Introducing OSR Resource Management

Part of the game instead of half measures or mechanical changes

New players to the OSR stumble over resource management even more frequently than lethality (perhaps less often than player mapping.) Resource management can feel like paperwork and when running for players with no OSR experience, it can be tempting reduce the bookkeeping burden and focus on other aspects of player skill.

Illustration: Ready to Delve - Alexander Rask

Immersion

The most common way DMs handle resource management for players who balk at inventory tracking is to simply ignore it. Players can write down whatever they want on the sheet (sometimes guided by the directive: “within reason.”) More ambitious DMs might enforce inventory but allow players to add items with a “flashback” when needed. Alternatively starting inventory may be strict but anything found in the dungeon is just thrown into a virtual pile to be dealt with later. These method provide advantages and reduce friction during play, but immersion suffers.

I have mostly run games for a tight knit group of people who grew up in the 90s. The action-adventure and fantasy movies, novels, television, and art of the 70s and 80s form the matrix of our ideas of adventure. The 90s impulse to ground fantasy in reality is what carves our ideas from that matrix and gives them final form. Playing a super hero or demigod is far less engaging to my cohort than playing a character close enough to our own reality that we can ground ourselves in the experience. For this play style, immersion is not roleplaying the slice of life for an adventurer or creating improvisation of interpersonal drama: it is the ability to engage with the game as an interactive experience. We take on the roles not to act out a character, but to enjoy the adventure.

Experience backpacking, travelling, and road tripping have made us relate to our characters as those brave fools pack rope, hooks, rations, water, and weapons. Running low on those supplies is the type of mundane danger that acts as a foil to enhance the fantastical dangers of dragons and magic. Having the right tool for the job is a victory we have all experienced ourselves.

Reintroduction

Reducing resource management is particularly tempting to do with new players or with experienced players new to the OSR style of play. There is a significant problem with this, however; it becomes problematic to reintroduce it later on. If the players are used to not tracking inventory or being able to amend it on the fly, taking that ease away will underscore the bookkeeping and feel like the DM is introducing needless difficulty and friction into the game for very little reward. A better solution is to create a situation that eases the burden of resource management but teaches the players the techniques to do it themselves and gives them an incentive to take on more and more of the task as play progresses.

In recent years, I have run games for more new players and players that are returning to the hobby after decades away. I needed not just an introductory module to teach them the lessons of dungeon crawling, I needed a narrative framework that allowed me to introduce resource management, time pressure, emergent storytelling, and lethality not as burdens to play, but as immersive elements they can identify with.

I made the characters part on an expedition.

Patronage

The expedition is led by a minor noble that finds himself at the limit of his ability to raise his station. To advance at court he needs additional wealth and some amount of glory. To that end he has invested nearly his entire fortune in an expedition to a recently rediscovered dungeon, tomb, labyrinth, or ruin. He has hired brave and desperate adventures to delve into the nightmare darkness in search of gold, glory, and ancient magic.

The patron is highly motivated for the venture succeed. If it fails, he is ruined. He will use any lever he can to keep the players delving, but he is not a tyrant and will provide the best support he can to ensure their victory. He should not be set up as a villain. If anything, he should be the type of ambitious leader that can be respected. It may require a healthy measure of positive traits to overcome the fact that the characters are his employees and that they only receive a portion of the treasure for which they risk their lives.

The party receives full XP value for the treasure they bring outside of the dungeon, but 80% of the total haul must be paid to the patron. This include magic items, though such items can be kept “on credit” and paid for from future returned gold, silver, gems, and art. This is intentionally a bitter pill to swallow.

Basecamp

How did the patron sink his entire fortune into such a venture? In order to support the delvers and attempt to monopolize the dungeon, a stockade was constructed directly at the dungeon entrance. This walls of earth and timber surround the camp and a study blockhouse built holds the treasury, hospital, armory, and the patron himself.

This camp provides most of the benefits of returning to town. Treasure returned to the camp awards experience. The walls are guarded and supplies laid in. Characters can convalesce or engage in other downtime activities like scribing scrolls. With “town” just a few steps outside the dungeon, forgetting needed supplies is not so punishing, and common equipment can be quickly secured.

The patron provides common equipment without charge, eliminating tedium caused by undecisive new players thrust into a shopping scene. Specialized equipment can be ordered and may even be paid for by the patron if the characters have a specific plan for it. The staff provide even more benefits.

Support Staff

The patron has a large staff on payroll to support the delve. These NPCs provide services, but they can also provide context and advice to the player characters. The DM can teach lessons about the logistics and tactics of dungeon delving in a narrative way. This can be in the form of off-handed comments, direct advice, or even specific missions within the dungeon given by the patron.

MERCENARIES secure the basecamp and may include light artillery in the form of ballista or cannon. From the mercenaries the players can learn:

• The basecamp is vulnerable to attack and needs to be defended

• Heavy weapons and massed formations can allow lower skilled fighters to defend themselves against dangerous monsters but neither can be effectively used inside of the dungeon

• Even grim professional mercenaries are generally unwilling to go into the dungeon; the player characters are a different breed of brave or desperate

The camp QUARTERMASTER and BLACKSMITH can provide adventuring supplies and repair services. If your system include equipment durability, the blacksmith can repair weapons and armor.

• Rope, rations, water, pitons, chalk, poles, pry bars, backpacks, sacks, and similar items are available in reasonable quantities. People around camp may suggest taking things the character do not have in their inventory

• The players will quickly discover the use of mundane adventuring equipment if they only need a few turns to secure something instead of a day or two travelling to town

• With supplies assured, players will be more likely to leave hardware in place and experience the advantage of being able to set a route through difficult areas with pitons, rope, chains, spikes, and timber.

The patron has also hired a low level HEALER who may also have a very limited supply of potions and scrolls to remove poison, disease, curse, and level drain.

• A ready healer reduces the lethality of the dungeon, but players will know they don’t have the same resources when they strike out on their own

• The DM can more safely telegraph the danger of poison, disease, and other lethal conditions early in the campaign without outright killing a character just to prove the hazard

• The low level healer can help with recovery but does not provide enough healing to allow the party to regularly skip rests

The camp MAGE considers himself more of a partner than an employee.

• The mage can identify magical items but the cost savings are offset by the debt the characters take on by keeping the items

• If the dungeon has secrets to reveal that require the players to engage with the lore, the mage can focus that attention by giving them tasks to return rubbings or statuary from below

• If players are already engaging with the lore but don’t have the proficiency in the language of the dungeon builders, the mage can provide translation

• Setting lore and history can be slipped organically into discussions with the mage

The players can recruit HIRELINGS from the pool of camp workers. A handful of torchbearers and porters are eager for the pay, at least at first.

• Torchbearers and porters are readily available, but in a limited quality. Some may be solid, but others are desperate for gold and cowardly

• If the party burns through too many hirelings fewer will be available and those that still volunteer will be increasingly unreliable

• Most hirelings will not participate in combat and some might betray the party if they think they can disappear with a few hundred gold in treasure

There are RETAINERS available at the camp as well: fellow crazed individuals willing to fight and die in the dungeon. Encourage the players to make a second or even third character to act as auxiliary kept on payroll by the patron.

• The auxiliary character will perform tasks in the background like ferry supplies to forward caches in the dungeon, escort resupply trips to and from town, and help defend against attacks on the camp

• If a particularly dramatic event occurs at camp, the DM might consider a one-session side quest focusing on the auxiliary

• Character death may still happen even with the support of the basecamp but replacement characters will not appear out of thin air; they have been fixtures of the camp from the start

Time Pressure and Consequences

The basecamp can save a lot of time for the player characters, but that should act as a foil to teach the players about the time pressures of dungeon delving. The patron established camp at the primary entrance to the dungeon, but the DM should have the dungeon include multiple entrances, some sealed secrets and some used by monsters that lair inside the dungeon. As word gets out, bandits, monsters, and rival adventurers will begin to scour the area for entrances to the dungeon. Bandits will attempt to seize supplies, and monsters may attack the stockade directly. Once rivals begin to break into the dungeon, the convenience of the basecamp will allow the party to limit the damage from that competition.

The DM can decide if rival access to the dungeon should occur at a set time or in response to player action. The rivals may also not prove successful in their own delve. Their attempts may release dangerous monsters, drive a nest of creatures into aggressive action, or result only in the players coming across the rival party’s bodies deeper in the dungeon. Most frighteningly for the players, the presence of rivals in the dungeon may leave some rooms empty of treasure.

The same dangers can result from the players themselves. Opening alternative exits may allow monsters from the dungeon to escape. The players may escape from a powerful foe only to discover it emerged on the surface and attacked the basecamp. A one-session diversion could be played as the lower level auxiliaries and the camp mercenaries attempt to drive off the threat. Alternatively, the consequences may only be revealed the next time the party emerges from the dungeon.

Conclusions

The basecamp start allows new and returning players to ease into resource management. The DM can introduce aspects of adventure logistics that the players have not considered through the in-world narratives of the NPCs. The amount the party must pay the patron encourages them to strike out on their own once the expedition is complete. The exposure to the resources and infrastructure of the basecamp will inform how the players plan for their own expeditions. Rather than feeling like difficulty is being added when the training wheels come off, the players are given a choice to stay with the patron or plan their own logistical support. They may think they can do it better, or at least more efficiently.

The basecamp can also be an interesting experience for veteran players and might inspire a future alternative starts that play with the idea. A party made of ambitious young nobles may start with part of a basecamp funded by their starting gold. A party of desperate rats from the slums may start with inadequate equipment and require a great deal of improvisation and thinking outside the box.

The players will hopefully see their characters as part of a living world grounded in reality and breaking into the fantastical rather than as game-pieces placed at the starting square of a battle map.