Not having enough supplies (torches, rope, food, sacks) is a great way to send players back to town and learn the difficult lesson of the re-populating dungeon upon leaving. Then there is the lesson of limited encumbrance upon leaving with treasure. Many are the coils of rope, extra torches, even extra food left in the bowels of the dungeon in order to carry more treasure out. That is a part of the game.

My character brings everything. He has a mule and a cart full of rope, lamp oil, a ladder, spikes and mallet, a few stakes, food, etc. Always realizes he forgot something once he's inside though.

Man, you got me thinking toward the end: "A dog sled... that is so thematic! But why would adventurers take dogs instead of horses? Oh, that's right. At really high latitudes, there won't be a lot of plant life, much less edible plant life. You might be standing on a glacier over a mile thick. The only food around is going to be animals." I had considered diets and how they might impact an adventure, but I had never thought about the fact that certain biomes might be nearly impossible for some as diets compared to others. And I certainly hadn't considered how diet effects pack animals. Lots to think about.

It's funny you mentioned the mirror for looking around corners as I used a woman's compact I got from one of our cooks to do that very thing when I deployed to Iraq. Good to look under doors too. Definitely a piece of equipment that every adveturer should keep on them!

I have a kinda-gear related story. In an old 3.5 game I was running, one of my players had too much gear and loot to carry, but he had (what I thought at the time anyway) was a clever solution. He bought a barrel from the local town and buried his extra gear. Then he took his loot and traveled to Baluder's Gate to buy a mithral chair shirt because it weighs way less than his regular iron chain shirt. Then went back and collected his buried stuff.

Carcass Crawler Issue #3 had a great expanded gear list for B/X and OSE

Love the topic ! A couple of points: - I always liked outfitting my character, it was part of the fun of generating a character - not much of a fan of real time, but I love using timers to speed things up if necessary - the thief always gotta bring a crowbar! - LOL the 10’ pole - love using guard animals Good discussion!

I highly prefer to run and play 5e, but videos like these are exactly what i like about OSR/system-agnostic channels like yours. you can talk about creative, thought-provoking, immersive ways to play rather than the minutia of the mechanics.

I don't have any cool examples of gear that come to mind, but I will say that this supports resource management ideas, too. I find that the coolest ideas come from players when they are out of the obvious or powerful stuff and they're stuck trying to MacGyver their way out of some death trap using whatever random gear is left over.

I have been running a Shadowdark game and it took me a session or two to get use to the real time torches mechanic. But I can actually say that I love it now. It really does ramp up the feeling of danger. YMMV of course. Let us know what you and your group think about it after you try it out. This is a fun topic. Clever use of gear has always scratched my simulationist itch. My friends use to always call me "Bag Man" because I always had my characters buy extra sacks, because you never know when they will come in handy, especially at low level.

In a recent 5e session, I made good use of my character’s equipment that I think surprised my GM. We were confronted with a magical glyph on the floor of a dungeon tunnel that would blast us with fire if we tried to pass. To get past it, I placed my shield over the glyph to block the fire and stepped over it. Later on, we encountered 2 more glyphs on both walls of the tunnel. Similarly, I suggested dual-wielding my shield and the paladin’s shield to protect against both glyphs, thinking they would also blast fire. They instead summoned ghostly hands that clawed at us, but the shield idea still worked for the most part. My character was unfortunately struck by the hands which paralyzed him for 10 minutes. Having lost all of our rope earlier in the dungeon, my allies improvised and used my character’s whip as a rope to drag him along as they continued down the tunnel 😆

I hadn't thought about the quantum gear thing in the manner you mentioned, but it makes complete sense. It's analogous to removing agency from the player, in a way. Meaning, they really don't have to make decisions which is about the same as not being able to make them. It really takes the "game" out of gaming.

In our playtest group, they knew they were going into Ed's massive undermountain & they were headed to a gate to a hidden valley and I must have told them 6x, "Do you all have EVERYTHING you need?" NONE OF THEM said, "a tent". & everyone of them had a bag of holding. 🙄 So on the way to the yawning portal they wound up buying this tent spun from Rothe hair that cost them 200gp. 😂

As a player, I always made a list of standard gear (rope, food, spikes, tinder, what-have-you), but I would also include something a little weird/different (e.g. a pot of wax). Never really with an intended use (although there were ideas), but simply because it would be awesome if it were ever needed. I wish I had thought of guard dogs.

My first encounter with "quantum equipment" was Stars Without Number's precognition psionic class. It had a feature where you could say that at some point earlier that day you had a premonition that you needed a particular piece of gear and so had stashed it in your gear, assuming you had space for it. Very neat way of making it work in-world.

I have been running B/X & AD&D for decades and I whole heartedly support the use of Gear as a primary game element. It allows the DM to include variant gear that opens up so many game play options that feel awesome to the players, it gives them abilities that are not strictly class and race associated. Torches that burn longer or brighter, lamp oil that burns slower, rope that is lighter, spring loaded grapnels, bear traps, snare kits, pole saws, alchemical torches with warding scents for certain pests or vermin, aniseed, and so much more. I think that creating a game that allows the players the option to "pick what they can do", by having them choose what they bring with them is so much more immersive for the player. Cheers, Great Video

The Real time mechanic is only applied to certain effects and items and is left up to the DM to adjudicate when things apply to it. Most spells in Shadowdark last for a number of rounds.

One of my players always had a divining rod to find water with. Smart guy!

Knave has a good list for rolling random items to start with. Shadowdark just tracks light sources in real time not normal spells.

I love encumbrance and adventuring gear broadly. Torches, pouches, rope, all that stuff. Love it. This is adventuring to me.

Totally agree - equipment choice & managing your supplies is an essential part of the game. Choices have consequences.

One of my players put a glue like substance that he harvested from a mimic in his ears, so he wouldnt be charmed by harpies. His character was deaf for the whole session! 😂 A great moment that gets brought up regularly in our group.

How many hexes did you cover in your walk in the woods? Any random encounters?

i've been running Shadowdark games and recently did one at a convention for 4 wonderful strangers. My players seem to really enjoy that torches last realtime. They're eager to volunteer and time the torches on their phones. Also, my players really like the tension when torches are running low during combat or when they do burnout mid combat. Since Shadowdark characters dont have dark vision but monsters do, ive been giving disadvantage & advantage, respectively, to Attacks in absolute darkness. It adds tension and immersion to combat when they're fighting giant spiders and the lights go out and their characters have to fumble in the darkness to light another torch on their Initiative I also had a player get trapped in a sinkhole while the other had to contend with a random encounter. And you guessed it - her torch was burning out. She had to let go of the rope the other was using to climb out of the sinkhole so she could relight another torch and fight off the monster It's low key resource management but it can add quite a bit of narrative

Odd ends like a bell or twine is always useful. Just because something isn't spelled out on the equipment list doesn't mean you can't get it. Sometimes PCs run around with a bucket, a trumpet, a comb etc. Sometimes we have mounted trade expeditions where the bums try to figure out what some faction lacks and try to make exactly the right bribe they need. Sometimes it is food, sometimes it's steel tools. Some morlocks traded them treasure in exchange for a few modern lighters and a pistol.

Whenever a player or group thinks outside of the box, or mcgyvers something to achieve the goal, I reward them for their creative thinking. Extra XP, usually.

We just played Shadowdark for the first time. Our GM purchased an 8" tall real hour glass that he triumphantly placed on the table when we lit our first torch. Very cool. While I don't love the real time mechanic, there is something dramatic about watching the sands of time on your torch run out, which they tend to do at the most inopportune times like in a battle or crossing the underground river. An issue is when the torch goes out before the hour ends. A real hour glass takes x minutes to reset. The answer was cell phone timers. Game on.

With this sort of decision-making also comes choices in how to extend how much you can carry along. PCs can hire porters. A level 0 labourer agrees to, for danger pay, carry stuff for them and do menial chores like hold a lantern on a stick. It increases the number of mouths to feed during the expedition, and it can make the group easier to spot. Mules sometimes venture into dungeons in some rules. Mules don't need a wage, can carry a reasonable amount of stuff but might react more unpredictably to weird dungeon events. A mule can't be told "We are going to use a spell, nothing alarming" or "Step only on the white blocks". They can set up a base camp closer to the dungeon entrance so their staging area with much more stuff is more easily available. If they need a length of rope and an anvil they can walk back up to the base camp instead of making a trip back to town. They can even set up depos of stuff inside the dungeon, if they are clever and can hide/fortify positions.

I've always been a fan of " getting there is half the fun", but finding a group who'll agree is a bit rare these days.

We had a list of standard gear for Pathfinder that always included ways to handle high level threats to low level characters. Beekeeping suit for swarms, treated goggles to avoid gaze attacks. Along with locked gauntlets, rope, javelins, alchemical items to breathe underwater for a time, and a potion of cure light wounds. In game buying this set of gear was a requisite to joining the mercenary company, it was basically the cost to buy in shares for the party.

Backpack were not invented until much much later in the gun ages. They might have had something like a Market Wallet - lookup 17th century Market Wallet. Then there is the sailors snap sack - which grew into Navy Duffel Bag. The Harvesters Basket and Roman Bed Roll with Cloak Bag is what the foot soldier carry.

10' pole has left the chat.

Public games or as you said "one shots" can make good use of "supply slots". Shopping can eat up a lot of game time when that time is a precious commodity.

What an awesome path of light. That effort and thought was probably better and more fulfilling than a battle.

Daniel. Good Sir, you always do such an amazing job. I’ve been playing for what will not be 50 years and GM/DMing 48 years, and I just love your videos. Thank you, sir, for all you for the hobby.

Our Five Torches Deep group is really digging the Supply system in that game! It's not exactly quantum, since you can't use Supply to create suff you didn't pack, but you can replenish those that you did. So they don't have to worry about how many torches, rations and potions they bring, they do have to note that they take them though. And in the dungeon they have to decide if they let the torches run out or not, because if they burn through too much Supply for one purpose, they might regret it. And there's a limit - each character can only have as much supply on them as their Intelligence score, and expensive equipment is refreshed at a higher Supply cost. That, combined with the scarce inventory space of the game, make things less burdensome than classic equipment but still challenging and presenting interesting choices & opportunities.

Shadowdark's real-time mechanics are super fun. I was opposed at first, but it kept the adrenaline up the whole night. Excellent.

I actually like the idea of common items found in the dungeon. Works out great.

I was testing a game I am making, and I had my wife play it. She had 4 PCs to herself, and a guy to escort to a small island in the middle of a lake. I put a dock, and a old rickety boat that was totally gonna sink as soon as it hit water. (I had no solution for this, just a problem. Figure it out player.) Well she completely ignored the boat, probably forgot it was there, and she had her axe character chop trees, and six hours later the five of them build a raft. Was cool. I learned some stuff about GMing. (I'm not the bestest, but it's going.)

Excellent topic with a bunch of great examples. All of those things really draw the players into the game and make a great atmosphere to play in.

Back in the day my third level MU learned Fireball throught ude of a wand. Original rulesrt DD. Fired off the fifth use snd a very close set room, like 20 by 10 feet. The wand survived...

"Neoclassical geek revival" has Schroedinger characters: the players can choose equipment and abilities as they play. Their characters just happen to be the perfect heroes for their first adventure. Then, when they run out of points, they need to spend gold to buy more equipment or get experience experience for more abilities.

Keep a consistent track of time is a challenge for many. Having an assistant DM in charge of time-keeping and other resources usage can really add a lot to a game. In 5e, players cast "pass without a trace" in OSR players find an overgrown drainage ditch

With light sources like candles, torches and lamps, I set a guarantied buring durration and add a random overtime to it. the pitch, cloth, wood and wax used for torches are natural and of variable quality. Same goes for the lamp oil and candles. They are not industrially produced of homogenised quality across production batches. A torch is rated in the book for 30 minutes, so I make it guarantied 20 minutes and then increasingly difficult roll on D20, starting at DC1, every 10 turns/every 1 minute. Water and food are similar. The party going through excessive hardship will cause them to use up more rations per day, especially the characters of lower strength. If it's extremely hot, the party needs to drink more regularely and use up their water quicker. I always loved the resource management aspect of dungeon crawling. I hate the concept of "You have a component pouch, don't worry about what spell components you have". Make sure, you actually have the required quantities of the neccessary components for your spells, or you can't cast them. The component pouch merely allows you to cast the spell within the time allotment the book states, because you have organised your components for easy access. Got all the components but no component pouch? Then it will take 1d10 turns to dig out the required components out fo your satchel or backpack. Got a component pouch but run out of the component? Tough, can't cast that spell. And the components don't automatically regenerate after a long rest. Buy them, gather them, steal them, harvest them, whatever, but they are not granted for free.

I've been considering making quantum equipment a class feature resource for my thief-equivalent class. They get to stock up on one "quantum slot" every time they return to safe haven.

Some "meta" can be attributed to character knowledge. Use a torch long enough and you'll know or can guess close enough. In my opinion.😊

I’ve heard that real time torches is shadowdark is designed to keep players moving instead of taking forever to discuss and argue. Putting the real time timers into the rule book makes sure everyone knows why and how debate at the table might cause issues for the characters. Sure, a good DM would, in effect, remind the players when they’re dilly dallying, but not everyone is as experienced as you are, so having it in the rules so that the players know the consequences of their actions can be useful.

As a player I fashioned a leather mask (taken from thieves) with mica lens (found in a magic users abode) combined and used them sunglasses. In my player characters case to protect eyes around fire/heat/ash (in a volcanic area). Misc. junk players pick up can be combined and be use full. That bucket of lard can be fashioned into the form of a small creature to be offered as a bribe to a nearsighted dragon.

Dungeon World RPG has a Quantum Gear mechanic for backpacks, each has five uses. It's good for fast character creation and players that don't enjoy the bean-counting aspect.

"Rope! I knew we'd need it if we didn't have it, Mr. Frodo!"

Ad&d 2ed, had a player that always carried club, dagger, sling, rope, chalk, etc. Her gear was always around twelve to fifteen pounds, but was constantly asking, in detail, to use the items in innovative ways. Need a pick? Dagger tied to club. Need a grappling hook? Club and three daggers. Can't throw the rope high enough? Tie string around a sling stone and throw it, letting the string play and use it like an arborist does a rope weight.

These videos always get me thinking. Great job as always. I’m not sure I like quantum gear in DnD, but I’ve seen it used well in other systems. I particularly like one from 2d20 Conan- one of my players was a master thief, and he had an item that could either boost certain skill checks, or 3 times per adventure, he could expend a use to have a particular item from a list of thieves tools- many of which were single use. It was fun to lean into the story aspects of it- he would explain that one of his contacts tipped him off that he might need the item, or maybe he had done some scouting or bribery to get the intel. It would always add to the story and make his character look very cunning. I think that the limited uses combined with the limited list of objects from the kit made the difference. In dnd it might be fun to play out the scouting and planning for a heist or tomb raid, but in pulpy game where you want to stick to the action and fast pace in the style of the original Conan stories, this was a neat way to add new npcs and expand the game world.

Great video! Thanks Daniel. Many a DM & player would benefit from your wisdom!

argument in favor of "real time" spell durations: just as you said for gear selection, it's a meta skill. If a spell lasts 10 irl "meta" minutes, the party is rewarded for playing well and not wasting meta minutes. it incentivizes players to get good instead of being indecisive. it's also a mechanical power increase for being a well-learned adventurer, like meta experience points.

I'm a gear guy and I have always enjoyed equipping my characters. And I always take into account how strong my character is when I equip them. I play thieves and having certain things can give them the edge they need. Caltrops for pursuit, flour for invisible creatures, a small bag of sand to toss in the eyes. We had a high level campaign and we needed to explore our new Domains. To do it we would have to travel the rivers but not with boats. To do it we would have to use kayaks because they were portable when we needed to cross land. So first thing was to learn kayaking. Then equipment we would need that would fit in a kayak. They made me write up a list, cuz like I said, I'm the equipment guy. Next was the characters. I had to tell everyone to gear down on the heavy stuff. The fighters weren't happy having to leave their heavy armor behind but a kayak can only carry so much and plate mail will make you sink if the kayak tips over. That was a fun bit of adventuring, especially when we found a Dragons lair. With fighters in leather armor instead of their+5 plate mail 😂. Then we had to figure out how to haul away all that treasure 😮 . Not an easy task even using magic.

Love the videos Dan! I really appreciate the simple and clean way you approach games.

Black hack uses a real-time encounter die. The effect on the group is that they'd spend more time acting and less time planning. Made for a more frantic, action heavy game rather than a slow, methodical one. Same with usage dice vs static uses on consumables. The party had to make calculated risks and rush rather than relying on perfect information. Having 24 torches is reliable. Having Ud12 torches is scary.

Real time timers sound to me like they would often be unfair

Thanks for the video! I found your insights helpful 👍

Shopkeepers in the TTRPGss I've played often sell grab bags of standard adventuring gear (the GM/DM adds up the cost and weight of a few standard containers, a knife, a pole, a rope, etc.) and still sell the parts separately, because some of it's going to get lost, broken, or expended.

Gear is so so so important for creating organic stories while adventuring. Even just having extra burlap sacks, lengths of chain, etc have all come heavily into play on very creative ways in the campaign I'm running currently. Even a mallet has ended up being useful when the party mule cart ended up with a broken wheel due to some bad terrain.

Really thought provoking and well thought out video.

Great takes, different from what we usually hear over there, and I agree

I said it once and I say it again 😃 love your content, your voice and you calm attitude ❤

i am currently desining an indie rpg system, and this video inspired me to come up with the rules for inventory in my system, i decided to be simple, each player can carry up to 10 different items (items that are worn, such as armor, or the very container the items are stored do not count), some small items can stack in multiples in a single slot, like 3 potions, or 20 arrows, i still have to figure out the penalty for carring too much, but either way, i like everything you make! :)

Reminds me of this one time I decided to buy blacksmith's bellows randomly at character creation. I used them to scatter the smoke from a smoke trap in the dungeon.

Whenever my players begin an adventure, I have each character choose one of the pre-selected adventuring gear packs that you find in Modules B3, and B4 (Ye Olde Fastpack). It saves time and frankly there is some useful stuff in those packs!

Love this channel so much, so happy I discovered you; instant subscribe! c:

Great video Daniel!

This has always been my philosophy of equipment and this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone else mention it. I’m designing a very low magic survival OSR game around the idea of having little access to equipment (being an escaped prisoner for instance) and your players deeply coveting things they find like blocks of cheese, rusty knives, and clean clothing. The players make decisions less like a world of Warcraft character and more like they would if put in the same situation…with conflicts involving boars, street urchins, or God forbid, bears, being incredibly dire and likely avoided. I LOVE this type of gameplay.

In my DnD 3.5 campaign, I had it the other way around. The party was enslaved and after a few month, they were 'rescued' by Roc's (module "Eye of the Serpent") into their nest high in the mountains. They had to find their way down with only their cloths on in harsh environment. Every monster they killed became a source for warm cloth, equipment, weapons, food etc. When they escaped the mountains they could not enter towns bacause they had their slave marks. It was, or still is, weeks of outdoor hex crawl. The older players in my group loved it, the younger hated it. Guess RPG has changed a lot since the I started playing in the 1980s.

Shadowdark RPG: Light spell, torch, and the lantern all have the option for one hour real time. In game time the duration is counted by rounds. A round (RAW) is everyone taking their turn clockwise around the table. I believe each round is equal to ten minutes.

I'm also not a fan of usage dice and loading dice. D&D is primarily a game of resource management. Equipment, Vancian magic, expendable magic items and HP are all slowly worn down until the party has to go back home. Or maybe they push their luck. But too much randomization reduces the degree to which that is an informed decision.

Excellent video, sir. 😎

Great stuff as always.

Gear is the coolest! I always your appreciate your perspective on these key rpg aspects.

Don’t know who told you that, but Shadowdark only uses real time for torch burn time, not spells, except for the Light spell because it mimics a torch.

Great stuff! I am in 100% agreement on all points.

Damn I love Your videos. Have a nice day Daniel!

I assume like most groups, when I started playing I was more interested in the weapons etc than the 10' poles but you soon learn. We started wanting tools like crowbars and entrenching tools which the DM decided makes sense as its basically a small shovel. Marbles were handy, especially with a light/continual light cast on them and wooden tubes for swimming underwater like a basic snorkel. We also started wanting things like machetes which led to having large knives and small knives as 'things' in the game instead of just a dagger. Someone came up with a simple doorstop as any easy carry to wedge a door shut behind us (rather than hammering in an iron spike) too. I don't think we were allowed ghillie suits though, pity.

I remember that gear website!!!😮 We used it bitd. Marbles Bag of salt A sock filled with sand String from a lute *grt as a garotte!* Perfume Soot A bag of lead, thrown into fireball spell has nasty effect!

That ghost encounter sounds cool!

This is an example of allowing the players to play the game and form the adventure instead of just forcing them to walk through something you've written.

Great stuff as usual! I've always wanted to run a game with resource management and creativity being an important aspect. When setting the tone of my new campaign for a group of mostly new players, I described it as a mix of Oregon Trail, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings. Although LotR is mostly for the fantasy elements and not really the grand story and mostly linear plot. I'm happy so far with what I'm seeing. We're just starting to get rolling, but they're having some good discussions as they prepare for the task at hand. We're still in town, but I'm keen to see how they handle the travel and dungeoneering to come.

1. I tell my players that encumbrance limits are actually a hidden skill slot mechanic and that what your character brings with them is like character building but with more versatility and less mechanical rigidity. 2. I don't like loaded dice either, I don't mind the dice-chain usage die because on average the items last about the same without the book keeping. However, I have found that I prefer to use a cheap, folding cribbage board to track turns, rounds, etc as the numbers are listed in sets of 5 and this reminds me of the turn duration of torches, the 6th turn needing to be a resting turn, etc.

The only time I’ve used real time for something was when I ran a haunted house one shot. Every 10 minutes real time there was some effect that occurred. I put the timer on the table and once the players caught on to what was happening they began to dread the clock counting down. It worked great.

I had a scroll tube with large marbles in it and continual light cast on each of the marbles. If I needed light a head I would open the tube grab a marble and roll it down the hallway or drop it down the well to see how deep it or the water below it was

Real time light source is great and man does it ramp up stress. We've had light sources going out in combat. Believe players pay attention to light sources now and their gear. They also don't dally around as much when it comes to make decisions. TIME is LIGHT.

In an old west campaign one character had 500 dollars worth of counterfeit money that he used

I do kind of like quantum gear, at least in certain games like Blades in the Dark, which as a whole is pretty geared (pun not intended) toward a sort of post-prep kind of gameplay. One thing I've grown really fond of, though, is games that give you random stuff out the gate, not necessarily *just* that (so sometimes you still pick your main adventuring gear, the other stuff just comes as a bonus), but it comes as a kind of "ok, now what do I do with this?" item. The brass bell is an example of an item somebody might get granted by the dice gods that, at first, I might think "well this is probably just going to collect dust on my equipment sheet" but after some thought, could be combined with some string to make a makeshift alarm system, could be traded with goblins or kobolds because shiny thing, could be used as an established secret signal between party members, etc. The choice of equipment is at least partially taken away (or at least what additional equipment you get beyond your chosen gear), but it in turn forces a choice of what to do with it. You got this tube full of glue, now see what you can come up with to do with it. 10 feet of chain, why would you pick that over 50 feet of rope? Probably wouldn't, but now you can start thinking up benefits to it being chain, like it doesn't catch on fire, now that might be relevant. Basically those sort of bonus trinket, odds-and-ends kind of items that you have on you because of your background or that you otherwise just picked up, before you decided to start adventuring and picked up your bespoke Adventuring Gear.

Only having run a couple sessions of Shadowdark so far, I like the real-time light mechanic, but not universally more than in-game time for torches. It’s nice because it creates a sense of urgency for the players to make snappy decisions that can sometimes lead to zany or deadly outcomes. That being said, you or your group might not like that and would rather make careful plans-for us, it made things seem more immersive. Also, things outside of dungeon crawling don’t use the real-time mechanic (at least that’s not how I’ve played), so the days-passing-in-minutes problem hasn’t come up for us. Loved the video!

As you mentioned about item list on a site, try starting a free doc list that someone can curate for any item in mind. Maybe make a key number for each setting and currency.

In my game Chanbara, the Ninja subclass has a quantum gear special ability. I did this for two reasons. One, ninjas (like boy scouts) always should come prepared, even if the player wasn't. Two, if the ninja gets captured or searched, they can use to to have somehow hidden the item that they produce. In general, though, I agree that quantum gear rules aren't as fun as preparing for your adventure. This is especially true for that 1st adventure, when you may not have enough starting gold to buy everything you'd like to buy. I'm also not a big fan of systems like The Black Hack that have a usage die. I'd rather know how long my items will last, or how many times I can use my bow/spell/laser gun.

Great channel

Dungeon crawling with equipment and inventory management exploration with 10" poles to trigger traps, using mirrors and marbles is what I think is produces the old school feel for me. I still like to equip my characters with string, chalk, marbles, stones, sticks and encourage gameplay where creative problem solving with mundane items is common. I encourage base camps and systemic dungeoncrawling like it is an archaeological dig, with swords. Where parties have picks, tools, ropes, pullies, mules, dogs, and henchmen to maintsin camp when the party is wealthy enough. Dungeons shouldn't be easy to explore for the casual treasure hunters. No commoner woukd be foolish enough to try to make some coin by a quick dip to a local dungeon . At higher levels when characters can mitigate a lot of hardship by magically producing food, water, lighting, and shelter then i can scale back on the physical hard natures of dungeons .

With torches and a few other items, I tend to go a more middle route. The rules I use state that a torch is supposed to last 30 minutes. In my games however, an average quality torch lasts 25 minutes + 1d10 minutes. The players don't know the result of the 1d10 roll, but I do telegraph a few rounds in advance that the torch is starting to burn out.

So I just wrote (like two weeks ago) on my blog about the question of whether or not inventory management matters. I'm not actually sold either way for games like DnD, though for games like Knave inventory management is the name of the game. My main points against it are that: shopping is generally boring, it feels awful when you forget something important, and that lots of stuff on the equipment list is weird and hard to intuit a good use for. Managing encumbrance is also fairly annoying in my opinion. That said, some people will argue that managing encumbrance is important for torches, as torches are a "time limit" for how long you can adventure, but I've always found that a bit odd. We already have a "time limit", it's called hit points. The main point for equipment is using it for cool problem solving. Frankly, I'm not sure this outweighs the cons, though I did really like your idea of unique equipment on lists. That's the kind of stuff that could get me interested in adventuring equipment.

My favorite subject

Preparing/choosing what gear you bring with you only matters if you enforce some kind of encumbrance in my opinion. Gold is typically so attenable that otherwise, the pcs can just carry the entire general store with them all the time.

I think this is a great discussion, I think trite gear choices are not great demonstrations of player skill - I learned about ten foot poles on my first L dungeon crawl and now I always take them for the last 30 years does not strike me as genius player skill. On the other hand the chalk and mirror tricks you describe really do seem skilful - possibly because they are things not learned on day one. I also think preparation is an under appreciate part of the game. I assist my players in planning and shopping for a desert or arctic crossing and it makes the actual crossing more fun (builds anticipation) and solves the “gotcha” problem. The players happily take credit for having the equipment on hand that I told them to take!!