Encumbrance Isn't Hard

In a somewhat recent (as of writing this, anyway) Nerdcognito episode, Ryan states that in the game he is working on he is going to use item slots as opposed to a normal and functional encumbrance system.

For shame.

For that those who have grown up suckling on the withered and vile teat of post-modern vapidware trash, in ages past when you generated your character in an actual roleplaying game, your Strength would determine how much your character could carry, and often there were various ranges that determined how encumbered you were. You'd note these values on your character sheet so that after going through the laborious process of equipping your character you could perform a bit of basic math and determine how burdened he was (if at all).

For players aged 12 and up this procedure was as straightforward as it was logical, as obviously different items have different weights. But this was long ago, the golden age of tabletop roleplaying, where designers were passionate and creative, as opposed to lazy hacks churning out shallow derivatives in the unceasing and unrewarding pursuit of fleeting attention, money and validation. Players today have been made soft, and their minds softer still. Adding up numbers? Sure...so long as you don't involve decimals and/or double-digits (and there are mentally ill narcissists that balk at the idea of simply subtracting hit points).

I am unsure which game to pin the blame on as the patient zero for the moronic plague that is item slots. It features in Lion & Dragon, where you can "generally carry 20 items" on your person, modified by Strength. There are of course a number of caveats: 1,000 coins count as one item, even though a thousand "medieval accurate" gold coins would weigh anywhere from around 20 to 40 pounds.

Assuming an average weight of 30 pounds, this means in Lion & Dragon the typical person could carry 300 pounds before suffering any sort of penalties, and up to 600 pounds and be only slightly impeded. Even if we were to assume a consistently smaller coin with a total weight of, say, 15 pounds per bag, that still means that your average commoner and carry 150 pounds without any sort of issue.

You can also carry a quiver with 30 arrows and have it count as one item (arrows are oddly only sold in dozens), even though the heaviest estimate I could find topped out at around 5 pounds. Since Strength modifies your total item slots I have to assume it's based around the amount of weight you can carry, which makes it confusing why two items with very different weights eat up the same amount of slots.

Also: why doesn't armor affect your slots? Apparently, the average person can wear plate armor, which weighs around 60 pounds, plus run around with 150-300 pounds of coins without any sort of detriment whatsoever. Of course, if you took the armor off and just carried it, then it would magically begin to impede you.

Oh, and "heavy or very heavy" objects count as five items, which would be a total weight of anywhere from 25-150 pounds. We can't be certain because we have no clue how much the coins are assumed to weigh, and the only examples of very heavy objects are small chests and corpses. So your typical medieval authentic avatar can carry the equivalent of two corpses, no problem, and up to four and still be able to move around only slightly impeded.

Even were he to strap on plate armor and run around with four corpses? He'd only be something like -10 to Speed and -1 to Dex-based checks.

Something I just realized is that due to how the rule is written a person with a Strength of 3 can also carry effectively 150-300 pounds without any sort of impediment, and up to 225-510 whilst suffering a meager -1 to Dexterity checks and -10 penalty to Speed. He can also do this while wearing plate armor without further hindering himself.

To be fair it's not nearly as retarded as DarkityDarkDark's slot system, where you can carry items equal to your Strength score or 10, whichever is higher. So a guy with a Strength of 3 can carry as much as a guy with a Strenght of 10. Items can also have different slot values. This would make more sense were Kelsey not so astoundingly stupid, assigning leather armor (why?) with a value of 1, and plate armor only a 3.

In reality, a gambeson weighs something like 5-10 pounds. Even assuming a weight of 10 pounds, that would mean that plate should take up at least 6 slots. Then you have arming swords, which Kelsey of course calls longswords because she's just copying 5th Edition and couldn't be bothered to do any research: these take up 1 slot, while a longsword (which Kelsy erroneously refers to as a greatsword) takes up 2 slots, even though a longsword only weighs a couple more pounds than an arming sword.

But then daggers also take up an entire slot, despite only weighing a pound on average.

However the award for the most retarded implementation of item slots goes to Troika. Here everyone can carry 12 items, period. The order you write them on your sheet also matters, because the "designer" was so stupid that he thinks everything a character carries is stuffed into a bag, all neatly layered atop each other, including things he is wearing or would be carrying on a belt.

Ryan: while item slots may appear to be more convenient in that you'll have smaller numbers, they make no goddamn sense under any amount of scrutiny. Item weights get too abstracted to the point where any discerning player would wonder why the fuck a dagger somehow "weighs" as much as an entire sword, or even a suit of armor which weighs at the least five times as much 

It's a lazy gimmick for the lazy gamer who thinks marginally-more-complex-yet-still-basic math that children can (somehow?) perform quickly and easily is just too much to bear. You could make it more granular, sure, but then at that point you're approaching a normal encumbrance system, which doesn't suffer from any of those issues, so why not just do that?

You don't even have to get super complicated with it. In Dungeons & Delvers you are either unencumbered, lightly encumbered, or heavily encumbered (though we're considering a moderately encumbered range). You suffer a cumulative penalty on all checks that require movement, as well as a reduction in Speed. Easy, plus the numbers follow a formula, so it's easy to memorize the entire table.

For item weights, round weights up or down for convenience. Sure, some arming swords only weighed two and a half pounds, but just round it up to three. Not that big of a deal. The only exception would be having some items weigh a tenth of a pound, or even a fifth, so you can just have each bundle of 5 or 10 items equal a pound (and it's easy to represent these weights using decimals).

Reject post-modern vapidware trash, embrace tradition.