Not having enough supplies (torches, rope, food, sacks) is a great way to send players back to town and learn the difficult lesson of the re-populating dungeon upon leaving. Then there is the lesson of limited encumbrance upon leaving with treasure. Many are the coils of rope, extra torches, even extra food left in the bowels of the dungeon in order to carry more treasure out. That is a part of the game.
Players sometimes set up a base camp, and then they need to learn the importance of guards and fieldworks to fortify the place. Some players are tricky and try to set up staging areas inside the dungeon where they could retreat and pick up more stuff. Hopefully where a dungeon inhabitant isn't going to find it and loot it all.
@@Marcus-ki1en One of my mates got one of the usual status symbols of a mid-level adventurer, a warhorse. They want to immediately start using the horse, even when our base camp is 30 minutes through jungle to the dungeon entrance. The warhorse can't scale the rope down, so they simply "park" it up top among the city runs. The horse gets surface random encounter rolls and a tiger shows up. We later on took military control over the city ruins, no war horses involved.
@@Marcus-ki1en Our western hobos were busy with a shootout against robbers in a mine. Their leader dashed past us in the dark in the tunnels, raced out followed by the posse and saw a chance to escape in our horses. And to prevent our pursuit, they took all of them and rode off as bullets from the posse's rifles whizzed past. Of course this included our pack horses so we had to not only walk back to town but use the entire reward to get new basic gear. The gang in Esoteric Enterprises play modern year criminals so they have cars. They are more worried about giving the cops an excuse to search their car up on the surface than they are for bugbears. But one random event is muggers. Instead of having the muggers confront the PCs (who are now well-known hardened, armed criminals) I could let them target their car. Every time they go down the dungeon, they park their van out of the way on a forest road. They have no guards in it and park it slightly out of sight from the main road to avoid curious bystanders and cops. Inside is usually a small stash of firearms. Or the car itself, like stealing the radio and the tires.
My character brings everything. He has a mule and a cart full of rope, lamp oil, a ladder, spikes and mallet, a few stakes, food, etc. Always realizes he forgot something once he's inside though.
Man, you got me thinking toward the end: "A dog sled... that is so thematic! But why would adventurers take dogs instead of horses? Oh, that's right. At really high latitudes, there won't be a lot of plant life, much less edible plant life. You might be standing on a glacier over a mile thick. The only food around is going to be animals." I had considered diets and how they might impact an adventure, but I had never thought about the fact that certain biomes might be nearly impossible for some as diets compared to others. And I certainly hadn't considered how diet effects pack animals. Lots to think about.
Reminds me of a similar thing I thought about, coincidentally also with regard to arctic and similar biomes, in that trees and wood might be hard to come by apart from maybe driftwood. Setting up camp out in the middle of fantasy Greenland might be a struggle both players and their characters are unfamiliar with.
It's funny you mentioned the mirror for looking around corners as I used a woman's compact I got from one of our cooks to do that very thing when I deployed to Iraq. Good to look under doors too. Definitely a piece of equipment that every adveturer should keep on them!
I have a kinda-gear related story. In an old 3.5 game I was running, one of my players had too much gear and loot to carry, but he had (what I thought at the time anyway) was a clever solution. He bought a barrel from the local town and buried his extra gear. Then he took his loot and traveled to Baluder's Gate to buy a mithral chair shirt because it weighs way less than his regular iron chain shirt. Then went back and collected his buried stuff.
I highly prefer to run and play 5e, but videos like these are exactly what i like about OSR/system-agnostic channels like yours. you can talk about creative, thought-provoking, immersive ways to play rather than the minutia of the mechanics.
I have been running B/X & AD&D for decades and I whole heartedly support the use of Gear as a primary game element. It allows the DM to include variant gear that opens up so many game play options that feel awesome to the players, it gives them abilities that are not strictly class and race associated. Torches that burn longer or brighter, lamp oil that burns slower, rope that is lighter, spring loaded grapnels, bear traps, snare kits, pole saws, alchemical torches with warding scents for certain pests or vermin, aniseed, and so much more. I think that creating a game that allows the players the option to "pick what they can do", by having them choose what they bring with them is so much more immersive for the player. Cheers, Great Video
Love the topic ! A couple of points: - I always liked outfitting my character, it was part of the fun of generating a character - not much of a fan of real time, but I love using timers to speed things up if necessary - the thief always gotta bring a crowbar! - LOL the 10’ pole - love using guard animals Good discussion!
Yeah Inventory management for players is good, but keeping track of every .1 pounds of gear is waaay too Math heavy for both DM and Player, so better to just break that into Bobbles (small items), Bulk Items, and Equipped items. Carrying a suit of armor is far more awkward then wearing it.
I hadn't thought about the quantum gear thing in the manner you mentioned, but it makes complete sense. It's analogous to removing agency from the player, in a way. Meaning, they really don't have to make decisions which is about the same as not being able to make them. It really takes the "game" out of gaming.
I don't have any cool examples of gear that come to mind, but I will say that this supports resource management ideas, too. I find that the coolest ideas come from players when they are out of the obvious or powerful stuff and they're stuck trying to MacGyver their way out of some death trap using whatever random gear is left over.
I have been running a Shadowdark game and it took me a session or two to get use to the real time torches mechanic. But I can actually say that I love it now. It really does ramp up the feeling of danger. YMMV of course. Let us know what you and your group think about it after you try it out. This is a fun topic. Clever use of gear has always scratched my simulationist itch. My friends use to always call me "Bag Man" because I always had my characters buy extra sacks, because you never know when they will come in handy, especially at low level.
@@BanditsKeep and then when a gust of wind blows your first torch out after 15 minutes, and 30 min into your second torch you need to get over a underground river, that light sure seems precious
Real-time torches are a great meta mechanic, especially for indecisive groups. The most precious resource to manage is time at the table, and real-time torches make in-game consequences for bad real-world time management. An hour might be too long, though. We’ll see once we’ve hit higher levels. Our SD game is still new
As a player, I always made a list of standard gear (rope, food, spikes, tinder, what-have-you), but I would also include something a little weird/different (e.g. a pot of wax). Never really with an intended use (although there were ideas), but simply because it would be awesome if it were ever needed. I wish I had thought of guard dogs.
Dolmenwood has really interesting dog breeds for pcs to buy, unfortunately the patreon for it is closed now and you cant get the work in progress pdf but like everything else in it, they are so built into the setting it's superb.
My first encounter with "quantum equipment" was Stars Without Number's precognition psionic class. It had a feature where you could say that at some point earlier that day you had a premonition that you needed a particular piece of gear and so had stashed it in your gear, assuming you had space for it. Very neat way of making it work in-world.
SpyCraft had something similar for the Fixer class, you could use it to have some sort of hidden or cobbled together gear stashed on you somewhere that would be useful for the situation.
Some magic items work like that.Then that item becomes a limited resource. You have one item or spell that can save yourself out of a situation, so you think twice before constantly using it on stuff you could have easily prepared.
"Neoclassical geek revival" has Schroedinger characters: the players can choose equipment and abilities as they play. Their characters just happen to be the perfect heroes for their first adventure. Then, when they run out of points, they need to spend gold to buy more equipment or get experience experience for more abilities.
Odd ends like a bell or twine is always useful. Just because something isn't spelled out on the equipment list doesn't mean you can't get it. Sometimes PCs run around with a bucket, a trumpet, a comb etc. Sometimes we have mounted trade expeditions where the bums try to figure out what some faction lacks and try to make exactly the right bribe they need. Sometimes it is food, sometimes it's steel tools. Some morlocks traded them treasure in exchange for a few modern lighters and a pistol.
In our playtest group, they knew they were going into Ed's massive undermountain & they were headed to a gate to a hidden valley and I must have told them 6x, "Do you all have EVERYTHING you need?" NONE OF THEM said, "a tent". & everyone of them had a bag of holding. 🙄 So on the way to the yawning portal they wound up buying this tent spun from Rothe hair that cost them 200gp. 😂
In a recent 5e session, I made good use of my character’s equipment that I think surprised my GM. We were confronted with a magical glyph on the floor of a dungeon tunnel that would blast us with fire if we tried to pass. To get past it, I placed my shield over the glyph to block the fire and stepped over it. Later on, we encountered 2 more glyphs on both walls of the tunnel. Similarly, I suggested dual-wielding my shield and the paladin’s shield to protect against both glyphs, thinking they would also blast fire. They instead summoned ghostly hands that clawed at us, but the shield idea still worked for the most part. My character was unfortunately struck by the hands which paralyzed him for 10 minutes. Having lost all of our rope earlier in the dungeon, my allies improvised and used my character’s whip as a rope to drag him along as they continued down the tunnel 😆
I'm D&D, I often take lots of gear with my characters, I will take bells and twine to set up a crude alarm around camp, eat plugs have actually come in handy, and a ten foot pole has helped my character cross gaps... I used to be the same way in real life, where I would carry a battery to charge my phone, wires, nail clippers for hangnails (which I've used to actually finder myself a full clipping when I realized I needed one and was away from home) and a whole slew of other things, but I got tried if carrying all of that and so now travel much lighter, and sometimes wish I had something like nail clippers on me, but I make due when I'm out and about.
In Shadowdark the real time 1hour torch mechanic is meant to put time pressure on the players since none of the playable lineages/races can see in the dark. Certainly there are other ways to employ time pressure, but this is a novel and fun one I think. On the other hand if it isn’t to your liking the game won’t break if you use an alternative method just as long as the threat of the looming darkness remains. The idea being that the Shadowdark (Underworld) is inimical to light and those who depend upon it. Kinda like a version of your “The Dungeon hates you” concept 😉
With this sort of decision-making also comes choices in how to extend how much you can carry along. PCs can hire porters. A level 0 labourer agrees to, for danger pay, carry stuff for them and do menial chores like hold a lantern on a stick. It increases the number of mouths to feed during the expedition, and it can make the group easier to spot. Mules sometimes venture into dungeons in some rules. Mules don't need a wage, can carry a reasonable amount of stuff but might react more unpredictably to weird dungeon events. A mule can't be told "We are going to use a spell, nothing alarming" or "Step only on the white blocks". They can set up a base camp closer to the dungeon entrance so their staging area with much more stuff is more easily available. If they need a length of rope and an anvil they can walk back up to the base camp instead of making a trip back to town. They can even set up depos of stuff inside the dungeon, if they are clever and can hide/fortify positions.
One of my players put a glue like substance that he harvested from a mimic in his ears, so he wouldnt be charmed by harpies. His character was deaf for the whole session! 😂 A great moment that gets brought up regularly in our group.
We had a list of standard gear for Pathfinder that always included ways to handle high level threats to low level characters. Beekeeping suit for swarms, treated goggles to avoid gaze attacks. Along with locked gauntlets, rope, javelins, alchemical items to breathe underwater for a time, and a potion of cure light wounds. In game buying this set of gear was a requisite to joining the mercenary company, it was basically the cost to buy in shares for the party.
Whenever a player or group thinks outside of the box, or mcgyvers something to achieve the goal, I reward them for their creative thinking. Extra XP, usually.
@@BanditsKeep Middle Earth Role-playing loved to stock up on encounters with extremely mundane animals. We ran into a random cat on the road, random eels, random herds of cattle. Our recurring joke was our shared longing to see the mighty kingfisher, bird of many tales.
Black hack uses a real-time encounter die. The effect on the group is that they'd spend more time acting and less time planning. Made for a more frantic, action heavy game rather than a slow, methodical one. Same with usage dice vs static uses on consumables. The party had to make calculated risks and rush rather than relying on perfect information. Having 24 torches is reliable. Having Ud12 torches is scary.
Keep a consistent track of time is a challenge for many. Having an assistant DM in charge of time-keeping and other resources usage can really add a lot to a game. In 5e, players cast "pass without a trace" in OSR players find an overgrown drainage ditch
I’ve heard that real time torches is shadowdark is designed to keep players moving instead of taking forever to discuss and argue. Putting the real time timers into the rule book makes sure everyone knows why and how debate at the table might cause issues for the characters. Sure, a good DM would, in effect, remind the players when they’re dilly dallying, but not everyone is as experienced as you are, so having it in the rules so that the players know the consequences of their actions can be useful.
Finally someone who seems to get it. I still press my players to ask if they're finished with their turn or not. Allowing someone to sit there, to hem-and-haw for 5 minutes is what slows things down the most. It is good player etiquette to be paying attention to the game, and get an idea of what you'll be doing on your turn before it happens.
Backpack were not invented until much much later in the gun ages. They might have had something like a Market Wallet - lookup 17th century Market Wallet. Then there is the sailors snap sack - which grew into Navy Duffel Bag. The Harvesters Basket and Roman Bed Roll with Cloak Bag is what the foot soldier carry.
@@BanditsKeep I learned in reenactments a lot of that old gear has only a mono strap to be easier to ditch it. Then if you get lucky and get a horse. Attach it to the saddle and get it off you. Spearmen would wrap their bedroll around the handle to pad it out for hours of marching comfort.
We just played Shadowdark for the first time. Our GM purchased an 8" tall real hour glass that he triumphantly placed on the table when we lit our first torch. Very cool. While I don't love the real time mechanic, there is something dramatic about watching the sands of time on your torch run out, which they tend to do at the most inopportune times like in a battle or crossing the underground river. An issue is when the torch goes out before the hour ends. A real hour glass takes x minutes to reset. The answer was cell phone timers. Game on.
This is an example of allowing the players to play the game and form the adventure instead of just forcing them to walk through something you've written.
Public games or as you said "one shots" can make good use of "supply slots". Shopping can eat up a lot of game time when that time is a precious commodity.
When you make pregens for a convention, you can toss in gear as well so the PCs will have at least basic stuff on them. Everyone has food for a few days, everyone has a random weapon etc.
Back in the day my third level MU learned Fireball throught ude of a wand. Original rulesrt DD. Fired off the fifth use snd a very close set room, like 20 by 10 feet. The wand survived...
Gear is so so so important for creating organic stories while adventuring. Even just having extra burlap sacks, lengths of chain, etc have all come heavily into play on very creative ways in the campaign I'm running currently. Even a mallet has ended up being useful when the party mule cart ended up with a broken wheel due to some bad terrain.
Daniel. Good Sir, you always do such an amazing job. I’ve been playing for what will not be 50 years and GM/DMing 48 years, and I just love your videos. Thank you, sir, for all you for the hobby.
As a player I fashioned a leather mask (taken from thieves) with mica lens (found in a magic users abode) combined and used them sunglasses. In my player characters case to protect eyes around fire/heat/ash (in a volcanic area). Misc. junk players pick up can be combined and be use full. That bucket of lard can be fashioned into the form of a small creature to be offered as a bribe to a nearsighted dragon.
Ad&d 2ed, had a player that always carried club, dagger, sling, rope, chalk, etc. Her gear was always around twelve to fifteen pounds, but was constantly asking, in detail, to use the items in innovative ways. Need a pick? Dagger tied to club. Need a grappling hook? Club and three daggers. Can't throw the rope high enough? Tie string around a sling stone and throw it, letting the string play and use it like an arborist does a rope weight.
This has always been my philosophy of equipment and this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone else mention it. I’m designing a very low magic survival OSR game around the idea of having little access to equipment (being an escaped prisoner for instance) and your players deeply coveting things they find like blocks of cheese, rusty knives, and clean clothing. The players make decisions less like a world of Warcraft character and more like they would if put in the same situation…with conflicts involving boars, street urchins, or God forbid, bears, being incredibly dire and likely avoided. I LOVE this type of gameplay.
I grew up with dogs, German shepherds and great danes, you have to make str/dexterity wrestling checks to keep your arms from tiring out, then the dog bite slobbers over your hands, arms, and face. Don't teach danes how to play football, they will shoulder bump your hip at 30mph+ knock you hard onto the ground. Also unclipped dog toe nails can gouge you bad enough to get stitches. Roll for infection from whatever the dog ran through. As for boars, large wild ones get big enough to kill a riding pony. Texas is having bad problems with wild boars. People are afraid of dogs, boars hunt/eat dogs. 2.) I grew up with 15 extended family and cousins, after wrestling, you may still have good hip/waist foot reflex stamina to avoid being hit/ touch " hit points." But your arms are shot, kind of like a failed constriction endurance roll and take 2d6 temporary strength damage that heal after a good night sleep. a.) Roman reenactors follow imperial training and field combat, it was 6 to 10 minutes of shield wall pushing then rotate to the back ranks to cool off and rest your arms for at least 30minutes. After 8 to 12min of being on the wall your reflexes start to drop and you can no longer keep balance from shoving or avoid being hit. b.) Check out some heavy crossbow videos, where the wooden shaft of the bolt shatters/splinters. Case of not too friendly fire on the front rows.
Dungeon World RPG has a Quantum Gear mechanic for backpacks, each has five uses. It's good for fast character creation and players that don't enjoy the bean-counting aspect.
Shopkeepers in the TTRPGss I've played often sell grab bags of standard adventuring gear (the GM/DM adds up the cost and weight of a few standard containers, a knife, a pole, a rope, etc.) and still sell the parts separately, because some of it's going to get lost, broken, or expended.
With light sources like candles, torches and lamps, I set a guarantied buring durration and add a random overtime to it. the pitch, cloth, wood and wax used for torches are natural and of variable quality. Same goes for the lamp oil and candles. They are not industrially produced of homogenised quality across production batches. A torch is rated in the book for 30 minutes, so I make it guarantied 20 minutes and then increasingly difficult roll on D20, starting at DC1, every 10 turns/every 1 minute. Water and food are similar. The party going through excessive hardship will cause them to use up more rations per day, especially the characters of lower strength. If it's extremely hot, the party needs to drink more regularely and use up their water quicker. I always loved the resource management aspect of dungeon crawling. I hate the concept of "You have a component pouch, don't worry about what spell components you have". Make sure, you actually have the required quantities of the neccessary components for your spells, or you can't cast them. The component pouch merely allows you to cast the spell within the time allotment the book states, because you have organised your components for easy access. Got all the components but no component pouch? Then it will take 1d10 turns to dig out the required components out fo your satchel or backpack. Got a component pouch but run out of the component? Tough, can't cast that spell. And the components don't automatically regenerate after a long rest. Buy them, gather them, steal them, harvest them, whatever, but they are not granted for free.
These videos always get me thinking. Great job as always. I’m not sure I like quantum gear in DnD, but I’ve seen it used well in other systems. I particularly like one from 2d20 Conan- one of my players was a master thief, and he had an item that could either boost certain skill checks, or 3 times per adventure, he could expend a use to have a particular item from a list of thieves tools- many of which were single use. It was fun to lean into the story aspects of it- he would explain that one of his contacts tipped him off that he might need the item, or maybe he had done some scouting or bribery to get the intel. It would always add to the story and make his character look very cunning. I think that the limited uses combined with the limited list of objects from the kit made the difference. In dnd it might be fun to play out the scouting and planning for a heist or tomb raid, but in pulpy game where you want to stick to the action and fast pace in the style of the original Conan stories, this was a neat way to add new npcs and expand the game world.
I've been considering making quantum equipment a class feature resource for my thief-equivalent class. They get to stock up on one "quantum slot" every time they return to safe haven.
I like the black hack's version, the thief has unlimited small daggers. Obviously you have to keep it reasonable, not let them sell them for infinite money or something stupid, but it has generated some pretty awesome moments so far.
That's a great way to make the thief more attractive! I give all character classes a 2:6 chance to do thief stuff (maybe a 2:8, 2:10 for heavier armor classes worn) with the thief getting to roll their thief skills in addition to a 2:6.
argument in favor of "real time" spell durations: just as you said for gear selection, it's a meta skill. If a spell lasts 10 irl "meta" minutes, the party is rewarded for playing well and not wasting meta minutes. it incentivizes players to get good instead of being indecisive. it's also a mechanical power increase for being a well-learned adventurer, like meta experience points.
Our Five Torches Deep group is really digging the Supply system in that game! It's not exactly quantum, since you can't use Supply to create suff you didn't pack, but you can replenish those that you did. So they don't have to worry about how many torches, rations and potions they bring, they do have to note that they take them though. And in the dungeon they have to decide if they let the torches run out or not, because if they burn through too much Supply for one purpose, they might regret it. And there's a limit - each character can only have as much supply on them as their Intelligence score, and expensive equipment is refreshed at a higher Supply cost. That, combined with the scarce inventory space of the game, make things less burdensome than classic equipment but still challenging and presenting interesting choices & opportunities.
Reminds me of this one time I decided to buy blacksmith's bellows randomly at character creation. I used them to scatter the smoke from a smoke trap in the dungeon.
The only time I’ve used real time for something was when I ran a haunted house one shot. Every 10 minutes real time there was some effect that occurred. I put the timer on the table and once the players caught on to what was happening they began to dread the clock counting down. It worked great.
Wow! Thank you for the great examples for gear, ie chalk, torches etc. Recently started a DCC campaign and thought the gear was only comedic window dressing, for example one character has a bag of flour. When you mentioned grinding chalk for foot prints, I thought a-ha! Flour would be great for that. Thank you for your practical videos. It helps a lot to grok this game.
In my DnD 3.5 campaign, I had it the other way around. The party was enslaved and after a few month, they were 'rescued' by Roc's (module "Eye of the Serpent") into their nest high in the mountains. They had to find their way down with only their cloths on in harsh environment. Every monster they killed became a source for warm cloth, equipment, weapons, food etc. When they escaped the mountains they could not enter towns bacause they had their slave marks. It was, or still is, weeks of outdoor hex crawl. The older players in my group loved it, the younger hated it. Guess RPG has changed a lot since the I started playing in the 1980s.
@@BanditsKeep I told them that it would be about survival when they were enslaved, but I guess I should have been clearer; good point. However, I frequently ask them what they want to play and they always say they are happy with everything. Anyway, my two older players love it and another player just learns to like it. The two younger players don't like bookkeeping too much, but in my opinion keeping track of equipment and weight is essential in wilderness hex crawl survival, and they were mad when I told them they have to.
All depends on the table, and tone desired. I will be using it for my next campaign, only when they are in the "dungeon" depending on circumstances. Shadowdark RPG is the system I will be using. Because it is so rules light, this is going to be easy to utilize at my table.
Shadowdark RPG: Light spell, torch, and the lantern all have the option for one hour real time. In game time the duration is counted by rounds. A round (RAW) is everyone taking their turn clockwise around the table. I believe each round is equal to ten minutes.
@@BanditsKeep yeah, it is such an abstract rule (optional) it seems to be a focal point. Unfortunately it over shadows how awesome and fluid and rules light the system is. Not to mention all the knuckle headed grognards like to hear something and trash it because, internet be what it is 😆
I feel like, in a more restrictive campaign, quantum gear allows for meaningful choices given less information. I have a wilderness exploration centered campaign where settlements are far and few between. The players use slots for equipment. Using a pack that takes up 2 slots but can give a 1 slot item when used allows for unique decisions in the moment. A lot of the campaign has been randomly generated, so the party doesnt know what to prepare for like they would with more settlements. If inventory space is limited and there is an item the character wants to take, deciding the pack is a lantern would let them bring the item, but if the character needs a rope in the next encounter they are out of luck. In summary, I think quantum gear is good as long as the players are the ones who make the decision with the knowledge that it cant be changed.
I remember Dael Kingsmill had a list of edible and medicinal plants for every topological area. ( Forrest, jungle, desert, plains etc). That would be cool for a D100 table or a survival guide tome a character carried
Quantum gear works very well in story games where you dont want to be slowed down by book keeping or more narrative games like blades in the dark thats designed around the whole idea of flash backs and the characters being more like movie characters we're watching than extensions of ourselves. But for more tactical games like oldschool dnd i 100% agree the vibe is diminished by not having a traditional inventory
I had a scroll tube with large marbles in it and continual light cast on each of the marbles. If I needed light a head I would open the tube grab a marble and roll it down the hallway or drop it down the well to see how deep it or the water below it was
With torches and a few other items, I tend to go a more middle route. The rules I use state that a torch is supposed to last 30 minutes. In my games however, an average quality torch lasts 25 minutes + 1d10 minutes. The players don't know the result of the 1d10 roll, but I do telegraph a few rounds in advance that the torch is starting to burn out.
Whenever my players begin an adventure, I have each character choose one of the pre-selected adventuring gear packs that you find in Modules B3, and B4 (Ye Olde Fastpack). It saves time and frankly there is some useful stuff in those packs!
i am currently desining an indie rpg system, and this video inspired me to come up with the rules for inventory in my system, i decided to be simple, each player can carry up to 10 different items (items that are worn, such as armor, or the very container the items are stored do not count), some small items can stack in multiples in a single slot, like 3 potions, or 20 arrows, i still have to figure out the penalty for carring too much, but either way, i like everything you make! :)
Real time light source is great and man does it ramp up stress. We've had light sources going out in combat. Believe players pay attention to light sources now and their gear. They also don't dally around as much when it comes to make decisions. TIME is LIGHT.
@@BanditsKeep They weren't paying attention. They were focused on combat, just like real life you would be. It was the worst place and time for it to happen. Give it a try. I'm telling you it is marvelous.
Don’t know who told you that, but Shadowdark only uses real time for torch burn time, not spells, except for the Light spell because it mimics a torch.
I assume like most groups, when I started playing I was more interested in the weapons etc than the 10' poles but you soon learn. We started wanting tools like crowbars and entrenching tools which the DM decided makes sense as its basically a small shovel. Marbles were handy, especially with a light/continual light cast on them and wooden tubes for swimming underwater like a basic snorkel. We also started wanting things like machetes which led to having large knives and small knives as 'things' in the game instead of just a dagger. Someone came up with a simple doorstop as any easy carry to wedge a door shut behind us (rather than hammering in an iron spike) too. I don't think we were allowed ghillie suits though, pity.
As you mentioned about item list on a site, try starting a free doc list that someone can curate for any item in mind. Maybe make a key number for each setting and currency.
Great stuff as usual! I've always wanted to run a game with resource management and creativity being an important aspect. When setting the tone of my new campaign for a group of mostly new players, I described it as a mix of Oregon Trail, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings. Although LotR is mostly for the fantasy elements and not really the grand story and mostly linear plot. I'm happy so far with what I'm seeing. We're just starting to get rolling, but they're having some good discussions as they prepare for the task at hand. We're still in town, but I'm keen to see how they handle the travel and dungeoneering to come.
i've been running Shadowdark games and recently did one at a convention for 4 wonderful strangers. My players seem to really enjoy that torches last realtime. They're eager to volunteer and time the torches on their phones. Also, my players really like the tension when torches are running low during combat or when they do burnout mid combat. Since Shadowdark characters dont have dark vision but monsters do, ive been giving disadvantage & advantage, respectively, to Attacks in absolute darkness. It adds tension and immersion to combat when they're fighting giant spiders and the lights go out and their characters have to fumble in the darkness to light another torch on their Initiative I also had a player get trapped in a sinkhole while the other had to contend with a random encounter. And you guessed it - her torch was burning out. She had to let go of the rope the other was using to climb out of the sinkhole so she could relight another torch and fight off the monster It's low key resource management but it can add quite a bit of narrative
Interesting! Of course my players would never just let a torch burn down to one or two minutes left and in combat it seems weird that a few sword swings takes 5-10 real time minutes and can burn the torch down, but it seems like you are enjoying it, so that’s awesome.
I do kind of like quantum gear, at least in certain games like Blades in the Dark, which as a whole is pretty geared (pun not intended) toward a sort of post-prep kind of gameplay. One thing I've grown really fond of, though, is games that give you random stuff out the gate, not necessarily *just* that (so sometimes you still pick your main adventuring gear, the other stuff just comes as a bonus), but it comes as a kind of "ok, now what do I do with this?" item. The brass bell is an example of an item somebody might get granted by the dice gods that, at first, I might think "well this is probably just going to collect dust on my equipment sheet" but after some thought, could be combined with some string to make a makeshift alarm system, could be traded with goblins or kobolds because shiny thing, could be used as an established secret signal between party members, etc. The choice of equipment is at least partially taken away (or at least what additional equipment you get beyond your chosen gear), but it in turn forces a choice of what to do with it. You got this tube full of glue, now see what you can come up with to do with it. 10 feet of chain, why would you pick that over 50 feet of rope? Probably wouldn't, but now you can start thinking up benefits to it being chain, like it doesn't catch on fire, now that might be relevant. Basically those sort of bonus trinket, odds-and-ends kind of items that you have on you because of your background or that you otherwise just picked up, before you decided to start adventuring and picked up your bespoke Adventuring Gear.
I use the real time torch timer in my Knave games (borrowed it from Shadowdark). It's been great. Sometimes they get wrapped up in something and forget about the torch, then POOF! .. timer goes off. Light goes out. Happened in the middle of a few combats & puzzles and made for some great tension. We love it! *pro tip: get an egg timer*
Not quite. I keep the timer visible to the players, so they can see how much of the torch is left. Instead of in-world time being the planning factor, its the real world time they spend doing stuff that they are considering, or they could rush through stuff to save torches, but that rarely works in their favor (also we do 30 min torches instead of 1 hour because I allow them to bundle 5 torches in 1 inventory slot). It's a small conceit to make torch tracking easier for everybody, but still has an element of resource management, though it's a more meta approach.
I also find it to be a more 'player facing' torch tracker than me keeping track of dungeon turns behind the screen. But hey, whatever works at one's table is all good.
Absolutely agree. I had some 5E players laughing at me because my character had brought a sack of flour on the adventure. Then we ran into an invisible opponent.
Gear and tracking encumbrance may seem boring, but are very important in the game. It also makes employing hirelings more of a factor which, in turn, makes Charisma a more important stat.
I was testing a game I am making, and I had my wife play it. She had 4 PCs to herself, and a guy to escort to a small island in the middle of a lake. I put a dock, and a old rickety boat that was totally gonna sink as soon as it hit water. (I had no solution for this, just a problem. Figure it out player.) Well she completely ignored the boat, probably forgot it was there, and she had her axe character chop trees, and six hours later the five of them build a raft. Was cool. I learned some stuff about GMing. (I'm not the bestest, but it's going.)
Preparing/choosing what gear you bring with you only matters if you enforce some kind of encumbrance in my opinion. Gold is typically so attenable that otherwise, the pcs can just carry the entire general store with them all the time.
In my game Chanbara, the Ninja subclass has a quantum gear special ability. I did this for two reasons. One, ninjas (like boy scouts) always should come prepared, even if the player wasn't. Two, if the ninja gets captured or searched, they can use to to have somehow hidden the item that they produce. In general, though, I agree that quantum gear rules aren't as fun as preparing for your adventure. This is especially true for that 1st adventure, when you may not have enough starting gold to buy everything you'd like to buy. I'm also not a big fan of systems like The Black Hack that have a usage die. I'd rather know how long my items will last, or how many times I can use my bow/spell/laser gun.
1. I tell my players that encumbrance limits are actually a hidden skill slot mechanic and that what your character brings with them is like character building but with more versatility and less mechanical rigidity. 2. I don't like loaded dice either, I don't mind the dice-chain usage die because on average the items last about the same without the book keeping. However, I have found that I prefer to use a cheap, folding cribbage board to track turns, rounds, etc as the numbers are listed in sets of 5 and this reminds me of the turn duration of torches, the 6th turn needing to be a resting turn, etc.
For gear, I might like something where you pay a certain amount, and allocate a certain amount of storage, and if you want something specific, you make a Wis save, as a wise pc would be more likely to bring what they needed. On a success, they have what they want, and one of their slots is now that item. If they FAIL, it's a random item off a mundane item list.
That's fascinating! I actually encountered a similar problem with loaded dice and real-time torches. However, like you mentioned, I do acknowledge some of the benefits they offer. If you haven't already, I'd love to hear your perspective on the comparison between vancian magic and roll-to-cast systems that have fewer limitations, as we've seen in recent projects like Shadow Dark, ICRGP, Mork Borg, and others.
Only having run a couple sessions of Shadowdark so far, I like the real-time light mechanic, but not universally more than in-game time for torches. It’s nice because it creates a sense of urgency for the players to make snappy decisions that can sometimes lead to zany or deadly outcomes. That being said, you or your group might not like that and would rather make careful plans-for us, it made things seem more immersive. Also, things outside of dungeon crawling don’t use the real-time mechanic (at least that’s not how I’ve played), so the days-passing-in-minutes problem hasn’t come up for us. Loved the video!
@@BanditsKeep They definitely should! Encounter/wandering monster rolls happen every round in total darkness, and the players get disadvantage on pretty much everything; however, each torch takes up an inventory slot, so you have to plan torch use pretty well to make it back out of the dungeon. I really think torches being entire slots, all of the mechanics around dropping torches, and the consequences of darkness are what I like most about Shadowdark--the real-time mechanic could be there or not, and I don't think it would make that big of a difference in my games.
@@BanditsKeepThey do! In fact it's made very clear in the rules for Light Sources that in the purpose of making tracking it simple players have two options with additional light sources. They may A. Have this new source ride along with the current 1-hour timer, or B. The old light source and timer is snuffed out, at the same time a new one is lit. Overall it's been working wonderfully in the games I've ran. I just make sure to inform the players when they have 30 minutes, or 10 minutes remaining. It's up to them afterward to be paying attention to what I say and to act on that. Outside of light sources however, the real-time mechanic is not used whatsoever. Everything else is tied to the always-on-initiative, as spell effects and such are timed by rounds.
The Real time mechanic is only applied to certain effects and items and is left up to the DM to adjudicate when things apply to it. Most spells in Shadowdark last for a number of rounds.
I'm also not a fan of usage dice and loading dice. D&D is primarily a game of resource management. Equipment, Vancian magic, expendable magic items and HP are all slowly worn down until the party has to go back home. Or maybe they push their luck. But too much randomization reduces the degree to which that is an informed decision.
Not having enough supplies (torches, rope, food, sacks) is a great way to send players back to town and learn the difficult lesson of the re-populating dungeon upon leaving. Then there is the lesson of limited encumbrance upon leaving with treasure. Many are the coils of rope, extra torches, even extra food left in the bowels of the dungeon in order to carry more treasure out. That is a part of the game.
For sure
Players sometimes set up a base camp, and then they need to learn the importance of guards and fieldworks to fortify the place.
Some players are tricky and try to set up staging areas inside the dungeon where they could retreat and pick up more stuff. Hopefully where a dungeon inhabitant isn't going to find it and loot it all.
@@SusCalvin Yup, love when they come out and say "I could have sworn I parked my pack mule right here!"
@@Marcus-ki1en One of my mates got one of the usual status symbols of a mid-level adventurer, a warhorse. They want to immediately start using the horse, even when our base camp is 30 minutes through jungle to the dungeon entrance. The warhorse can't scale the rope down, so they simply "park" it up top among the city runs. The horse gets surface random encounter rolls and a tiger shows up. We later on took military control over the city ruins, no war horses involved.
@@Marcus-ki1en Our western hobos were busy with a shootout against robbers in a mine. Their leader dashed past us in the dark in the tunnels, raced out followed by the posse and saw a chance to escape in our horses. And to prevent our pursuit, they took all of them and rode off as bullets from the posse's rifles whizzed past. Of course this included our pack horses so we had to not only walk back to town but use the entire reward to get new basic gear.
The gang in Esoteric Enterprises play modern year criminals so they have cars. They are more worried about giving the cops an excuse to search their car up on the surface than they are for bugbears. But one random event is muggers. Instead of having the muggers confront the PCs (who are now well-known hardened, armed criminals) I could let them target their car. Every time they go down the dungeon, they park their van out of the way on a forest road. They have no guards in it and park it slightly out of sight from the main road to avoid curious bystanders and cops. Inside is usually a small stash of firearms. Or the car itself, like stealing the radio and the tires.
"Rope! I knew we'd need it if we didn't have it, Mr. Frodo!"
Indeed
My character brings everything. He has a mule and a cart full of rope, lamp oil, a ladder, spikes and mallet, a few stakes, food, etc. Always realizes he forgot something once he's inside though.
Of course 😂
Way she goes
I've always been a fan of " getting there is half the fun", but finding a group who'll agree is a bit rare these days.
Me too!
Carcass Crawler Issue #3 had a great expanded gear list for B/X and OSE
Nice! I’ll have to look, I have all the OSE stuff somewhere
Man, you got me thinking toward the end: "A dog sled... that is so thematic! But why would adventurers take dogs instead of horses? Oh, that's right. At really high latitudes, there won't be a lot of plant life, much less edible plant life. You might be standing on a glacier over a mile thick. The only food around is going to be animals." I had considered diets and how they might impact an adventure, but I had never thought about the fact that certain biomes might be nearly impossible for some as diets compared to others. And I certainly hadn't considered how diet effects pack animals. Lots to think about.
For sure!
Reminds me of a similar thing I thought about, coincidentally also with regard to arctic and similar biomes, in that trees and wood might be hard to come by apart from maybe driftwood. Setting up camp out in the middle of fantasy Greenland might be a struggle both players and their characters are unfamiliar with.
@@anadice-nemo Yeah. Without spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut, even starting a fire is gonna require player creativity.
It's funny you mentioned the mirror for looking around corners as I used a woman's compact I got from one of our cooks to do that very thing when I deployed to Iraq. Good to look under doors too. Definitely a piece of equipment that every adveturer should keep on them!
Awesome.
Plus, the wizard can cast because he has line of sight!
I use this a lot to cast around corners.
I have a kinda-gear related story. In an old 3.5 game I was running, one of my players had too much gear and loot to carry, but he had (what I thought at the time anyway) was a clever solution. He bought a barrel from the local town and buried his extra gear. Then he took his loot and traveled to Baluder's Gate to buy a mithral chair shirt because it weighs way less than his regular iron chain shirt. Then went back and collected his buried stuff.
Nice!
A mithril chair shirt?! I now see someone who has two folding chairs chained together like a sandwich board
Old school. You ain’t stealing my donkey!
I highly prefer to run and play 5e, but videos like these are exactly what i like about OSR/system-agnostic channels like yours. you can talk about creative, thought-provoking, immersive ways to play rather than the minutia of the mechanics.
Thank You! I’ve had a ton of fun playing 5e, though have not kept up with the latest releases in a few years.
I have been running B/X & AD&D for decades and I whole heartedly support the use of Gear as a primary game element.
It allows the DM to include variant gear that opens up so many game play options that feel awesome to the players, it gives them abilities that are not strictly class and race associated.
Torches that burn longer or brighter, lamp oil that burns slower, rope that is lighter, spring loaded grapnels, bear traps, snare kits, pole saws, alchemical torches with warding scents for certain pests or vermin, aniseed, and so much more.
I think that creating a game that allows the players the option to "pick what they can do", by having them choose what they bring with them is so much more immersive for the player.
Cheers, Great Video
Love the topic !
A couple of points:
- I always liked outfitting my character, it was part of the fun of generating a character
- not much of a fan of real time, but I love using timers to speed things up if necessary
- the thief always gotta bring a crowbar!
- LOL the 10’ pole
- love using guard animals
Good discussion!
Yeah Inventory management for players is good, but keeping track of every .1 pounds of gear is waaay too Math heavy for both DM and Player, so better to just break that into Bobbles (small items), Bulk Items, and Equipped items. Carrying a suit of armor is far more awkward then wearing it.
Thanks!
I hadn't thought about the quantum gear thing in the manner you mentioned, but it makes complete sense. It's analogous to removing agency from the player, in a way. Meaning, they really don't have to make decisions which is about the same as not being able to make them. It really takes the "game" out of gaming.
I definitely think so
I love encumbrance and adventuring gear broadly. Torches, pouches, rope, all that stuff. Love it. This is adventuring to me.
For sure
10' pole has left the chat.
Probably got dissolved in the acid pool
I don't have any cool examples of gear that come to mind, but I will say that this supports resource management ideas, too. I find that the coolest ideas come from players when they are out of the obvious or powerful stuff and they're stuck trying to MacGyver their way out of some death trap using whatever random gear is left over.
For sure
I have been running a Shadowdark game and it took me a session or two to get use to the real time torches mechanic. But I can actually say that I love it now. It really does ramp up the feeling of danger. YMMV of course. Let us know what you and your group think about it after you try it out.
This is a fun topic. Clever use of gear has always scratched my simulationist itch. My friends use to always call me "Bag Man" because I always had my characters buy extra sacks, because you never know when they will come in handy, especially at low level.
Oh yes, the empty sack can be super useful. I’m curious too about the torches, we usually play for 2 hours so I guess I’ll pack 2 torches.
@@BanditsKeep and then when a gust of wind blows your first torch out after 15 minutes, and 30 min into your second torch you need to get over a underground river, that light sure seems precious
@@jacoblindberg8915 A 15 minute old torch that is blown out can simply be relit. No need to light a second torch.
Real-time torches are a great meta mechanic, especially for indecisive groups. The most precious resource to manage is time at the table, and real-time torches make in-game consequences for bad real-world time management. An hour might be too long, though. We’ll see once we’ve hit higher levels. Our SD game is still new
@@jacoblindberg8915 can I not re - light it? So we have real time and gusts of wind? Why not one or the other?
As a player, I always made a list of standard gear (rope, food, spikes, tinder, what-have-you), but I would also include something a little weird/different (e.g. a pot of wax). Never really with an intended use (although there were ideas), but simply because it would be awesome if it were ever needed.
I wish I had thought of guard dogs.
Exactly!
Dolmenwood has really interesting dog breeds for pcs to buy, unfortunately the patreon for it is closed now and you cant get the work in progress pdf but like everything else in it, they are so built into the setting it's superb.
My first encounter with "quantum equipment" was Stars Without Number's precognition psionic class. It had a feature where you could say that at some point earlier that day you had a premonition that you needed a particular piece of gear and so had stashed it in your gear, assuming you had space for it. Very neat way of making it work in-world.
SpyCraft had something similar for the Fixer class, you could use it to have some sort of hidden or cobbled together gear stashed on you somewhere that would be useful for the situation.
That seems interesting
Some magic items work like that.Then that item becomes a limited resource. You have one item or spell that can save yourself out of a situation, so you think twice before constantly using it on stuff you could have easily prepared.
One of my players always had a divining rod to find water with. Smart guy!
Awesome
"Neoclassical geek revival" has Schroedinger characters: the players can choose equipment and abilities as they play.
Their characters just happen to be the perfect heroes for their first adventure.
Then, when they run out of points, they need to spend gold to buy more equipment or get experience experience for more abilities.
Hmm, interesting
Odd ends like a bell or twine is always useful. Just because something isn't spelled out on the equipment list doesn't mean you can't get it. Sometimes PCs run around with a bucket, a trumpet, a comb etc.
Sometimes we have mounted trade expeditions where the bums try to figure out what some faction lacks and try to make exactly the right bribe they need. Sometimes it is food, sometimes it's steel tools. Some morlocks traded them treasure in exchange for a few modern lighters and a pistol.
Awesome
In our playtest group, they knew they were going into Ed's massive undermountain & they were headed to a gate to a hidden valley and I must have told them 6x, "Do you all have EVERYTHING you need?" NONE OF THEM said, "a tent". & everyone of them had a bag of holding. 🙄 So on the way to the yawning portal they wound up buying this tent spun from Rothe hair that cost them 200gp. 😂
Ha ha nice
Thats hilarious
Love it! A hard lesson of the Gold Rush of 1849 was that the only ones that made a ton of money were the store owners on the way to the mountains.
"I have a bag of holding, I can put tons of stuff in it :D"
"ok, what did you put in it?"
"..."
@@Marcus-ki1en Thats soooo true! Good add!🙂
Totally agree - equipment choice & managing your supplies is an essential part of the game. Choices have consequences.
For sure
In a recent 5e session, I made good use of my character’s equipment that I think surprised my GM.
We were confronted with a magical glyph on the floor of a dungeon tunnel that would blast us with fire if we tried to pass. To get past it, I placed my shield over the glyph to block the fire and stepped over it.
Later on, we encountered 2 more glyphs on both walls of the tunnel. Similarly, I suggested dual-wielding my shield and the paladin’s shield to protect against both glyphs, thinking they would also blast fire. They instead summoned ghostly hands that clawed at us, but the shield idea still worked for the most part.
My character was unfortunately struck by the hands which paralyzed him for 10 minutes. Having lost all of our rope earlier in the dungeon, my allies improvised and used my character’s whip as a rope to drag him along as they continued down the tunnel 😆
I'm D&D, I often take lots of gear with my characters, I will take bells and twine to set up a crude alarm around camp, eat plugs have actually come in handy, and a ten foot pole has helped my character cross gaps... I used to be the same way in real life, where I would carry a battery to charge my phone, wires, nail clippers for hangnails (which I've used to actually finder myself a full clipping when I realized I needed one and was away from home) and a whole slew of other things, but I got tried if carrying all of that and so now travel much lighter, and sometimes wish I had something like nail clippers on me, but I make due when I'm out and about.
Knave has a good list for rolling random items to start with. Shadowdark just tracks light sources in real time not normal spells.
Ah yes. Knave and Maze Rats as well I believe. If it’s only light sources I really don’t understand the point, but hopefully I’ll be playing soon!
In Shadowdark the real time 1hour torch mechanic is meant to put time pressure on the players since none of the playable lineages/races can see in the dark. Certainly there are other ways to employ time pressure, but this is a novel and fun one I think. On the other hand if it isn’t to your liking the game won’t break if you use an alternative method just as long as the threat of the looming darkness remains. The idea being that the Shadowdark (Underworld) is inimical to light and those who depend upon it. Kinda like a version of your “The Dungeon hates you” concept 😉
With this sort of decision-making also comes choices in how to extend how much you can carry along.
PCs can hire porters. A level 0 labourer agrees to, for danger pay, carry stuff for them and do menial chores like hold a lantern on a stick. It increases the number of mouths to feed during the expedition, and it can make the group easier to spot.
Mules sometimes venture into dungeons in some rules. Mules don't need a wage, can carry a reasonable amount of stuff but might react more unpredictably to weird dungeon events. A mule can't be told "We are going to use a spell, nothing alarming" or "Step only on the white blocks".
They can set up a base camp closer to the dungeon entrance so their staging area with much more stuff is more easily available. If they need a length of rope and an anvil they can walk back up to the base camp instead of making a trip back to town. They can even set up depos of stuff inside the dungeon, if they are clever and can hide/fortify positions.
For sure
One of my players put a glue like substance that he harvested from a mimic in his ears, so he wouldnt be charmed by harpies.
His character was deaf for the whole session! 😂
A great moment that gets brought up regularly in our group.
Nice! Not every idea works well 😂
We had a list of standard gear for Pathfinder that always included ways to handle high level threats to low level characters. Beekeeping suit for swarms, treated goggles to avoid gaze attacks. Along with locked gauntlets, rope, javelins, alchemical items to breathe underwater for a time, and a potion of cure light wounds.
In game buying this set of gear was a requisite to joining the mercenary company, it was basically the cost to buy in shares for the party.
Interesting!
Whenever a player or group thinks outside of the box, or mcgyvers something to achieve the goal, I reward them for their creative thinking. Extra XP, usually.
Cool, that’s a good idea
How many hexes did you cover in your walk in the woods? Any random encounters?
1 five mile hex, 2 deer and a small snake - all friendly reactions
@@BanditsKeep damn lucky rolls if you ask me.
@@BanditsKeep Middle Earth Role-playing loved to stock up on encounters with extremely mundane animals. We ran into a random cat on the road, random eels, random herds of cattle. Our recurring joke was our shared longing to see the mighty kingfisher, bird of many tales.
@@MrRourk Definitely sounds like the DM fudged it a bit! LOL
@@timothylamont845 that never ever happens:)
Some "meta" can be attributed to character knowledge. Use a torch long enough and you'll know or can guess close enough. In my opinion.😊
For sure
Excellent topic with a bunch of great examples. All of those things really draw the players into the game and make a great atmosphere to play in.
Thank You!
Black hack uses a real-time encounter die. The effect on the group is that they'd spend more time acting and less time planning. Made for a more frantic, action heavy game rather than a slow, methodical one.
Same with usage dice vs static uses on consumables. The party had to make calculated risks and rush rather than relying on perfect information. Having 24 torches is reliable. Having Ud12 torches is scary.
Not a huge Black Hack fan, though I’ve played probably 2-3 dozen games. Perhaps that’s part of it.
Keep a consistent track of time is a challenge for many. Having an assistant DM in charge of time-keeping and other resources usage can really add a lot to a game. In 5e, players cast "pass without a trace" in OSR players find an overgrown drainage ditch
True, having the players help with “paperwork” can really help
I’ve heard that real time torches is shadowdark is designed to keep players moving instead of taking forever to discuss and argue. Putting the real time timers into the rule book makes sure everyone knows why and how debate at the table might cause issues for the characters. Sure, a good DM would, in effect, remind the players when they’re dilly dallying, but not everyone is as experienced as you are, so having it in the rules so that the players know the consequences of their actions can be useful.
Sorry, I don’t agree with that premise
Finally someone who seems to get it. I still press my players to ask if they're finished with their turn or not. Allowing someone to sit there, to hem-and-haw for 5 minutes is what slows things down the most. It is good player etiquette to be paying attention to the game, and get an idea of what you'll be doing on your turn before it happens.
Backpack were not invented until much much later in the gun ages. They might have had something like a Market Wallet - lookup 17th century Market Wallet. Then there is the sailors snap sack - which grew into Navy Duffel Bag. The Harvesters Basket and Roman Bed Roll with Cloak Bag is what the foot soldier carry.
Interesting- I guess in D&D they invented them along with fireballs
@@BanditsKeep I learned in reenactments a lot of that old gear has only a mono strap to be easier to ditch it. Then if you get lucky and get a horse. Attach it to the saddle and get it off you. Spearmen would wrap their bedroll around the handle to pad it out for hours of marching comfort.
We just played Shadowdark for the first time. Our GM purchased an 8" tall real hour glass that he triumphantly placed on the table when we lit our first torch. Very cool. While I don't love the real time mechanic, there is something dramatic about watching the sands of time on your torch run out, which they tend to do at the most inopportune times like in a battle or crossing the underground river. An issue is when the torch goes out before the hour ends. A real hour glass takes x minutes to reset. The answer was cell phone timers. Game on.
Cool
This is an example of allowing the players to play the game and form the adventure instead of just forcing them to walk through something you've written.
For sure
Public games or as you said "one shots" can make good use of "supply slots". Shopping can eat up a lot of game time when that time is a precious commodity.
It doesn’t have to “take what gear you think you need” “write 5 pieces of gear on you sheet” all work well and fast
When you make pregens for a convention, you can toss in gear as well so the PCs will have at least basic stuff on them. Everyone has food for a few days, everyone has a random weapon etc.
Back in the day my third level MU learned Fireball throught ude of a wand. Original rulesrt DD. Fired off the fifth use snd a very close set room, like 20 by 10 feet. The wand survived...
🔥
Gear is so so so important for creating organic stories while adventuring. Even just having extra burlap sacks, lengths of chain, etc have all come heavily into play on very creative ways in the campaign I'm running currently. Even a mallet has ended up being useful when the party mule cart ended up with a broken wheel due to some bad terrain.
Daniel. Good Sir, you always do such an amazing job. I’ve been playing for what will not be 50 years and GM/DMing 48 years, and I just love your videos. Thank you, sir, for all you for the hobby.
Thanks so much!
As a player I fashioned a leather mask (taken from thieves) with mica lens (found in a magic users abode) combined and used them sunglasses. In my player characters case to protect eyes around fire/heat/ash (in a volcanic area). Misc. junk players pick up can be combined and be use full. That bucket of lard can be fashioned into the form of a small creature to be offered as a bribe to a nearsighted dragon.
Nice
Ad&d 2ed, had a player that always carried club, dagger, sling, rope, chalk, etc. Her gear was always around twelve to fifteen pounds, but was constantly asking, in detail, to use the items in innovative ways. Need a pick? Dagger tied to club. Need a grappling hook? Club and three daggers. Can't throw the rope high enough? Tie string around a sling stone and throw it, letting the string play and use it like an arborist does a rope weight.
Nice
This has always been my philosophy of equipment and this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone else mention it. I’m designing a very low magic survival OSR game around the idea of having little access to equipment (being an escaped prisoner for instance) and your players deeply coveting things they find like blocks of cheese, rusty knives, and clean clothing. The players make decisions less like a world of Warcraft character and more like they would if put in the same situation…with conflicts involving boars, street urchins, or God forbid, bears, being incredibly dire and likely avoided. I LOVE this type of gameplay.
Nice!
I grew up with dogs, German shepherds and great danes, you have to make str/dexterity wrestling checks to keep your arms from tiring out, then the dog bite slobbers over your hands, arms, and face. Don't teach danes how to play football, they will shoulder bump your hip at 30mph+ knock you hard onto the ground. Also unclipped dog toe nails can gouge you bad enough to get stitches. Roll for infection from whatever the dog ran through.
As for boars, large wild ones get big enough to kill a riding pony. Texas is having bad problems with wild boars.
People are afraid of dogs, boars hunt/eat dogs.
2.) I grew up with 15 extended family and cousins, after wrestling, you may still have good hip/waist foot reflex stamina to avoid being hit/ touch " hit points."
But your arms are shot, kind of like a failed constriction endurance roll and take 2d6 temporary strength damage that heal after a good night sleep.
a.) Roman reenactors follow imperial training and field combat, it was 6 to 10 minutes of shield wall pushing then rotate to the back ranks to cool off and rest your arms for at least 30minutes. After 8 to 12min of being on the wall your reflexes start to drop and you can no longer keep balance from shoving or avoid being hit.
b.) Check out some heavy crossbow videos, where the wooden shaft of the bolt shatters/splinters.
Case of not too friendly fire on the front rows.
What an awesome path of light. That effort and thought was probably better and more fulfilling than a battle.
Thanks!
Dungeon World RPG has a Quantum Gear mechanic for backpacks, each has five uses. It's good for fast character creation and players that don't enjoy the bean-counting aspect.
How is knowingly what your character is carrying “bean counting” to me it’s part of the narrative build.
I actually like the idea of common items found in the dungeon. Works out great.
For sure
Shopkeepers in the TTRPGss I've played often sell grab bags of standard adventuring gear (the GM/DM adds up the cost and weight of a few standard containers, a knife, a pole, a rope, etc.) and still sell the parts separately, because some of it's going to get lost, broken, or expended.
I like this
With light sources like candles, torches and lamps, I set a guarantied buring durration and add a random overtime to it. the pitch, cloth, wood and wax used for torches are natural and of variable quality. Same goes for the lamp oil and candles. They are not industrially produced of homogenised quality across production batches. A torch is rated in the book for 30 minutes, so I make it guarantied 20 minutes and then increasingly difficult roll on D20, starting at DC1, every 10 turns/every 1 minute. Water and food are similar. The party going through excessive hardship will cause them to use up more rations per day, especially the characters of lower strength. If it's extremely hot, the party needs to drink more regularely and use up their water quicker. I always loved the resource management aspect of dungeon crawling.
I hate the concept of "You have a component pouch, don't worry about what spell components you have". Make sure, you actually have the required quantities of the neccessary components for your spells, or you can't cast them. The component pouch merely allows you to cast the spell within the time allotment the book states, because you have organised your components for easy access. Got all the components but no component pouch? Then it will take 1d10 turns to dig out the required components out fo your satchel or backpack. Got a component pouch but run out of the component? Tough, can't cast that spell. And the components don't automatically regenerate after a long rest. Buy them, gather them, steal them, harvest them, whatever, but they are not granted for free.
Indeed
Shadowdark's real-time mechanics are super fun. I was opposed at first, but it kept the adrenaline up the whole night. Excellent.
Cool!
These videos always get me thinking. Great job as always. I’m not sure I like quantum gear in DnD, but I’ve seen it used well in other systems. I particularly like one from 2d20 Conan- one of my players was a master thief, and he had an item that could either boost certain skill checks, or 3 times per adventure, he could expend a use to have a particular item from a list of thieves tools- many of which were single use. It was fun to lean into the story aspects of it- he would explain that one of his contacts tipped him off that he might need the item, or maybe he had done some scouting or bribery to get the intel. It would always add to the story and make his character look very cunning. I think that the limited uses combined with the limited list of objects from the kit made the difference. In dnd it might be fun to play out the scouting and planning for a heist or tomb raid, but in pulpy game where you want to stick to the action and fast pace in the style of the original Conan stories, this was a neat way to add new npcs and expand the game world.
I like that as it is limited and thematic
I've been considering making quantum equipment a class feature resource for my thief-equivalent class. They get to stock up on one "quantum slot" every time they return to safe haven.
I think in hero system they were called variable power pools, and had sensible rules to make them less of a short circuit to the plot.
I like the black hack's version, the thief has unlimited small daggers. Obviously you have to keep it reasonable, not let them sell them for infinite money or something stupid, but it has generated some pretty awesome moments so far.
Could be interesting- maybe limit what it is - at least that’s what I would do.
That's an interesting idea! It's kind of like a very narrow application of the general Blades in the Dark mechanics.
That's a great way to make the thief more attractive! I give all character classes a 2:6 chance to do thief stuff (maybe a 2:8, 2:10 for heavier armor classes worn) with the thief getting to roll their thief skills in addition to a 2:6.
argument in favor of "real time" spell durations: just as you said for gear selection, it's a meta skill. If a spell lasts 10 irl "meta" minutes, the party is rewarded for playing well and not wasting meta minutes. it incentivizes players to get good instead of being indecisive. it's also a mechanical power increase for being a well-learned adventurer, like meta experience points.
What if the GM is taking a long time?
Our Five Torches Deep group is really digging the Supply system in that game! It's not exactly quantum, since you can't use Supply to create suff you didn't pack, but you can replenish those that you did. So they don't have to worry about how many torches, rations and potions they bring, they do have to note that they take them though. And in the dungeon they have to decide if they let the torches run out or not, because if they burn through too much Supply for one purpose, they might regret it. And there's a limit - each character can only have as much supply on them as their Intelligence score, and expensive equipment is refreshed at a higher Supply cost. That, combined with the scarce inventory space of the game, make things less burdensome than classic equipment but still challenging and presenting interesting choices & opportunities.
Cool. I have that system but have yet to run it
Reminds me of this one time I decided to buy blacksmith's bellows randomly at character creation. I used them to scatter the smoke from a smoke trap in the dungeon.
That is amazing! I’ll need to remember that one.
@@BanditsKeep Awesome! Thanks for the reply. Still working through your catalog, but I really like what I've seen so far.
The only time I’ve used real time for something was when I ran a haunted house one shot. Every 10 minutes real time there was some effect that occurred. I put the timer on the table and once the players caught on to what was happening they began to dread the clock counting down. It worked great.
Nice!
Wow! Thank you for the great examples for gear, ie chalk, torches etc. Recently started a DCC campaign and thought the gear was only comedic window dressing, for example one character has a bag of flour. When you mentioned grinding chalk for foot prints, I thought a-ha! Flour would be great for that. Thank you for your practical videos. It helps a lot to grok this game.
I’m glad it helped fire up your imagination - I may be mistaken but I also believe flour in the air can be very flammable
In my DnD 3.5 campaign, I had it the other way around. The party was enslaved and after a few month, they were 'rescued' by Roc's (module "Eye of the Serpent") into their nest high in the mountains. They had to find their way down with only their cloths on in harsh environment. Every monster they killed became a source for warm cloth, equipment, weapons, food etc. When they escaped the mountains they could not enter towns bacause they had their slave marks. It was, or still is, weeks of outdoor hex crawl. The older players in my group loved it, the younger hated it. Guess RPG has changed a lot since the I started playing in the 1980s.
Sounds fun to me! Did the players who disliked it know up front it would be a survival type game?
@@BanditsKeep I told them that it would be about survival when they were enslaved, but I guess I should have been clearer; good point. However, I frequently ask them what they want to play and they always say they are happy with everything. Anyway, my two older players love it and another player just learns to like it. The two younger players don't like bookkeeping too much, but in my opinion keeping track of equipment and weight is essential in wilderness hex crawl survival, and they were mad when I told them they have to.
Real time timers sound to me like they would often be unfair
All depends on the table, and tone desired. I will be using it for my next campaign, only when they are in the "dungeon" depending on circumstances. Shadowdark RPG is the system I will be using. Because it is so rules light, this is going to be easy to utilize at my table.
And they sound like the gimmick of gimmicks. Dislike these kinds of “outside”-rules. Makes ttrpg feel more like boardgames and less like rpgs.
I’m curious how they play out
Love the videos Dan! I really appreciate the simple and clean way you approach games.
Thank You!
Great takes, different from what we usually hear over there, and I agree
Thanks!
Shadowdark RPG: Light spell, torch, and the lantern all have the option for one hour real time. In game time the duration is counted by rounds. A round (RAW) is everyone taking their turn clockwise around the table. I believe each round is equal to ten minutes.
Cool - so the real time thing is an option - seemed to be leaned on heavily when people talk about the system.
@@BanditsKeep yeah, it is such an abstract rule (optional) it seems to be a focal point. Unfortunately it over shadows how awesome and fluid and rules light the system is. Not to mention all the knuckle headed grognards like to hear something and trash it because, internet be what it is 😆
@@BanditsKeepIt is the expected rule, with the suggestion that if you cannot track time you may count 10 rounds as one in-game hour.
I feel like, in a more restrictive campaign, quantum gear allows for meaningful choices given less information. I have a wilderness exploration centered campaign where settlements are far and few between. The players use slots for equipment. Using a pack that takes up 2 slots but can give a 1 slot item when used allows for unique decisions in the moment. A lot of the campaign has been randomly generated, so the party doesnt know what to prepare for like they would with more settlements. If inventory space is limited and there is an item the character wants to take, deciding the pack is a lantern would let them bring the item, but if the character needs a rope in the next encounter they are out of luck. In summary, I think quantum gear is good as long as the players are the ones who make the decision with the knowledge that it cant be changed.
I’m not a fan, but if it works for you and your group that is awesome.
I remember Dael Kingsmill had a list of edible and medicinal plants for every topological area. ( Forrest, jungle, desert, plains etc). That would be cool for a D100 table or a survival guide tome a character carried
For sure, that would be a great in world artifact so to speak
Quantum gear works very well in story games where you dont want to be slowed down by book keeping or more narrative games like blades in the dark thats designed around the whole idea of flash backs and the characters being more like movie characters we're watching than extensions of ourselves. But for more tactical games like oldschool dnd i 100% agree the vibe is diminished by not having a traditional inventory
I had a scroll tube with large marbles in it and continual light cast on each of the marbles. If I needed light a head I would open the tube grab a marble and roll it down the hallway or drop it down the well to see how deep it or the water below it was
Nice
With torches and a few other items, I tend to go a more middle route. The rules I use state that a torch is supposed to last 30 minutes. In my games however, an average quality torch lasts 25 minutes + 1d10 minutes. The players don't know the result of the 1d10 roll, but I do telegraph a few rounds in advance that the torch is starting to burn out.
Cool
I said it once and I say it again 😃 love your content, your voice and you calm attitude ❤
Thank You!
Whenever my players begin an adventure, I have each character choose one of the pre-selected adventuring gear packs that you find in Modules B3, and B4 (Ye Olde Fastpack). It saves time and frankly there is some useful stuff in those packs!
Nice! I have done the same
i am currently desining an indie rpg system, and this video inspired me to come up with the rules for inventory in my system, i decided to be simple, each player can carry up to 10 different items (items that are worn, such as armor, or the very container the items are stored do not count), some small items can stack in multiples in a single slot, like 3 potions, or 20 arrows, i still have to figure out the penalty for carring too much, but either way, i like everything you make! :)
Awesome, thank you. If you are part of the Discord, please share in the designing games if you feel comfortable.
In an old west campaign one character had 500 dollars worth of counterfeit money that he used
Nice
The bell or twine or dye can be found on victims, survivors or the defeated
True. Having some interesting items on NPCs can inspire players
Real time light source is great and man does it ramp up stress. We've had light sources going out in combat. Believe players pay attention to light sources now and their gear. They also don't dally around as much when it comes to make decisions. TIME is LIGHT.
If they are paying attention, how does it go out in combat? In combat, is actually the worst place I could possibly see this mechanic being used.
@@BanditsKeep They weren't paying attention. They were focused on combat, just like real life you would be. It was the worst place and time for it to happen. Give it a try. I'm telling you it is marvelous.
Don’t know who told you that, but Shadowdark only uses real time for torch burn time, not spells, except for the Light spell because it mimics a torch.
That’s good to hear, but I still don’t care for it.
I assume like most groups, when I started playing I was more interested in the weapons etc than the 10' poles but you soon learn. We started wanting tools like crowbars and entrenching tools which the DM decided makes sense as its basically a small shovel. Marbles were handy, especially with a light/continual light cast on them and wooden tubes for swimming underwater like a basic snorkel. We also started wanting things like machetes which led to having large knives and small knives as 'things' in the game instead of just a dagger. Someone came up with a simple doorstop as any easy carry to wedge a door shut behind us (rather than hammering in an iron spike) too. I don't think we were allowed ghillie suits though, pity.
Nice!
As you mentioned about item list on a site, try starting a free doc list that someone can curate for any item in mind. Maybe make a key number for each setting and currency.
Good idea
That ghost encounter sounds cool!
Thank You!
Great stuff as usual! I've always wanted to run a game with resource management and creativity being an important aspect. When setting the tone of my new campaign for a group of mostly new players, I described it as a mix of Oregon Trail, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings. Although LotR is mostly for the fantasy elements and not really the grand story and mostly linear plot.
I'm happy so far with what I'm seeing. We're just starting to get rolling, but they're having some good discussions as they prepare for the task at hand. We're still in town, but I'm keen to see how they handle the travel and dungeoneering to come.
Awesome
i've been running Shadowdark games and recently did one at a convention for 4 wonderful strangers. My players seem to really enjoy that torches last realtime. They're eager to volunteer and time the torches on their phones. Also, my players really like the tension when torches are running low during combat or when they do burnout mid combat. Since Shadowdark characters dont have dark vision but monsters do, ive been giving disadvantage & advantage, respectively, to Attacks in absolute darkness. It adds tension and immersion to combat when they're fighting giant spiders and the lights go out and their characters have to fumble in the darkness to light another torch on their Initiative
I also had a player get trapped in a sinkhole while the other had to contend with a random encounter. And you guessed it - her torch was burning out. She had to let go of the rope the other was using to climb out of the sinkhole so she could relight another torch and fight off the monster
It's low key resource management but it can add quite a bit of narrative
Interesting! Of course my players would never just let a torch burn down to one or two minutes left and in combat it seems weird that a few sword swings takes 5-10 real time minutes and can burn the torch down, but it seems like you are enjoying it, so that’s awesome.
I do kind of like quantum gear, at least in certain games like Blades in the Dark, which as a whole is pretty geared (pun not intended) toward a sort of post-prep kind of gameplay. One thing I've grown really fond of, though, is games that give you random stuff out the gate, not necessarily *just* that (so sometimes you still pick your main adventuring gear, the other stuff just comes as a bonus), but it comes as a kind of "ok, now what do I do with this?" item.
The brass bell is an example of an item somebody might get granted by the dice gods that, at first, I might think "well this is probably just going to collect dust on my equipment sheet" but after some thought, could be combined with some string to make a makeshift alarm system, could be traded with goblins or kobolds because shiny thing, could be used as an established secret signal between party members, etc.
The choice of equipment is at least partially taken away (or at least what additional equipment you get beyond your chosen gear), but it in turn forces a choice of what to do with it. You got this tube full of glue, now see what you can come up with to do with it. 10 feet of chain, why would you pick that over 50 feet of rope? Probably wouldn't, but now you can start thinking up benefits to it being chain, like it doesn't catch on fire, now that might be relevant.
Basically those sort of bonus trinket, odds-and-ends kind of items that you have on you because of your background or that you otherwise just picked up, before you decided to start adventuring and picked up your bespoke Adventuring Gear.
I can definitely see why Blades uses quantum gear, but there is much more to the “flashback” style of play Blades allows which is pretty awesome.
I use the real time torch timer in my Knave games (borrowed it from Shadowdark).
It's been great. Sometimes they get wrapped up in something and forget about the torch, then POOF! .. timer goes off. Light goes out.
Happened in the middle of a few combats & puzzles and made for some great tension. We love it!
*pro tip: get an egg timer*
Btw your Videos are very informative and really get the imagination going. Keep up the great work!
So a 10 second combat (in world) takes 10 minutes at the table so the planning they did with the torches is meaningless?
Thanks.
Not quite. I keep the timer visible to the players, so they can see how much of the torch is left. Instead of in-world time being the planning factor, its the real world time they spend doing stuff that they are considering, or they could rush through stuff to save torches, but that rarely works in their favor (also we do 30 min torches instead of 1 hour because I allow them to bundle 5 torches in 1 inventory slot).
It's a small conceit to make torch tracking easier for everybody, but still has an element of resource management, though it's a more meta approach.
I also find it to be a more 'player facing' torch tracker than me keeping track of dungeon turns behind the screen. But hey, whatever works at one's table is all good.
Excellent video, really helped me get in the mindset of a… ROLE PLAYING GAME!!!
Glad to hear it!
Absolutely agree. I had some 5E players laughing at me because my character had brought a sack of flour on the adventure. Then we ran into an invisible opponent.
Nice
Gear and tracking encumbrance may seem boring, but are very important in the game. It also makes employing hirelings more of a factor which, in turn, makes Charisma a more important stat.
For sure
I was testing a game I am making, and I had my wife play it. She had 4 PCs to herself, and a guy to escort to a small island in the middle of a lake. I put a dock, and a old rickety boat that was totally gonna sink as soon as it hit water. (I had no solution for this, just a problem. Figure it out player.)
Well she completely ignored the boat, probably forgot it was there, and she had her axe character chop trees, and six hours later the five of them build a raft.
Was cool. I learned some stuff about GMing. (I'm not the bestest, but it's going.)
Nice
Excellent video, sir. 😎
Thank You!
Preparing/choosing what gear you bring with you only matters if you enforce some kind of encumbrance in my opinion. Gold is typically so attenable that otherwise, the pcs can just carry the entire general store with them all the time.
Indeed
In my game Chanbara, the Ninja subclass has a quantum gear special ability. I did this for two reasons. One, ninjas (like boy scouts) always should come prepared, even if the player wasn't. Two, if the ninja gets captured or searched, they can use to to have somehow hidden the item that they produce. In general, though, I agree that quantum gear rules aren't as fun as preparing for your adventure. This is especially true for that 1st adventure, when you may not have enough starting gold to buy everything you'd like to buy.
I'm also not a big fan of systems like The Black Hack that have a usage die. I'd rather know how long my items will last, or how many times I can use my bow/spell/laser gun.
I like the idea for a ninja! Very thematic
Great video! Thanks Daniel. Many a DM & player would benefit from your wisdom!
Thank You!
Really thought provoking and well thought out video.
Thank You!
1. I tell my players that encumbrance limits are actually a hidden skill slot mechanic and that what your character brings with them is like character building but with more versatility and less mechanical rigidity.
2. I don't like loaded dice either, I don't mind the dice-chain usage die because on average the items last about the same without the book keeping. However, I have found that I prefer to use a cheap, folding cribbage board to track turns, rounds, etc as the numbers are listed in sets of 5 and this reminds me of the turn duration of torches, the 6th turn needing to be a resting turn, etc.
I like that! And you can play cribbage after the game
For gear, I might like something where you pay a certain amount, and allocate a certain amount of storage, and if you want something specific, you make a Wis save, as a wise pc would be more likely to bring what they needed. On a success, they have what they want, and one of their slots is now that item. If they FAIL, it's a random item off a mundane item list.
That seems like way more work - and you are letting the dice decide what the player should have
Gear is the coolest! I always your appreciate your perspective on these key rpg aspects.
Thanks!
That's fascinating! I actually encountered a similar problem with loaded dice and real-time torches. However, like you mentioned, I do acknowledge some of the benefits they offer. If you haven't already, I'd love to hear your perspective on the comparison between vancian magic and roll-to-cast systems that have fewer limitations, as we've seen in recent projects like Shadow Dark, ICRGP, Mork Borg, and others.
I don’t think I’ve talked about that in depth, but generally I’m not a fan of most roll to cast systems
Only having run a couple sessions of Shadowdark so far, I like the real-time light mechanic, but not universally more than in-game time for torches. It’s nice because it creates a sense of urgency for the players to make snappy decisions that can sometimes lead to zany or deadly outcomes. That being said, you or your group might not like that and would rather make careful plans-for us, it made things seem more immersive. Also, things outside of dungeon crawling don’t use the real-time mechanic (at least that’s not how I’ve played), so the days-passing-in-minutes problem hasn’t come up for us. Loved the video!
I definitely need to try it, I’m not understanding why someone doesn’t just light another torch when there is 5 minutes left
@@BanditsKeep They definitely should! Encounter/wandering monster rolls happen every round in total darkness, and the players get disadvantage on pretty much everything; however, each torch takes up an inventory slot, so you have to plan torch use pretty well to make it back out of the dungeon.
I really think torches being entire slots, all of the mechanics around dropping torches, and the consequences of darkness are what I like most about Shadowdark--the real-time mechanic could be there or not, and I don't think it would make that big of a difference in my games.
@@BanditsKeepThey do! In fact it's made very clear in the rules for Light Sources that in the purpose of making tracking it simple players have two options with additional light sources. They may A. Have this new source ride along with the current 1-hour timer, or B. The old light source and timer is snuffed out, at the same time a new one is lit.
Overall it's been working wonderfully in the games I've ran. I just make sure to inform the players when they have 30 minutes, or 10 minutes remaining. It's up to them afterward to be paying attention to what I say and to act on that.
Outside of light sources however, the real-time mechanic is not used whatsoever. Everything else is tied to the always-on-initiative, as spell effects and such are timed by rounds.
Chalk is the second most useful gear next to charcoal!
For sure
The Real time mechanic is only applied to certain effects and items and is left up to the DM to adjudicate when things apply to it. Most spells in Shadowdark last for a number of rounds.
Cool
I'm also not a fan of usage dice and loading dice. D&D is primarily a game of resource management. Equipment, Vancian magic, expendable magic items and HP are all slowly worn down until the party has to go back home. Or maybe they push their luck. But too much randomization reduces the degree to which that is an informed decision.
I agree