4 Ways To Track Resources Without Slowing Down Your Game

Resource tracking has come up twice in my orbit recently, so I thought I’d share a couple thoughts on how to reduce tracking friction on encumbrance, spell slots, and other meters and pools.

Case in point, Roleplaying Tips GM @jcauseyfd asks on the Discord:

Has anyone run across any good systems/mechanics for DnD (5e) to include some survival component but don’t involve a whole lot of bookkeeping?

The only thing I’m really familiar with is some of the stuff from Tomb of Annihilation and none of the players (myself included) enjoyed all the tracking needed.

We typically hand wave a lot of stuff to do with rations, camping supplies, etc., but I’m getting some interest in having this be an aspect for our next campaign.

Several helpful GMs responded to the 5E survival question. Today, I want to talk about bookkeeping and cover three main resource tracking ideas:

  • What You’re Tracking
  • How to Contain Your Tracking
  • When to Sneak in Your Tracking

What Are You Tracking?

To overthink this in typical Johnn fashion, let’s first noodle on the fiddly bits we aim to track.

I put them into these buckets:

  • Meters
  • Slots
  • Timers
  • Push Your Luck

Meters count in linear fashion up or down. Hit points, gold pieces, experience. All the things being tracked are the same. This is a stacking job. Sometimes I call meters pools.

Slots have counts too, but things are heterogeneous. It matters when or where you place or remove things from slots. Equipment, spells, attunements. This is a prioritization (when) or sorting (where) job.

Timers operate on in-game and real world time constraints. Torch time, session length, seasons. While time is a meter, one of its key dynamics is the tension between different types of in-game actions. Crawl time, bullet time, downtime. Timers represent pressure and reward prioritization, planned pathing/sequence, and efficiency choices.

Push Your Luck or elastic band meters I sometimes think of them as, are cumulative effects where each next level represents higher risk and reward. Play again to double your money or lose it all, spend another 10 minutes searching the alcove for a secret door, drop all defense and go for extra damage. Inevitably, luck runs out. This tracker offers a series of exquisite binary choices.

I think it helps first understanding what we’re trying to measure. That helps us with the next step:

Choose Your Container

1. Meters

The total count in meters matters. Therefore, the container’s primary job is to visualize the current total. Simple, physical counters work best:

  • Dice
  • Abacus
  • Whiteboard
  • Cribbage Board
  • Pencil and paper
  • Dish with beads, marbles, meeples
  • Knitting Row Counter or Sports Counter

2. Slots

We need to visualize the space, sequence it, or both. We’re playing Tetris and/or First In First Out friction.

I find physical tracking with objects representing inventory best:

  • Coloured Dice
  • Whiteboard With Template
  • Magnetic Board And Magnets
  • Dishes With Coloured Beads

3. Timers

There are four main kinds of timers:

  • Alarm: A clock or meter best represented in public in dramatic countdown fashion. Fuse burning, second wave arriving, death saves. Great for clarions and fiercely red blinking lights warning about low fuel, arrows, or remaining air.
  • Chess Clock: Where fastest matters when things are happening in parallel. Chases, capture the flag missions, toilet paper shortage. You’ll want one clock per resource being tracked.
  • Stop Watch: When length matters. When counting up to measure a toll matters more than counting down to a bang. Radiation exposure, time spent in one dungeon location, session pacing.
  • Calendar: In-game time and mechanics-driven time. Birthdays, cold season, crafting.

A simple tally system works here. Timers are interesting in that they can be actual clocks with seconds, minutes, and hours, or simple and abstract units like pencil marks on an index card.

4. Push Your Luck

Would you risk it all for huge reward? That’s what motivates wounded combatants to stick around, casters to meet a charge with their best spell, and the decision whether to stay or head back to town with the loot you’ve got.

We need memory for this type of tracking because each step forward becomes riskier.

I suggest a Sessions Since Character Death: 0 notice on the wall behind you, haha.

A great way to dramatically visualize luck is by rolling in public and grabbing a new die each roll, creating an ever-bigger pile on the table as notice that a bad roll’s more likely than ever, now. “You guys in or out?” followed by your best chicken impression. Bkaw!

When to Track

Something we don’t want from resource tracking is annoying game interruptions.

When choosing the best container for tracking a scarce resource, we want to think a bit on what jobs the container needs to do. Does it need to display total time spent, build drama, make calculating rolls faster? The answers should help a lot in choosing.

However, I feel this is more a matter of picking the best time to update or manipulate containers than whether to do it or not.

For example, if a GM stops using encumbrance because it constantly interrupted game flow, I would suggest keeping the mechanic and deliberately choosing tracking moments so as to not break immersion or stop flow.

Approaches I take include:

  • Track When It Matters: I don’t ask for encumbrance tallies until I know the party’s getting weighted down and it starts to matter. Also, parties usually get weighted down after the action’s stopped and it’s treasure time, so I’ll ask for updates on totals during breaks between encounters.
  • Use Public, Physical Trackers: Easy drama this way without costing you any extra energy. For extra drams, use trackers that get attention, like a bead dish you can shake or giant d20s you increment and decrement.
  • Ask Players To Track: Takes the load off us. Works great in combination with public trackers.
  • Perform Random Audits: In low-trust groups, pick your moments and ask players to sync tallies with yours. Only tally when you want to do an audit.

I Hope This Tracks Well For You

We got into the weeds a bit today, but I hope the last section there tied things together.

I believe friction for many tracking jobs can be reduced. Rather than toss out mechanics that seem high friction, see if you can reduce the friction first. Often, those mechanics supply fantastic in-game constraints that generate interesting choices for players.

To decide how best to track a resource, consider what its main job is and then understand each container’s strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, ask players to help and use public trackers as default to spread the pain around, haha.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning my web app, Campaign Logger. It has several features that make resource tracking easy:

  • Log Entries: Create quick tracker update entries. “Day +1”, “Foe 1: 35”, or “Torches: 6”.
  • Shared Log Entries: You edit shared Log Entries and players refresh the stream to see current progress or count.
  • Labels: For longer term trackers like power levels and common “scan” type references like number of charges left.
  • Combat Tracker: Times, rounds, and turns.
  • Tags: Use the Date & Time (%) Tag to track calendars, events, and game-time. Put counts in Tag names temporarily for faster reference.
  • Markup: Use strike throughs, lists with current rank bolded, tables, and simple text tricks in Log Entries and Pages for easy clocks and counters.

Get Campaign Logger here.

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!

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