Vestigal D&D Mechanisms

It seems like every time I try to sit down and write a blog, I find another blog that says what I want to say, except better.

With that in mind, I've decided to start linking to these other blogs, because they're great, and they give me a chance to comment on them. Today I'm talking about resource management.

Or more accurately, Anne from DIY and Dragons is talking about it.

Specifically, she talks about how D&D used to be a game about tracking things like ammo, weight, food, torches, etc. but the game we have today doesn't actually need to track any of those things. And yet we still track (some of) them. Kind of.

Here's an excerpt that summarizes her thoughts (and mine) perfectly.

"Later editions of D&D and Pathfinder seem to feel obliged to maintain rules for equipment weights in pounds, degrees of encumbrance and rates of movement. But they're like legacy components that are no longer supported by the rest of the system. There rules are there, but they don't matter. You get all the work, but it serves no purpose. In that sense, it becomes completely optional, because nothing in the game depends on tracking those things. There are no consequences if you don't track them, and no consequences if you do track them either.

If there are no wandering monster checks, then why does it matter how quickly you're moving? If it doesn't matter how quickly you're moving, then why does it matter how much weight you're carrying? And if it doesn't matter how much weight you're carrying, then why bother tracking the individual weights of every item in your inventory? (And in general, the high-fantasy settings these editions imagine, the linear-path games they support, and the medieval-superhero characters they generate all seem antithetical to imaginary scarcity and privation.)"

Oh my. Lack of consequences means a lack of tracking. That's not to say that tracking is inherently fun, or that not-tracking is inherently better. It's just that we have these weird vestigial parts of a game that we nod to and yet ignore almost completely. I'll give you one more quote and then I'm out of here.

"Every background [in 5e] has a special ability that guarantees you free room and board from someone. You start the game with a week or two of rations, enough arrows to slay a small army, and enough light to last at least through your first session without refueling. You can mark them off as you play, but you know (or you learn, the game teaches you) you'll never run out mid-session, and between sessions, you can fully restock on anything you used up. So why mark them off? Why keep track, if keeping track will never matter, if it will only ever be busywork?

And if you're not keeping track of your arrows, and the things the game offers for sale are things like arrows, things that cost the barest fraction of the treasure you hauled out your very first session, why keep track of those purchases? Your food is already free, your room every night is already free. What is there left to spend money on? And if you can't spend it fast enough to ever, even for a moment, be in danger of running out of it, why bother tracking it at all? (Yes, I realize I just asked "why track gold in D&D?" but if you aren't trading gold for XP, and you always have as much gold as you need for routine purchases, and routine purchases are the only kind of purchases you can make ... then why track gold in D&D?)"

It's a fascinating read that I highly recommend.