I hate Encumbrance rules!
It's not that I think players should get a totally free ride, not at all. Its just that most of the time - at least in the systems I am familiar with - encumbrance is, well, an encumbrance. It's book-keeping, accounting and math. Adding up the weight of each and every little thing the character is carrying is boring and takes too long.
Generally I don't bother. The games we play we assume that the characters have anything they need for most situations. I assume rope, iron spikes and the like (or whatever.) If they have been doing a lot of stuff or they have lost their packs, then they have problems.
I also assume they can carry all the stuff they need.
Mind you, they are not allowed to specify that they are carrying 100 iron spikes, or 10 coils of 100' rope, but the basic load they get without any issues.
Yesterday, after my post about waiting for the Flame Princess to arrive, I went and downloaded the free stuff from the site, including the character sheet which, BTW, is one of the better ones I've seen. I don't know if the way the encumbrance is done is unique to this system, but it is certainly elegant and - to my mind - is another way of getting rid of the book-keeping.
The method used seems to be (I haven't read the actual rules - I'm just going by the sheet) that one simply marks off the descriptions that match what you are carrying, starting with the least encumbrance. Total the dots marked and that gives you a line on a table which summarizes the effects of your encumbrance on your speed, etc. A step above what I advocated earlier, but still more simple and elegant than most encumbrance accounting systems.
It's not that I think players should get a totally free ride, not at all. Its just that most of the time - at least in the systems I am familiar with - encumbrance is, well, an encumbrance. It's book-keeping, accounting and math. Adding up the weight of each and every little thing the character is carrying is boring and takes too long.
Generally I don't bother. The games we play we assume that the characters have anything they need for most situations. I assume rope, iron spikes and the like (or whatever.) If they have been doing a lot of stuff or they have lost their packs, then they have problems.
I also assume they can carry all the stuff they need.
Mind you, they are not allowed to specify that they are carrying 100 iron spikes, or 10 coils of 100' rope, but the basic load they get without any issues.
Yesterday, after my post about waiting for the Flame Princess to arrive, I went and downloaded the free stuff from the site, including the character sheet which, BTW, is one of the better ones I've seen. I don't know if the way the encumbrance is done is unique to this system, but it is certainly elegant and - to my mind - is another way of getting rid of the book-keeping.
The method used seems to be (I haven't read the actual rules - I'm just going by the sheet) that one simply marks off the descriptions that match what you are carrying, starting with the least encumbrance. Total the dots marked and that gives you a line on a table which summarizes the effects of your encumbrance on your speed, etc. A step above what I advocated earlier, but still more simple and elegant than most encumbrance accounting systems.
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