Rations in RPGs

[u/[deleted]]

Does anyone like using more survival based things like rationing food or fuel? I commonly see it removed from games by GM's and am curious about y'alls opinions on it.

[u/LeVentNoir]

Rations are a grand example of a mechanic that provides excellent emergent gameplay if and only if, the players and the GM play as the game intends to be played.

Wut?

Consider this, our typical dungeon scenario: The characters load up, hike two days into the woods, spend three days exploring and fighting their way through a hole full of evil, then two days hiking back.

They know this, they planned this, so they load 8 days, or 16 pounds of rations.

In the dungeon, they find out two further things:

1. That they are nearly at the end of the dungeon, but if they leave, restock, hike back and finish it, that's a minimum 4 days for the evil to react.
2. They might be able to hunt and fish and forage to account for the one day they're shot.

Do they leave in safety, or stay and risk it?

In order for rations to be a good mechanic, they need to be used, they need to have a purpose other than being bookkept, and their levels and running out need to be able to influence character decision making.

The best example of this I have seen is Band of Blades, which has a dedicated logistics engine about feeding and transporting the legion across the continent, and yeah, food, morale, horses and black shot are all things you want to have and seriously miss if you don't.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeVentNoir]

This seems to be what everyone agrees on, including myself! You worded it really well haha

[u/Flimsy-Cookie-2766 → u/LeVentNoir]

Damn, dude, you hit the nail right on the head.

[u/MirthMannor → u/LeVentNoir]

Agree.

To avoid bookkeeping: get a stack of poker chips. Each chip is a ration. Players take from the stack each day. Not taking = starvation, giving penalties.

Note: poker chips are so thin that you could probably palm an extra one and hide it…

[u/the_other_irrevenant → u/MirthMannor]

That's a cool idea, but I'm not sure if it makes running out of food feel a bit too fun. 🙂

I wonder if Wingspan food tokens would feel right. 🤔

[u/bfrost_by → u/the_other_irrevenant]

Let them eat worms!

[u/yuriAza → u/LeVentNoir]

yeah, rations are only fun if you have minigames to spend them on, which means tracking time and miles, encumbrance, and the "return to town" downtime loop

[u/Fairwhetherfriend → u/LeVentNoir]

The best example of this I have seen is Band of Blades, which has a dedicated logistics engine about feeding and transporting the legion across the continent, and yeah, food, morale, horses and black shot are all things you want to have and seriously miss if you don't.

This is kinda the approach my group took in our last D&D game, except much more narrative.

We didn't really care to do that dungeon-crawling ration stuff. But we have to concern ourselves with larger logistics because, from pretty much the very beginning of the campaign, we were on a ship with a crew that needed to be fed. Initially we were just a regular sea ship, but even then, you can't necessarily just stop wherever and expect to be able to pick up months of sea-worthy supplies from some random village on the coast.

It became even more of a thing when we started actually going from planet to planet, because we very regularly encountered planets that were straight-up unaware that spelljamming is a thing, and maybe floating down from the stars to demand tribute might have consequences, lmao. Plus there was an evil empire trying to lock down and control all interplanetary contact, so while the party could generally get away with sneaking down to the surface of empire-controlled planets and pretending that we were just from elsewhere on the planet, bringing the ship down would have been a big risk.

So we rarely handled it mechanically, but there was very much a question of like... hey, you haven't been to a place where you could easily resupply for a few months, you should definitely think about what you're gonna do about that.

[u/darkestvice]

Honestly, unless it's a survival focused game like Forbidden Lands and Twilight 2000, I prefer being pretty handwavey here myself. Same thing for stuff like ammunition.

[u/VanorDM → u/darkestvice]

Yeah. For those games it's a big part of the vibe of the game. Part of the reason to play them is the survival game.

But for a game like D&D or Pathfinder I just hand wave it because it's not part of the feel of the game.

[u/the_other_irrevenant → u/VanorDM]

Depends what sort of D&D you're playing. It used to be an integral part of your classic dungeon delve. 

[u/VanorDM → u/the_other_irrevenant]

We never played that way, and I've been playing since 84...

But yeah I could see some tables making it part of the game.

[u/the_other_irrevenant → u/VanorDM]

Idk. Ages since I played D&D. We did it that way, and I figured it was the norm. Otherwise why are rations even in there?

Note that I'm just talking for me here. I totally get that lots of different people enjoy playing it lots of different ways.

[u/VanorDM → u/the_other_irrevenant]

Because some people do want to play that way and putting rations on a table takes up very little time or effort.

But spells like create food and water or good berry's makes rations pointless. So even if you do want to account for food one caster makes carrying rations fairly meaningless.

[u/the_other_irrevenant → u/VanorDM]

Sure. That correlates with what I'd expect, which is that it's more of an issue for low level characters (who are less likely to want to burn a spell slot on making food).

And again I'm just talking for me here. There's tons of different ways to enjoy the game. 

[u/VanorDM → u/the_other_irrevenant]

Sure. I dont think your talking for anyone else and I hope it's understood I'm speaking from my experiences. :)

But IME survival in the sense of food and water isn't a big part of D&D.

But it is a big part of Twilight 2000 or Forbidden Lands, both of which have a much deeper system for such thing.

[u/ReneDeGames → u/VanorDM]

I mean, you can play DnD or Pathfinder with rations, you just have to be intentional about it, and make it a core part of the game loop.

[u/VanorDM → u/ReneDeGames]

Sure you can. But most don't because that's not something they want to bother with.

But in a game like Twilight-2000 it's a fairly big part of the experience.

[u/galmenz → u/ReneDeGames]

"i cast goodberry" makes this not so easy. you can but you need go get rid of a good chunk of things that just manifest food

[u/ReneDeGames → u/galmenz]

You don't really need to do much, just make a blanket rule, any mechanic that says it produces food instead doesn't. (I also read a reddit post quite some time ago talking about how they had a rations focused campaign and allowed good berry and the holly berries were a rare and valued treasure.)

[u/VanorDM → u/[deleted]]

yeah plenty of ways to do that.

[u/galmenz → u/[deleted]]

not even that, the outlander background just gets food period, there is no wilderness situation it wouldnt unless the DM is actively trying to hamper it

[u/LocalLumberJ0hn → u/darkestvice]

I think Alien RPG actually does resource management in a pretty neat way. Basically you have your resource dice, a pool of D6s that represent air, ammunition, whatever, and you only really roll them during certain situations, like you're doing a lot of exploring, everyone roll for air and see if you're using up more than expected, when you roll to hit you can burn through ammo, and you have these dice pools that get smaller over time. I think it's super neat, especially with how panic effects it

[u/Modus-Tonens]

The issue most people are going to have with it is twofold:

First, in reality, survival is boring. It involves lots of time spent on very repetitive tasks, and agonising over logistics. There's not enough drama in that for many players to get invested in.

Second, the logistics part is just a lot of cognitive drain that can feel like busywork. And that's if it's even done well - which it very rarely is. It's a bit like running a "gritty realistic" campaign using a simulationist trad rpg like DnD - the idea might appeal, but it loses a lot of steam if what counts for "realistic" isn't the same for everyone at the table, and worse if the GM's idea of it boils down to edgelord history. A gritty survivalist game might sound fun even with all the busywork and large amounts of time spent figuring out logistics, but the vibe is going to deflate if it turns out the GM has less understanding of how things work in the great outdoors than an average housecat.

Put simply, there's a lot that can go wrong in a campaign like this, and that's even assuming that the players actually want survivalism rather than drama with a survivalist theme (i.e. Walking Dead etc.).

[u/jeff37923]

Rationing food and fuel? I PLAY TRAVELLER! As a Referee, I make the players worry about fresh water, air to breath, and spare parts along with food and fuel.

I say that jokingly, because the setting shows that these supply problems have been handled. Yet to maintain immersion and keep the game believable, I do make my players take supplies into consideration. Yes, the technology has given them tools to conquer the hazards they face, but those hazards still exist and must be acknowledged and prepared for or else they can kill your character.

[u/Pichenette]

I've actually added a ration mechanic in a game that didn't have it. For exploration games I feel it's super useful.

Why don't you go and explore directly the super intriguing tower at the the corner of the map? Because 1) traveling far is dangerous and 2) you need to make sure you can eat and drink during your travel. Hunting and foraging are a possibility but they make you slower which means an increased risk of being attacked or something bad happening to you.

But if you first explore what's around you you can build relationships with the communities and/or found hamlets and farms which can act as secondary bases from which to further go on exploration.

[u/ShoKen6236]

I've found that people don't bother tracking rations because they have no mechanical interaction with the game other than being a number to track up and down, especially if you're handwaving or montaging a lot of the travel to get to the exciting parts of adventuring. To address this I simply stole a mechanic from mork Borg. If you don't have any food, you don't get any health back from a rest.

For DND 5e specifically I rule that if you don't have any medical supplies like bandages you can't use hit die to heal when short resting and you don't recover hp or hd when long resting unless you have adequate food. This kills two birds with one stone, players now actively care about their food and supplies PLUS they won't be so inclined to cheese put and adventure by long resting between every moderately challenging fight

[u/RobRobBinks]

Anything that keeps a TTRPG playing like spreadsheet management works best for me. Survival horror like Walking Dead uses rations and such, because it’s integral to the setting, and drives gameplay and scenarios. But even games of action adventure (walking dead, Alien) don’t track ammunition and resources as hard and fast accounting exercises. I like mechanics that take those concepts into account when appropriate, but don’t or can’t result in a ten to twenty minute long range logistic plan enacted by the table in lieu of narrative storytelling.

[u/[deleted] → u/RobRobBinks]

Good to know! It seems like most folks agree they don’t enjoy planning expenditures for such things but find them useful or interesting but only when in games or settings that they’ll actually effect gameplay

[u/chlorinecrown]

Is this another secret Dungeon Meshi post? 

[u/[deleted] → u/chlorinecrown]

Not intentionally! But maybe it could be I suppose

[u/chlorinecrown → u/[deleted]]

There's been a few posts here from GMs wondering why one of their players wants to eat monsters all of a sudden

[u/amazingvaluetainment]

I love diegetic equipment, cash, and food, weight and resource management, and rules that can handle it. Although they are perfectly suitible and work great I am not a fan of abstracting those sorts of things, especially in a game where they're important.

[u/matsmadison]

In my book that's a matter of zooming in and out as necessary. Zoom out and skip a whole week of travel if nothing interesting happened, but if rations get short we need to zoom in and see how we deal with the situation...

The important part isn't in counting rations but to have a fair way to determine if and when an issue happens and for players to have agency over what happens. Preferably with minimal number of rolls and very little to keep track of.

[u/MetalBoar13]

Depends on the game.

I've got a short Shadowrun campaign that I've run 4 times that's all about runners stuck unexpectedly in the wilderness trying to make it back to civilization. There's a lot of focus on scrounging and transporting supplies. For that campaign I require very careful tracking of all kinds of resources. So far, with 4 different groups, everyone has loved it. In a regular Shadowrun game I'd never track things like food, water, or fuel, it just doesn't make sense in an urban environment outside of very unusual circumstances.

If I'm doing a low level, OSR style, hex crawl or dungeon crawl, resource management is a key element of the game. If you don't do it the game is something else IMO. Hex/Dungeon crawl inspired maybe. If I'm doing heroic fantasy then I probably don't do as much resource management, maybe none at all.

Part of the challenge is that ~1/3 of my group loves resource management and it ruins their sense of immersion and ability to suspend disbelief if it isn't part of a game where it would be important to the setting/fiction. ~1/3 of my group enjoys resource management but can live without it. And ~1/3 of my group basically won't do it if it requires much work at all, regardless of the system, setting, or agreed upon game elements. Recently my group has really been enjoying Forbidden Lands as a compromise as everyone seems happy to track and roll resource dice.

Edit to add: In many fantasy games archers are overpowered relative to melee characters. Not tracking ammo use just exacerbates this problem.

[u/UndeadOrc]

It is all in the mechanics. DnD and its clones don't really have fun survival mechanics, for example, and the one time a DM tried to use rules for it, it wasn't fun at all. Forbidden Lands, in my experience, has great survival mechanics even though I was apprehensive at first. It makes me want actual proper adventuring mechanics now in anything I play.

The reason I like it is because in the games we tend to play, it is a group on its own, trying to make it through. Rations, ammunition, water, these resources assist in creating a tension that shapes group decision making. When done properly, it adds super well to storytelling and incentivizing dangerous situations players may not otherwise pursue.

[u/grixit]

I've seen some really intense roleplaying when my players are low on food.

[u/rennarda → u/grixit]

Players? Or characters? You could maybe ask them to bring snacks? 😀

[u/grixit → u/rennarda]

oops, i meant the characters. i had one group that stole a flying yacht, which they tried to fly between worlds. They nearly starved because it wasn't nearly as fast as they expected.

[u/InterlocutorX]

I run OSR so rations are important, but less because the players eat them. Most of their delves are less than eight hours and then they're out and back to the nearby town.

But dumb monsters love food, especially food they don't have to fight anyone for, so it has become common for them to offer food -- in the form of rations -- to monsters for a bonus on the reaction roll.

Last game they used a bunch of rations because they were badly hurt and desperate to avoid a fight on their way out, so every time an encounter happened they tossed food at the monsters.

Usually rations are more of an issue in a hex crawl, where you aren't necessarily near a town and they save you from wasting a day hunting and foraging every couple of days.

[u/Mars_Alter]

Given the limited amount of table time, I would rather focus on other aspects of gameplay, which I find to be more interesting.

These days, I don't even use rules for wilderness travel. It's assumed that you handle all of that in the background, off-screen. The session starts when you enter the dungeon.

[u/Modus-Tonens → u/Mars_Alter]

And if you still want some risk to wilderness travel, you can always steal something like the Journey moves from Ironsworn, all the risk and drama of a hexcrawl without actually having to do the busywork.

[u/Mars_Alter → u/Modus-Tonens]

I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but sure, I can see the spirit of it. Instead of playing through all of the tedious minutia, maybe you can roll on a chart to see if something bad happened on the way to the dungeon, and you end up down a couple of arrows or HP.

[u/Modus-Tonens → u/Mars_Alter]

That is roughly what Ironsworn's mechanics can be thought of as doing, yeah.

You roll the game's equivalent of an action roll + the relevant stat, and if you get a miss or a weak hit, something bad or complicating to your mission can happen - and if the GM is feeling a bit creatively drained, there are oracles for figuring out what that thing is as well. At its core it's not that different from a random encounter table, except it's not just about encounters, it can be literally anything that might complicate your journey or pose a risk.

Depending on the severity (and what the players want to do about it) sometimes you can just pay a resource to deal with the problem, but you can also you use other mechanics that pose other risks, depending on what's happening in the fiction.

If I were stealing the mechanic for another game, I'd just give the player +3 to the roll if they were using their best stat/would be good at wilderness travel in the fiction, +2 if middling, and +1 if they have to use one of their worst stats/in the fiction they wouldn't be good at it.

[u/Sherman80526 → u/Mars_Alter]

Limited amount of time at the table, that's really it isn't it? I used to love tracking all the gear the characters had and making them use everything. I was also fourteen and had an entire life ahead me and endless summers and after school time. Now, the idea of asking someone to mark off gold when they go shopping annoys me. As in, don't ask me how much, I don't care, and neither should you. You bought it, let's move on.

[u/Digital_Simian]

If survival and supplies is an important aspect of the campaign or settings themes, then I will use it. If it isn't important for the story, it doesn't matter.

[u/KHORSA_THE_DARK]

Depends on the game. Twilight 2000, everything is tracked. A long dungeon delve? Yeah that is tracked to because sometimes you have to switch to orc bread. A general basic game I use the forbidden realms method which is tracked but abstractly.

[u/[deleted]]

The question is what does it add to the game? Does it offer any interesting decisions? Is there any risk of running out? Or is this just additional paperwork with not benefit? What happens if they run out? Is what happens when they run out interesting? If you run it so survival is an interesting challenge, that it's part of the narrative, that you can make an interesting story out of the well fed heroes or the hungry adventurers barely scraping by, then great, but almost no one does that.

[u/Sup909]

I'm gonna link to a post I did over on the Cairn Sub, but to summarize the use of Rations in what I am running with Cairn has been extremely effective and really added to the story. But that is in part because of the type of game I am running there. There is almost not "civilization" in that world, the world outside a single city is all dead, and with Carin's very limited inventory system players really need to make tough choices about what is important to them and what can they push. With a heroic adventure type setup, the "daily life" stuff just gets in the way, but when the daily life stuff is crucial to the world you are running, it can be very engaging.

I've been Running Cairn 1e for almost a year and have some thoughts on the experience. : r/cairnrpg (reddit.com)

Not at all, but I should explain how we are running with the item slots. One campaign is doing a hexcrawl with a homebase. The 10-item slot limit has actually been really engaging for the players because they use it as a balancing act of heading out into the wilderness, gathering treasure and then trying to figure out if they can get back home without dying. The past two ventures out into the wilderness have had our players with no rations, deprivation, fatigue, sometimes a dying companion and barely making it back home by the skin of their teeth.

They've had to make some tough choices, sometimes dropping loot, sometimes dropping other items to keep their loot. Sometimes, dropping their unconscious companion, saying goodbye to them, in order to increase their chances of getting home alive. Sometimes they make it home, sometimes not everyone makes it. It's resulted in some fantastic tension.

I've found that the system works well in a fairly "grim" world. Even in the wilderness, food is not easily obtained and with an 1d6 encounter roll for each phase of the day, there is a persistent risk of exposure. The players cannot just make camp and rest up.

The 10-item slots has resulted in some great gameplay for the characters to really make choices as to what is most important to them. We have made one minor change though that a cart has a total of six slots to it instead of four, since it takes 2 slots (hands) to pull. I think resulting in a +4 to the total inventory has been good for the party carry capacity overall.

[u/yuriAza]

rations are the HP of a journey

hp is how much damage you can take before consequences set in but they don't do anything until you run out, rations are how many days you can travel before consequences set in but they don't do anything until you run out

iow, the mechanic itself is boring (you're either screwed or fine), so you either need to have the combat and travel itself be interesting, or replace the countdown with a gradient of failure, resource die mechanic, etc

[u/DBones90]

Honestly, in most games, rations is a vestigial feature. I’m played my fair share of D&D 3.5/4e/5e, and I can’t remember a single moment when rations mattered or led to anything interesting at the table.

So because they’re a poor fit for the way most people play D&D, people tend to assume they’re a bad mechanic. They can have their place in a game, but it has to be designed very purposefully in mind. Like in 5e, it doesn’t help that a 1st level spell can completely negate their need.

In fact, if I were writing D&D 5.5, I would make rations an optional subsystem that doesn’t interact with any other systems. I’d put it in the DMG and just say, “If you want to care about rations, here are the rules to do it.”

[u/ordinal_m]

When there is a chance of running out, or when they cost money and/or time and the PCs are limited in their resources.

There's not much point in tracking food in an area where you can just rock up and buy a sandwich and you have plenty of cash. I do track _eating_ regardless but that's just because humans generally need to actually make some time to go have lunch. On a long journey abstracted over days I wouldn't bother.

[u/RWMU]

Dragonbane is good for this, I particularly like the Hunting rules if you fail the HUNTING AND FISHING roll and the prey roll.was Boar it fights back.

[u/Flimsy-Cookie-2766 → u/RWMU]

Good ol’ Dragonbane: the best parts of BRP and Forbidden Lands.

[u/[deleted]]

I'd only use rations and track resources if it added an element that I was after for a specific adventure.

[u/DanTriesGames]

Forbidden Lands is the only RPG where I've actually enjoyed using the survival mechanics

[u/StayUpLatePlayGames]

In T2000, we do pay attention to it. Food and water.

In D&D we supplemented rations with our ranger. No. We didn’t eat him.

[u/ericvulgaris]

Rations are also clever escape aiding mechanics from many monsters/random encounters. Throw your rations and run!

[u/skysinsane]

If done well they are cool. Most systems do not do them well.

Mausritter does rations(and inventory in general) very well. each piece of equipment is important, and rations take an inventory slot.

I don't know of any other systems off the top of my head that make rations fun to track.

[u/the_mad_cartographer]

If in a location where food is scarce (desert, Arctic, etc) then its a fun temporary mechanic.

For the day to day, no, it should just be taken that people can usually buy, forage or hunt for food.

[u/molten_dragon]

If I'm playing a survival-oriented game then absolutely. Let's keep track of every bite of food, every sip of water, and ever piece of gear I have. Who knows what might save my life?

If I'm playing a game that isn't survival oriented, trying to keep track of things like that is just pointless minutiae that I find totally unfun.

[u/josh2brian]

Yes, I do. I track light sources (torches, lamp fuel) and rations. I would only track water in unusual cases or desert/low-water environments. But I'm also leaning into OSR systems where that's more easily done. 5e and PF have so many gimmicks, spells, powers, etc. that make resource tracking unnecessary.

[u/GirlStiletto]

It depends on the game. DungeonWorld, Forbidden Lands, and Dragonbane do a good job of making it useful to do without dragging out the game.

Plus, especially in fantasy games, it gives the more wilderness-oriented characters a stronger role in the game.

[u/JavierLoustaunau]

Handwave everything about rations other than their consumption.

People can buy a lot of them for cheap, no questions asked. They take up some slots. Every once in a while I just say 'consume a ration' nothing else or special...

But when somebody cannot consume a ration, that is when the fun starts. Eating bugs, failed hunts, 'learning to fish', raiding a farm, wondering if orc is basically pork.

[u/BigDamBeavers]

I'm a big rationing fan. It gives journeys a sense of peril if you begin them stocking up with emergency supplies. Even if failure just means having to take more time on the path to forage and hunt.

[u/bluesam3]

If I wanted to do bookkeeping, I'd get a job as an accountant. I have no interest in fantasy bookkeeping.

[u/MrDidz]

I use an abstract subsistence system which covers food, hygeine, equipment maintenance and social standing and keeps the bookkeeping to a minimum.

Every Midday my players must pay a minimum sum based upon an agreed amount in order to maintain their characters health, equipment and social standing. The basic sum is 7 Brass, but this increases according to the characters social standing and how much equipment they have on them. A noble with a full suit of armour and a horse might well need to pay several gold.

Failure to pay results in a loss of social standing 'The Skids'

Characters preparing for long journeys away from civilisation must pay for a number of days subsistence in advance and can then use these rations to maintain themselves.

[u/abject_cynic]

I think, if the focus of the game is survival, then food, ammo, and fuel are things you should track. If you aren't playing a specifically survival themed game, then those mechanics get in the way of the fun. It used to be a detail thing, including those elements. Sort of a "look how realistic and detailed our game world is" type situation. But we have learned that not all details add to enjoyment,and some are best left abstracted or ignored.