[Old school] I can't deal with inventory

[Swanosaurus]

I really like a lot of the ideas behind recent streamlined old-school games like Into the Odd, Mausritter, Shadowdark, Liminal Horror ... but one thing that really doesn't work to me how they tend to put your inventory front and center, often linking it directly to health/wounds. I just never found it fun to deal with equipment in RPGs; as a GM, my approach has been "if it makes sense, you have it on you." I theoretically understand the fun in it, but whenever I'm playing, the whole thing just totally disappears from my mind - for me, it's a chore part of RPGs that I always strive to minimize. However, these systems treat equipment as one of the most basic building blocks of an RPG session, which, for me, is a really big disconnect. Does anyone know problem? I'm just interested if I'm the only one out here who totally gets 80% of these games and is totally stumped by that 20% equipment focus.

 

[Cergorach]

I love equipment, not the weight management or the Tetris game you play to make everything fit, but what you can do with it in a given situation. While I'm not into Old School, I do play and DM D&D5e, as a player I love bags of holding, both as storage and as a weapon. But as a DM I tend to leave equipment management up to the players, only paying attention to it when things get out of hand. It helps that the weak wizard has a Tenser's floating disk handy for loot.

It does occasionally come up when they find an interesting statue or large piece of furniture and I have to explain that, yes that granite man-sized (or larger) is VERY heavy when none of them have a belt of Storm Giant Strength...

Something fun I added to our current campaign is that for the first five levels their minds have been kind of fuzzy regarding a couple of things (time+memory stuff), one of them being the exact contents of their backpacks, so when they increased in levels they suddenly found stuff they previously didn't know they had. A bit like a Kender bag...

Certain systems treat equipment as very important, as depending on the setting and atmosphere, they are. Just remember how important the rope or the 10' pole were in actual old school gaming... When new systems try to capitalize on the 'old school' trope, they often want to mechanically integrate those tropes. Often the rules tend to be simplified/shortened, streamlined if you will. But quite often that leads to more abstract rules, while thematical, it's missing a direct connection/understanding for many people. As you have with linking equipment to things like health/wounds, you understand the theoretical fun it it, but in practice it's not fun for you...

Equipment is often related to in game wealth, as an example: In a game of Shadowrun you often play as a street thug where wealth is important for survival and equipment that's used, thus everything is tracked. For something like Vampire The Masquarade you play as a powerful (old) vampire, where wealth is often inconsequential to what's going on, things important to a vampire you can't normally buy easily. Wealth has been reduced to a stat, at a certain level you can buy the simple things, if you want to buy expensive or rare things you make a roll. That's abstraction, and while it works, for me it looses something in the translation, but it works for the system, the setting and the atmosphere, thus I roll with it.

 

[TiQuinn]

I really like a lot of the ideas behind recent streamlined old-school games like Into the Odd, Mausritter, Shadowdark, Liminal Horror ... but one thing that really doesn't work to me how they tend to put your inventory front and center, often linking it directly to health/wounds. I just never found it fun to deal with equipment in RPGs; as a GM, my approach has been "if it makes sense, you have it on you." I theoretically understand the fun in it, but whenever I'm playing, the whole thing just totally disappears from my mind - for me, it's a chore part of RPGs that I always strive to minimize. However, these systems treat equipment as one of the most basic building blocks of an RPG session, which, for me, is a really big disconnect. Does anyone know problem? I'm just interested if I'm the only one out here who totally gets 80% of these games and is totally stumped by that 20% equipment focus.

I think it’s because there’s a whole set of problem solving challenges that only work based on what items you have available, and it’s the limitation on what’s in your inventory that makes those challenges possible. For example, if you’re faced with a pit in a dungeon that you can’t jump across, you are constrained by the items and spells that you have. Say, in this instance, you don’t have a spell or ability that allows flight or teleportation - now you have to creatively determine how you’re going to get across the pit. Without inventory, you’re only limited by imagination of what items realistically can let you cross the pit and the pit becomes more trivial: you can simply declare that you have a rope and grappling hook. Or you can simply say you have an extendable ladder or the tools and materials to build one. Without the limits on what you have or what you can carry, the purpose of the pit can become pointless.

Same thing goes for carrying back treasure. If you discover a hoard of gems, the size of the hoard could be a challenge to bring back, and can force the players to make choices of what to take. If they can simply take it all, what’s the point of describing the size of the hoard at all? You can simply say, you find a single gem worth X gold pieces and be done with it. Sometimes that’s what you want. Other times, the decision on what to carry is what creates the tension, the focus of the decision on what to take and what to leave behind.

 

[wicked cool]

If your the dm then the rpg police aren’t coming to get you if you allow the player to take extra gear. In shadowdark just the other day I allowed my player to take extra stuff that has no impact on the game

 

[Reynard]

Same thing goes for carrying back treasure. If you discover a hoard of gems, the size of the hoard could be a challenge to bring back, and can force the players to make choices of what to take. If they can simply take it all, what’s the point of describing the size of the hoard at all? You can simply say, you find a single gem worth X gold pieces and be done with it. Sometimes that’s what you want. Other times, the decision on what to carry is what creates the tension, the focus of the decision on what to take and what to leave behind.

In games about getting treasure and getting out alive, I think this is super important. What are you taking? What are you willing to leave behind?

 

[Willie the Duck]

I really like a lot of the ideas behind recent streamlined old-school games like Into the Odd, Mausritter, Shadowdark, Liminal Horror ... but one thing that really doesn't work to me how they tend to put your inventory front and center, often linking it directly to health/wounds. I just never found it fun to deal with equipment in RPGs; as a GM, my approach has been "if it makes sense, you have it on you." I theoretically understand the fun in it, but whenever I'm playing, the whole thing just totally disappears from my mind - for me, it's a chore part of RPGs that I always strive to minimize. However, these systems treat equipment as one of the most basic building blocks of an RPG session, which, for me, is a really big disconnect.

This is interesting to me, in that you say you have this problem with these systems, despite them doing things interesting with the equipment (like connecting them to health/wounds). My prevailing theory has been that people dislike inventory precisely because game systems never really do anything interesting with them. I don't know how you could tell this, but do you think you are having a disconnect even in these systems because of leftover issues from previous games, or if these new systems with new equipment mechanics still actively grate?

Does anyone know problem? I'm just interested if I'm the only one out here who totally gets 80% of these games and is totally stumped by that 20% equipment focus.

It's not quite Alignment, 5/15-Minute Workday, or LFQW, but it seems to be in the upper 1-2 dozen major complaints people have about (at least D&D-like) RPGs.

 

[bsss]

Yeah, it's a genre thing for me. If the focus of the game is dungeon survival, treasure hunting, wilderness exploration, etc., part of the game is decision-making around your inventory, encumbrance, mobility, and so on.

Most of my games are more on the "big damn heroes" end of the spectrum in tone and story beats, so those details really don't matter, which suits me fine as I don't like inventory mechanics either. PCs can have infinite storage as far as I care, they tend to be limited more in what is reasonable to afford anyway.

This goes beyond TTRPGs: I tire of CRPGs and JRPGs with limited inventory and convoluted mitigation systems, just let me carry my 99 potions I'll never use in peace.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

In the old days, some DMs handed out Bags of Holding to first-level characters, handwaving that they were super-cheap and available in the setting, because encumbrance was such a PITA that even the DMs disliked it.

RPGs have some Intractable Problems that people have wrestled with over the years with only partial success at best. One of those Intractable Problems is grappling (or "overbearing," or whatever the system calls it). Another is encumbrance and inventory limits.

 

[Reynard]

In the old days, some DMs handed out Bags of Holding to first-level characters, handwaving that they were super-cheap and available in the setting, because encumbrance was such a PITA that even the DMs disliked it.

RPGs have some Intractable Problems that people have wrestled with over the years with only partial success at best. One of those Intractable Problems is grappling (or "overbearing," or whatever the system calls it). Another is encumbrance and inventory limits.

I think that overstates it by quite a lot. There are tons of "encumbrance" solutions out there, ranging from spreadsheets to pure handwavium and everything in between.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Like many things, it is all Tolkien's fault. If Sam Gamgee had not asked for rope from the elves, we would not be having this conversation. But, rope, he asked for, and so, later he had to have need for rope (per Mr.Checkov).
Conan never asked for rope,if needed rope, it was there in the scene, or he made do without. Did he ever buy anything outside wine?