I can't stand bean counting anymore in my pseudo-medieval games ! What should i do ?

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After much deliberation, Opaopajr, the only bean that I want to be counting in my medieval fantasy adventures is Jack's* :grin: !

*from Jack and the Beanstalk

So you're saying bean counting needs to be couched in taking advantage of the poor (widows) & gullible (children) ... :devil: Yes. Excellent. Your GM has likely gained much opportunity with this admission and would thank you for your honesty.

:gooseshades:

(Honest answer, it's probably because of the assumed "starting balance" of the shared experience that rubs people at tables the wrong way when exceptions are handed out.

My personal solution to that issue -- issue being not mere reskinning, but gear that comes with actual mechanical effects -- is at my tables I can offer players to go in DEBT with their PCs with my GM case-by-case basis permission. That DEBT can be actual negative coinage, which would directly affect Lifestyle comfort, and future gearing up, OR portioned out to NPCs (known or unknown) who will call it in later (FAVORS). The advantage to that is it creates adventure opportunities, and it also is a nice goad to PC behavior as FAVORS can be traded to other less savory NPCs as one's reputation or attitude plummets. It's bean counting of a seemingly easier but truly more annoying, social sort... and I do love counting those beans. :devil:)
 
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High Valor (Dark Ages though) assumes you have basic stuff and don't need to track it--though a failure to do something can always be described as "out" of important gear. Wealth is a trait you can use to buy stuff, but it doesn't go down or anything. Afterall real wealth in the era was mostly land and cattle!
 
If you want to go truly abstract, then just steal the usage die from The Black Hack, and set it as your wealth mechanic. Standard/low level treasure, you come out with maybe d6 usage die. You want to go shopping, every 50ish gold is a roll on the usage die.

If you don't know how the usage die works, you roll the die and if you get a 1-2, it downgrades to the next lower. When you get the 1-2 on the d4, it's gone. This would represent the changing fluctuations of the economy. Maybe this time, you can buy a sword and 6 healing potions before the money from the bandit camp runs out. Maybe next time, it's gone after room and board for the night. When you find the dragon hoard, the usage die is a d20, so you've got a lot to spend, but you might have gotten swindled or ripped off in a deal too.
 
Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells pretty much does this, although I suspect it is heavily influenced from The Black Hack.
I'll have to dig my copy out. Heck, may be good fodder for my Black Sword Hack game anyway.
 
I'll have to dig my copy out. Heck, may be good fodder for my Black Sword Hack game anyway.
I deleted that post because it was incorrect, but you already saw and responded.
The Useage Dice is in use with Ss&Ss, but I just realised it was for Luck, not Wealth - my mistake!
By the way, Ss&Ss should compliment BSH pretty well :thumbsup:
 
If you want to go truly abstract, then just steal the usage die from The Black Hack, and set it as your wealth mechanic. Standard/low level treasure, you come out with maybe d6 usage die. You want to go shopping, every 50ish gold is a roll on the usage die.

If you don't know how the usage die works, you roll the die and if you get a 1-2, it downgrades to the next lower. When you get the 1-2 on the d4, it's gone. This would represent the changing fluctuations of the economy. Maybe this time, you can buy a sword and 6 healing potions before the money from the bandit camp runs out. Maybe next time, it's gone after room and board for the night. When you find the dragon hoard, the usage die is a d20, so you've got a lot to spend, but you might have gotten swindled or ripped off in a deal too.
That looks interesting. I will definitely check it out.
 
I deleted that post because it was incorrect, but you already saw and responded.
The Useage Dice is in use with Ss&Ss, but I just realised it was for Luck, not Wealth - my mistake!
By the way, Ss&Ss should compliment BSH pretty well :thumbsup:
Yeah, I am glad I pulled it out. It’s going with my smal pile of items for the BSH game. Seriously, even including note cards and legal pad, my GM-load is way less than most other RPGs I’ve run.
 
Yeah, I am glad I pulled it out. It’s going with my smal pile of items for the BSH game. Seriously, even including note cards and legal pad, my GM-load is way less than most other RPGs I’ve run.
I'm starting to think digest games are the way to go, because they're very compact and often more concisely written, and of course they are much more handy at the table due to their physicality. As a GM I think having a few digest sized books and a notepad is the way to go (perhaps with a iPad as a back up)

I rememeber being impressed when the Savage Worlds Explorer line came out, it seemed perfect for a system like that to be digest sized, and was a shame when it returned to the larget format. Mongoose Conan and Pathfinder 1E also brought out digest versions of their core rulebooks as well, I'm not sure why they were not more popular as the compact size makes them much more handy as an in-session reference.

This is another reason why I'm thinking of taking my LEGEND core book to the gaming table, even if we are technically running Mythras, as it's about 95% the same as Mythras, and much easier to reference at the table (not too mention it's font size is better...)

As far as OSR-adjacent games go, I'm pretty impressed with the compact size of some of the books I have: Black Sword Hack, Into The Unknown, Into The Odd, Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, The Hero's Journey, White Box Adventures, and the upcoming Shadowdark. All digest or similar compact size, it just feels so handy compared to lugging around great big tomes :thumbsup:
 
Compactness is definitely appreciated. Cold Iron can fit in a 1" binder, though I mostly reference the digital documents these days except for the reference sheet which is double sided and has most of what you need for quick reference. For RuneQuest I do keep a slightly bigger stack of books on the table (in this case, I DON'T use digital references...), RQ1, RQ2, Cults of Prax, the Judges Guild GM screen, and maybe a few more things. Then maps and adventures for either.
 
That's it !

The last time I made a D&D 5th edition character, I couldn't be arsed to count my beginning gold pieces budget. That bored me to tears !

I decided that my character would don heavy armor - not the full plate armor, mind you: the one one step before that. Because that was the armor that looked cool ! and it was the kind of armor - a kind of brigandine - that made sense for my character.

As usual, the DM shot a glance at my character sheet, and said it was okay. Because, basically, he trusts me (we've been gaming together for 30 years), and he doesn't care about the kind of armor my PC wears - as long as I'm content with it.

But one of the other players (a friend of 25 years) began the game by bitching about the fact that he would have liked to afford a full plate armor for his PC at the very beginning of this new campaign.

But he couldn't - his PC class hadn't enough debutante's dough :yawn:.

And he bitched, and he moaned, and I didn't really listen because I was too busy enjoying playing my PC with his brigandine armor (among other things), and slicing baddies in half with Lawfuf Goodness fueling my righteous fury. That's what D&D is all about, compradres !

But then, having guessed at my PC class (Him : "So you're playing a Paladin ?" ; Me - "No ! I'm playing Badass Maladjusted Idealist struggling with an unjust world ! [I hate it when my clever attempt at painting a full-fledged character is summarized as "So you're playing Generic Name Class ? Your to hit bonus are SO COOL, dude !"), my friend asked, for the benefit of all at the table :
- How come you're wearing a brigandine ? I can't even afford a full plate armor with my un-optimized PC class !
- Hu ?
- You've not enough gold ! Count it, man !
- [eyes glazing over] you're sure ?
- Count it ! Count it !
- [grabbing the unwieldy rulebook, flippping morosely through it, and finding the right page] Yeah... It appears you're right... [I don't give a frak !]
- You've not enough gold at the beginning ! If everyone could afford the kind of armor he wanted at the beginning of the game, I would have chosen muh full plate, dude !
- [grabbing my eraser, erasing the offending brigandine on my character sheet, and replacing it with CHAINMAIL ARMUR !] There, there ! It's all taken care of, friend. Can we go on playing, now ?

Two hours in table game (real) time later, sure enough, the party of PC found enough gold to buy several chariots of full plate.

But I still kept my chainmail armor, because I found its description aesthetically pleasing.

All that to say, while metaphorically clubbing my dear friend on the head with bag of beans and screaming at the top my lungs: I am fed up of f*** bean counting in my rpgs !

...


Well, that was a bit of a rant :errr:.

My question is: which of you gentle Pubbers could point me in a direction of an abstracted system of ressources for a medieval RPG ? It doesn't need to be complex or extensive, it's just that the next time I'm mastering a game I aim not to inflict accounting duties on my hapless gamers, seeing as it [double upper duper] bores me already well enough :evil:.
The problem isn’t the bean counting in any RPG, the problem is the bean counter who cries about everything and is always comparing character sheets. That person will find a way to take a dump in the middle of any ruleset you use.
 
For my part, I've a hard time seeing why granularity is bad when it comes to economics and resource management, but just dandy when it comes to hit points, armor classes, damage rolls, mana points, and anything pertaining to combat.
 
Now on the subject of bean counting, I can't help much...

I just went through an exercise of helping my Cold Iron players distribute the armor and weapons they looted from goblins onto their horses to keep them from being over encumbered. This actually is a first for Cold Iron, I don't think back in college we actually paid too much attention to the encumbrance of treasure, but with my Google Sheets character sheets, tallying the encumbrance is simple and then it automatically updates the characters for the effects of encumbrance. All pretty clever and very bean countery...
 
I'm not sure Voros Voros is online at present, but I think I can help you out.
This is what I think he is referring to from Into The Odd 2E:
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:thumbsup:
With a highest attribute of 9 and 1HP you get a sword, a pistol, modern armor and you can sense unearthly beings.
With a highest attribute of 18 and 6HP you get a mace, a pigeon and are disfigured.

Holy shit, I laughed so hard I almost coughed up a lung.
 
The problem isn’t the bean counting in any RPG, the problem is the bean counter who cries about everything and is always comparing character sheets. That person will find a way to take a dump in the middle of any ruleset you use.
I would suggest that the problem is going into a game without discussing ahead of time "don't worry about the rules of building the characters, just do what's cool" and doing that anyway. In a game where every + counts for capability, don't fault the guy for saying "I didn't know we didn't have to follow the rules". You know, the effect of someone playing Hero System, and just deciding to start with an extra 50 points over standard campaign level. Will it destroy the game? Probably not from a game-effect standpoint, but it sure can from player goodwill.

That's why I said the big fault in here is coming in without setting expectations first.
 
I would suggest that the problem is going into a game without discussing ahead of time "don't worry about the rules of building the characters, just do what's cool" and doing that anyway. In a game where every + counts for capability, don't fault the guy for saying "I didn't know we didn't have to follow the rules". You know, the effect of someone playing Hero System, and just deciding to start with an extra 50 points over standard campaign level. Will it destroy the game? Probably not from a game-effect standpoint, but it sure can from player goodwill.

That's why I said the big fault in here is coming in without setting expectations first.
The first expectation is “don’t be that guy who obsesses over everyone else’s charsheet looking for ways in which you’re getting screwed over or aren’t the best”.

GM knows Player A for 30 years, Player A and B know each other for 25 years. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and take a wild guess that Mr. Waaahh I don’t have Full Plate at 1st level has done this kind of thing before.

It’s the GM’s fault. He should have told the jackass to have a nice cold bottle of mind your own damn business.
 
The first expectation is “don’t be that guy who obsesses over everyone else’s charsheet looking for ways in which you’re getting screwed over or aren’t the best”.

GM knows Player A for 30 years, Player A and B know each other for 25 years. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and take a wild guess that Mr. Waaahh I don’t have Full Plate at 1st level has done this kind of thing before.

It’s the GM’s fault. He should have told the jackass to have a nice cold bottle of mind your own damn business.

The way you’ve phrased it makes it even worse on the OP. Which is worse, to be the guy who comes into a game expecting an even playing field? Or to be the guy who comes into a game and willingly violates the even playing field knowing your friend will be troubled by it.

You are partially right. It is the GMs fault. But it’s because he didn’t control it from the outset. Not because he didn’t tell a guy “just deal with it”.
 
OP has a legit beef. This isn't 1e D&D where first level players can start with full plate and it's not a big deal. Thanks to the more restrained numbers and bounded accuracy of 5e, Armor Class is a lot more powerful in 5e than in previous editions. A suit of plate costs 1500 G which, with typical treasure rewards, most players can't afford until level 5.
It’s the GM’s fault. He should have told the jackass to have a nice cold bottle of mind your own damn business.
Bro, it's not 1984 anymore and that Viking Hat DM shit no longer flies. I'd be fuckin' pissed if I joined a combat-focused game where the DM handed out a large combat advantage to another player at character creation and said "mind your own business" when asked for an explanation.
 
OP has a legit beef. This isn't 1e D&D where first level players can start with full plate and it's not a big deal. Thanks to the more restrained numbers and bounded accuracy of 5e, Armor Class is a lot more powerful in 5e than in previous editions. A suit of plate costs 1500 G which, with typical treasure rewards, most players can't afford until level 5.

Bro, it's not 1984 anymore and that Viking Hat DM shit no longer flies. I'd be fuckin' pissed if I joined a combat-focused game where the DM handed out a large combat advantage to another player at character creation and said "mind your own business" when asked for an explanation.

No one had Full Plate. The whiner was upset he didn’t have it at first level and then started checking other people’s characters for gear. The hyper-competitive Chargen Envy types generate a poisonous atmosphere at the table. A problem player is a problem player, it doesn’t matter if the other guy was also at fault. Two things can be true at the same time.

What you call having a Viking Hat, I call “playing with adults”. Don’t whine about chargen and don’t worry about someone else’s character. Someone doesn’t like that, they’re perfectly free to leave and run their own game, or find a GM that will let them give all their fellow players a chargen colonoscopy. It’s not happening at a game I run. Granted, someone’s not going to just help themselves to something they can’t afford either.

That’s why the fault ultimately rests with the GM.
 
The way you’ve phrased it makes it even worse on the OP. Which is worse, to be the guy who comes into a game expecting an even playing field? Or to be the guy who comes into a game and willingly violates the even playing field knowing your friend will be troubled by it.

You are partially right. It is the GMs fault. But it’s because he didn’t control it from the outset. Not because he didn’t tell a guy “just deal with it”.
I don’t care how wrong a player is, it’s not another player’s job to enforce the rules and fix things. It’s the GM’s job. If they don’t like how the GM is doing that job, fine, deal with it after the game. Game night is for playing, not being a Drama Queen. Just because you’re fouled doesn’t mean you won’t get a technical for being a jackass about it.
 
With a highest attribute of 9 and 1HP you get a sword, a pistol, modern armor and you can sense unearthly beings.
With a highest attribute of 18 and 6HP you get a mace, a pigeon and are disfigured.

Holy shit, I laughed so hard I almost coughed up a lung.
yeah that's certainly one way to balance out beginning characters, heh heh
 
For my part, I've a hard time seeing why granularity is bad when it comes to economics and resource management, but just dandy when it comes to hit points, armor classes, damage rolls, mana points, and anything pertaining to combat.
Well, on the one hand you have resources used occasioanlly and on the other you have resources and mechanics used very regularly. That's not a complicated division. Granularity is a personal taste thing of course, but its important to seperate what you like from what is useful more generally for other people with different tastes.
 
Well, on the one hand you have resources used occasioanlly and on the other you have resources and mechanics used very regularly. That's not a complicated division. Granularity is a personal taste thing of course, but its important to seperate what you like from what is useful more generally for other people with different tastes.
Why? Find people whose tastes suit yours, who cares what everyone else does (“everyone else” usually being self-validating code for “what I like”).
 
Why? Find people whose tastes suit yours, who cares what everyone else does (“everyone else” usually being self-validating code for “what I like”).
So we don't pretend that what we like is the only way to play was where I was going there. Obviously we should play the way we like.
 
Well, on the one hand you have resources used occasioanlly and on the other you have resources and mechanics used very regularly. That's not a complicated division. Granularity is a personal taste thing of course, but its important to seperate what you like from what is useful more generally for other people with different tastes.

And of course there are games who don't approach combat with that granularity.
 
I mean... if I found out the GM was letting one guy ignore starting gold limits when I had to adhere to them, I might feel a bit salty, too?

Playing favorites is one of the quickest ways to ruin a game. If a player really wanted to play a knight of some sort, complete with horse, armor, weapons, etc. I might allow it, but anything over the maximum starting amount should count against the character's experience points. That would be a fair trade-off.
 
Playing favorites is one of the quickest ways to ruin a game. If a player really wanted to play a knight of some sort, complete with horse, armor, weapons, etc. I might allow it, but anything over the maximum starting amount should count against the character's experience points. That would be a fair trade-off.

There's a Knight (variant Noble) background in the 5e PHB. I'd let them take a combat-trained horse instead of one of their (AIR) three retainers. You still start with chainmail though. :hehe:
 
That seems fair enough. Starting money isn't that much of an issue in my campaign since I allow each player to start with either a 2nd level PC, two 1st level PCs or a 1st level character and either two men-at-arms or three torch bearers. Starting money is doubled. I also allow each PC 5 re-rolls that can be used at any time.
 
Wait there is your problem ... :p
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TOR uses a Treasure level which indicates your treasure and your lifestyle. It never asks if you have pennies for beer. It does inform you whether you can have a horse.

That level of abstraction works well for me. Zero interest in counting how many electrum pieces I have (and the last time I played D&D5e, I remember remarking how Fng expensive a beer was in Homlet. Figured that the number of gold enriched adventurers in the place had artificially driven the prices through the roof so we, 1st levels with no treasure, almost starved.
 
That level of abstraction works well for me. Zero interest in counting how many electrum pieces I have (and the last time I played D&D5e, I remember remarking how Fng expensive a beer was in Homlet. Figured that the number of gold enriched adventurers in the place had artificially driven the prices through the roof so we, 1st levels with no treasure, almost starved.

Well, that´s the price for being an adventuring tourist.
 
Well, on the one hand you have resources used occasioanlly and on the other you have resources and mechanics used very regularly. That's not a complicated division. Granularity is a personal taste thing of course, but its important to seperate what you like from what is useful more generally for other people with different tastes.

I think it's based considerably more on "Combat! Is! Important!" than on frequency of use, which you must admit varies dramatically from group to group. It is, after all, the same paradigm that has people snarling about social mechanics rules totaling four paragraphs in the middle of rulebooks with forty pages of combat rules, snarling about the "waste of space" devoted to skills and spells with no apparent applicability to adventuring, and provokes bewildered forum posts of "... but how does this houserule (element, change, proposal) help a party fight off the lich-king?" about fifty times as often as "... but how does this houserule help a party navigate the intricacies of Venetian drawing room politicking?"
 
I think it's based considerably more on "Combat! Is! Important!" than on frequency of use, which you must admit varies dramatically from group to group. It is, after all, the same paradigm that has people snarling about social mechanics rules totaling four paragraphs in the middle of rulebooks with forty pages of combat rules, snarling about the "waste of space" devoted to skills and spells with no apparent applicability to adventuring, and provokes bewildered forum posts of "... but how does this houserule (element, change, proposal) help a party fight off the lich-king?" about fifty times as often as "... but how does this houserule help a party navigate the intricacies of Venetian drawing room politicking?"
First off, I wouldn't disagree that combat is over-emphasized, mechanically speaking, in some systems. That said, the idea of fighting the liche king or the equivalent is also a far more common core element of play in RPGs generally than is the Venetian drawing room, which by itself mitigates for additional mechanical treatment. Beyond that there is also the fact that social play generally, in terms of RPG design, has been something that has historically been handled by a notion something like let them roleplay it coupled with basic adjudication mechanics. The extent to which you or I are happy with that reality is a side note.

My point was that game play elements that get used more often are also likely to have more granular mechanical systems designed in aid of adjudicating them. It might also help us here if you were a little more specific about what you mean by 'resource management'. I took that to mean things to do with money more specifically, but perhaps you also mean things like counting arrows and torches, I'm not sure (and you might be indexing something else entirely). Even then, I think vanishingly few games need mechanical granularity on the order of your average combat system to manage any of that.
 
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TOR uses a Treasure level which indicates your treasure and your lifestyle. It never asks if you have pennies for beer. It does inform you whether you can have a horse.

That level of abstraction works well for me. Zero interest in counting how many electrum pieces I have (and the last time I played D&D5e, I remember remarking how Fng expensive a beer was in Homlet. Figured that the number of gold enriched adventurers in the place had artificially driven the prices through the roof so we, 1st levels with no treasure, almost starved.
This pretty much matches my interest level. However, some people I'm sure are quite interested in counting their horde, and I have no problem with a system design that allows for that. The usefulness of wealth levels becomes obvious when you think about modern or sci-fi games where the amount of wealth, possibly even possessed by a starting character, can be on the order of millionaire or some such. At that point being able to count your individual dollars makes almost no sense, nor does tracking individual purchases below a certain point.
 
For my part, I've a hard time seeing why granularity is bad when it comes to economics and resource management, but just dandy when it comes to hit points, armor classes, damage rolls, mana points, and anything pertaining to combat.
I think why it's always bothered me is because it's both the last part of character creation and the least essential.

I've always been of a mind, "Ok I've gone through and spent all my points and managed to get a character that sort of represents what I want in a kind of compromised way...what I now have to work out my starting wealth and spend a whole other set of points? Can't we just get started now?"
 
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I think why it's always bothered me is because it's both the last part of character creation and the least essential.

I've always been of a mind, "Ok I've gone through and spent all my points and managed to get a character that sort of represents what I want in a kind of compromised way...what I now have to work out my starting wealth and spend a whole other set of points? Can't we just get started now?"

It's the "least essential" only to those who don't give a damn about it. Which of course does encompass many gamers, and I likewise concede that gamers are frequently socialized to consider such elements boring at best ... that is, for anything other than bean-counting their arms and armor.
 
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