Do you guys keep track of your ammunition and encumbrance?

Do you guys keep track of your ammunition and encumbrance?

Only in a fairly loose sense, unless i'm doing a game where tracking it really matters.

Usually yes, but it depends on the nature of the game.

Yeah, but I'm probably on the spectrum. I always have loads of spare clothes, redundant means to start fires and provide lights, food, water, shelter (tents, blankets, bedrolls, and more where needed,) special weather gear based on climate, climbing gear, fucking six to twelve weapons and at least half a dozen tools like shovels, crowbars, and so forth, personal effects like books, diaries, etc., scrolls and wands and shit, and the Infinite Cosmic Power of being a character that can already cast cleric spells and see in the fucking dark.

I guess I'm paranoid about dumb, little shit, I dunno. No DM has ever tried to fuck with me about anything like that, so there's no reason. My friends just joke about it; it's a running gag that their characters can ask if anyone's got X and my cleric dude either has it or can approximate it, period.

My DM loooooves rule stuff.

I was once carrying 300 pounds at all times for a bit of atonement while also acting as the pack mule for the party.

I play Dungeons and Dragons, not Summations and Spreadsheets.

not really, however, i usually make sure to have light loads of weak characters, if i play a wizard i make sure to only have a satchel's worth of stuff, while if i play a fighter i usually deck him out fairly well, but i really can't be arsed to constantly update the exact carry.


in my opinion, encumbrance should only ever be brought into question if the players need to transport something heavy (they find a chest filled to the brim with coins, but got no way to store them, so they need to haul around the chest/ a party member is knocked out and is going to need help / a bound prisoner is being carried) and only in the broadest strokes of crunch possible. exact thresholds and counting-every-little-thing just feels detractive of the actual game; overly specific numbercrunching with little to nothing to gain from it.


ammo however should be kept a slightly better eye on, but usually setting "auto resupply at available shops, automatic max supply (unless the player asks for extra) is X amount of ammo, regain 50% of used ammo after fights" provides an easy way for the player to almost ignore that part if he/she so wishes, or, if they wish it to be more important for their character, take greater care of it, most likely opening up windows for RP

>Do you guys keep track of your ammunition and encumbrance?

Well, considering we're playing Mutant: Year Zero, and ammo is both ammo AND money, you can bet your buttocks we're keeping track of it. As for encumbrance, the PCs are so poor they barely have to worry about having a lot to carry, or eat, or drink for that matter...

That's a system-specific question.

>Ammunition
Absolutely
>Encumbrance
Only when it starts getting ridiculous how much shit someone has on them, otherwise nobody cares

Ammunition yes, encumbrance no

DM rolls on everything he possibly ever could in the rulebook. There's no worldbuilding or real roleplaying either. He just pulls up a forgotten realms map and does dungeon crawling and survival rolls.

I like to keep two separate rule states with my players.

'Overworld Rules' have lax encumbrance, loose inventory management, you recover your full hp after a full night's rest, stuff isn't hard to come by, and you can retroactively buy something from the last town or merchant if you pass an appropriate (and usually improvised) check.

'Dungeon Rules' are more survival based because I believe dungeon crawls should be just as much a test of survivalism as a test of combat strength. I let my players know ahead of time that 'Dungeon Rules' strictly follow RAW encumbrance, nightly healing, inventory tracking, item damage, lighting, and fatigue and I'll let the party know in advance if they'll be doing anything in the next session that follows 'Dungeon Rules' so they can appropriately codify their inventories before the session starts. Of course 'Dungeon Rules' don't just apply to dungeons, if the party's going to be travelling a long distance to a town on a road not frequented by travelers or something, I might warn the party ahead of time that the journey will be following Dungeon Rules. Same goes for sea voyages or treks through underpopulated lands or anything else where civilization might be far away.

I try to keep 'Dungeon Rules' stuff to less than a quarter of the overall campaign, but I also play with a lot of newbies and people who prefer to RP rather than crunch.

A critical element of this approach, I feel, is to have your players camp a few times in 'Overworld Rules', and when they make camp; describe in detail the individual characters using the kind of stuff you expect them to have on their character sheets for Dungeon Rules.

Ask if a player if their character would have bought cheap or fine rations, describe their meal/drink for them, describe them using the tent they probably forgot to write in their character sheets.

In Dungeon Rules, don't punish the players for not having something you didn't bring up during the Overworld Camping scene.

Yeah i get my players to keep track of it them selves but i dont rigorously enforce it and use an honour system for encumberance. Im not going to check anything i trust my players to be honest

Yes, it makes it more fun in almost every game.

To me it's as important as keeping track of HP.

We ostensibly do, but once my light load hit 1 ton, it didn't s'much matter for me. My new character is light at around 400, making it irrelevant once again. I carry a lot of shit for the team.

>he keeps track of HP

Depends on if the game is "fantasy" or "gritty"

This is... An interesting system. Pretty "videogamey," but I might give something like this a shot.

Then you're doing it wrong.

I mean, I'd love to play with a group where everybody brings laptops and has their characters in spreadsheets. I'd love to track encumbrance down to the milligram. But when the GM flat out refuses to give me weight figures, I can't even track MY encumbrance.

D&D is a shitty game that has been showing it's age now for over a decade

Where I live, physical games are either D&D or No&Thing. I'm working on getting my current group to be more open-minded, but making little progress.

Only during early game
Later levels it's assumed that the players are re-stocking, so long as they're in a place with a merchant/blacksmith

Have you heard the good word?

I have been thinking of running 2ed after this campaign, yes. I'm just afraid that actually having to think and actions having consequences would cause some heads to explode.