In one of my recent pbps, the premise of the game included an idea that supplies would be waning in the region the PCs were in, and that would eventually make resource management an important part of the game.
While the players may have been monitoring resources eventually, I wasn’t paying much attention, and that part of the game went by the wayside and we focused on the narrative. It was a lot of fun, but it did make me feel like pbp was a hard medium in which to play a heavily resource-dependent game. I would probably have had to monitor the character sheets to make sure the players were remembering to be careful about resources, and that didn’t seem like fun or pleasant.
I pay a lot of attention. Tracking torch uses and single use items matters a lot (especially Rations). I have noticed that my players sometimes forget, and that can add some load to my brain space.
It helps to tell folks to do it, and to check in again. It really helps to remind them of how many are left at the same time (e.g. "OK mark off a use of Torch. You have two uses left.).
There is no easy solution to this problem. People just have to pay attention!
The most assured way to go about it may be to just keep your own sheets for each character, either on your computer or on paper. Don’t make a big production of it, and have players keep their own online sheets as well, but it gives you something to reference if you think resource management is getting off track.
Of course, that’s more work on the GM, but whattya gonna do.
Another way to go about it would be to just always mention when players should update their sheets, and put it in a consistent notation, using some sort of brackets, e.g. <arrows -2>
That way, if you’re unsure about the count, you can search <arrows and see how many times you’ve called for adjustments.
Or just play more narrative-oriented scenarios pbp, and save the resource-crunching for in-person.
Yes, it helps to have software assistance as well. We use Kettlewright (which allows for party and inventory management) and before that I kept everyone’s character sheets in individual channels as raw text.
Any time I’m making a call that would require my players reference their sheet I just check what they have written down. I know that it’s very difficult to keep track of these rolling resources iver the years a PbP game can take place so I just always check in. If I feel like something maybe hasn’t been updated in a while I’ll ask a player directly.
We play on discord and have at minimum 3 channels: #in-character#out-of-character and #sheets, so everyone’s character sheet is right there on the server.