefight, then firing 7.6 rounds will net you 1.4 hits on average. If you're hitting 30% of the time when they're not firing back, then 3.5 rounds will net you 1.05 hits on average. Essentially they're firing enough to get 1 hit, maybe 2. But they're taking quite a few rounds to do so. However, they are not in danger of running out of ammunition.

With that in mind, you can either ignore ammunition entirely ("After the fight you collect some more arrows or buy some in town") or else just count magazines/quivers/pouches for the really long combats - since the police-suspect firefights do not typically involve large numbers of combatants over many hours.

Quote from: Zalman on December 14, 2020, 10:11:05 AM
What sets RPGS apart for me is the immersion factor, and here again my own experience is that immersion is best served by a sense of danger via potential loss, and the strategic engagement therefrom. My own experience with more story based games has been that they result in a more disjointed and narcissistic sort of immersion, as each player dwells more on how their own character looks in the story, rather than what their character might achieve in the game.

Zalman - can you say more about what specifically your experience of "more story based games" is? I find it is used to refer to some very different sorts of games. One type would be more "themed" traditional RPGs, like Star Wars D6 or Call of Cthulhu -- where there is more of a storyline to the written adventures. Another type is the post-2000 design trend of small-press games with explicit story mechanics, like Sorcerer or Dungeon World or Fiasco. These are more about story, but they still often have a high sense of danger in that PCs can be killed abruptly. Another type is playing traditional games like D&D, but with a railroading GM.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 14, 2020, 10:56:37 AM
It depends on the kind of game you're running.

Something gritty and serious -- say, Twilight 2000 -- yeah, you're gonna have to track every bullet, bean, and bandage. Part of the game and part of the setting. Deal with it.

Now, if you play something high-fantasy or cinematic -- a superhero RPG, maybe, or Exalted, or something else -- then yeah, tracking mundane ammunition can be handwaved. Ever notice how the Punisher never seems to run low on bullets except as the plot demands?

This may be a tendency -- that higher-power and/or higher-abstraction games tend to be less serious, but it's not definitional. As I noted, there are plenty of dedicated wargames where you don't track individual soldier ammunition. That's not to be non-serious, that's because they're focused more on strategic decision-making and less on detailed counting. There are serious and/or dark games that can be focused more on the strategic level.

For a specific example, I've been playing in a Call of Cthulhu campaign using the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. We haven't been counting ammo there either. The reason is that at this point we're relatively well-supplied (some high Credit Rating PCs plus an NPC backer), and in practice, we're dead or close to dead long before we run out of ammunition. We'll track rare items like dynamite, but not supply of individual bullets.

Quote from: moonsweeper on December 10, 2020, 02:45:11 AM

Quote from: Altheus on December 09, 2020, 09:18:24 AM
I've had an interesting counter-example on this subject. Whille playing call of Cthullhu we encountered a strange creature that was attacking people in a library, due to an amazing series of two brilliant initiative rolls, 2 impaling attack rolls and 2 sets of max damage the monster went down in the first round of combat.

Had the GM fudged the monster so that shots did minimum damage the monster would have been a viable threat for the whole session of frantically trying to keep it at bay while those pcs good at research found and cast the banishing spell instead it was very anticlimactic.

Definitely an example of how story can be better than game.

I think you have that reversed...that is a perfect example of the game (random dice) creating a much cooler story than would otherwise have happened....even if it does mean you wasted some time prepping as the DM

Isn't that the whole point of rpgs with dice...the randomness 'creates' a unique story.

I was one of the players, not the GM and I would much rather have had an entertaining evenings play for myself and my friends, rather than a quick session that some of them didn't get to do much in.

The tale of "Someone summoned this thing and we blew it away in two shots" is much less fun than "Someone summoned this thing and, after a lengthy struggle to keep it from hurting anyone our researchers found the spell and banished it at the last minute".

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2020, 06:52:04 PM

If you're only hitting 18% of the time in a firefight, then firing 7.6 rounds will net you 1.4 hits on average. If you're hitting 30% of the time when they're not firing back, then 3.5 rounds will net you 1.05 hits on average. Essentially they're firing enough to get 1 hit, maybe 2. But they're taking quite a few rounds to do so. However, they are not in danger of running out of ammunition.

If it takes 3.5 or 7.6 rounds to drop a single target depending on range, then it would be plenty easy to run out of ammunition in the course of a day's adventuring. To drop someone with one hit would likely require a larger caliber round, which a police officer would typically carry something like 37 of. So that would be enough to fight 7 opponents on average, at varying ranges. Heck, one band of goblins could use that up.

Browsing some forums where police officers (and ex-officers) hang out, it becomes readily apparent to me that in real life, folks who fire missile weapons for a living pay a lot of very careful attention to how much ammunition they are carrying.

Quote from: Zalman on December 15, 2020, 12:15:40 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 14, 2020, 06:52:04 PM

If you're only hitting 18% of the time in a firefight, then firing 7.6 rounds will net you 1.4 hits on average. If you're hitting 30% of the time when they're not firing back, then 3.5 rounds will net you 1.05 hits on average. Essentially they're firing enough to get 1 hit, maybe 2. But they're taking quite a few rounds to do so. However, they are not in danger of running out of ammunition.

If it takes 3.5 or 7.6 rounds to drop a single target depending on range, then it would be plenty easy to run out of ammunition in the course of a day's adventuring. To drop someone with one hit would likely require a larger caliber round, which a police officer would typically carry something like 37 of. So that would be enough to fight 7 opponents on average, at varying ranges. Heck, one band of goblins could use that up.

Browsing some forums where police officers (and ex-officers) hang out, it becomes readily apparent to me that in real life, folks who fire missile weapons for a living pay a lot of very careful attention to how much ammunition they are carrying.

Few tabletop games model any kind of DoT. The bullet might not drop you instantly, but you'll be looking at bleeding and shock soon IRL, not so much in the game. In most games, if an attack doesn't instantly down you, it's not going to take you down a few minutes later (unless you take another hit a few minutes later).