Here is a revision of my party equipment record sheet. Thanks to the suggestion of the fabulous Mr. Reints, I've added a half page for recording party treasure:
The idea is to write treasure found in easy to decipher sections: scroll, potions, weapons and armor. There should probably be other sections.
I'm not that satisfied with it, but hey, I just spent like an hour looking for a damn public domain image of a halfway decent jewel and failed. I may revise this for myself later, but instead of inundating you with a bunch of revisions, in the spirit of fostering DIY, here's a zip file of all the images in the above document as pngs. Use them as thou wilt.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Simple Encumbrance III
The thing about a list based system of encumbrance is that you can use any lined piece of paper, index card, or scrap of napkin you've scrawled some line across. Very DIY. But, if you want something a little ritzier to give your players I made another sheet that might be more generally useful.
I may be too conservative on my total weight. So, going with Swords & Wizardry's 75 pounds with no movement penalty, I've made a new encumbrance record sheet. Going with my previous post's 7.5 pounds per line, you have 10 lines. Going with the system of a new line for every 2 points above average Str, there are for dotted lines beneath that strong pcs can use and others ignore. I put one hireling on. Pdf here.
Looking over S&W's weapons list, most entries are either 5 or 10 pounds. So, it might be more convenient for you to make the lines represent 5 pounds each. That would mean this record sheet has too few lines. But I think 7.5 per line would probably work out better. Hopefully for every spear a character carries she'll have a dagger and they'll balance themselves out.
Choose How Many Lines You Want
I wouldn't worry about it too much, the point is to find a number of lines that feels about right to you as a DM. And, of course, there's always room for rulings if player's abuse the system. I remember back when I was an embryonic gamer, my DM's DM had a player that had so many magic swords they joked he wore them like a skirt. Yeah, that would be too much. Ten suits of chain or something would be crazy, but I want to be as hands off as possible and let the lines do the work where they can.
Coins As An Exception
So . . . is a backpack full of 300 gp one "item"? I would say, no. Everything is an item until you get to coins and then they slop across the lines. You fill all the containers you have, adding their weight to the total.
But if you are using that standard D&D 10 coins equal 1 pound, then every two of my lines is 150 coins. Pretty easy. You would probably want to have some standards worked out for container weights/capacities (does any one have a list of these already?). The max our poor hireling could carry is 750 gp. But hey, that's a good profit :)
Update: I think need more coffee. I probably should have put spots on the pdf for the chracter's max load possible and how far they can carry it. Maybe later.
I may be too conservative on my total weight. So, going with Swords & Wizardry's 75 pounds with no movement penalty, I've made a new encumbrance record sheet. Going with my previous post's 7.5 pounds per line, you have 10 lines. Going with the system of a new line for every 2 points above average Str, there are for dotted lines beneath that strong pcs can use and others ignore. I put one hireling on. Pdf here.
Looking over S&W's weapons list, most entries are either 5 or 10 pounds. So, it might be more convenient for you to make the lines represent 5 pounds each. That would mean this record sheet has too few lines. But I think 7.5 per line would probably work out better. Hopefully for every spear a character carries she'll have a dagger and they'll balance themselves out.
Choose How Many Lines You Want
I wouldn't worry about it too much, the point is to find a number of lines that feels about right to you as a DM. And, of course, there's always room for rulings if player's abuse the system. I remember back when I was an embryonic gamer, my DM's DM had a player that had so many magic swords they joked he wore them like a skirt. Yeah, that would be too much. Ten suits of chain or something would be crazy, but I want to be as hands off as possible and let the lines do the work where they can.
Coins As An Exception
So . . . is a backpack full of 300 gp one "item"? I would say, no. Everything is an item until you get to coins and then they slop across the lines. You fill all the containers you have, adding their weight to the total.
But if you are using that standard D&D 10 coins equal 1 pound, then every two of my lines is 150 coins. Pretty easy. You would probably want to have some standards worked out for container weights/capacities (does any one have a list of these already?). The max our poor hireling could carry is 750 gp. But hey, that's a good profit :)
Update: I think need more coffee. I probably should have put spots on the pdf for the chracter's max load possible and how far they can carry it. Maybe later.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Simple Encumbrance II
So, I left off with the idea of a binary system of dealing with how much crap characters in adventure games can carry: little enough that it doesn't matter, or enough that they can barely carry it.
Again, this is an abstraction. If you don't have a problem calculating movement rates for all pcs/npcs, then that's cool. I personally don't want to deal with calculations if an abstracted system will give me similar results-- namely the feeling that people have limits to what they can carry, and that because of this they'll have to plan ahead if they expect to find heavy treasures, or else make hard decisions about what to leave behind.
A Full Pack Hinders
Now, I think a simple addition to the binary system would help along those lines and not cost much in complexity: if you have at least one slot left in your pack, it doesn't affect you in any way, if you have a full pack you can't run or jump.
I'd have to see how this works in play, but I think it might prevent the binary system from feeling overly simple. I'm guessing it would put pressure on players to always have a little room left in their packs.
If you wanted a little more grit you could give pcs with full packs a -1 to all combat rolls (thanks Dan), or require them to have to make the standard rest breaks twice as long / twice as often (thanks anarchist). Both are simple enough that you could probably get away with using them without confusing players or slowing down play.
Carrying, Just . . . One . . . More . . . Thing . . .
Okay, what if their packs are full and players still want to carry something? I don't have a brilliantly elegant idea for this, I was just thinking pcs could carry up to their Str in 10s of pounds for a distance of their Str divided by 2 in 10s of feet. So an average adventurer with a full pack finds a bag of coins and wants to carry it with her. She can carry up to 100 more pounds, but only 50 feet. So she could drag it or schlep it 50 ft and then have to rest, huffing and puffing.
Someone with exceptional Str would be able to carry an additional 180 pounds 90 feet. if that doesn't sound like a lot, remember that I was going with an average pack weight of 45 pounds + 4 x 7.5 for exceptional strength. Which put the total weight at 255 pounds. That isn't too far off of the Swords & Wizardry maximum limit of 300 pounds.
How many of these over-encumbered carries can a pc make? Again, something I'd have to try in-game to see how it goes, but I might just let them keep doing one after another, except the noise they make grunting and continually dropping the weight would call for a wandering monster check each time.
Character Sheets
The cool thing about having an inventory list based encumbrance is that you can tailor a character sheet to be ready for the assumptions of your campaign. If all your fighters start with leather armor you can cook that in to your sheet and have it ready to go. If all your mages have to carry extremely heavy spell-books, same thing.
Here is my workmanlike draft of how I might incorporate my starting equipment with this system:
What everyone gets by default is listed. I currently give them a choice of three other items which can be entered on the first 3 lines below the default gear. That leaves them three lines for junk they find in the dungeon, more if they're strong.
This could actually simplify my starting equipment down to "Here choose three things off this list."
Since most of my players like hirelings and end up with at least 2, it would probably be a good idea for me to work up a page similar to the draft in the last post. But it would have an inventory list for one pc and lists for 3 hirelings.
Bags of holding, mules, Tenser's floating discs, could all be easily worked up into sheets with a certain amount of available slots too.
Anyway, the details can be worked out. I'm more excited about the way ignoring encumbrance effect on movement rates could streamline play.
Again, this is an abstraction. If you don't have a problem calculating movement rates for all pcs/npcs, then that's cool. I personally don't want to deal with calculations if an abstracted system will give me similar results-- namely the feeling that people have limits to what they can carry, and that because of this they'll have to plan ahead if they expect to find heavy treasures, or else make hard decisions about what to leave behind.
A Full Pack Hinders
Now, I think a simple addition to the binary system would help along those lines and not cost much in complexity: if you have at least one slot left in your pack, it doesn't affect you in any way, if you have a full pack you can't run or jump.
I'd have to see how this works in play, but I think it might prevent the binary system from feeling overly simple. I'm guessing it would put pressure on players to always have a little room left in their packs.
If you wanted a little more grit you could give pcs with full packs a -1 to all combat rolls (thanks Dan), or require them to have to make the standard rest breaks twice as long / twice as often (thanks anarchist). Both are simple enough that you could probably get away with using them without confusing players or slowing down play.
Carrying, Just . . . One . . . More . . . Thing . . .
Okay, what if their packs are full and players still want to carry something? I don't have a brilliantly elegant idea for this, I was just thinking pcs could carry up to their Str in 10s of pounds for a distance of their Str divided by 2 in 10s of feet. So an average adventurer with a full pack finds a bag of coins and wants to carry it with her. She can carry up to 100 more pounds, but only 50 feet. So she could drag it or schlep it 50 ft and then have to rest, huffing and puffing.
Someone with exceptional Str would be able to carry an additional 180 pounds 90 feet. if that doesn't sound like a lot, remember that I was going with an average pack weight of 45 pounds + 4 x 7.5 for exceptional strength. Which put the total weight at 255 pounds. That isn't too far off of the Swords & Wizardry maximum limit of 300 pounds.
How many of these over-encumbered carries can a pc make? Again, something I'd have to try in-game to see how it goes, but I might just let them keep doing one after another, except the noise they make grunting and continually dropping the weight would call for a wandering monster check each time.
Character Sheets
The cool thing about having an inventory list based encumbrance is that you can tailor a character sheet to be ready for the assumptions of your campaign. If all your fighters start with leather armor you can cook that in to your sheet and have it ready to go. If all your mages have to carry extremely heavy spell-books, same thing.
Here is my workmanlike draft of how I might incorporate my starting equipment with this system:
What everyone gets by default is listed. I currently give them a choice of three other items which can be entered on the first 3 lines below the default gear. That leaves them three lines for junk they find in the dungeon, more if they're strong.
This could actually simplify my starting equipment down to "Here choose three things off this list."
Since most of my players like hirelings and end up with at least 2, it would probably be a good idea for me to work up a page similar to the draft in the last post. But it would have an inventory list for one pc and lists for 3 hirelings.
Bags of holding, mules, Tenser's floating discs, could all be easily worked up into sheets with a certain amount of available slots too.
Anyway, the details can be worked out. I'm more excited about the way ignoring encumbrance effect on movement rates could streamline play.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Simple Encumbrance
If you've followed my blog this summer, you know I've been struggling with the tangle that is movement rates/encumbrance. I came up with what I thought was a pretty streamlined system of checkboxes to keep track of these. But two things happened, 1) I realized that the whole idea of more weight slowing a person's pace is wrong and 2) James Raggi came up with a much more elegant way to track encumbrance.
Short Distances, Not Slow Speeds
So, 1 first. This is one of those things that seems so intuitive but just isn't right. First, yes, carrying weight can slow your pace, but the amount your pace slows is nowhere near that given in most rpg rules. Check out these world's strongest men carrying the Husafell stone:
That thing is 300 to 400 pounds. Notice how they are walking at about 3 mph, in other words, normal walking pace. You could do this experiment yourself: go to the local building supply store pick up an 80 pound bag of ready-mix concrete and carry it around the store. I'd wager, if you can pick it up, that your problem won't be how slow you're moving, but how far you can go before your tired muscles give out completely. At some point the weight we carry flips from "I don't really notice this" to "Just a few more steps, just a few more steps."
So I'm proposing a binary encumbrance model:
- you carry it with no effect on your movement rate
- or, it's so heavy you can only carry it a limited distance.
First, we need to know what is the weight that flips us over to too heavy. In real life this has all kinds of influencing factors including body weight, height, and genetics but we'll keep it simple. We'll only vary it by the Strength attribute, 18's like the guys in the video will carry more than the rest of us. But to start let's hold strength steady at 10. What weight can be carried with no penalty?
If you go by Swords & Wizardry, the most a character can carry without suffering movement rate penalties is 75 pounds (5 stone). If you use my revised starting equipment pack, all characters will start with ~25 pounds of gear (1.5 stone). That would leave them with ~3.5 stone leeway.
To complicate things, I actually think the 75 pounds is much too high. My vague recollection of backpacking into the sierras is of having ~60-70 pound packs, and those were heavy, and those were modern packs made with aluminum frames, plastics, and designed to put weight on your hips. I'd be much happier if we lowered the default weight carried to ~45 pounds (3 stone). You could easily make this higher or lower. I would keep it multiples of 15 to make conversion to stones simple, say 30, or 60 pounds if those feel more right to you.
But, after the fast pack, that only leaves 20 pounds, you might think. But remember my fast pack is giving them almost everything they need going in to the adventure. If they find treasure they can always ditch some rations, oil, etc. Also, don't forget those lovely non-combatant hirelings, what do you think they are being paid for exactly?
Encumbrance as a Limited List
Okay, now 2. Anyone who has played crpgs has probably wished for an encumbrance system as simple. The packs in, say, Baldur's Gate had a certain amount of room and items took up a certain amount of that room. If you're a freaking pack rat like me, you would spend a lot of time in that game juggling gear, trying to decide what to throw out, learning what had the most value per weight/size. Encumbrance was a real part of the game experience. But how to translate that to the non-computer world where calculations get in the way of time spent making quips about portable holes? James Raggi proposed slots on a character's sheet. Each line could have one piece of equipment written on it. As these slots are filled characters pass predetermined encumbrance levels affecting their movement rate.
Now, first, this is a genius idea of abstracting levels of weight to lines on a sheet of paper. It, like most elegant solutions, is a matter of granularity; yes a sword weighs more than a potion, but that is not the level of detail we want to mess with if it requires us to do math every time we pick up new gear. An item takes a slot. That's it. (okay, you can actually fudge a little here, and I might, making oil bottles and ammo come in standard sized bundles in your world, to allow for say 3 bottles of oil on a line).
But, if you combine this with my idea above I think we can make this even simpler while still giving a feeling of verisimilitude, about things in our worlds having weight and people having limits. So, I would limit the lines available for gear to total our flipping point weight of 3 stones.
A sticky decision to make is, roughly, what weight should each line on the encumbrance record sheet represent. Again, you could vary this to your taste, but I think 7.5 pounds (1/2 stone) is a good middle position between a heavy mace and a lighter dagger, averaging things out in the end.
So, 45 pounds divided into 7.5 pound chunks would give us 6 slots. Players in my games would only have 3 slots left. We can round these numbers off and be a little sloppy, it's supposed to be an abstraction.
Strength Differences
But what about characters of different strength? The easist solution would be to give pcs more slots or more stones according to their strength attribute modifier. This could probably work for Labyrinth Lord or Osric, but S&W and oe have more limited bonuses. I want to keep this simple, how about add a new slot for ever two points of strength over 10, remove a slot going down the other way. So, someone with 18 strength would have 10 slots.
I propose hirelings, unless a trait noted otherwise would be average 10. You could make them weaker than average if you wanted. Here is a draft of what a record sheet using this system might look like:
Pdf is here. Hirelings on the bottom. You can see the players have 6 lines available with 4 additional dotted lines for those lucky enough to have exceptional strength.
I think I'll stop here and post tomorrow about what to do when the weight goes over the normal load.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Party Equipment Record Sheet
Even with fast packs there are often equipment choices for players to make when outfitting their expeditions to the underworld. I figure a really easy way to smooth these decisions, speed things along, and maybe also help with bookkeeping later is to have a party equipment record sheet.
I've been wanting to do this for a while but finding the right art has been an exercise in frustration. Anyway, think of it as a draft. And if you like the idea, you don't even need this pdf, just quickly sketch the items on a piece of paper and make your own on game day. But I do think images ease the reading of the sheet.
The idea is player one picks her gear, writes her character's name by all the stuff she chose then hands it to the next player who does the same. People are usually making these decisions simultaneously, but it could be helpful for inexperienced parties to be thinking about what they might need that they haven't purchased yet. I think it could be really helpful later when all hell breaks loose and you need to know which hirelings had torches-- just check this sheet, their names would be by torches.
There's room for an item or two more. I'm not sure what else should be one the sheet. I thought maybe bags or coffers, for when the party is carrying booty out of a dungeon. Other ideas?
I've been wanting to do this for a while but finding the right art has been an exercise in frustration. Anyway, think of it as a draft. And if you like the idea, you don't even need this pdf, just quickly sketch the items on a piece of paper and make your own on game day. But I do think images ease the reading of the sheet.
The idea is player one picks her gear, writes her character's name by all the stuff she chose then hands it to the next player who does the same. People are usually making these decisions simultaneously, but it could be helpful for inexperienced parties to be thinking about what they might need that they haven't purchased yet. I think it could be really helpful later when all hell breaks loose and you need to know which hirelings had torches-- just check this sheet, their names would be by torches.
There's room for an item or two more. I'm not sure what else should be one the sheet. I thought maybe bags or coffers, for when the party is carrying booty out of a dungeon. Other ideas?
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