Encumbrance is one of the most commonly discussed topics as far as OSR games go, but at the same time, at least from my point of view, there’s not really any settled consensus that I’ve found. A lot of people claim it’s important and has to be realistic in some sense, but it’s difficult to parse out what this means exactly. Most tables I’ve played in have done some version of slot-based or b/x “basic” encumbrance where armour is the main thing that matters–this definitely works well enough, but also interested in the different solutions available and weighing them against each other.
I’ve come across this topic as I’ve been trying to work through some version of an arctic wilderness exploration, where the amount you carry is important and probably some combinations like plate mail with 100 oil flasks could be jarring.
Here’s a short list of problems or reasons I think why it’s a challenging design problem:
Knowing how much a person can carry over certain terrain types, and how much this would slow them down, is not necessarily intuitive, possibly unless you’re an experienced backpacker (I’m not)
Knowing how to translate this into a medieval-ish fantasy setting is also difficult, i.e. even if you know a lot about backpacking, you don’t necessarily know what B/X is referring to as plate mail or can’t necessarily easily envision what it would be like to walk around in
Many of the listed books don’t really have precise weight values, or in some cases like gp use deliberately inflated values
What makes for a good game doesn’t always necessarily translate to what would be “realistic”
There are a lot of D&Disms (like heavy gold coins) that don’t necessarily always translate to medieval fantasy
In addition to weight, the other factor for items is bulkiness, which can also be challenging to represent mechanically
So given all that above, there are maybe a couple different approaches for encumbrance:
FKR it and use no explicit system. The potential downside here is for that for the parts that are hard to think about intuitively, you might need a bit more explicit guidance on what things tend to weigh and how everything fits together.
Use a simplified abstraction such as slots. The positive is that this offloads some of the thinking, but also can also lead to other incoherence like trying to think about how many slots certain items are or what exactly counts as taking up a slot.
Go for complete realism, and meticulously calculate weight, volumes, and so on, as well as (possibly) where everything carried is exactly kept. I haven’t played in this style before, but it seems like it could be fun in a setting where it matters or when people are on board with it. This is sort of an FKR approach as well, just maybe from a different angle.
Are there other approaches I’m missing? Are there any standard “here’s the consensus” articles that people point to when discussing encumbrance?
Obligatory ‘FKR isn’t the same as free form’ comment. See here for the difference.
On the topic though, I’ll throw my hat in the ring and share an old qualitative system I made a while back. I feel like it is novel enough to not fit in one of the categories you listed. Link here.
You also have arts and craft systems, Anti-Hammerspace and Mausritter being two examples, but there’s been a bunch of homebrew examples. This kind of abstracts weight and a form of volume, and can be pretty neat, but can be difficult to maintain in the long term.
I generally just prefer the traditional track relative weights, and assume logic for volume.
Location/Hands and Containers is my general approach in most games, and sufficient for most situations. Should a large hoard/logistical challenge present itself, these are usually problems that can be addressed with more Hands and more Containers.
We try to ground things in the fiction, so initially there might be frequent queries of "How are you carrying that? so everyone is on the same page. “It fits on my Character Sheet” isn’t really an acceptable answer here, so that usually lets us close any gaps before it’s added to a Character’s Inventory.
For Container Volume, I do still quite like the abstraction of Coins. Players want to track those generally, especially if they’re tied to Advancement and it’s useful to know how much Money you have.
I run encumbrance and wounds very similiar to what you wrote down hear.
Its always nice to find out there are others finding similiar solutions to oneself.
I keep tinkering with how exactly i handle encumbrance but for me the biggest point has become to focus on the slow wear and tear of travel.
If you are fully fit and healthy traveling even with a heavy backpack isnt that big of an issue but if you are already injured, lacking sleep, have been on/off the road for an extended period of time that will all add up to how fast one is and how accident and injury prone one is.
I should probably add that my campaigns are severly lacking in dungeons. Its almost entirely overland exploration.
From what little dungeon play I had i believe a simple slot based system is probably best.
Have you formalized this anywhere? Was poking around your blog, and also found your Equipment List which is really useful for comparing values.
On the topic of systemless “crunch,” I was also trying to think of if there are any good examples of encumbrance as high-fidelity, while also not explicitly mechanized in a player-facing way or using common gaming abstractions.
I agree this is different than free form or rules-less, which is why I’m using the term FKR, although sometimes it’s hard to find examples of “crunchy” FKR-play (if that’s even the best way to describe it).
Some rough parallels I can think of (not necessarily related to encumbrance):
in Koibu’s Frozen Frontier series (2e with lots of house rules), I recall he had players somewhat meticulously track square footage of volume on their sled
Oftentimes domain play veers into high amounts of spreadsheet management, although I don’t really know of any good examples to point to here
Some wargames, such as The Campaign for North Africa, require you to do a ton of detailed calculations of things like fuel expendeture and supply management, meaning that a single game can take 40+ days of play. That’s a board game, of course, so somewhat different context
there’s an older blog post where the GM was doing some complex spreadsheets for generating trade markets across different cities, but I can’t think of it at the moment
I do go into it a bit in length as part of my Rules Reference/Play Example on Encumbrance (written with B/X in mind, but most of the advice here is broadly applicable to other games.)
This covers some of the various different methods, but places a bit of emphasis on turning Encumbrance more into a “Logistical Conundrum” or Challenge, rather than making it purely punitive.
Kind of
The main consequence of overencumbrance is determined by rolls on the travel accident table and in addition to heavy encumbrance wounds are another factor that gets the players worse results
For the more “tactile” Inventory Systems (like Mausritter) I will sometimes make other things consume those Slots.
A big one for me is Conditions that expand over time if the underlying driver isn’t addressed. We use quarter folded squares for it, a bit tricky to explain, but here’s an example:
As the Condition “escalates” it ends up becoming a more pressing concern by utilizing more “space” and having it’s own “tracks” of progressively more onerous impacts. I think something similar could easily be applied to Wounds in this way (something that escalates or takes on a larger portion based on severity, rather than just occupying a single slot.)
Another thing that’s often fun is the use of Beneficial Conditions (like being Well-Fed, or In Good Shape) that can be acquired during Downtime. These can also take up Slots, but usually provide a decent enough benefit that it becomes a real tough choice to cast them aside for the free space.
Oh nice, is this something you’re able to share? I have been working on a travel accident table as well.
Here’s my current version, trying to keep it vague enough to fit with different locations.
Travel Hazards - 1d12 and choose from either Obstacle or Event. If choosing an event, the event happens without time to avoid it. If choosing an obstacle, roll 1d12 to determine the type of danger. This indicates the consequence if the obstacle is not overcome.
I’ve never actually enforced encumbrance in any game I’ve played, but I am enforcing it, rules as written, in my current Arden Vul campaign. I am using someone’s Google sheet version of a Swords & Wizardry character sheet, so it calculates weight for the player.
But I am very pleasantly surprised at how it’s affecting gameplay. My players realize they can’t just take everything they come across, and if they do, it will slow them down, which will have consequences if they have to flee or fight. We spent a large chunk of the last session with them trying to figure out where they’re going to stash loot until they can do something with it.
I wouldn’t have expected it, but it is absolutely contributing to my table’s fun.
I am in huge agreement that encumbrance absolutely helps certain classes of games, like dungeon crawlers. I think it gets a lot of bad rap because it can be arduous, but like you said, things like auto-calculators, or really even just formatting the weight structure (I tend to use “stones”, and break down weights into three divisible categories) can really help along with that stuff.
