Hi, I’m currently at the beginning sessions of a seafaring pirate campaign. As I often do when I start a new big-world setting, I feel like implementing “SUPPLY” would be cool. But in practice I have never made it work, and it usually gets forgotten and we just go, “eh, nevermind that stuff let’s just play.”
Do you use SUPPLY your games? If so, how do you keep it easy to track and also fun to worry about rather than frustrating?
Thanks!
There have been a few discussions on SUPPLY. I like this thread Hearts and effort for supply because I think one of the guys there had a cool idea 
net/net counting supplies sucks
SUPPLY is a restraint that you impose on your players to control how far they can move on the world map. I use it when I feel like such a restraint would add to the game. If you do not feel like it adds anything to your game, it’s absolutely fine to discard it.
With the disclaimer out of the way…
Your frustration with SUPPLY might come from one of two things: your players are not doing their part or you have yet to untangle the mess that is SUPPLY in ICRPG. It is a misunderstood mechanic and I’ll get into it a bit later.
While your job is to adjudicate the actions of your brave/foolish/greedy/heroic adventurers, you cannot track everything. That’s why players record things on their character sheet. It should be up to them to be aware of how much supply they can buy and have before taking the decision to go on trip.
You could be a bit more strict with them about this or you could shift the responsability over to you if you feel able to do it. Pool their resources and substract them as time passes, you will learn to remember it in time.
Tracking resources doesn’t need to be fun to facilitate the generation of fun events during your game. Dilemmas can arise from your players finding a promising ruin but argue about going in or continuing their trip to save up SUPPLIES.
Tallying SUPPLIES might not be fun in itself, but it doesn’t need to be complicated either to be useful. I think that there is the issue of untangling how SUPPLY works exactly and how it might cause some unnecessary headaches to DMs.
To my knowledge, ICRPG 2E never really mentions SUPPLY as a mechanic. It’s present on one of the character sheet but does not seem to be important until the WORLDS book. At that point, I think that the whole community had been exposed to the fact that ICRPG mechanics are malleable. Relative to the setting in which they are used. As such, I think that it’s logical to assume that people have misunderstood “four people per SUPPLY” introduced in Ghost Mountain. Besides, it would seem weird for Runehammer to introduce fractions in ICRPG. 
The original idea seems to be obvious: spend X amount of SUPPLY per day of travel, according to the region your character is going through. SUPPLIES seem to be a mix of food, water, antiseptics, and bandages. There was the issue of how much SUPPLY a character could hold in this thread but I think that the answer should be fit the spot that SUPPLY occupy on the character sheet: it is a score (a stat) and as such should not rise beyond ten.
Speaking of my personnal approach to SUPPLY: I allow players to spend one during a fight to heal 1D6. Since there does not seem to be an exhaustion table in ICRPG, I either use the one from D&D 5E for inspiration or make my own depending on the setting. Otherwise how can you tell when a character is about to starve?
At the end of this post, I’m going to shill my own Supply Heart rule if you want to check it out.
If you have other questions about SUPPLY or want to discuss further, I’d be happy to brainstorm more with you! In the meantime, roll fun! o7
I have tried to implement supply in a couple of my games but it ended up being forgotten and then dropped. I’ve come to realize that for me it’s just not fun to keep track of those things during a game. I know some folks may like the granular bookkeeping that supply provides and if that is fun for them that’s fantastic. However, for me supply feels more like a board game thing rather than a role playing thing.
I like the idea of using Supply as another means to heal. It is a neat way to make Supply matter instead of just hand waving it (as I assume most do). It also can make Healing more “realistic” as you don’t just sleep and get better, you have to eat, apply dressings and salves. This now creates more drama, “Well you have 2 Supply left and two days to reach the castle, but Yergan is at 3 HP and really needs some meds…”.
I like the notion that it’s only necessary as a measure to restrict players and keep them from “fast traveling” across a map without cost.
Just the phrase “SUPPLY HEART” says volumes to me even without reading any more, and I know I could do something like rolling a D4 of “supply drain” or a D6 if it’s rough territory. Or rather, flat numbers like 1 supply/day and 2 supply/day. Minus that from their “heart”. It just makes sense to me.
But will I implement this? Possibly. But I’m also concerned about how frustrating playing while exhausted would be (if all rolls are hard for example).
I’d run SUPPLY like it was items or loot that were purchased previously but not actually decided upon until the use case. SO when you leave town with 3 SUPPLY you dont have to do all of your shopping in town and decide how much of what to bring. it sums up all that bookeeping into one number.
So SUPPLY becomes whatever the narrative needs it to be. whether its fuel for your spaceship, rations for the trail, firewood to keep away the encroaching ice, doesn’t matter. I know in Worlds > Ghost Mountain it mentions that 1 SUPPLY can equal 6 bullets. Narratively the players will consume some type of resource that forces their decision making to weigh options, like pushing deeper into the dungeon or returning to re-SUPPLY. Turn a SUPPLY into a healing potion now to not have food for tomorrow? Trade your new LOOT to the locals in exchange for more SUPPLY? Go back for more SUPPLY or rescue the princess tonight?
How you use SUPPLY in game should depend on your narrative goals and the types of player trade-off decisions you want them to face. If managing scarcity doesn’t fit your genre or playstyle or table, then scrap it.
Yeah it can be a meta-decision on what the “supply” manifests itself as, like a Schrodinger’s Cat situation haha. I ran into that when playing Ghost Mountain. Is it bullets or Supply? You decide. Weird, but easy to play at least.
But then we ended up just ignoring the food part and just used it for bullets anyways. I seldom run games wide and long enough to warrant supply.