Making encumbrance challenging and fun?

[Pyoor]

This is why I always buy a mule and some saddle bags or a pack saddle.

That's the best suggestion! Many of my characters purchased mules for that exact reason.

As a DM, I typically ignore encumberance unless it is important to the story. The only times it became important is when the PC's found a treasure horde or when they needed to bring supplies somewhere, like crossing a desert.

When I tried to enforce encumberance, the PC's came up with a magical solutions like a bag of holding or Tenser's Floating Disc. The magic solutions took the tension out of worrying about carrying capacity and the PC's didn't have to make tough choices like "do I carry back all the gold or do I carry water and food?"

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

This is why I always buy a mule and some saddle bags or a pack saddle.

When I tried to enforce encumberance, the PC's came up with a magical solutions like a bag of holding or Tenser's Floating Disc.

Yup, my experience, as well.

Although, as a player, I have had at least one donkey carried off by a roc, and a pack horse minced by whirling blades. And as a DM, I've let loose a horde of flying monkeys upon a tenser's floating disk laden with excavation gear and loot You know, to keep things in perspective And when stuff like that happens, it's good to know what went missing.

The magic solutions took the tension out of worrying about carrying capacity and the PC's didn't have to make tough choices like "do I carry back all the gold or do I carry water and food?"

Yeah. In the end, it just depends on the campaign how/whether to track encumbrance. But it's rarely "fun", imho, so that's why I like the simple card-based systems, at least for what a PC is carrying. And if the players get around it somehow, cool. Heck, real-world encumbrance is why humanity invented the wheel; there's reason to arbitrarily deny that in game.

Just so long as the flying monkeys get to have a little fun now and then, too.