D&D Encumbrance is boring. Do THIS instead.

Professor DM presents several different ways to handle encumbrance and track ammo. ( Episode # 438)

[breakerpressgames]

My players run out of arrows and have their food rot all the time. But I do survival-horror, so that's part of my whole vibe.

[mintjams]

I met Professor DM at PAGE 2 convention this weekend and was an absolute pleasure to meet. Fantastic guy and fantastic content!

[strawberryhellcat]

When we started playing D&D as kids, we were fast and loose with encumbrance, torch life, etc. Years later, one of the snots I taught to play the game came back as a RL combat vet and completely upended the way we played. Thanks to him, we frequently game at the VFW, and found a lot of our players there. Particularly in our 3.5 games, we do encumbrance, weather rolls, ammo, food, and torch tracking, intent rolls, terrain, morale and sanity checks, unspeakable traps - as gritty as we can get it. The snot also used to keep an eye on my late father to make sure he didn't try any sneaky short-cuts too, which was fun to watch.
However, my favorite game moment with the snot was the time he announced, "That's not how you loot a body", and I replied, "I'm gonna tell Mom you said that."

[jexsnake]

I don't play DnD, but THIS is the kind of video I want to see more about TTRPGs in youtube. Bring more about ideas for mechanics, talk more about different designs, things that worked or not worked on your campaigns, and the like.

[sergeantstime]

Back in the Dark Ages (1980) my OD&D group used encumbrance and equipment as a part of the story telling. Equipment became part of the story with retainers and henchmen to carry excess items. These retainers went on to become PCs with their own fond (or not so fond) memories of being 'pack horses'. Of course, they carried on the tradition with hiring their own retainers....

[MormonFoodie]

"Before you spend 60 minutes equipping your character ..." 🤣Back in the day's of AD&D I was an encumbrance freak. It had those wonderful rules about how much stuff could be put in a backpack, pouch, large sack, etc. And it had item saving throws. I made the characters write down where they put what so that I could threaten them losing their stuff whenever they got hit by things like fireball, lightning bolt, etc. It was nit picky, I admit, but it made for some interesting play when they had to roll to save their stuff from getting melted. 🙂

[harmonicaman]

Slot based encumbrance rocks for me: Each character has 10 slots and gets extra slots as per their strength bonus. Each item takes one slot. Bulky items take multiple slots (ex: two handed sword takes two slots). Leather armor takes one slot, chain mail takes up two slots, plate mail takes up three slots. Small items can be bundled three to a slot (rations, torches, spikes, gems). Coin purse holds 100 coins, each slot holds 100 coins. DM rules on other items.

[ruBenes]

I've gotten rotten rations in a game before, but it was from a random encounter in a swamp. They were ruined and started rotting due to a trap, but I used them as bait to capture the genetically modified monster we were looking for so it worked out in the end (It's in a Star Wars 5e campaign).

[abpho]

I like how Shadowdark handles carrying capacity.

[needycatproductions]

I try to use the system from Forbidden Lands: You have supply dice for torches, arrows, food, water. The max is a d12. Every in-game day, the players have to roll for food and water at least once. On a 1 or 2, their supply decreases. So you go from a d12 to a d10 etc. Same for arrows but after every combat encounter. And I think for torches you roll after a certain amount of rooms explored.

[VelliMak]

I love tracking equipment and rations on my character sheet, and meticulously track every projectile shot.

Sadly none of my usual DMs make that a meaningful aspect of our games.

[DanielMastrofski]

You are single-handedly my FAV commentator for D&D. Your advice is well-given, and well-received. Thank you for your genuine nature!

[Haldrahir]

I've only been playing D&D from the late 80's onwards, but generally, I have tracked encumbrance/resources. Not always, but generally. It matters less in certain types of games for sure. But in most D&D games I play/run resource management is an important part of life, and has so much impact on the story.

[ronnievagrant]

We purchase blank business cards and business card sleeve sheets to put in a players folder. When we purchase an item we draw it on the business card and slide it into the sleeve. Its a nice visual way of tracking items including ammo, mana, health points and stamina.

[NuSocTheKelDor]

I like the way ICRPG does equipment. For adventuring gear, you can have kits with items that represent the different actions possible with those kits. An adventurer's kit may come with rope, torches, rations, and some sort of fire starter. Each kit has an amount of HP, and every time you pull a relevant item from that kit, it removes a point of HP. Once that kit hits zero HP, you can't pull anything else from it until you resupply. Ammunition is handled in a different way, though, depending on setting. Bows, flintlock pistols, and other ranged weapons that fire 1 projectile at a time have an ammo range, usually 1-5. If your unmoddified attack roll falls within that range, you've run out of ammo in your quiver or pouch and need to swap weapons for that encounter. For full-auto and semi-auto weapons, you instead are assumed to have all the ammo you will ever need, but you have a reload range like the other weapons. If your attack roll falls within that range, you've run out of ammo in your clip/mag and need to reload which is your action for turn. Or you can switch to another weapon you have equipped for no cost and save reloading for another encounter.

[AvonofTalamh]

I've settled on item slots for my games, but I love usage dice too — so much so, I cribbed the idea and use it for harvesting plants and monsters for parts. In that case, they're "abundance dice, " and a harvesting source runs out after the abundance dice are depleted. Each time a character harvests from a source, that source's abundance die depletes on a roll of a 1 or 2.

[eric]

My group has been replaying the old Darksun campaigns using Shadowdark, that slot based system really made the rations and torches become extremely important and completely changed the groups approach to a lot of situations where they had to pick what risks to take in order to survive, which I found to be much more interesting gamewise. In place of the 1hour timer on torches, I changed it to 10 rounds and made a visual tracker they can see of the torch slowly burning down, thought that made it a bit better than just a timer.

[ChristopherGronlund]

My approach is similar to yours: it's reasonable to assume people have things for an adventure (as long as no one takes advantage of it). Spending time each adventure day searching for food beyond rations was something friends did when we were younger and played all weekend, but with a handful of hours to play during the week today, there's no tracking, shopping--and you have what you need to cast spells. Unless it's part of a particular adventure (food goes bad...lighting is not as readily available), players have the little things they need.

[adamjchafe]

I enjoy encumberance and NOT handwaving things because it gives me an excuse to carry around weird items we find during adventures and think of clever ways to use them. Slot based works great for that. As always it depends on the type of game. Your CoC example makes perfect sense, but when my group plays Delta Green the agents are lucky to have their clothes, 50 bucks, a fake id, and a burner phone. Scrounge for materials as you go.

If anyone needs a masterclass in how cool inventory managment can affect gameplay check out the criminally underwatched 3d6 Down The Line actual play. It really makes dungeon delving exciting!

[AthanasiusofIreland]

i see dungeoncraft, i click. Love the content.