My campaign is fast approaching. Traditionally my group has been pretty handwavey about things like rations. Basically you buy some rations when you are a first level character and from there on we don't worry about what you're eating when the PCs aren't in town.
However, with Kingmaker I'd like to make that more of a thing. However, I don't want to force the players to keep track of every single copper piece and deal with minute changes in gear over time.
Does anyone have an idea of how to keep the spirit of the trackless wilderness exploration aspects of the game intact while still keeping the tracking of resources relatively streamlined? I was thinking about delegating the role of "quartermaster" to one of the players and making it his responsibility to track the party's food and camping gear.
How are you all handling this?
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You know, I tried that exact tactic at the start of the campaign. But somewhere in the middle of Stolen Land we just fell out of the practice.
IME, most players don't want to be bothered tracking rations, or ammunition, or especially encumbrance. I'm sure there are some players who are into that sort of thing, but I've only ever met one in over 3 decades of gaming. So I have to stay on them about that stuff, which isn't much fun for me. And I am juggling so many other things that I am bound to forget.
Also, to a certain extent the system is working against you. Once they have mounts, carrying the rations isn't an issue. Once they have a little bit of gold, buying the rations isn't an issue. And even if they ran out, it's so easy to get by with Survival checks and taking 10 that it still won't be an issue. Granted, using forage to get food & water slows you down, at least until their bonus is higher.
Other wilderness stuff, like getting lost, is also easily bypassed with a halfway decent Survival bonus. Temperature extremes are dispensed with a 1st level spell. And so on.
So I guess my advice would be to say, if they have money, and they have the carrying capacity, simply charge them X gp/day of being in the wild. If they lose their provisions but have someone trained in Survival, they can chose to starve or to move at half speed. The situation basically can't get desperate unless there's no one with Survival, but how often does that happen with a Kingmaker party?
I have to echo pennywit's points, and not just because he liked my post! I've done both of those things - pre-generated the weather, and paid attention to the rules for non-combat mounts - and they've been positive experiences, I think.
For a while, the wizard insisted on walking instead of riding, because he was tired of losing control of his horse when a predator appeared or a fight erupted. And the nature-type characters had the opportunity to use their Handle Animal skill to train the party mounts for combat.
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Two posts I would recommend for advice Improving Overland Travel and Stolen Lands A Few Observations.
Great advice everyone. Thanks.
Good to know I'm not the only one who finds the minute tracking of supplies and encumbrance more annoying than anything else. At least with tools like Hero Lab the encumbrance part is not so bad, but I think I'll definitely hand wave a lot of the supply questions. Though I do like possibly keeping tabs on how many days of food they have behind the screen - that wouldn't be too big of a deal and it could add some realism.
As for the weather, I actually built a spreadsheet that calculates a years weather at a go. You basically give it a bunch of info about the general climate on the front end, and then it uses that to calculate a (somewhat) realistic listing of daily high and low temp, wind direction and speed, and precipitation. For Kingmaker, I'm using historical weather data for Kiev, but it's built such that you can stuff anything into the climate information, so it could be used for any location by finding a real world analog and plugging in the specifics. It also generates the days of the week and tracks the lunar cycle. The other nice thing is it has a "Notes" column, so I'm planning on using it also as a tracker for what the party did, and what's coming up (disease Fortitude saves and the like).
It's more or less done; I thought I'd post a link here if anyone was interested.
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My previous games have been the same way, almost never keeping track of supplies because it was tertiary to the storyline. While I always wanted to do an exploration game, before Kingmaker it was always low on my totem pole of priorities.
So I was struggling the first session with trying to make exploration in the least bit interesting and giving it a "real" feeling, and that included making keeping track of supplies important, but not a boring task. After that I went through my entire library and the paizo site grabbing anything remotely attached to wilderness travel.
The second session was much better, but cross-referencing was a nightmare, and I was still trying to remember all the little rules.
Finally this past week I pretty much put together an "exploration" package in excel. There's still some kinks to work out, but the highlights are as follows:
* a list of resources
* a per hex checklist/exploration guide containing a list of relevent information for that hex (a stock description of the terrain more detailed than "it's a grassy plain", travel time, details such as water sources and local flora, pre-rolled random encounter, pre-generated campsite details) and where among my resources to get that information depending on the type of hex (plains, hills, etc). This includes necessary skill checks such as getting lost, finding food, and any modifiers from the terrain
* an encounter spreadsheet that lists all the pertinent information for an encounter the rules generally gloss over (what is the terrain like, what will knowledge checks about the creature/site generate, checks to determine if anyone has surprise/advantage)
* weather mapped out on a per day basis, overall weather pattern and duration of, pertinent traits/rules pertaining to such, etc
Next is to actually collect all the tables, etc from the various resources so I don't need to cross reference and can get them from just a different sheet in the file.
Don't get me wrong, this was a *ton* of work up front, but now that it's done it takes minutes to expand "it's a forest hex with a radish patch. There are four kobolds with stomach aches. It takes a day, mark off one set of rations" into a much more richly detailed event that makes the exploration itself entertaining and not just a means to an end.
I know that's a lot of info that seems only tangentially related to the OP, so let me bring it back around:
The party is on horseback, so each hex of exploration is just about one day. In addition, we're making efforts to not gloss over or skip days when they are in the wild. So, every day involves a little bit of flavor text at a minimum, including a unique camping experience, and thus "dinner time". So every time they make camp, check off one ration. Or the survival guy goes hunting.
In short, for the players it's not an inventory checkbox when I do it this way. Camping comes regularly, and eating is something you do at camp. By doing it this way it doesn't feel as something you need to keep track of so much as something that is natural and integral to making the story flow.
You don't need to huevos to the wall like I did, but it did work for me. And if you like the idea, but want to save yourself that level of effort, I have no problems sharing my work. I'm actually thinking of getting a thread going just to go over how I'm handling various things that are part and parcel of this AP that none of the books ever really go over.
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As far as the encumbrance/cost aspect, I haven't found it to be too much of an issue. Most of my players have hero lab to cover encumbrance. We talked about skipping it, but it felt like if we were ever going to follow this rule, now would be the time to make it relevant. And for the most part the heavy stuff is carried by the horses anyway, so its moot as long as they are paying attention. IE - it hasn't inhibited play, but I am forcing them to at least be aware of it. And it's always entertaining when they go to grab something important and remember that it's in a saddlebag on the other side of the encounter area.
And the cost is minute. Every time they kill some bandits they end up with more food, and the ranger is generally able to scrounge enough to keep everyone covered. I don't think they've spent a single copper on rations.
@Matthew - if you're willing to share your spreadsheets I'd love to check them out. My campaign will be starting soon, so I'll be frantically gathering my resources over then next couple of weeks.
For anyone who's interested, I've posted a dropbox link to the weather generating calendars I mentioned upthread. The link is in this post.
I've had a similar experience. I've tried to track the party's rations and arrows and other consumables as my players explore, but it is a lot of not-interesting bookkeeping, and the price to resupply is so low and horse carrying capacity is so high. It's slipped off the radar a few times.
I wonder if a more abstract approach would work better than trying to do it "for real"? Assume rations and arrows and suchlike are effectively unlimited most of the time, but put a non-specific "wilderness survival event" into the random encounter table, and if it comes up, then something comes up highlighting how cut off from civilization they are. Wild animals try to get into their rations during the night, or they have a mishap crossing a river and need to make a skill check or lose most of their arrows, or if they've been out for a long time then they "discover" that they only have a few days of rations left, or whatever. When it comes up, it goes from something that's assumed to be fine in the background to something significant for the session, and once its dealt with it goes back into the background.
The problem with a random approach is that the players can't easily make preparations, but by leaving the event open-ended the GM can factor in party preparations in the challenge they throw at them... if the PCs made sure they carry large amounts of rations, then the people on watch might get multiple Perception checks to notice the rustling and munching from the pile of saddlebags instead of just one etc.
While pondering this sort of thing, I stumbled upon a great house rule idea that I think I'm going to steal. It's geared mostly towards keeping track of ammo, but it could also work well for rations.
The original post is no longer available, but thanks to the glorious power of archive.org's Wayback Machine, the article can still be read here.
The basic gist is instead of meticulously tracking every individual piece of an expendable item (lets say arrows), you assign the group as a whole a die (in the case of arrows start with a d12 for a full quiver). Every time you use an item out of the group, roll the die - if it comes up "1" drop to the next lower die size - down to a d10, then a d8, etc.
When you get down to a d4 and you roll a 1, you have one arrow left.
I really like this because is gets rid of the fiddly bookkeeping, but still adds a bit of the "oh crap, I'm running out of supplies" feeling that makes long term adventuring dangerous. Also, rolling a 1 could also represent other things like the moisture ruining the fletching glue on some of your arrows or something.
Obviously, I'd still have the player track individual magic arrows, but I think this will work great for mundane arrows.
The same idea could be applied to rations, but starting with a lower die - say a d6 - and successful foraging means you skip rolling for that day.
I was going to post the "distance to the horizon" tool, but Wyntr beat my to it!
Honestly, I'd wrap "rations" and other equipment considerations into lifestyle cost, and then just set a hard limit on how many days supply they can carry (accounting for pack animals and the like).
They're always going to plan adequately, so don't make it about counting pennies. Assume they always start with as much as they need, in agreed-upon standards.
It's not planning the right amount of rations they should worry about, it's what happens to the rations when they're out in the field! They only need to worry about running out when something goes wrong, like animals stealing, or getting lost. Animals are more likely to raid their packs than attack.
So if you want to cut down on paperwork, hand-wave the "optimal" kit for them when they strike out on expedition, but make sure they know that is just a starting point.