Encumbrance

[Snarf Zagyg]

Alright kids. I'm getting ready to start a new campaign, and I'm trying to figure out what encumbrance rules I want to force the players to track this time.

I'm interested in any novel ideas for both tracking encumbrance, and for mechanical effects. What I want from an encumbrance system is something that's relatively easy to keep track of with pencil and paper, and that will force the players to make decisions and tradeoffs.

Make it real.

Take some heavy weights, and put them on the players at an approximate ratio to reflect the encumbrance of the characters.

You want to force the players to make hard choices about the encumbrance that the characters are taking on? "Hey, Phil, you really want to carry that armor to sell it in town? Well, I have a 100 lb. blanket we can drape on you. Just, you know, think about it."

Tends to clarify the decision-making process.

 

[delericho]

After a huge amount of going backwards and forwards on this topic, I've finally concluded that simpler is better: allow each PC to carry a certain number of "things" (where the limit should be set a little bit lower than feels right - the party should be forced to make some tough choices about what to leave behind). Treat a reasonable number of identical items as a single "thing" - so a quiver of arrows is one, maybe 10 torches is another, and so on.

I've more or less settled on 10 "things" as being about right, which doesn't count containers (backpacks, sacks, etc), regular clothes, or water and rations (I handle those separately).

Also: there comes a point, probably not very long in the campaign, where even that ceases to be interesting and is best dropped.

 

[Blue]

I vastly prefer the Usage Die mechanic from The Black Hack to any other system I've used.

Check out Five Torches Deep.

I'm interested in what you are suggesting, but don't either game. Can you tell us what makes it light and good?

 

[aco175]

I tend to hand out a few bags of holding that I give a volume to instead of what is published. A typical bay holds stuff that can fit in a 5x5x5 space- which is a lot, and a backpack is 2-5x5x5ft spaces.

If I was to chart this, I would think a checkbox system like for arrows or torches where certain things fill a box and you have a number based on your strength and size. Armor takes a slot, a week of food another. Some of the smaller things like a tinderbox maybe no slot to simplify.

Another point may be fleeing PCs drop their pack. In the Army, we would walk along with a big, heavy pack and drop it as soon as we started taking fire. There was a lot of running forward and falling on your face to engage the enemy before running forward and falling again. This was impossible with a pack on. I suppose there would be a lot of gear left behind if we ever needed to flee. This may lead to some PCs leaving gear and others hiding things on their person fights.

 

[GMMichael]

Alright kids. I'm getting ready to start a new campaign, and I'm trying to figure out what encumbrance rules I want to force the players to track this time.

I'm interested in any novel ideas for both tracking encumbrance, and for mechanical effects. What I want from an encumbrance system is something that's relatively easy to keep track of with pencil and paper, and that will force the players to make decisions and tradeoffs.

Moving a little slower in combat because you're encumbered is not interesting, but most systems I've seen that have more varied and interesting effects end up being very bookkeeping intensive. Hence my request for inspiration.

Hard to talk about mechanical effects if you're not referring to a specific game. "Encumbered" could be a Fate aspect, one that either the PC or GM could use (compel?) to make things interesting. Or in my game it could be a Flaw, and encumbrance would only pop-up in the game when the PC or GM wanted to make the PC suffer a bit in exchange for a hero point.

One easy way to do it is to just count bulky items. Depending on the system, but say in D&D maybe you can carry one bulky item plus your Strength modifier. And heavy weapons and armor count as a bulky item each. Easy to track.

Sounds like the Munchkin system to me. You can fill each of your body equipment slots, but you get only one Big item. Although, I seem to remember the Big items being more like D&D's Attunement items than gear that's actually bulky. And before anyone says it, yes, Munchkin can definitely be a role-playing game.

 

[CubicsRube]

What about something like the mutant year zero system?

Small items take up hard a slot
Most items take 1 slot
Big or heavy items take 2 slots
You get a number of slots equal to your strength score

Sword shield and plate? 5 slots used already.

Spellbook and wand? 1.5 slots

 

[DeviousQuail]

I use a slot system for my homebrew game.

Spoiler: Guidelines

Weight:
<5 lbs = .5 slots
5 - 15 lbs = 1 slot
15 - 30 lbs = 2 slots
30 - 50 lbs = 3 slots
+1 Slot for every 25 lbs above 50 lbs
Size:
<1 ft dimensions = .5 slots
<4 ft dimensions = 1 slot
<7 ft dimensions = 2 slots
<10 ft dimensions = 3 slots
+1 Slot for every 3 feet above 10 feet

Use whichever has the higher requirement for determining slots.
Each character gets 5 + Brawn slots (Average human adult has a Brawn of 2-3).

The idea was to make it easy to estimate how many slots an item required while factoring in weight and dimension. My system uses stamina and focus as spendable points so the penalty for being over encumbered is to add 1+ to the cost of all actions. Obviously, the numbers would need to be changed to fit whatever system you are using. For D&D I'd probably just do 8+Str Mod and treat over encumbered as 1 or more points of exhaustion.

There are more details (0 slot items, backpacks, quick slot items, etc) but that is the gist of it.

 

[Fenris-77]

The usage die is an abstraction to facilitate tracking consumable gear. So, for example, torches have Usage Die of d6 and take up an equipment slot. When called upon by the game, you roll the usage die and if you roll a 1 or 2 the die steps down (in this case form d6 to d4). If you roll a 1-2 when rolling a d4 for usage you run out of whatever it is (so you run out of torches in this case). The randomness of the die represents some of the uncertainty in consumables, so in the case of torches some burn faster or slower, perhaps one was damp, etc etc. A d6 usage die gives you average of 5 uses before it runs out, so players can still plan their loadouts with some confidence but without having to track individual uses of gear. In practice I find it works well enough to serve in a high resource management game environment, like OSR dungeon crawls, without seeming hand wavey, in my experience anyway.

This is the mechanic used in The Black Hack, the second edition of which is something like $6 on DTRPG, so the buy in is manageable.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've been using more and less generous versions of Matt Rundle's Anti-Hammerspace Item Tracking for years. The basic principle is where you carry something is interesting and helps visualisation - and with a lot of what adventurers carry, from large shields to bows to ten foot poles, bulk is far more a limiting factor than weight.

It really isn't mechanically intensive.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Shadiversity did a fun video where he tried illustrating how much space just the weapons a typical adventurer uses takes up. I think Matt Easton of Schola Gladiatora has done some stuff about it as well.

The latter put this out just last month, and I happened to have just watched it before seeing this thread.


It's a bit long, and basically boils down to the issue you mention of you can't carry multiple large weapons effectively, except it adds the visual aspect of seeing him holding these things.