Blog Preview: Track Encumbrance and Only Encumbrance

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Track Encumbrance and Only Encumbrance

One of, if not the, most appealing aspects of games like Knave, Into the Odd, or newer-comers like Cinco, is that characters are not defined by the abstract game-layer of character class or ancestry, but instead by the things they carry. Want to play a wizard? Carry a ton of spellbooks. Fancy yourself a knight? Tote around your sword and board and maybe get a noble steed. This makes all characters into paper dolls, perfect for any occasion for which you can outfit them. It also incentivizes hunting for new and better gear in dungeons more appealing than in a game whereby your inventory is ancillary to the real progression mechanism of gaining new, innate benefits upon more-or-less arbitrary milestones.

These games do not go far enough! Sure, a wizard is now just a freak lugging a library on their arthritic back and a knight is just a bloke covered in platemail, but they still have vital statistics of some type. That so-called wizard may have the mental capacity of a lab rat and naturally brawnier than his greatsword-swinging travel companion. Even if a character’s Strength score is far less impactful (and restrictive) in an Oddlike than in the latest corporate D&D and its successors, they still have a Strength score that is entirely unconnected to the things they carry.

What if encumbrance was a stat? What if it was your only stat? Right off the back, this comports nicely with a bouncing-off-point most people have with roll-under systems and which even I complained about in the past: that rolling low is good and rolling high is bad. Bigger number gooder is so baked into some of our brains that subverting it can be a hurdle to adopting an Oddlike system. But here, if we say you have to roll above the number of filled inventory slots on your sheet in order to pass a save, then the principle of bigger number gooder is restored! And you can even keep the not-originally-intended-but-we-all-must-in-our-hearts-admit-is-satisfying house rule of “rolling a 1 is an auto-fail and rolling a 20 is an auto-pass”. And in terms of explaining why encumbrance is relevant to succeeding at a saving throw diegetically, I posit to you that it is actually very difficult to avoid any dangers when you have too much shit on you. Those who have ever gone backpacking will know well what I mean. This is not a new observation, in fact holy smokes the Twenty Sided blogpost observing this is now 20 years old. Even the Rise Up Comus blogpost on the topic is old enough to be in primary school. 

[insert image from ITYSL]

For those for whom exemplars are the best teachers, I have generated a random character using one of Save Vs Total Party Kill’s excellent character generators. I have rolled a bald, decrepit elf in drab clothing, whom we will dub Michaelf. Michaelf has (I am not counting backpacks, that kind of stuff is how you carry all the other stuff): (1) a dagger, (2) a waterskin, (3) a lantern, (4) four flasks of oil (certain duplicate items can be bundled into a single slot), (5) a week’s worth of iron rations, (6) a ten-foot pole, (7) fifty gold coins (same with coins, let’s say up to about 50 of a single type–which is why adventurers prefer to be paid in gold and spurn chests filled with copper pennies), (8) seventeen gold coins (two slots of gold because Michaelf is already planning for retirement plus the aforementioned 50 coins=slot rule), and (9) the magic missile spell. Now that you are picking the bald, decrepit and probably unpleasant in other ways not detailed by the generator, Michaelf the elf, imagine him face-to-face with a dragon. The dragon, as it is wont, belches forth flames at our poor Michaelf. In some games, his player would have to make a Dexterity saving throw to dodge out of the way and in others there are bespoke saving throws just for dodging dragon breath. But we now have our all purpose save: encumbrance. Because Michaelf has 9 items, he needs to roll a 10 or higher to succeed. Rolling a die and… 8! Sorry, Michaelf, you have been burnt to a bald, decrepit crisp and are now dead. 

Wait, that’s not right, what about hit points? I mean, sure, the dragon’s breath probably killed Michaelf but don’t we want to be sure? However, I said that we are only tracking encumbrance, so it would be a breach of my blogger’s oath to say we are still tracking hit points (for the characters, let’s still track them for the monsters, monsters remain unchanged). The dragon’s breath weapon deals the dragon’s current hit point total (45) as damage. But how will Michaelf track this damage? Encumbrance, of course. Imagine Michaelf’s character sheet with 20 boxes for tracking their inventory slots and each slot has a little bubble or something else in a corner that can be filled in, in addition being able to write the item in the larger space in the slot. This is where we will record damage. For each slot bubbled in, it is treated as filled whether or not there is an item there. I.e., the number to beat when making a saving throw is the greater of the number of slots filled with items or the number of slots with damage markers. If Michael already had 11 damage, he would have had to beat 11 on his save instead of 9, despite carrying 9 items. And if all 20 slots are marked with damage markers, you are dead. Elegant. 

But what about armor? That isn’t a question Michaelf cares about, because he was wearing none, but it is relevant for this imaginary system we are designing in this post. Let’s just take the armor values from an ordinary lingua franca D&D, Old School Essentials, and reverse engineer something. In OSE, leather armor provides a 12 armor class, chainmail is 14, plate mail is 16 and a shield gives you a +1. I’m sure magic armor can get you higher numbers. If we want Michael (who in OSE would have an AC of 10) to have an armor class of 1, then we simply subtract 9. So here, leather (weighs 1 slot) provides 3 AC, chainmail (2 slots) is 5, plate mail (3 slots) is lucky number 7, and shields are still +1. What do these numbers mean? It means when the character takes damage, each slot can take that number of points of damage before having to give it a damage marker. Put more simply, and mathematically, take the damage dealt and divide by the AC (rounded down), and that is how many slots take damage. So for Michaelf, 45 divided by 1 is still 45, so he is still fucking dead, but at least we did the math to make sure. But not so for his stalwart companion, the buxom dwarf with flowing locks of hair, Edwarf. Edwarf is wearing plate mail so when faces down the dragon’s morning breath, the damage is 45 divided by 7 which is (rounded down, remember): a mere 6 slots that take damage. Edwarf will loot Michaelf’s body.

The wiseacres in the audience have already discovered, like several paragraphs ago, what they think is a fatal flaw in my Encumbrance Only system. “I’m just going to hop around buck naked, maybe with just an Elden Ring jar on my head, and I’ll pass every single save that is thrown at me!” Sure, but you won’t be able to do much of anything without tools or weapons. “Okay, I’m buck naked but I carry a big sword!” What this hypothetical insolent reader is pointing out is that the system needs some countervailing force that makes players want to not just go into the dungeon naked. And I thought up one that doesn’t add too much complexity to the whole thing and prevents the sword wielding naked adventurer as a viable (and perhaps the most viable) character option in one fell swoop.

[insert elden ring jar head image]

Your attacks can only deal a maximum damage of the total number of your slots filled with items. There, that completes this system. Now the greatsword wielding nude maniac is nerfed, only capable of doing two points of damage (let’s say that 2-handed weapons take up 2 inventory slots). To be clear, this is a limiting factor, not a minimum. So, for instance, Michaelf’s dagger still does 1d4 damage and isn’t really impacted by the limit of 9 damage due to their equipment. Nor are their magic missiles, which deal 1d6+1 damage. But Edwarf, who let’s say is carrying 7 slots worth of equipment (3 of which is his armor), won’t get the full benefit of their battle axe’s 1d8 damage because it is capped at 7 so long as he carries so few things. Now the downside to this countervailing rule is that it is less easily explained diegetically than the fact that being encumbered makes it hard to succeed at stuff. However, maybe it tells us something about whatever world this system describes. 

In Into the Odd, Knave, Cairn, and their descendants and other close relatives, there is something innate in those worlds that isn’t quite true in ours: equipment imbues capability. If you give me a sword in our real world, I will be less able to deal as much damage with it than would Josh, author of the aforementioned Rise Up Comus blog, whose many years spent studying the blade (in LARPs) have perhaps taught him basic techniques regarding how to swing one. Likewise, I cannot simply place a treatise on civil procedure in Josh’s hands and expect him to represent me in court when I am tried for the results of my unskilled sword-swinging. But in the worlds of these Oddlike systems, possession of a weapon confers the ability to use it just as well as anyone else and possession of a spellbook confers the ability to use magic, without having to spend four years paying wizard-tuition. The system I have described herein must go one step further: the accumulation of things is power in and of itself. That is why the naked swordsman is ineffective at their craft. Their relative lack of possessions makes them less powerful. Likewise, Michaelf’s bags of gold make him more powerful, not less, even if it makes him more susceptible to dragon fire. And perhaps this even explains dragons. It is their accumulation of treasure, of their hoards, that give them power. This is an old idea, but it is a fun one, especially for games where the point is to go into dark places in search of stuff. Possession is nine tenths of the law for this game system.

For those actually wanting to try this out, here is a quick and dirty summary of the above rules so you don’t have to go digging through my ramblings when trying to remember what does what:

• Saves. Saving throws are 1d20 (advantage and disadvantage optional) versus the number of slots either filled with inventory or marked with damage (whichever is higher). Roll over that number to succeed. A 1 is a failure. A 20 is a success.

• Slots. Certain smaller items can be bundled into a single slot (referee discretion). 50 coins of any denomination fills a single slot. Light armor fills 1 slot, medium armor fills 2 slots, and heavy armor fills 3 slots. Weapons or tools that require at least 2 hands to use fills 2 slots. Backpacks, bandoliers, fannypacks, and other worn containers and ordinary clothing being worn don’t fill slots at all.

• Hit Points. Each inventory slot can take a single damage marker. When damaged, a player has to fill in a number of slots with damage equal to the damage rolled divided by their AC. When 20 inventory slots have been filled, the player-character dies. 

• Armor. Unarmored is AC 1, light armor is AC 3, medium armor is AC 5, heavy armor is AC 7, and shields are +1 AC. 

• Attacks. PC’s damage, whether by weapon, spell or otherwise, is capped out at the number of inventory slots filled with items. 

• Other Statistics. Monsters, weapons, etc. have the same statistics as in your base system (some type of D&D is assumed, use OSE if in doubt).