Thoughts on Encumbrance

Illustration by Silex Art Studio

    Nicodeme III, a wizard, is carrying 3 bundles of ropes, 4 flasks of oil, 1 lantern, 15 torches, 3 potions, 1 lockpicking kit, 2 vials of acid, 1 extendable ladder, 2 leather armor, 4 daggers, 1 short sword, 3 bows, 1 quiver, 50 arrows, and 15,000 coins. There is no squeaky door, dark corridor, pit, or padlock that stands in the way of Nicodeme III. He is ready for anything and will be even more ready next time he visits the general store. Sorry Nicodeme III, you’re going to have to drop some stuff, it’s too much.

I believe that encumbrance can be useful as a mechanism to encourage creative thinking. If a character is lacking a rope, it may have to get creative or take a risk to descend down a slippery cave. And, of course, if there is too much treasure in a dangerous dungeon, then being unable to carry it all in one trip may encourage new strategies or preparation.

For those of us that like encumbrance, several options have been presented. There are at least the options of keeping track of weight, of coins as weight, of slots, and of arranging equipment in a grid, among others. There are also many that would prefer not keeping track of item encumbrance, instead opting for unlimited inventory space. However, this can devolve into characters carrying everything available in the world and sometimes the entire stock of stores. Can we have something in between? Something that gives us those situations of imperfect preparation that stimulate creativity?

Perhaps a different way to think about encumbrance is simply as limits on availability of items at a point in time. To get that without tracking encumbrance, we could approach it from the another angle: availability and durability. If there are only a few things available every session and things can become non-operational, then we can also limits on item availability.

These are a couple of ideas I have been using in my games for over a year. Every session I roll what the general store and blacksmith have available. Generally, there are about 3-4 types of random items and 1-3 pieces of random armor and weapons. This approach seems to encourage players to get what is available and work with it in creative ways, and I like that. Complementarily, items have a 1-in-6 chance of breaking after a use, so players are sometimes required to use their second-choice weapon or armor, changing the pace of things. Together, these mechanisms impose limits on the availability of equipment across time leading to a type of pseudo-encumbrance, for lack of a better term.

I have not yet used just these two ideas with unlimited carrying capacity to see if it leads to sufficient attrition that simulates the outcomes of encumbrance. For now, I have been using all three angles: actual encumbrance using slots, limited stores, and durability. This has been going well for more than 50 sessions. I also have deeply integrated gold expenditure into several layers of the game to provide other layers of resource management (e.g., pay to heal, level, and gain abilities). If you want to read more about how these things are interconnected and implemented in my game, snag a free copy of Symbion.

Finally, I leave you with a randomizer that gives results similar to what I roll every session:

General Items: Waiting...

Arsenal Items: Waiting...

Potions: Waiting...