'Real Life' Table/House Rules

[svensson]

So, as usual, another comment has segued into another topic starter.

I'm a US Army veteran, military historian, and historical reenactor and this has led me to impose certain reality-based house rules on players in every single one of my games, fantasy or sci-fi.

Here are a few of them for fantasy games like RQG:

- Encumbrance counts. We can do this one of two ways, I can make you account for every quarter-ENC and apply all sorts of fatigue and movement penalties or you can respect the load you're character is carrying, I give you some wiggle room, and you don't argue over weight /fatigue issues. Your choice.

- Don't treat your mount like a pick up truck. You can't just throw stuff on the back of your war zebra and then expect it to charge into battle like some Knight Templar. Mounts are living things and take at least as much care as you do. They need rest, proper food, good water, etc. etc. etc. And hiring a stable boy to follow you along and take care of your beasts isn't going to cover it either. War mounts bond with their rider and YOU have to train your mount to YOUR commands. You need to expect to have personal involvement in this.

- Most preserved traveling food in the age before canned goods actually didn't save you a lot of weight. Most travel foods were either dried [hard tack biscuit] or salted [salted meats]. The weight savings are made up by the need to nearly double your water consumption in order to rehydrate the food to an edible form or to digest the food without gastric consequences. You should plan on carrying a minimum of 2 quarts /liters of water with you, at roughly 4 lbs./2 kg. Where you save on such food is that your food isn't rancid and is less likely to give you food-borne illnesses.

Then I pull out some of my old SCA [medieval] gear and acquaint people used to wearing cheap cotton and artificial fabrics with natural linens, wools, and duck canvas. I let them heft a sword and see a cuiboulli helm I made and kept. I let them see how bulky a double layered woolen full-circle cloak [suitable for use as a blanket] is. I also pull out some of my US Civil War stuff and show them 'campaign-quality' wool blankets, a shelter half of the period and what hard tack biscuit and salt bacon looks like.

This REALLY brings a lot of the 'murder hobos' back down to Earth. They realize just how much a sword in a scabbard gets in the way and how bulky a back pack that's just a loose bag with shoulder straps on it is.

Do you guys have real-world experiences you bring to your tables? I'm curious to see what you do and what you think of all this.

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by svensson

[Kloster]

3 hours ago, svensson said:

Do you guys have real-world experiences you bring to your tables? I'm curious to see what you do and what you think of all this.

After 12 years of quite high level fencing (with modern foils and swords):

- A combat takes a lot of energy and attention. You can not keep fighting continuously for very long, or your capability to continue avoid hits is considerably lowered. A fencing fight is rarely above 15 seconds, and after 2 or 3 passes, you sweat.

- A sword, even a modern one, has a weight that can not be counted as nil. A 1 meter thin metal rod brings rapidly your wrist too low to be usable.

- A helmet with face covering reduces your vision, so don't complain if you don't see everything you expect to see. Same for hearing if not a modern one.

[Akhôrahil]

Via Matt Easton: Some things, like polearms and bows, you can really only carry in your hands when travelling. And you only have two of them. Barring a horse, pack animal or servant, you likely can’t carry both a long spear and a bow.

[svensson]

59 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Via Matt Easton: Some things, like polearms and bows, you can really only carry in your hands when travelling. And you only have two of them. Barring a horse, pack animal or servant, you likely can’t carry both a long spear and a bow.

Well, at least not ready to use.

There are quite a few medieval illustrations of troops carrying carefully wrapped bows and quivers of arrows on their backs during a march, but it's gonna take a a few minutes to get them ready for a fight.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

For a while my character went out of the way to take extra care of her Goldeneye.  But the GM didn't really notice.  Or, he did, but decided not to "punish" the other PCs who were leaving it more to stable hands.  It's a tough call how realistic you want to be, as opposed to MGF.

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

For a while my character went out of the way to take extra care of her Goldeneye.  But the GM didn't really notice.  Or, he did, but decided not to "punish" the other PCs who were leaving it more to stable hands.  It's a tough call how realistic you want to be, as opposed to MGF.

Fair point, but If I were the ref, your Goldeneye would have shown a remarkable loyalty and stability in danger.... just as a way of subtly encouraging the other players to treat their mounts better.

I don't know... maybe I just played a Rhino Rider too long 🤣 Stupid fire-hairs in Sartar don't know anything about proper beasts!

[Rodney Dangerduck]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

don't know... maybe I just played a Rhino Rider too long 🤣 Stupid fire-hairs in Sartar don't know anything about proper beasts!

"Sehzade" and I raced several of the Praxian beasts, and bested them all, though the Sables are a tough match.  One of our PCs is very proud of his War Bison.

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

Food, foraging and cooking. 

Stopping for 2 hs, setting down, even for a short rest means gathering wood, setting a fire and looking for what's available around. Maybe you are lucky and can come up with a stew. Maybe you only have that elvish/danish rye bread everyone hates.

If you have animals, they need to be fed too. 

Staying alive is busy work. 

[svensson]

1 hour ago, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Food, foraging and cooking. 

Stopping for 2 hs, setting down, even for a short rest means gathering wood, setting a fire and looking for what's available around. Maybe you are lucky and can come up with a stew. Maybe you only have that elvish/danish rye bread everyone hates.

If you have animals, they need to be fed too. 

Staying alive is busy work. 

In the US Civil War, troops would form 'messes', comrades who agreed to share camp chores. Once the order was given to set camp, a couple of guys would get the canvas up, a couple guys would go looking for wood for fires and bedding, another would start breaking down the rations, one or two would get told off for company level fatigues [digging latrines, guard duty, whatever].

Here's a picture of a ration issue I did with my Civil War company back in 2017. This was a daily ration. It consisted of: 1.5 lbs salt bacon, 10 hard tack biscuit, a piece of fruit or a vegetable, a handful of green coffee beans, a handful of rice, and a chunk of sugar.

 

[Squaredeal Sten]

1 hour ago, svensson said:

In the US Civil War, troops would form 'messes', comrades who agreed to share camp chores. Once the order was given to set camp, a couple of guys would get the canvas up, a couple guys would go looking for wood for fires and bedding, another would start breaking down the rations, one or two would get told off for company level fatigues [digging latrines, guard duty, whatever].

Here's a picture of a ration issue I did with my Civil War company back in 2017. This was a daily ration. It consisted of: 1.5 lbs salt bacon, 10 hard tack biscuit, a piece of fruit or a vegetable, a handful of green coffee beans, a handful of rice, and a chunk of sugar.

 

That's very generous on the bacon.  They should gave gotten less for a day.  

But as for the RPG side of it I have my own  "There are no MREs or C rats" lecture.  It's rare for players to take it in to the extent if even including a small cooking vessel in their load on the character sheet.

Though I do that, it's rare for the routine eating and mount care to figure in the actual play.  

On the reenacting side the two most usual farby things I see are providing too little time in the events for the troops to cook, and officers calling for a faster rate of fire.  If you have done live fire. especially with live paper cartridges, you know that the authentic rate of fire is slower, not faster, than we achieve with no projectile and no ramming.

 

 

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by Squaredeal Sten
Last comments

[Kloster]

3 hours ago, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Food, foraging and cooking. 

Stopping for 2 hs, setting down, even for a short rest means gathering wood, setting a fire and looking for what's available around. Maybe you are lucky and can come up with a stew. Maybe you only have that elvish/danish rye bread everyone hates.

If you have animals, they need to be fed too. 

Staying alive is busy work. 

Yes. Especially for a large group of people (an army). Napoleon's army was the first one since centuries to move more than 5 km per day just because of this.

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

10 minutes ago, Kloster said:

5 km per day just

So about what you can get in an hour of trekking an easy forest path by yourself. 

[Squaredeal Sten]

2 hours ago, Kloster said:

Yes. Especially for a large group of people (an army). Napoleon's army was the first one since centuries to move more than 5 km per day just because of this.

Though i get your point, 5km per day is a very low estimate for daily march distance.  10-15 miles (16-24km) appear to have been achievable for several days before the armies would stop, rest, and forage.  A well organized foraging process would go on every day of the march, but a well financed army wouldn't do that much, instead holding markets - .with the understanding that if the locals didn't bring food to the market, the foragers would take it for nothing and maybe burn the villages too.

 

 

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling

[Ian Absentia]

19 hours ago, Kloster said:

- A helmet with face covering reduces your vision, so don't complain if you don't see everything you expect to see. Same for hearing if not a modern one.

After two decades of field work in all manner of weather, particularly while wearing a hood in the rain, I invoke significant penalties to perception skills for wearing enveloping headgear.  Especially for hearing and peripheral vision when wearing a hood.  A bull (or a bulldozer) could be charging at you and you wouldn't know.

!i!

[svensson]

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

That's very generous on the bacon.  They should gave gotten less for a day.  

But as for the RPG side of it I have my own  "There are no MREs or C rats" lecture.  It's rare for players to take it in to the extent if even including a small cooking vessel in their load on the character sheet.

Though I do that, it's rare for the routine eating and mount care to figure in the actual play.  

On the reenacting side the two most usual farby things I see are providing too little time in the events for the troops to cook, and officers calling for a faster rate of fire.  If you have done live fire. especially with live paper cartridges, you know that the authentic rate of fire is slower, not faster, than we achieve with no projectile and no ramming.

 

 

 

Federal regulations called for 1.5 lbs of preserved meat [salted, brined, or smoked] or 1 lbs of fresh meat per day, so when I do a ration day that's what I issue.

My company is careful to manage our rate of fire. We usually volley by rank and only give orders to quickly do things in the reloading phase. My CO is pretty good about that.

[svensson]

42 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

After two decades of field work in all manner of weather, particularly while wearing a hood in the rain, I invoke significant penalties to perception skills for wearing enveloping headgear.  Especially for hearing and peripheral vision when wearing a hood.  A bull (or a bulldozer) could be charging at you and you wouldn't know.

!i!

It's amazing just how much ambient noise rain on canvas or a nylon or Gore-tex hood will drown out, true enough. Wool not so much, but wool has a certain noise deadening quality that I can't accurately describe but have experienced.

PROTIP:

If you have heavy work to do in the rain, a wool half-hood is better than a cloak. Keeps you just about as warm, blocks the same amount of rain, and gets in the way a whole lot less.

[svensson]

3 hours ago, Kloster said:

Yes. Especially for a large group of people (an army). Napoleon's army was the first one since centuries to move more than 5 km per day just because of this.

Harold Godwinson was able move his army between Stamford Bridge and Hastings [about 250 miles] in 18 days, which is pretty good time considering he had no proper roads to speak of and absolutely zero march discipline. You lose a lot of men through desertion marching through home territory... a lot of your feudal levy just says 'bugger this' and goes home.

[Bill the barbarian]

20 minutes ago, svensson said:

Harold Godwinson was able move his army between Stamford Bridge and Hastings [about 250 miles] in 18 days,

Thought you might find this of interest.

https://medievalarchives.com/2020/09/25/recreating-the-1066-battle-march-from-stamford-bridge-to-hastings/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08v7p0v

Edited March 24, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Eff]

The Passion rules had to be largely junked after my player and I agreed that they made very little ontological sense as a conscious invocation. They also wanted to know why Rune values going above 80% meant regular episodes of mind control, so that's also still in negotiation. 

[Ian Absentia]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

It's amazing just how much ambient noise rain on canvas or a nylon or Gore-tex hood will drown out, true enough. Wool not so much, but wool has a certain noise deadening quality that I can't accurately describe but have experienced.

The real issue that I've experienced is the restricted directionality of vision and hearing.  It's straight forward, and everything else around you becomes a guess.  In any situation where you're concerned about being ambushed, blind-sided, or cold-cocked (or crushed by a track hoe), it's hoods-down or penalties-up.

!i!

Edited March 24, 2022 by Ian Absentia

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

The Passion rules had to be largely junked after my player and I agreed that they made very little ontological sense as a conscious invocation. They also wanted to know why Rune values going above 80% meant regular episodes of mind control, so that's also still in negotiation. 

Would you please spin this out into a thread of its own? (if you haven't already)  Because, much as I've appreciated Traits and Passions in both KAP and RQG as a meta-mechanic, they do strike me as self-fulfilling prophecies in play.

!i!

Edited March 24, 2022 by Ian Absentia
Turning a lemon into lemonade

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

The Passion rules had to be largely junked after my player and I agreed that they made very little ontological sense as a conscious invocation. They also wanted to know why Rune values going above 80% meant regular episodes of mind control, so that's also still in negotiation. 

I agree with @Ian Absentia. This does deserve it's own discussion.

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

The real issue that I've experienced is the restricted directionality of vision and hearing.  It's straight forward, and everything else around you becomes a guess.  In any situation where you're concerned about being ambushed, blind-sided, or cold-cocked (or crushed by a track hoe), it's hoods-down or penalties-up.

!i!

You certainly do loose the sonar effect of hearing with a hood up!

The US military [and IIRC the British Army] forbid hoods on jackets being up in combat zones in any weather less than an actual arctic blizzard. They MUCH prefer that you wear a knitted cap or a forehead wrap /headband under your helmet instead.

Makes you wonder how an Uz in a Full Helm copes with it and Darksense, since DS requires an active 'ping' return. I realize that Uz use their snouts as part of their Darksense reception, but if you cover up both receptors [ears and snout] and muffle the mouth, you're gonna logically gets some lousy return information.

Edited March 24, 2022 by svensson

[Kloster]

5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Though i get your point, 5km per day is a very low estimate for daily march distance.  10-15 miles (16-24km) appear to have been achievable for several days before the armies would stop, rest, and forage.  A well organized foraging process would go on every day of the march, but a well financed army wouldn't do that much, instead holding markets - .with the understanding that if the locals didn't bring food to the market, the foragers would take it for nothing and maybe burn the villages too.

In fact, it was quite high. Louis XIV's armies were moving around 4km per day on the average during campaigns (according to Vauban), including all those activities. Napoleon's armies were around 10 km per day on the average, and this was a all time high since the end of the roman empire (whose average was, iirc, around 30 km per day). That does not mean an army can not move faster, but that means that to go faster, you need to bring everything with you, and you need extra people just to take care for the extra work, or you need roman 20 years veterans that do everything themselves. I frankly have no idea of how fast macedonian or mycenian armies were moving strategically.

 

5 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

After two decades of field work in all manner of weather, particularly while wearing a hood in the rain, I invoke significant penalties to perception skills for wearing enveloping headgear.  Especially for hearing and peripheral vision when wearing a hood.  A bull (or a bulldozer) could be charging at you and you wouldn't know.

!i!

Agreed. This is in addition to the penalties I spoke about face covering (I never had a bull charging me during a fencing fight, although I completely missed a MBT during the night and wearing winter equipment around 50 meters from me when in the army).

[Kloster]

53 minutes ago, svensson said:

The US military [and IIRC the British Army] forbid hoods on jackets being up in combat zones in any weather less than an actual arctic blizzard. They MUCH prefer that you wear a knitted cap or a forehead wrap /headband under your helmet instead.

I've never seen a hood on any french military clothing, even if I was in mountain corps (but I never seen arctic equipment), but this was 30 years ago, so can't say anything for current equipment.