Barf Forth Apocalyptica

powered by the apocalypse => Dungeon World => Topic started by: miedvied on September 19, 2016, 07:18:30 PM

Title: Rations question
Post by: miedvied on September 19, 2016, 07:18:30 PM
Forgive me if this has been answered before: google didn't help, and the search function brought up mostly "inspirations."

I've been asked to MC a DW game for the first time. Stupidly, I agreed, so I've been reviewing the rules. The ration rules are giving me pause, though, and I was hoping some might help clarify.

Salient points:
- Undertake a Perilous Journey suggests a journey costs 1 ration/day
- Human Hunter starting move states the character doesn't have to consume a ration when making camp (in context X), suggesting rations are 1/character/day
-Make Camp consumes a ration, and again, its phrasing suggests 1/character/day
-Quartermaster skill, on 10+, reduces number of rations required by 1. On a 7-9, normal ration consumption.

Things I'd like to clarify:
1) It's not explicitly stated, but it seems to me that the ration cost of Perilous Journey and the ration cost of Make Camp are the same cost; you make camp each night, and you measure your journey as 1ration/day. That is, this is a cost of 1/day, not 1/day of travel + 1/night of camping.

2) Again, I can't find the explicit statement, but it seems to me the cost is 1 ration / day / character. A five day journey with a party of 3 ought to consume 15 rations. Right?

3) If I understand the above two, it seems like the quartermaster skill check is a bit odd.

A 10+ on trailblazer, if it saves even a day, will save a number of rations equal to the number of members in the party. If it saves more than that, it grows in multiples. Likewise, a miss would be measured in large proportions of total ration cost. Scout 10+ can take a huge amount of sting out of an encounter; a miss can really hurt. QM, on the other hand, on a miss can theoretically be crippling, and on a 10+ seems to have essentially no value over a 7-9 (e.g., a party of four traveling for a week, on a 10+, saves 1 ration off of 28; by comparison, a trailblazer 10+ saving even one day of travel would save 4 rations).

That is, trailblazer and scout each have a "holy shit," "status quo," and "nice!" category, depending on the roll. QM seems to only have "holy shit" and "status quo".  It just doesn't quite seem to fit the magnitude of the other two roles, at least assuming I've understood the ration counts correctly, and the QM move correctly.

Any guidance?
Title: Re: Rations question
Post by: gaptooth on September 27, 2016, 10:01:25 PM
I always took it to mean that the Quartermaster can reduce the number of rations required by one per ration eater. This follows naturally from the reading that journeys are measured in 1 ration per day, for each ration eater.