Do you make your players count their ammo?

my old GM was extremely petty when it comes to that.

One player would meticulously track his ammo, as well as any ammo he'd crafted or lent to partymembers when they used it (to know when they needed a few more for their backup/special guns). Despite this the GM once sprung "you're out. well you haven't been counting and I let that slide for a while but your ammo's empty now". He also started applying whichever damage type he damn well felt like (in the case of multiple types the type the target is most vulnerable to is what applies). The worst such case was when the lightning component (it was also fire and piercing, the latter of which was the boss' vulnerability) healing one boss and earning the player the ire of the party for such a betrayal as if it was his fault. He quit before the next session after GM blew up at him out of nowhere on IRC for having mentioned the weather.

The rest of us though had never been made or asked to count munitions. Ever. And we never ran out.

Only before they receive a large quantity of it.
Say, if they happen upon an armory with a stockpile of a few hundred arrows. Just forget about tracking after that.

Its possible to stuff close to 100 arrows in a purpose made large quiver.

>He quit before the next session

The question is why the rest of you stayed. Kompromat?

Special ammo yes. Basic arrows not really. Most settings they'll just find ammo. Unless it's post apocalypse, in which case scarcity is a major decision making factor.

We play Dark Heresy and I make them count the current ammo in their clip, but I often provide them with "free" ammo so I don't make them count how many clips they have, always assume 10 or so.

I track my own ammo, supplies and weight limits. The GM doesn't enforce that stuff too heavily, but my autistic need for a perfectly accurate character sheet has me tracking everything.

At least I'm capable of tracking everything. There are some people in my group who would be unable to do so, if the GM started rigidly enforcing encumbrance they'd slow the games pace to a crawl.

Assuming it ever get back off the ground I'm only GMing an FFG Star Wars game where most ammo is either randomly determined or people rarely carry more than ten of them.

Fpbp

> DnD
After 3rd level or so, you'll have plenty of money and storage space for arrows. If anyone uses a LOT of arrows, then they get to subtract gp when they hit a city.

> Shadowrun
It's fairly realistic and gritty, so yeah. I won't track magazines individually, but players are expected to keep track themselves. Chummer helps a great deal.

> Other sci-fi semi-homebrew stuff
Nah. Not unless you use ridiculous amounts.

At first my campaigns aren't just about fighting monsters and doing puzzles. Mother nature and luck itself is also an enemy. It may start raining and they'll get sick, or they find too much to carry. Until the players find a decent way to not have to worry about it; be it artifact, riches, or prestige. they will have to manage all their resources at the start.

As a rule no, not unless it's a special item. It doesn't introduce tension or resource management, it just makes one person say 'I...uh...I buy ammo and supplies for the party every time you reach town.

Same with food. Unless you're doing a wilderness survival or crossing the desert section it simply doesn't matter. However, if you are doing those things track it temporarily because it just became Ranger Boys time to shine.

Yes. Also rations and encumbrance. Otherwise they get cocky and start trying to fuck with my games in other ways.

Running a Western using DnD, and I took inspiration from Edge of the Empire in regards to that. A player is always considered to have plenty of ammunition, but a Critical Failure on a shot either gives me that bullet or the rest of theirs.

Generally that means that the player finds that they've run out of ammunition. Now, you can pretty easily scavenge some rounds from the bodies of banditos, or you can just buy a 20g back-up item that generally comes in the form of a bandoleer. It functions by letting you ignore a Critical Failure's effects, though you are still vulnerable to future flubs.

It's only come up a few times, and it's led to some fantastic scenes.

I'm absolutely stealing this

Pick one or the other, don't flip flop half way in the campaign like I did. All that does is end in stupid arguments.

I did say "my old GM".
Didn't stay very long; it destabilized after that.

Although I didn't do much better; less than a year later I get into a group that starts off well, until That Guy (actually 'that girl') joined; whenever she'd not get her way or get called on on some rather blatant bullshit, she'd turn on the waterworks, and within five minutes everyone turns around and she'd been right all along, how dare anything that offended her do so.

People in their early 20s used to have *some* degree of maturity, but this latest batch is just...

We're lucky their own children will likely rebel against such shitass attitudes.

Go hog wild with it. Like I said, I cribbed it from EotE to begin with. And while taking the rest of their shots is normally what I do, I do reserve the right to instead take that shot for them if they were firing into melee.

I think my favorite result that's happened so far was the cantankerous old veteran stuck in a pit with a Black Pudding, no longer able to kite around it as he found himself armed only with his saber while the rest of the party tried to offer him support from above.

I generally do. More, it's that my players just do it naturally and I don't have to pester them about it. It makes for solid scenes sometimes when a player is down to his last few shots and is trying to figure out what to do.

>Tracking ammo
Yes, because not tracking ammo unfairly advantages fighter archers in 5e compared to classes that actually shoot harder but less quickly.

>Tracking rations
In the wilderness, otherwise I assume they either have a dayjob or can just spend a couple silver a day to assume their expenses are covered.

>Tracking weight
I assume they start combat with most of their non-combat gear in easily dropped bags (or pack bags if they're riding) so it's never particularly useful. It still sometimes comes up.

>Tracking material components
I like primary casters to suffer so yes.

>Yes, because not tracking ammo unfairly advantages fighter archers in 5e compared to classes that actually shoot harder but less quickly.

Doesn't that unfairly advantage rogues who shoot less but more powerfully then?

Not particularly no, also it mostly seems to be the intent in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't bother with numbering ammo in the first place.

They would because of legacy.

There also wouldn't be a quiver of infinite arrows in the DMG.

Abstracting away resources makes the player characters feel even less like real people.

Amazing adventures and great character interaction can come from being broke, or not having enough rations, or having to actually scrounge for stuff.

Making everyone a videogame character with infinite ammo/other stuff is how you get 0 stories about that one time someone did something amazing with their very last bullet.

I think you are making far reaching deductions based on shit that the designers have not really given any thought to.

Nnno, it fairly advantages rogues because that's their thing. That's what they do, as per how their class works.

No, but I would if I were playing a grittier campaign

This.

I run games on RollD20 and make a script for each weapon of each player triggered on to hit rolls, so those who don't count (such as me) could be surprised when somene's gun runs out of ammo in a critical moment. I'm a subscriber of a certain type of laziness - the type that forces you to do a lot of work once but frees you from even more of work later.

But how do you decide which advantage is fair? You could argue that the fighter's "thing" is having many attacks and needing to count arrows unfairly punishes them for that.

As a player, I always keep track of my ammo, rations and encumbrance, and was quite surprised to find out that not everyone else did.

Mundane ammo, no. +1 arrows or bolts, yes.

Thrown weapons/flask weapons\ yes.