GS: TTRPG - Equipment

In my experience there’s two distinct approaches to handling equipment in an RPG (they have their variants but there’s effectively only two broad categories, with a third option being none at all.) As you may have already guessed, I don’t really like either of them, heh, but it’s also not something I feel is important enough for me to try and reinvent from scratch. Managing your inventory is never anyone's favorite part of gameplay, and because it’s often such a chore, it’s often handwaved in TTRPGs. I do, however, want to talk about both methods because I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

System 0: Why is a bag

Real quickly first, I want to discuss why I think it's important to have equipment limits or a carrying capacity at all. Some players seem to wish dearly for the elimination of inventory management entirely. While I used to agree with them, from a design perspective I don’t think that’s necessarily a healthy choice in most RPGs. The limit placed on carrying capacity is important in most RPGs because humans by their very nature tend to hoard anything that seems useful, or that they might imagine could be useful later. In a game, video game or tabletop, there’s a weird perception that because an item exists (or because the GM mentioned it,) then it must have some function. Why include it or mention it at all if it is just a worthless item with zero value? Bethesda literally fills their games with junk items, but you still might wonder if there’s a quest in the game at some point that might require you to find one, so, best to save it for later. And even taking a dinner plate or fork or something with you might be worth it if there's spare room in your bag because you could sell it for 1 gold at the next trader you meet.

Having a limit on the stuff you can cram in your backpack reminds the player they need to judge the value of each item as it pertains to their goals, and drop some of their shit off every once in awhile, engaging with the traders or other inventory dump systems to convert all that trash they’re carrying into something more useful. It lends itself well into the “make interesting choices” part of gameplay, where the interesting choice in this instance is whether to keep something of questionable usefulness, or trade it for something better. I can think of no better example of this than in Darkest Dungeon, where the player is constantly forced to make choices about whether they should use their very limited inventory space for valuable supplies that could help them survive a bit longer or toss them out to make room for the delicious delicious treasure that’s worthless until you make it back to town.

Having an unlimited inventory removes those choices, which usually means the player just keeps everything because there’s no immediate cost or consequence for doing so. The only consequence comes after it’s far too late, and then you are forced to do epic battle with the UI or your pages and pages of hand-written inventory to find the one thing you need. Your character’s inventory should never be the final boss of the game.

System 1: Weight/Volume Limits

Speaking of Bethesda games, these weight-based or volume-based inventory limits are kind of the gold standard in RPGs. Every item in the game has a solid, static weight, a number that represents the “cost” of taking it with you, and the player has a value, usually based on their character’s stats, that defines how many “points” they can spend on carrying things. This works fine in video games, where the math is all done for the player instantly. It’s easy to ignore, simple to understand, and it stays out of the way of gameplay until you reach the limit and can’t move any more because you picked up one too many paper cups.

From a realism perspective, though, this system simply… sucks. There’s simply no way you could possibly be carrying six full complete sets of daedric armor, plus a pile of swords, plus six thousand arrows, three bows (and a crossbow just in case) AND that giant dwemer apparatus you just vacuumed up somehow for the quest you're on. It’s comical to unload your inventory, when all these items explode out of you in a ring, filling up a space many times your size with all the shit you were allegedly carrying.

D&D tries to do something similar, but honestly, outside of character creation, I don’t think I’ve ever given Encumbrance a second thought in a D&D campaign. The system is clunky to manage in pen and paper and I just don’t care enough to engage strongly with it. I’m not the type of player to min-max, so I’m not going to try and push the limits of what my character can bring with them to maximize my profits once we return to town. I'd rather just have wings and use that as my excuse as to why my character needs to travel extra light. If I imagine that it makes sense for my character to stuff that gold and gem-encrusted idol into my empty pack, then I’ll snag it. If I’m already carrying a buncha stuff, however, I’ll probably leave it for someone else to grab.

So for ease of use in a video game, the system can work great. But it’s clunky to calculate and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense otherwise. Which brings us to the next system...

System 2: Slot-based Limits

While more varied than the latter, perhaps, this is any system that relies on a limited number of inventory slots, rather than weight, to determine what your character can carry. Think of something like Diablo, Resident Evil or Backpack Hero. This is the system I’ve opted to lean more towards in the GS: TTRPG, (because I hate math.)

Slot-based can mean anything, such as having slots on your person for armor, torso, hands, feet and the like, or having a grid of slots in your backpack to fit tetris piece shaped items. Or having categorial slots. Etc. While can be a bit more complex, at times, than simple weight limits, it’s still quite easy to understand, and I think it's actually the easiest option for pen and paper. By its very nature, this system allows the player to carry significantly less, making it a bit more realistic as well.

And with all that out of the way, I present to you the GS:TTRPG Equipment System:

I’m going with a more slot-based system, but given our emphasis and focus on the player characters, which slot an item goes into is relative to your character. My goal is to make it as simple and manageable as possible, so players don’t have to spend a whole lot of time on managing their inventory.

You have your Worn items, 2 Large items, 5 Small items, and a number of Pocket items. That's it.

When you find an item and decide to pick it up, it goes into one of these categories. (Although it could also be a Huge or Gargantuan item, in which case, no, you can't pick it up). What matters most to whether or not you can take it with you is the size of your character.

How I imagine this working is the GM will have, in their mind, a general idea of an item's size and shape alongside their description, but it doesn't have to be very precise.

Players who have any interest in taking the item with them will speak up, the GM will evaluate the size of their character, and determine if it's Large, Small or Pocket-sized for that character, and if the character decides they still want it, they fill in their appropriate slot. This should be a relatively quick and simple process, and if it isn't 100% accurate, it's not super important. Most of what you're going to find in Kuserra is busted up junk anyway. Any uncertainty or ambiguity can also be solved by allowing a quick Passive Brawn check, to let the character's physical strength help determine if the item is Huge or Large, Large or Small, but this probably won't be necessary most of the time.

Items in Kuserra do have an absolute weight, of course, that doesn't change based on who is holding it, but it's not necessary to provide that value for every single item. This is largely because no two items in Kuserra will be the same; they will vary wildly in weight, composition, size and shape. One sword might be hammered out crudely from a twisted lump of rebar, another might be a reinforced shred of sheet metal with a duct-tape handle. A piece of chest armor might be comprised of a well-crafted thick leather covering and straps, or it might be a broken computer monitor wrapped around you with wires. These items function in-game based on the appropriate category. All "swords" do the same thing. But I’m not going to say they all weigh 10 or 20 lbs. One might weigh a little more, one might weigh a little less. They might be larger or smaller.

Worn Items

Worn items are anything your character can reasonably wear without being hindered. This includes clothing, well-fitting armor, belts and straps, collars, gloves or boots. There is likely to be some discussion as to whether or not you can wear layers of armor (from a gameplay perspective it doesn’t matter much because armor doesn’t stack with itself,) but generally the question comes down to, can you put this on or not? If it’s unusually bulky or might be something that DOES hinder you, it might instead be considered a Small or Large item. Worn items can have pockets, sometimes, but they won't always.

Large Items

Your character can carry two Large items. This is the first category of things that are categorized relative to your character, which, for now, I’m defining as anything that is less than 75% of your character’s size. This is not an absolute restriction. None of these are. If you can make a reasonable argument for why you should be able to carry three Large items, (perhaps thanks to those extra limbs you mutated) go for it, but be ready for the GM to spring some consequences on you. Carrying too many things makes you delicious in the eyes of those who think they deserve all that stuff more than you do.

Examples: Large items will generally be appropriately sized two-handed weapons or the larger end of one-handed weapons, and big bulky items like backpacks. A microwave might also fall into this category. While it's not impossible to wield a Large item in one hand, these are usually things that are used with two hands or best worn on the back.

Small Items

Small items are anything up to 25% the size of your character, and you can carry five of them at a time. These will typically be things attached to belts, like daggers or other small weapons, or pouches or other small objects with pockets in them.

Examples of Small items:

Pouches, knives, tools, medkits, a full meal, a rock

Pocket Items

Items small enough to fit inside one of your Small items are considered Pocket items. I don’t put a hard limit on the number of pocket items you can take with you, but you do need a pocket to put them in, which you’ll specify on your character sheet. If an item with a pocket in it gets stolen or lost, all the pocket items attached to it are lost as well. (This needs testing of course, I'm not sure how many pockets people will end up managing on average, it might need limits, etc.)

Additionally, while there’s no hard limit on the number of items that can fit in a single pocket, if you’re putting everything into one pocket, and it’s unreasonably full of items, the pocket can tear or be destroyed and its contents get scattered all over the ground, with or without the character noticing. As for precisely where that threshold lies, the GM can use their best judgment or ask for a consensus at the table for what everyone agrees is a reasonable limit. This, as well as many other things, I imagine will differ at every table, and might even depend on the specific type of pocket/container, so I’m not going to try and provide a table of guidelines for it. If your pocket-having item is like a pet carrier, obviously you can cram quite a bit of STUFF into it when compared to a pants pocket. Though very tiny pocket items might fall through the air holes… I digress. This is all stuff to be discussed at the table, not in the rulebook.

Examples of Pocket Items:

Scraps of food, fistfuls of nails, cells, pebbles and countless other lightweight or pocket-sized things. Heck, if the 11 foot wolfbear in your party wants to scoop up your smol bean and stuff them into the big oversized pocket they have in their backpack, why not. You're a pocket item now. Congrats.

Huge Items

Huge items are anything that's bigger than a Large item relative to your character. These can't be carried on your person, not easily or very far. It's exhausting to move them, but they CAN be moved. You can carry them a short distance, but trying to move them any further than that will start to cause Pain and Rest to increase. You can push them or pull them as well, but they are heavy or abnormally bulky. If you are playing a smol bean, you will likely run across Huge Items much more commonly than larger characters.

Examples: Wagons, vehicles, very large boulders, particularly stubborn solid metal doors.

Gargantuan Items

Anything that's twice the size of your character or more. You cannot move it. No matter how hard you try, no amount of pushing will move such a thing.

Examples: A building. Everything larger than a car

Watts

Watts are stored on Cells. Cells require a Chitter (which almost every trader has) to read how many watts are left on them.

So wait, what the heck is the benefit of being small?

This was actually a point that got brought up in the first round of feedback I got, that size being used as a factor for gameplay might make large characters OP. Currently, large characters can carry and move more stuff, yes. They are mighty. And small creatures just can't carry as much stuff.

However, small creatures are much harder to hit with ranged attacks, harder to spot from a distance, and have a much easier time hiding in small spaces or escaping through tunnels. So, I gotchu smol fam!

ANYHOO this wound up being way too long, sorry about that. Ramblers gotta ramble. Next time I want to introduce Adaptations, and at some point I wanna write a quick reference guide, since a lot of the mechanical crap is getting lost in these rambly posts of nonsense. Thanks for reading bye!