Don't forget the rule: common sense trumps rules.

Seems more applicable to me as a vague kind of thing: There's guns in the locker, but someone may have misplaced the key, or Bob ordered the wrong kind of ammo last week and the box might be in the mailroom somewhere, or someone took all the springs out to be cleaned, and there around here somewhere...

I'm not planning a long campaign, and probably won't use the stronghold and resources rules, but this (above) is how I'd do it.

jh

I get that common sense trumps rules, but I'm unsure of how to correlate bringing home resource with getting new gear from your stronghold. In Tri-city, for example, you can raid Cy's truck to get heavy pistol ammo added to your stronghold resource catalog. How? If you raided his truck, you obviously brought back all the ammo there, or else there was so much you couldn't get it all and you'd have to go back for it. And if you brought it all back, why couldn't you use it all right away?

And even if it is vague and the key is misplaced, how does me coming back with bags of food from the uncle piggy's help someone find the key? And more importantly, where does that resource from the store go when we find the key/get the guns? Again, I can't shake the mental image of the heroes returning from a raid carrying their heavy bags, setting them down and being informed that the key to the armory was finally found. They open the bags and... suddenly everything inside is gone the moment the armory door was opened.

I am getting the impression that you are interpreting Tri-County as there is only one resource catalog for the 'tri county precinct' and that it grows as you continue to do missions outside of it. If so, that isnt' really the case.

How I handle the resource catalog is simple what 'could' be at a location during a search roll, aka what players would notice if they were to search for something useful (hammers at a tool store, guns in a gun store etc). If the roll isn't high enough, it either was already taken (in the case of Tri-county, as most of the SWAT team was mobilized before the characters arrived), or previously looted, as is the case of most stores.

Adding items into the resource catalog only really applies in the case of unlocking the weapons cabinet. In order to help 'start the game along' we allowed a certain amount of resources to be available to players at the start of their stronghold. So that maybe they could stand a chance.

In Outbreak: Undead, our intention behind 'cashing in' at your stronghold, is so that players aren't bickering in the middle of a battle about what they have grabbed (trust us, this was a big issue in beta testing). It made more sense to quantify a certain amount of 'resources' were taken, but if it wasn't specified what was taken after they decided what to 'buy', it all just became 'generic' instead (nails, tape, food, w/e).

In the case of Uncle Piggy's and Cy's, adding them to the resource catalog simply implies that whatever 'resources' you found from that mission can be used to 'buy' that ammo after you came back from that mission, but it could potentially have other things if thats what the player would rather use instead (Maybe the ammo is useless to them, maybe they want bludgeoning items instead). They can't go back to do another mission, and simply get more heavy ammo, just because they finished that mission. Getting into Cy's truck is essentially a small 'raid' mission.

Again in the Tri-county scenario as well too, having a default amount of resources (with a cap on certain high 'rarity' items, simply prevents it from everyone getting a shotgun at the start. We did want to put a limit on it so it felt like there was some terror, and not everyone is going to be 'armed to the teeth' despite being in a police station.

Going over the scenario, I can see where this can get confusing, it would simply be easier to make a separate resource catalogs for "Cy's Truck", as well as one for "Uncle Piggys", so they aren't getting mixed up in what was available at the 'initial start' of the campaign in Tri-County.

This was our premier demo, so its about 2 years old now, we've come up with a lot since then, It may be time to go revisit it.

Let me know if this makes sense, or if I just come off as rambling.
Or if you have anymore questions :)

I understand cashing in resources back at the stronghold, and it's there for a very good purpose (and have from the get-go. Very clever, might I say). The reason I'm confused about the Tri-country scenario in particular is the fact that it says in the burrito place "Can be looted to add Food to the Resource catalog at degradation (1)". And something similar with ammo at Cy's truck, while it says that the grocery store and tool store can be looted normally for food and tools respectively. I'm confused as to what the difference is. Is it just the fact that the burrito store's resources degrade, so on an unlucky roll the (let's say) 5 resource they find there can be turned into 1 batch of food, and the extra 4 become unspent resource (as you said, tape, etc), while the food store lets you turn as many of those resources you wanted into food?

In the errata, on page 10, where it gives a sample resource catalog, it says "The rest of the items that have been found can be added to the stronghold resource catalog and remain there, or be purchased immediately." Doesn't adding it to the stronghold resource catalog mean that future resource can be used to buy those items at the stronghold? If not, what's the point of having a resource catalog for your stronghold?

Hydra_Lord said:

I am getting the impression that you are interpreting Tri-County as there is only one resource catalog for the 'tri county precinct' and that it grows as you continue to do missions outside of it. If so, that isnt' really the case.

Contrary to what Ivan said, if that's what you believe the Resource Catalog to be, then that's EXACTLY the case.

In general, if you've raided a location with, say, 4 Degrees of Success, that means everything at that location from anywhere from 0-4 DoS is available to purchase at a Stronghold with Resource upon your return. The object will remain in a Stronghold Resource Catalog until the supply is gone as per Degradation rules.

What might get dicey (and what I presume to be the case) is that if you're mixing purchases made at locations specifically and purchases at the Stronghold. It helps to do exclusively one or the other, but doing both is entirely possible. However, exhausting a certain item at a specific location will make it unavailable for purchase later on at a Stronghold, so it's generally a better idea to have access to the supplies when you need them rather than impulsively buying them on the spot and bulking up your character's available Cargo space and prevent you from purchasing it later when you might actually need it.

The difference between making purchases at a location and making purchases at your Stronghold is that you have a very small amount of Resource with which to make purchases from at a location (only using what you are able to gather from that location specifically to make purchases from) whereas returning to a Stronghold before you make purchases gives you access to your entire pool of Resource. This represents actually planning ahead what you might need and effectively rationing your available materials appropriately as compared to just impulsively grabbing what you just so happen to find.