Why Do We Manage Resources?

04 Sep, 2024

Introduction

On the purple OSR Discord, a new member asked about some resources they could use to understand the thought process behind dungeon exploration and why it's done the way it is. Aside from some examples of play (Shoutout to Cairn and Ben Milton's Knave Example of Play) there isn't really a "why are we doing this" document that people can point to when folks ask that very question.

So I decided to write one.

The Dungeon Turn and Resource Management

Lots of OSR materials derived from the original books, like OSE and OSRIC, or even more modern stuff like Shadowdark and Worlds Without Number all pay lip service to the idea of keeping track of time and resources while in a dungeon. Very few explain the purpose behind doing so in any way more complex than "this is how you play the game". So let's explain not just how it's done, but why it's done in the OSR as well.

Resource Management. Just... Why?

One of the most common rules I see thrown out while talking to contemporary non-OSR Referees is tracking ammunition. "That just seems boring! Who wants to count ammunition?" While this is a valid concern, the goals of the OSR are benefitted by this attention to detail in a way that other play styles or play cultures aren't.

The "goal"¹ of the OSR play culture, overly simplified and with enough brevity to inspire probably dozens of angry Discord messages disagreeing with me, is to create a series of "interesting decisions" at the table as often as possible and with as much variance as possible. Interesting decisions are decisions which have meaningful and varied outcomes and multiple valid solutions.

"But Mr. Mann, how is tracking arrows related to making interesting decisions? Counting arrows doesn't offer meaningful or varied outcomes!"

You'd be right! It doesn't. But this resource management is instrumental (i.e. contributing to, a means to, or priming) interesting decisions down the line.

Imagine you're coming back from a dungeon delve with an empty quiver and a missing sword. You have 15 silver pieces in your pocket, the price of either one sword or five arrows. Do you buy the sword and risk being unable to return fire from faraway foes or buy the arrows and be vulnerable to melee ambush?

If we weren't counting or tracking ammunition, your quiver would always be full! So we lose an interesting decision at the table².

The OSR doesn't keep large spreadsheets full of arrows and torches because every OSR purist gets some sick satisfaction from counting but because this resource management can be incredibly important in creating interesting moments in play!

"Well that sounds lovely, Mr. Mann. I'm going to start tracking arrows now! Well, my players are, anyway!"

Good thing I don't have to keep track of arrows!

Well yes, because you probably have a lot more arrows to keep track of than your players do, but as an OSR referee the resource you should probably be tracking is simultaneously much harder to count and much more important to having a campaign full of meaningful decisions: time.

One of the important parts of "interesting decisions" is the outcome or result of that decision. One of the most obvious ways to gauge the outcome of a decision is to consider how long it's been since that decision was made. If you set a carpet on fire, the outcome of the decision will change as time passes. A few sec onds after? You could probably salvage the carpet. A few days after? It is unlikely you could even salvage the house it was in.

In this way, player decisions inside a dungeon can have much more realized and meaningful outcomes when time is tracked than when it isn't.

"Wow! That makes so much sense! But how exactly do we track time? That seems kinda hard."

Dungeon Turns

Dungeon Turns are the equivalent of Combat Rounds for exploration. They're used to delineate what happens in a coherent order and to systematize actions in a fictional space. You don't need to always track Dungeon Turns, just like you don't always need to track Combat Rounds or run initiative, but in their context they're immensely helpful.

Now, when you're trying to figure out how long torches last, you need only look down at your Dungeon Turn tracker and count how long it's been since the torch was lit. Torches tend to last about an hour in OSR games, so that's 6 dungeon turns. Suddenly, you can track torches like arrows!

When you're trying to figure out how many times you should roll for a Random Encounter, you need only look down at your Dungeon Turn tracker. A common chance is something like "1-in-6 chance of a random encounter, rolled every other turn." Suddenly, you can track random encounters like arrows!

Like counting arrows, players will naturally begin to understand that the system you're using to keep track of time is real and time is a resource that they spend when they perform certain actions. Suddenly, you're keeping track of time like arrows!

One of the key parts of a lot of expressions of OSR play is resource management, not for its own sake, but because of the interesting decisions it drives forward.