Quote from: Lunamancer on March 13, 2023, 01:02:44 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 13, 2023, 11:32:00 AM
- We need to balance simulation and handling time. This is a compromise.  We found that if you tracked every arrow, bolt, and sling bullet, when you held the field it hardly ever mattered except in really long fights or fights with cliffs, lots of vegetation, etc.  If we don't track them at all, or use something like an "ammo" die, it's too far from the simulation. When you don't hold the field, the GM has a pretty good guess as to how much you are down.  Sometimes it rounds off for or against you, but not enough to justify the extra handling time of doing it the long way.

Allow me to confess my sin. Not only do I not track encumbrance religiously. I also handle it inconsistently.

In principle, I'm actually an even bigger stickler than the rules for deciding what you can carry. It's not enough you keep enc within your weight allowance. You have to be able to explain exactly how you can carry everything.

What I generally find in practice is, players do not want to commit to having a potion in some awkward place just to justify how they can carry it. Because the moment they do, they realize they're admitting their character wouldn't be able to get at it quickly in a pinch. And so players tend to streamline their adventuring gear and supplies.

This is a big point for me. I dislike systems that discourage tactics or actions because the rules make it more effective to just do without.

Quote from: jhkim on March 13, 2023, 01:20:19 PMTo me, the choice of ammo tracking isn't a simple fun/not-fun. It will depend on what sort of game I'm running.

[...]

Different games and priorities will mean different choices about the rules and practices.

I agree with this.

As with all media, just like I want different things from different genres (horror x comedy movies, individual x team sports, euro x ameri boardgames, etc) I also expect different things from different TTRPGs. So sure, I'll want to track ammo on more gritty/sim games like Twilight 2k or Runequest, but not necessarily when playing narrative/drama games like Monsterhearts or Vampire 5E.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 14, 2023, 03:24:25 AM

Even with very meticulous tracking, ammunition is not generally expensive enough to present a scarcity problem. In practice, having 100 arrows or 20 arrows is the same if you are only worried from moment to moment about the next shot you're taking in combats that last a few rounds at most. It's just way too many arrows either way to present a chance of running out except over a very long and grueling crawl. Once you take a step outside the arrow tracking world, you're now adopting an abstraction with a lot of tradeoffs either way.

From a simulation perspective, this is part of what we've been talking about, though.  Simulated with some verisimilitude, arrows are not that cheap.  Historically, they were expensive and time consuming to make.  Transporting them was next on the logistics list of bad issues right after food and fodder.  No one carries 100 arrows on their person, either.  Though I can see some savvy players having a base camp with mules, and then we are back to some spare arrows going into the supply--right after the food.  Arrows are fairly large.  12 per quiver makes a lot more sense.

Not to say that any of that is necessary.  Double, Triple, Quadruple quivers of 20 arrows that cost almost nothing isn't a bad thing if you want to ignore all that.  Legolas isn't Dirty Harry, and neither one of them is random adventurer #11.  However, I think the contrast is another example of Lunamancer's point. 

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 14, 2023, 03:24:25 AM
Even with very meticulous tracking, ammunition is not generally expensive enough to present a scarcity problem. In practice, having 100 arrows or 20 arrows is the same if you are only worried from moment to moment about the next shot you're taking in combats that last a few rounds at most. It's just way too many arrows either way to present a chance of running out except over a very long and grueling crawl. Once you take a step outside the arrow tracking world, you're now adopting an abstraction with a lot of tradeoffs either way.

I got a good laugh out of the words "very meticulous" being used for something that is perfectly normal and obvious. Steven Mitchell hit on some reasons why you can't just assume a lack of scarcity. But I've got an even easier one. A PC picks up 6 magical +2 arrows. We're not supposed to be very meticulous in tracking them? How about if you're throwing even non-magical daggers? It's got the same RoF as a bow. In a dungeon crawl where visibility is by torch light, their range is just as good as any. And a strong fighter can put some muscle behind it more than making up for the lower damage die, so it will do more damage for those of us who very meticulously track hit points. Outside of Castlevania, who's carrying 100 throwing daggers?

I never understood why tracking how many arrows you shoot is any different from, say, tracking how many spells you cast. For most games, it's one arrow per attack, so the math is literally exactly the same.

I like abstract combat, so the ammo tracking is done "per volley" instead "per arrow", but the math is still the same: make an attack, mark it off. Just like any finite resource in the game.

If you hate all finite resources, fine, but I just don't get why ammo is treated as some special resource case in these discussions.

Quote from: Zalman on March 14, 2023, 11:15:11 AM
I never understood why tracking how many arrows you shoot is any different from, say, tracking how many spells you cast. For most games, it's one arrow per attack, so the math is literally exactly the same.

I like abstract combat, so the ammo tracking is done "per volley" instead "per arrow", but the math is still the same: make an attack, mark it off. Just like any finite resource in the game.

Volley is one of the things I was thinking of.

Imagine you're doing a nautical themed campaign. Sailing on ships. Following treasure maps to lost gold. Drinking rum. Talking like pirates. Getting scurvy, etc. You might have a sizeable crew of 0th level NPCs for operating the ship. And basic defense as well. International waters being what they are. If you've got 60 men on deck firing bows at the standard RoF of 2 for bows, understand they're pumping 10 gp worth of ammo off the bow every round to kill those bastard merfolk trying to sink your ship with their grapnels. That's going to cut into your booty.

QuoteIf you hate all finite resources, fine, but I just don't get why ammo is treated as some special resource case in these discussions.

All theory, no play makes Jack a dull boy.

In theory, ammo seems trivial. It's on the standard equipment list. It only costs like a percent of your starting gold. Even its encumbrance isn't that bad. The same is mostly true for spell components, though most of those are so insignificant in cost and encumbrance that they don't even get a listing in the manuals.

In actual play, though, shit happens. You find small numbers of magic arrows. Or you might even have to buy silver arrows because of that rumor you heard in the tavern about the werewolf. Or you might lose a whole sheaf or two when you get stuck in a quagmire (giggity). Or if a dungeon corridor gets flooded with water and you have to swim underwater. That's a good way to ruin a good number of your spell components as well as sodden your bow.

Quote from: Zalman on March 14, 2023, 11:15:11 AM
I never understood why tracking how many arrows you shoot is any different from, say, tracking how many spells you cast. For most games, it's one arrow per attack, so the math is literally exactly the same.

I like abstract combat, so the ammo tracking is done "per volley" instead "per arrow", but the math is still the same: make an attack, mark it off. Just like any finite resource in the game.

If you hate all finite resources, fine, but I just don't get why ammo is treated as some special resource case in these discussions.

In typical D&D, there's a big difference in the scarcity and importance of magic compared to most mundane ammo. A spellcaster might have less than a dozen spell slots. An archer might have a sheaf of 24 arrows in a quiver, and several more sheafs stowed away. A sling or gun user could have hundreds of bullets on their person.

Tracking down numbers from a hundred or more seems more work than tracking when you've used one of your 9 spells.

If a group has fun track everything, that's fine -- but I also can understand people tracking spells but not arrows/bullets. When I played 1E D&D, it was similar with material components. We would track rare and expensive material components, but we didn't track common stuff like pinches of fine sand or bits of spider web.

This discussion is circling back to the heart of the "complexity budget" concept.  One of the reasons that I don't have a lot of spell components in my system is because I do want to track ammo to some degree.  There's very little you couldn't easily track if it was one of only a handful of things.  Pick your poison. 

It's also not an accident that it is more palatable to track ammo in AD&D than it is in WotC versions.  Having a lot less spell slots to keep up with means more room to track something else.  Yeah, I get that we are talking different characters, but still the sum total adds up for the party too. Someone is keeping up with treasure found, for example. 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 14, 2023, 09:39:42 AM
From a simulation perspective, this is part of what we've been talking about, though.  Simulated with some verisimilitude, arrows are not that cheap.  Historically, they were expensive and time consuming to make.  Transporting them was next on the logistics list of bad issues right after food and fodder.  No one carries 100 arrows on their person, either.  Though I can see some savvy players having a base camp with mules, and then we are back to some spare arrows going into the supply--right after the food.  Arrows are fairly large.  12 per quiver makes a lot more sense.

I think it's a problem when a rule system suggests that the world works one way, and the rules themselves say otherwise. Rules for older versions of D&D make arrows cheap, plentiful, and fairly easy to transport. If the rules are supposed to model the world (as in a simulation), I want those rules to help those details emerge naturally if you just play the game as presented. If I as the GM need to constantly invent contrivances that limit the use of bows or other equipment, then what value are the rules providing to me? I agree 12 arrows per quiver makes more sense - if that were enforced and the rules made it clear even through concrete guidelines that arrows are rare and expensive and hard to transport, I'd be fine tracking each arrow. In D&D it takes GM fiat to impose any sense of scarcity.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 14, 2023, 11:09:37 AM
I got a good laugh out of the words "very meticulous" being used for something that is perfectly normal and obvious. Steven Mitchell hit on some reasons why you can't just assume a lack of scarcity. But I've got an even easier one. A PC picks up 6 magical +2 arrows. We're not supposed to be very meticulous in tracking them? How about if you're throwing even non-magical daggers? It's got the same RoF as a bow. In a dungeon crawl where visibility is by torch light, their range is just as good as any. And a strong fighter can put some muscle behind it more than making up for the lower damage die, so it will do more damage for those of us who very meticulously track hit points. Outside of Castlevania, who's carrying 100 throwing daggers?

Tracking arrows is meticulous because it's modeling something that generally only matters on a timescale beyond the length of most combats, but we're doing tracking in combat. I can count on a single hand the number of times I've actually run out of arrows in a combat situation in my 20+ years of playing and I can't remember it being a deciding factor. I myself forget to mark arrows from time to time in an attack so I usually just have to estimate high on how many arrows I spent and reconcile when I remember. When I'm a GM, the reality is that I can't audit the players. If we're operating on an honor system, then the player already has a choice - skip tracking in shame, or track with honor and announce to the table "I have run out of arrows" at the appropriate time. Not much different than just baking that moment directly into the procedures/models.

If my table is playing a game with modern firearms, we're going to be tracking mags not bullets and I'd call bullet tracking fairly meticulous. We can just assume you've bothered to load the magazines prior to battle (or else why even carry them), and the important part of the model is asking when you need to reload since that will take time/actions and you might get caught in a bad spot where switching to your sidearm makes sense.

In a fantasy RPG, the quiver is effectively your mag and arrows are your bullets. The only thing that matters moment-to-moment in combat is whether or not I have enough arrows in my quiver to make my attacks, especially since nocking an arrow typically costs no time that is tracked. It doesn't matter if I have 20 arrows or 20,000. Of course, nobody carries 20,000 arrows, or even 200 arrows, but that's precisely my point. 20 arrows will get you through 10 rounds of attacking even at a 2:1 fire rate or 6+ rounds even using broken bow mastery rules from one of the AD&D supplements. How often are your combats going through 10 full rounds of shooting before the players get a chance to regroup, recover arrows, and rinse/repeat? This is to say nothing of the potential for scavenging from intelligent opponents if you win the battle.

As for magic or silvered arrows, I personally don't play with +2 magic arrows of any ample supply and prefer low magic. Silvered arrows you probably need to seek out an artisan and pay well. More significant magic arrows are in rare supply and are tracked individually (there is ONE troll-slaying arrow).If you're throwing daggers (as in actual daggers or knives), I track them individually because they're fairly bulky and throwing them one after another is going to take time and actions (akin to swapping mags), even from a brace. If you're throwing specialty throwing-daggers, I'd just track a brace of them the same way I'd track a quiver of arrows. Simple and conveys/models the dynamic well IMO.

If the goal is to model scarcity properly, you can do a 1:1 model (arrow tracking) and clamp down on supply hard. Alternatively, you can do an abstraction of some kind. Arrow tracking can't be done by players in isolation though - if you are tracking arrows per-player but don't track arrow supply in town, then that scarcity we've been talking about is not really modeled at all. If I can buy 20 arrows in town on the honor system and I track my arrows on the honor system then what is this model accomplishing? Somebody still has to voluntarily surface the fact that they've run out of arrows for it to matter.

Same basic argument applies to spells. A lot easier to notice somebody casting too many spells when there are like 5 spells per day and high level spells are way different than others. Compare that to tracking 20 spells per day and they're all uniform.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 14, 2023, 09:55:14 PM

I think it's a problem when a rule system suggests that the world works one way, and the rules themselves say otherwise. Rules for older versions of D&D make arrows cheap, plentiful, and fairly easy to transport. If the rules are supposed to model the world (as in a simulation), I want those rules to help those details emerge naturally if you just play the game as presented. If I as the GM need to constantly invent contrivances that limit the use of bows or other equipment, then what value are the rules providing to me? I agree 12 arrows per quiver makes more sense - if that were enforced and the rules made it clear even through concrete guidelines that arrows are rare and expensive and hard to transport, I'd be fine tracking each arrow. In D&D it takes GM fiat to impose any sense of scarcity.

Let's be clear here.  The  default rules for AD&D are not making arrows that scarce, by design.  It's a gold rush economy, so it would be rather pointless.  Those rules are tracking encumbrance.  So scarcity is more about running out in the dungeon when you can't get out, can't find any to scavenge, etc.  That's neither good nor bad, it's just the way it does it.  My point is that to the extent AD&D is a simulation at all, it's simulating something different than what others, including myself, are simulating.  Or sometimes not, as Lunamancer has detailed. 

So there's no particular virtue or vice in simulating scarcity or not.  It's all in the context of the design goals of the game and how the game is then applied to the intent of the GM's setting.  In other words, if you want to get the effects of making arrows scarce, then you can simulate that by doing the things I said before, and it will even add to the verisimilitude of a medieval fantasy setting. If you want the effects of making arrows scarce.  Otherwise, that would be a waste of time. 

Note also that all of my tweaks in this department are only partially based on simulation. I also have "player behavior" goals that to me add to ambience of the game, allow for player decisions, etc.  These goals are the ones I measure against when deciding if a rule is useful or not.  So when I tweaked the rules for arrow scarcity to the point that sometimes players made a decision not to "waste" an arrow on a low percentage shot, I knew I was in the ballpark.  When I tweaked the encumbrance rules to the point that players occasionally had to make a decision to take or not take something that was otherwise worth it to them, again, in the ballpark.  Simulation certainly contributes to that behavior, because it's a way to ground the players in something that make sense in the setting for their characters.  But I'm not hesitant to use other game or drama tricks when they suit that larger purpose, either.

As people mention arrows in this thread, my other thread on historical prices has the cost of the English longbow and a sheaf (24) arrows.  I've put it below in case you don't want to dig through it.

Either arrows need to be more expensive or longbows need to be cheaper as they are around the same price.


Item                                                 Year      Pound      Shilling      Pence      Total Shilling       Total Pence       Silver(g)      Gold(g)
Longbow – white                                      1341                               12           1.00                   12.00         16.188               
Longbow – painted                                    1341                               18           1.50                   18.00         24.282               
24 arrows (sheaf) steeled                            1341                               14           1.17                   14.00         18.886               
24 arrows (sheaf) non-steeled                        1341                               12           1.00                   12.00         16.188               
300 sheaves arrows                                   1359      21         5                          1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
400 sheaves arrows                                   1359      28         6             8            1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
500 sheaves arrows                                   1359      35         8             8            1.42                   17.01         18.879         1.645
600 sheaves arrows                                   1359      42         10                         1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
700 sheaves arrows                                   1359      49         11            8            1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
800 sheaves arrows                                   1359      56         13            4            1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
900 sheaves arrows                                   1359      63         15                         1.42                   17.00         18.870         1.644
400 painted bows, 200 white bows, 1000 sheaves       1359      145        16            8            2,916.67               35,000.00                       
200 painted bows, 400 white bows, 700 sheaves        1359      109        11            8            2,191.67               26,300.00                       
Painted Bow                                          1359                               36           3.00                   36.00         39.960         3.481
White Bow                                            1359                               18           1.50                   18.00         19.980         1.740

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 14, 2023, 09:55:14 PM
Tracking arrows is meticulous because it's modeling something that generally only matters on a timescale beyond the length of most combats, but we're doing tracking in combat.

I sense shenanigans. Should I start listing things that we track on a round-by-round basis that generally only matters on a timescale beyond the length of the round? This is simply an absurd yardstick. Anyone can make any argument they want without regard to the truth of the matter simply through specious tinkering of the timescale.

Allow me to suggest that the full length of the adventure is the only honest timescale for the purposes of this discussion. That's how often PCs get to re-up any ammo expended. That's the timescale they've got to economize to.

QuoteI can count on a single hand the number of times I've actually run out of arrows in a combat situation in my 20+ years of playing and I can't remember it being a deciding factor.

How often do PCs reach zero hit points compared to how often they very meticulously track hit point loss? The ratio is extremely low, and it's not by accident. Nor is it be careful and precise balancing of encounters on the part of the DM. It's because as PCs get closer to zero hit points, they make different choices, favoring courses of action less likely to result in further hit point loss. And so even lacking any sort of wound penalties or forcing morale checks on PCs, hit point loss has a real affect on the character. It just flies under most gamers' radars.

Why do you assume PCs are carrying so many damn arrows in the first place? Could it be because they don't want to run out? So even if they never even once run out of ammo, the potential to hit zero, which emerges from the tracking, has had an effect so profoundly ubiquitous that you just assume we start with that much ammo.

QuoteIf the goal is to model scarcity properly, you can do a 1:1 model (arrow tracking) and clamp down on supply hard.

Speaking for myself, it's not my goal. 1:1 tracking is the absence of a model. It's just counting how many arrows the guy has. Because details are cool and generic is the enemy of art.

QuoteAlternatively, you can do an abstraction of some kind. Arrow tracking can't be done by players in isolation though - if you are tracking arrows per-player but don't track arrow supply in town, then that scarcity we've been talking about is not really modeled at all.

If there were no scarcity, the arrows would be free. I can therefore "model" the arrow scarcity just by the price in town. It would feel kind of weird to model arrow scarcity during an adventure by deducting 2 sp's per shot. And it would only serve to kick the can down the road. Then the argument would be, "Bah! I don't bother to very meticulously track gold. I can count on one hand all the times my character ever ran out of gold! And even when I did, it didn't matter."

As an aside, I'm an econ nerd, and I actually have developed some systems for when the local economy matters. Even that doesn't require precise tracking because more arrows are constantly being manufactured, and some of them will be sold to NPCs. The only time I really need to worry about such things as the hard quantity supplied is if the PC party is going on a mass buying spree of arrows.

In that case, the DMG tells me that while still keeping up with their usual work, each blacksmith in town can produce up to 30 arrowheads in a month. If that total lines up with how many the PCs want, I know it will take at least a month, and it will only take that short a time if they are willing to pay extra, enough to outbid every last NPC who wants arrows. And I can figure that out by a percentage of the most valuable thing in town those arrows would otherwise be used to protect.

QuoteIf I can buy 20 arrows in town on the honor system and I track my arrows on the honor system then what is this model accomplishing? Somebody still has to voluntarily surface the fact that they've run out of arrows for it to matter.

Same basic argument applies to spells. A lot easier to notice somebody casting too many spells when there are like 5 spells per day and high level spells are way different than others. Compare that to tracking 20 spells per day and they're all uniform.

That's how hit points work in my games as well as every D&D game I've played in. I suppose we could stop tracking those, too. We could just have the number of Hit Dice a character or monster has be the number of hits it takes to kill it. Compare tracking just 5 Hit Dice to 20 hit points.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 14, 2023, 11:04:38 PM
Let's be clear here.  The  default rules for AD&D are not making arrows that scarce, by design.  It's a gold rush economy, so it would be rather pointless.  Those rules are tracking encumbrance.

Yes, arrows are not scarce in AD&D. I'm arguing that it's a questionable decision when using 1:1 arrow-tracking. My basic argument is one of significant figures. Tracking each arrow implies each arrow might be a deciding factor in some outcome. Tracking each quiver means emptying the quiver is what will decide the outcome. Under some circumstances, each and every arrow might make the difference. Under most circumstances if you just play the game the way it's presented, generally that's not what I've experienced. I'm arguing basically to round to the nearest whole number while arrow tracking believes the tens or possibly hundreds digit is worth tracking.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 14, 2023, 11:04:38 PM
So there's no particular virtue or vice in simulating scarcity or not.  It's all in the context of the design goals of the game and how the game is then applied to the intent of the GM's setting. If you want the effects of making arrows scarce.  Otherwise, that would be a waste of time. 

I agree there's nothing inherently good or bad in whether or not scarcity is simulated. I'm arguing that arrow-tracking is a system that works fine when arrows are genuinely scarce, and doesn't work so great when arrows are plentiful and cheap. Thus, I'm saying in most cases arrow tracking is simulation without any real impact. From the character's perspective, the only interesting thing about the ammo left in their magazine is whether or not the gun goes "bang" when they pull the trigger, or "click". Nobody at the table necessarily needs to know how many bullets are left in the thing until somebody either checks or pulls the trigger. To reference your earlier point, I'd prefer to focus complexity elsewhere in the sim and abstract this to one degree or another. The exact degree depends on genre, world, etc.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 14, 2023, 11:04:38 PM
Note also that all of my tweaks in this department are only partially based on simulation.

I agree here as well. My own system is an attempt at modeling what I think is interesting about the simulation but in a way that produces a satisfying game experience. I'm trying to do that by focusing on choices and consequences. Any given focus on any given aspect of the simulation is fine, to be totally clear about my position. I think resources though in particular, in a resource management game like say D&D, are aspects of the sim that benefit from a little abstraction and gamification.

My basic thesis and what makes my approach difficult to categorize is that I'm trying to model/simulate something with associative rules that are still workable at the table and satisfying to play. I sacrifice a little in perfect 1:1 accuracy for the sake of the game. I think what's important in modeling are the shaped of the curves and the relationships, the interactions between systems. Arrow tracking and scarcity. Arrow tracking and encumbrance. etc.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 01:12:39 AM
I sense shenanigans. Should I start listing things that we track on a round-by-round basis that generally only matters on a timescale beyond the length of the round? This is simply an absurd yardstick.

Assuming we're discussing AD&D, all that spring to mind are HP and spell slots (and arrows). Spell slots are genuinely scarce, so it's fair to track at time of use just like a potion. HP is fairly disconnected from the sim. As for the only resupply happening at the start/end of the adventure, I'd question that. If the group brings a pack animal and cart with them on an adventure, they can bring as many arrows as they please. If the players scavenge enemies, won't they find usable arrows? The reason I've almost never run out of arrows is that it takes a pretty specific set of circumstances to run completely dry on arrows.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 01:12:39 AM
How often do PCs reach zero hit points compared to how often they very meticulously track hit point loss? The ratio is extremely low, and it's not by accident. Nor is it be careful and precise balancing of encounters on the part of the DM. It's because as PCs get closer to zero hit points, they make different choices, favoring courses of action less likely to result in further hit point loss. And so even lacking any sort of wound penalties or forcing morale checks on PCs, hit point loss has a real affect on the character. It just flies under most gamers' radars.

I'd argue HP is just about tension/pacing and so it's about the game, not the sim. It affects player psychology only so long as the player suspends their understanding of the rules and tries to role-play their HP loss as if it's more than what the rules actually model. 1 HP is the same as full HP as far as your ability to continue fighting. All that matters round-to-round is the likelihood that the next round the incoming hits will drop you. Tracking HP tilts the percentages so the odds of survival drop as rounds wear on, but that's about it. You could model that a dozen different ways and it wouldn't necessarily need to track something like HP.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 01:12:39 AM
Why do you assume PCs are carrying so many damn arrows in the first place? Could it be because they don't want to run out? So even if they never even once run out of ammo, the potential to hit zero, which emerges from the tracking, has had an effect so profoundly ubiquitous that you just assume we start with that much ammo.

I assume players carry around so many arrows because the rules make it pretty clear that they're cheap, plentiful, fairly easy to transport, and a great strategy. Given how often people need things like carts to haul loot out of a dungeon, it's reasonable to carry a spare quiver or two there. That's 60 arrows total (20 on you, 40 in the cart) and for only 5 gp each (OSE prices). Bring a porter and you won't even need to go back to the cart. Lose the quivers because the porter is swallowed whole? 10 gp. No big deal. I'll point out that I'm not arguing that you shouldn't model running out of arrows. I think that's an important part of the sim. I'm arguing AD&D with arrow tracking does not support this properly due to the way the game works (and the prices are structured).

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 01:12:39 AM
If there were no scarcity, the arrows would be free. I can therefore "model" the arrow scarcity just by the price in town. It would feel kind of weird to model arrow scarcity during an adventure by deducting 2 sp's per shot. And it would only serve to kick the can down the road. Then the argument would be, "Bah! I don't bother to very meticulously track gold. I can count on one hand all the times my character ever ran out of gold! And even when I did, it didn't matter."

In the fictional world we're trying to sim, there's presumably no magic matter replicator responsible for the existence of these arrows so scarcity is being used colloquially here. If you neither control the supply nor the consumption of arrows and rely on the honor system however, you effectively do have a matter replicator because a player runs out of arrows when they decide to run out. There is dissonance between what the game ought to model about the fictional world and what is actually modeled. IMO it's a bigger problem for the sim than any abstraction, but YMMV. And yes, I'd say it's quite meticulous to track 1 GP per arrow in a game where GP = XP and it takes many thousands to make it past the first couple levels (during which you might fire maybe 100 arrows). You could just budget it and it would have the same effect. That's what you're going to have to do anyway when players get to name level and they have their little force of yeomen out there training. You're not going to be arrow tracking them, and it's doubtful you'll want to arrow track the local smiths.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2023, 01:12:39 AM
That's how hit points work in my games as well as every D&D game I've played in. I suppose we could stop tracking those, too. We could just have the number of Hit Dice a character or monster has be the number of hits it takes to kill it. Compare tracking just 5 Hit Dice to 20 hit points.

Depending on how much HP bloat you're dealing with (which edition), as the GM you have a decent idea how much damage people have taken or healed much like you have a decent idea how many spell slots the players are burning. I have had GMs who track damage on their side of the screen and it works pretty well in terms of immersion and preventing metagaming, though there are tradeoffs.

The 5 HD vs 20 HP thing is genuinely worth considering. Many wargames track nothing but a few hits and for most situations 1 good hit = death. I ended up using HP in my games but when I'm tuning numbers I actually worry about hits and how many rounds it will take to drop somebody (and the likelihood over time). For all practical purposes, the HP is just a decimal with my attuned level of precision. All of that is pure game consideration, not sim. The only question worth worrying about from the sim side is if we're properly modeling underlying reality to an acceptable degree. If a dagger is always better and more harmful than something like a dane axe, that's a sim problem AND a game problem. It's worth considering though that people hate HP bloat and I think it's the same basic significant figures problem. Tracking 1 HP does feel kind of pointless when you have 100 HP and hits tend to deal 4-12 damage. 1 HP when you have 10 is important because we've shifted the decimal point. Hopefully that makes it clear what I'm saying.

Your local economy sim sounds neat. I built something similar but working with quivers, obviously

Quote from: Old Aegidius on March 14, 2023, 09:55:14 PM
I think it's a problem when a rule system suggests that the world works one way, and the rules themselves say otherwise. Rules for older versions of D&D make arrows cheap, plentiful, and fairly easy to transport.

Weirdly, BX & BECMI D&D are relatively good on this, 5gp for a quiver of 20 arrows. That seems an historically justifiable price (5gp  being about £/$/e 500, or £/$/e 25 per arrow, in modern money), though 20 arrows in a quiver seems too much, and bows are relatively too expensive. A bow generally cost *less* than a quiverfull of arrows, and they weren't cheap either - a longbow could cost more than a cheap arming sword.

The 'arrows are free' rot seems to have come from AD&D 1e, where 12 arrows are only 1gp, and carried from there.