Encumbrance

Let's talk encumbrance systems in RPGs.

What is your favourite system? What do you like best about it? What games do it right?

What is your least favourite encumbrance system? What makes you despise it? How could it be done better?

Encumberance systems are generally shunned. If anyone still uses them, it's the ODR folks.

>What is your favourite system? What do you like best about it? What games do it right?
My favorite is the one ACKs uses, and more broadly the OSR encumbrance systems like it.

I like that it doesn't require exact weights for every single item. Instead, sorting items into categories (small/one-handed, large/two-handed, armor, coins/gems, etc) is enough to decide the extent to which characters are encumbered.

I also like that it blends weight with portability and ease of storage. That means you're much less likely to run into a situation where you're under the limit, but your GM is giving you dirty looks for how many 10ft poles you have on your person.

I like that it has a scaling degree of encumbrance that is easily computed and has real impacts to combat speed, overworld speed, and other things.

Its interesting just how much stuff you can pack on yourself if you put your mind into it.

To give an IRL LARP example - I was armed with infantry half plate, bow in holster+quiver, medium sized shield, 2 swords, shameful amount of knives AND I had room for more since nothing was strapped on my back and my arms were free due to decent rigging. I could easily include a backpack with a bedroll and outdoors kit AND still have my arms free to hold something - like a great weapon.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a fairly good encumbrance system. The first 10 small items, 2 large items, or one huge item are 'free', every five small items or one large item gives a -1 to speed and I think some other simple penalties. Given that wandering monsters are prominent in the modules and time is an important resource, being fast and lightly geared can be an advantage.

There's another one I found online called Anti-Hammerspace Inventories. Characters have a 3x6 grid of inventory space with which to fill with equipment. Most items take up one space while larger ones like swords or bows might take up a 1x2 or 1x3 section. Leather armour takes up a 1x3 space, Chain takes up a 2x3, and Plate takes up a 3x3, so a warrior carrying a longsword, a shield, and in plate mail has almost no room left. You could probably adjust it as well so that high-Strength characters gain additional slots if you wanted to.

That said, I don't really use encumbrance rules in my campaigns. Characters can carry their worn armour, their equipped weapons, and whatever they can fit into a backpack. Anything strapped to their waist or chest is in easy reach, meaning they can draw it quickly in combat but it can also be stolen or sundered by enemies. Anything in their pack takes significantly more time to draw out but is much better protected.

Anything based on strength and the weight of the items.

>DnD 5E
>13 STR
>Over-encumbered with just my starting equipment

That's why you always buy a mule.

How do you enforce encumberance rules? I feel like I should, but having my players doing their inventory management takes too much time from actually playing.

I just make the max number of kg a player can carry based on Strength: S1 player can carry 10kg, S2 can carry 20kg etc... and a S10 can carry 100kg without getting overencumbered.

Your average human player is somewhere between S3-S5, meaning 30-50kg of stuff.

Use an inventory system that isn't a complete chore.

If you're using one where your players are expected to count up every pound of every item on their sheets, then dump that inventory system in favor of one that's easier to use.

I've always been more of a fan of vidya-type "inventory slots" rather than flat encumbrance weights. If it's armor, your favorite weapon, or ammo that's properly stored in a quiver/holster it doesn't count toward your weight since you're assumed to be used to hefting it around. That way you don't end up in situations like .

Everything else kind of depends on the system itself, but when tracking numbers I'm more of a fan of using whole numbers (not fractions) and keeping numbers abstracted. I like how FFG's Star Wars line does things, where a lot of simple items have no encumbrance and heavier things might "weigh" between 1-2 out of your Brawn+5 encumbrance. Plus, you can always load yourself up with appropriate backpacks and load-bearing gear to get some more room.

So far the best system I've seen is a slotting system akin to ARPGs but on a smaller scale. It was a homebrew, nothing official, but it was pretty neat. Basically characters have a different number of slots for different storage gear on them (like a belt gives 3, a pack gives 6, etc) and items take up a predetermined number of slots when stored. Like a longsword might occupy 3 slots, and a week's rations occupy one slot, and so on. It's pretty neat but requires work from the GM to balance and tweak.

I should add that I hate hate hate weight based encumbrance. It allows for lots of things that don't make sense narratively and doesn't account for volume of objects.

Also, for the slot based system you could add encumbrance penalties by doing something like giving an object 3 slots and a 4th slot that can be used with an encumbrance penalty or something.

They are all stupid, since it should be just common sense about equipment, rather than basing it on weight. I mean what? You gonna carry around three sets of rigid armour in your backpack, just because you can lift it? Or maybe 10 different weapons, including two pikes, because they weight in total 50 pounds?

>favourite system
desu I'd rather not keep up with it since I'm a lazy shit

Anyone know what ACK is? (and anyone who wants to explain what ACK's encumberance system looks like?)

Ugh, armor shouldn't take up inventory space,

>ITT: people complaining about weight-based inventory, when the limitations on what people can carry is literally weight/weight distribution and size.

>Ugh, armor shouldn't take up inventory space
It is part of deciding how much shit you can pile upon yourself and still function, both in weight and added volume/reduced mobility.
I don't like the encumberance numbers they gave it though.

The trouble is that the most common weight based systems don't account for distribution and size.

Distribution, yeah I agree with you.

Size? People's lack of common sense annoys me.

Common sense is why I don't bother with an encumbrance system, as it doesn't usually come up unless a player is trying to carry something abnormal.

The original Albedo has a good system. You had envelopes representing different bags/pouches/etc, with each one holding a specific size and amount of gear. If a piece of equipment wasn't in your 'pouches', you didn't have it.