Dean wrote:The explanation for that is in the games premise: that there are adventurers. The premise that there are adventurers is the historically anachronistic assumption that there are individual people so badass you hire them instead of 100 dudes with spears.
Take it from the opposite perspective:
If adventurers are so badass you hire them to do Herculean tasks that no one else can do, then why waste them on mundane tasks that can be handled by 100 guys with spears? That's why armies had supply caravans. The best soldiers aren't assigned to the supply caravans. The best soldiers are instead up front with the army.
Yes, the supply train can't fight very well if it encounters raiders (whether magical ones in fantasy, or mundane ones in real life) but that's why the supply train is never too far off from the army. So the army can always protect the supply train from a real threat.
Point is, the caravan's there to be a convenience - a point that adventurers can always return to in between fights to access the rest of their stash. Sure, there may be situations where the caravan is bailed out of trouble, and where the party might march a few days away from the caravan (and therefore be unable to access their stash at this time); but its existence allows the adventurers to focus mainly on their on-person gear instead of tabulating their entire stashes all the time.
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Also - I don't want to leave on a note where I just discuss forum drama, so let me leave with this actual piece of useful design advice:
A designer's job is to ask who the players are, and what do they want.
Yes, it's sounds simple. But most designers actually forget this and start chasing after whatever new "cool" idea that comes into their head. That's indeed why the professional designer I got this advice from shared it as his basically number one rule.
A good design isn't one that is jam-packed with every idea you can think of.
A good design is one where every element
adds to fulfilling the core question - "Who is your player, and what do they want"?
And in RPGs, most players will answer that question with "I am an Adventurer, who wants to gain adoration, fame, and fortune by killing some evil monster".
Indeed, the best games and RPGs are the ones that are able to narrow that down to something very specific and yet very appealing. Pendragon for instance basically answer the core question with "I am a knight of the round table, and I want to remain true to my vows no matter the cost", and the majority of its unique mechanics are attuned to furthering this core.
If logistics and accounting doesn't help with furthering that core idea, then maybe don't focus too much on it or even ignore it entirely.
By contrast, if the game is about "I am an
explorer and I wish to gain fame, adoration, and glory, by uncovering these unknown lands", then yeah definitely add something like a hex-based mini game exploration thing.
But that's also why asking that simple question - and being very definite about your answer - is so important. It's very easy to fit new things into a generic term like "adventurer" and end up not having a very clear theme or game. It's actually a bit of work to narrow down what you really want out of the game.