Light the Way! An Alternative to Tracking Torches
Image sourced from Ave Nox Pick a book off your shelf of P/OSR games, slam it on your desk and flip through the first few pages. Chances are within those first 5-10 pages you’ll find some reference to tracking torch duration, wether it’s one extinguished every 6 turns, a random roll on a six-sided die every turn, or every 60 real life minutes. Since the days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons managing light in the form of torches has been the centre of a resource management cycle in certain play-cultures of fantasy adventure gaming. In particular the OSR has become synonymous with tracking torches. Games like Draw Steel even define themselves by contrast as “not a game where you track torches”. And somewhat surprisingly, neither is any version of Dungeons and Dragons. While torches appear on equipment lists it’s as a part of standard packages of equipment. DnD, if it cares about encumbrance, only cares about weapons, armour and treasure, it does not expect you to account for carry...