I have a little bit of an obsession with encumbrance systems. It's a pretty common aspect of the D&D to house rule and hack, and a lot of people are dissatisfied with it no matter what.
This is just a quick post to point out one reason people are dissatisfied with every encumbrance system everywhere. Everyone knows some sort of system is needed, but no one is clear enough on why it's needed to be happy that what they have does it what needs doing.
Before you even start to think about encumbrance in your games, though, you need to think about the differences among three sorts of rules.
Inventory limits are rules that say you can only have a certain amount stuff in your character's inventory.
Encumbrance rules impose consequences on characters based on how much stuff they are carrying at any given time.
Carrying capacity rules concern how much weight or bulk a character can pick up and move around with.
These are not the same things! A game doesn't have to have all of them. Most versions of D&D have a set of rules that do all three jobs at once. But games such as the wonderful roguelike, Brogue, get by with just inventory limits, and they don't just work, they work really, really well.
If you have carrying capacity rules, they probably indirectly determine inventory limits. You can't have more in your inventory than you can lift or carry. I've played in many games, especially 5e games, where that's the only limitation on you inventory. The rules say what the maximum weight you can carry is, and your inventory is limited only by that weight, containers be damned.
But carrying capacity and inventory rules serve slightly different functions. Carrying capacity is an aid to verisimilitude. It's just too silly not to have some limits on how much a character can lift, especially when all characters have a Strength score sitting there to tell you exactly that.
Inventory limits are constrained by verisimilitude, but that's not their main point. Their main point is to create interesting decisions—times when you would like to be able to carry both A and B, but you only have room in your inventory for one of them. You must weigh the pros and cons and decide which you will carry.
That's why Brogue works so well with no more than just the rule that you can only carry 20 things at once. You want to carry more than that. At a certain point, you must decide what to drop to make room for new items you really want. You start to think about where to cache supplies you can't carry but want access to. Those are all interesting decisions, but there is no nod to verisimilitude here. A maul and a potion and a ring are each 1 "thing," and each takes up the same amount of inventory.
Carrying capacity rules are only needed if the characters bump against the limits from time to time, so that they have to make decisions. Inventory limits are only needed if characters are picking things up and putting them down frequently enough that decisions about what to pick up or put down can be interesting. In a game where characters aren't running into anything too heavy for them to lift, and they aren't finding treasures that will take up limited inventory space, there's no need for carrying capacity or inventory limit rules.
Then what does encumbrance do? There are two versions.
One version of encumbrance rules is to add a dimension to the sorts of decisions inventory limits impose. Rather than just saying you can only carry so many things, the rules give you consequences for carrying more stuff, even before you reach your limit. This should lead to decisions about whether to take the penalties or drop something and, if the latter, what to drop. In a good set of rules, the penalties might increase as one carries more and more, but they shouldn't be immediately crippling. There should be some temptation to soak up the penalties for the sake of carrying what you want.
That first version of encumbrance rules is much less interesting if characters aren't often picking things up and putting them down. If characters' gear is fairly static, and they aren't hauling around a lot of heavy treasure, there's not much point to a detailed set of penalties for carrying more and more. They won't come into play.
The second version of encumbrance rules is aimed mostly at simulating the idea that some equipment, especially armor, makes you move slower. So, it simply assigns movement rates based on armor and leaves it at that. This version is independent carrying capacity or inventory limits. It can exist without either.
So, before you can decide if the inventory management rules of your game are doing their job, you need to think about what job you want them to do and what sorts of rules can do that job. Don't expect inventory limits to give you a satisfying simulation of how strength affects carrying capacity. Don't expect rules for lifting and carrying to make inventory decisions more interesting. And whatever rules you wind up going for, don't use a detailed and fiddly system to track something that almost never changes!
The promised article on kobold tactics is coming soon. Stay tuned.
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