The Joy of Bookkeeping?

Howdy there folks - Pelagius here.

So it strikes me that we role players are never on the same page regarding how much bookkeeping is a good and desirable thing in our various games.

I came to this conclusion the other night when I was running my 4th edition D&D campaign with a bunch of my friends. Since you're reading this, it's probably a safe bet that you've been involved in a D&D game before, so you can probably put the scene together in your head: a bunch of awesomely nerdy people sitting around a table that is inevitably too small to contain all of the character sheets, dice, maps, minis, pens, pencils, snacks, drinks, etc. This type of scene has been a part of almost every single roleplaying game I've been a part of since I first got involved with this glorious thing called gaming nine years ago.

As I looked at the barely contained and certainly unorganized chaos in front of me, it occurred to me that all of us were as happy as pigs wallowing in the mud - surrounded by the paraphernalia that seems to define the games we play and loving every bit of it. Some of my players prefer to keep track of things by using old school printed character sheets and rolling actual dice. Others adopt a more technological approach and use their iPhones or laptops to take care of their character's hit points, healing surges, powers, attack bonuses, etc. The whole scene makes me smile and brings me to a happy warm place.

What struck me was the thought that these players actually like to keep track of all of this stuff.

Some of you are probably thinking, "Well of course I do! Rolling a whole bunch of dice and eeking out bonuses is what it's all about!" Others are probably thinking "That sounds awful! How could you possibly be having fun keeping track of all of that nonsense?"

This highlights a question I've been groping towards expressing for some time now: how much bookkeeping is good and fun in a roleplaying game?

Because I know a wide array of tremendously interesting and wonderfully creative roleplayers, I have run across a plethora of gaming systems. Some of them are so skimpy as to be barely considered "systems" in the first place, and they demand next to nothing in terms of book keeping. Castle Falkenstein comes immediately to mind on this side of the equation. On the other side, however, are those role playing systems that demand scrupulous, exacting, some would say excruciating amounts of detailed bookkeeping in order to play the game - HARP exemplifies this kind of complexity in my mind. Other systems such as New WoD and D&D seem to fall somewhere in the middle.

So I ask you, dear readers, where do you fall on the spectrum of bookkeeping goodness? How much is enough to keep you interested? How much turns you off?

More importantly to my inquisitive nature, why do you feel this way?

That's all I got for now folks, so goodbye and good gaming!

--Pelagius

"Take everything that's not nailed down. If you can pry it up, it's not nailed down properly." - Old Bandit Kingdoms proverb