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Aotrs Commander
2015-06-03, 08:18 AM
An attempt to create a humanoid carrying space inventory system (paper-doll style.)

I'm am - for the first time in over a decade - starting a new Rolemaster/SpaceMaster party. This particular one is sort of a "SG-1ish" sort of feel, in that the PCs will basically being going out and exploring things through a similar sort of dohickey. (There are various reasons why I'm not actually running SG-1, despite having the SG-1 D20 system, but I am cribbing a lot of those ideas!) In addition, one of the other things I have planned is to be running a neolithic(ish) sort of party sometime down the line, wherein the PCs will be "leading" their tribe down a long migratory path left by a long-dead ancient civilisation when there village is destroyed. In both of these adventures/adevnture paths, carrying capacity - as in more than just "weight", volume - is going to be a more important factor than in more typical D&D.

As I am revising and polishing my RM character sheets (I figured after ten or so years, I could now do a better job!) what I want to do is attempt to impliment a crude "paper doll" system like you get in many CRPGs. It wants to be a little more granular than the D&D system - which let's be fair is a good step in the right direction - and I am using that as my base.

Currently, my plan runs along the lines of all items basically having a size in boxes, and a little series of boxes on the "paper doll" locations, which you just join up with a pencil when you fill that slot). I am working on basically having small items bveing 1 box (or less), anything that would be equivilent to a D&D light weapon (pistol, short sword, tricorder-equivilent) being two boxes, and what would be one-handed weapons in D&D as three (e.g. longsword, heavy pistol) and larger ones up to four (and possibly requiring more than one slot, like a two-handed weapon). (Broadly, some slots will only have one box despite size of any potential items.)

The list current runs to:
Head (1 Box): For helmets/hats etc
Face (1 Box): For googles/sunglasses etc. You can wear a hat and sunglasses.
Throat (1 Box): Essentially, stuff like necklaces and such don't really count as a slot, and the throat slot is mainly, like D&D for potential "magic items" sort of slot.
Back (4 boxes, but most back items will use all those boxes): A backpack would count as a back slot item.
Right Shoulder (4 Boxes), Left Shoulder (4 boxes): The first pair of linked slots. The idea here is you can just about manage to wear a backpack, and sling another item over each shoulder (or wear a front-carrying baby carrier, which would count as 4 boxes on both slots). So you can only sling a couple of weapons - or quivers - over your shoulders, so you might have to carry some of your two-handed weapons...!
Armour: (Single slot): Pretty self-explanatory, this is a slot specifically for armour and nothing else. (Equivilent to the D&D Body slot.)
Clothes: (4 Boxes): What would be akin to the D&D "torso" slot. I'm giving it some more slots, because you migth have pockets or something, though I am in debate about this (you might argue that you have only one slot, but what you wear on here gives you additional slots.)
Right Arm (2 Boxes)/Left Arm (2 boxes): essentially being akin to the D&D Arms slot, and on the basis that bracers or maybe a concealed small weapon could be carried on your arms. (E.g. knife, of something like Mara Jde's Holdout blaster.
Right Hand (4 boxes)/Left Hand (4 Boxes): Pretty obvious. Four boxes because you can carry something like a pistol and, say, a pencil in your hand, or several shuriken or arrows or whatnot.
Feet (1 Box)/(1 Box): One slot is the "main" one, and supplementary for, like, boot-kinives or whatnot. (I suppose you might argue you should have one "boots" slot and maybe a small item slot for each foot.
Ring (10 boxes): Specifically, only two slots that "cont" for wearing magical gubbins, but otherwise one box for each finger is you want to festoon your character with jewellery or something.

Belt: (12 boxes): The assumption here is that you can just about fit about four weapons and some spare space (scanner, your money pouch etc). This is sort of the design-intention slot. With 12 slots, for example, you could carry a heavy pistol (3), a shordsword (2), three grenades (1 each) and scanner (2) with a bit of space spare. If you wanted to carry, like two pistols and two short swords, you'd have to move the grenades elsewhere or something.

That's as far as I've gotten so far.

The next obvious one is to add "backpack", with various numbers of slots (I'm thinking maybe 12 per cubic foot approximately as being in the main slot, and then pockets being 2-3 or perhaps just have larger number of slots and and be more abstract about it).

The other thing that occurred is that I probably need to consider webbing. Which, one having a look, surprisingly is an item utterly missed by any of the editions of SpaceMaster I have! RM gives you some stats for backpacks - and I can estimate close enough anyway, seeing as I use backpacks as a matter of course (my 85-litre is used for carting my roleplaying stuff around!) But I have only a vague idea of what a typical modern soldier's load out is, and what they can carry in their webbing.



So, what I'm looking for help on is:

a) thought/suggestions on the system itself and how to polish it up a bit. I am essentially trying to work out what people can carry, and abstract it a bit into a useable system. (Weights and weight carrying capacity are not important for this function, I will just use the defaults for that - this is just an extra constraint on top!) It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, but even setting some limitations is better than none!

b) Some help from any military types on the forums as guide me in working out what sort of statistics (i.e. weight capacity, item spaces) to assign to webbing, based on what sort of things you can carry in typical webbing.



For reference, the basic load-out of the military force in question for this quest is nominally starting at a full suit of body armour plus helmet, one rifle, one pistol, a short sword, three grenades and a scanner. To that, when I get to the nitty-gritty, I will need to add spare powerpacks (equivilent to magazines) and other sundries. This particular party will not need to take rations, but I want to account for that space anyway (they can always use the spare space for more junk of their own, and later parties might!)

goto124
2015-06-03, 08:33 AM
Complicated inventory systems work out better in computer games than pen-and-paper tabletop ones.

JeenLeen
2015-06-03, 08:41 AM
D&D 3.5's Incarnum splatbook has a similar paper doll in it. It's not perfect, but it might work as a baseline or give you a point of comparison. You can probably find it by Google images, since I think that page was one of the 'can print for free for players' ones. I generally made or used-what-I-found-online a 'paper doll' for my characters to keep track of what I have equipped in what item slot. Just seemed easier than writing it on the character sheet like default, so I think you have a good idea for how to pursue this concept.

I second goto124's opinion, but as long as it's not something the players have to deal with a lot, and each item doesn't do more than D&D's normal equipment does to modify stats, I reckon it'll be okay without being too burdensome to the players. The shoulders seem the most complicating aspect, but I can't think of much to comment. Backpack space is tough to do realistically. I assume no extradimensional supertech (that is, bags of holding) exist.

I guess I can sum up any hesitation about your plan as try to balance the difficulty/hassle of this equipment management (not fun) with the challenge it provides (fun).

SimonMoon6
2015-06-03, 10:45 AM
Looks interesting.

However, it could be a lot of work to go through. Personally, as a GM/DM, the thing I'm most concerned with is just "What's in your hands?" So, if it was me, I would focus on just that. If you're holding a sword and a shield, you're not holding a torch too. If you're holding a gun and a flashlight, you can't also be dragging your unconscious friend away from the fight.

Aotrs Commander
2015-06-03, 11:15 AM
Part of the point with both of these adventures is that the PCs will be working with limited resources - there won't be any shops or anything to restock, so they will only have what they can carry. Managing their load-out for the military party is part-and-parcel for their mission set-up; for the neothlithic-ish, inventory is basically nearly the whole adventure. (Since shops haven't even been invented yet... Never mind Bags of Holding being treasure, bags are treasure...!)

This is why I'm attempting to make the system a little bit less lax (because both D&D and Rolemaster are VERY generous in what you can carry, D&D in particular). The balance point is making it not too complicated.

(More later, got to go now!)

Kadzar
2015-06-03, 02:56 PM
Kind of reminds me of the Anti-Hammerspace Item Tracker (http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2012/06/matt-rundles-anti-hammerspace-item.html).

LibraryOgre
2015-06-03, 03:01 PM
I cannot remember the specifics, but I believe that Lamentations of the Flame Princess had a widely hailed inventory system.

Aotrs Commander
2015-06-03, 03:33 PM
Kind of reminds me of the Anti-Hammerspace Item Tracker (http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2012/06/matt-rundles-anti-hammerspace-item.html).

Heh! Great minds and all that...! That's pretty much the sort of idea I was going for, only maybe a bit more granular and definitely a little bit more generous. My plan for the neolithic party had nominally included having the items on little cut-out markers the PCs would attach to their sheets via bluetack, but there's a certain logic to actually just drawing them in...!

I like the idea of a limit on the number of container slots you can use - though in my case it'd be a soft cap that would say "if you have more than this many item slots filled, you get encumbered."




I cannot remember the specifics, but I believe that Lamentations of the Flame Princess had a widely hailed inventory system.

After a quick google it apears that there is a free version of that on DrivethruRPG, so I will definitely have a look at that.

Edit: interesting, but it suffers from the same problem as the weight system, only is arguably more harsh, if easier to track. ("Easier to track" appears to be the only real advantage over weight... And I'm just anal enough a DM to occasionally calculate the PCs weight allowances, or call them out if they have too much stuff (like the guy who at one point was carrying around - if I believed what was written on his sheet - 2-3 spiked chains, about four longs swords, a couple of polearms... (Largely because the player was to lazy to do a proper job of record keeping.)))

The "certain numer of items makes you encumbered" isn't a bad idea, on top of the volume and weight allowance. (As I say, this particular adventures are designed with the PCs having more limited resources and pre-planning what they are taking is part and parcel of the adventure. (They will not be getting a lot of awesome loot in the Aotrs party anyway, and "loot" takes rather a new meaning in the neolithic party where there's no money and also everything is loot - a mere metal canteen would be the work of the gods, except "gods" is a bit too advanced a concept, even...)

Mr. Mask
2015-06-03, 05:32 PM
That is one thing many system lack, come to think of it. Not just the weight, the shape of an object can make it a lot more annoying to carry, or a lot easier. The Romans and many travellers liked to place many of their belonging in a bundle, and hang that from the top of their walking stick. You can rest the weight of your belongings whenever the stick touches the ground.

One game you might want to take inspiration from, Aotrs, is Neo Scavenger. It have a very indepth inventory system, where you keep stuff in bottles which you keep in bags which you keep in shopping carts, and you can't keep small items in the shopping cart because they fall through the holes, etc..

LibraryOgre
2015-06-03, 07:20 PM
That is one thing many system lack, come to think of it. Not just the weight, the shape of an object can make it a lot more annoying to carry, or a lot easier. The Romans and many travellers liked to place many of their belonging in a bundle, and hang that from the top of their walking stick. You can rest the weight of your belongings whenever the stick touches the ground.


Arguably, that's part of what leads to the "unrealistic" weights for AD&D weapons... they're not merely weights, but encumbrances expressed as weights.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-04, 07:54 AM
So, they were actually basing them off how difficult they were to move, as well?

Of course, I can't think of any system that has modelled encumbrance fully realistically, with proper ways to reduce the encumbrance of an object by what method you carry it. That could be interesting to see in a game, but it would be complicated and rather boring.

LibraryOgre
2015-06-04, 11:06 AM
So, they were actually basing them off how difficult they were to move, as well?

At least in part, though some of it might have been simple "pulled from the butt" numbers.


Of course, I can't think of any system that has modelled encumbrance fully realistically, with proper ways to reduce the encumbrance of an object by what method you carry it. That could be interesting to see in a game, but it would be complicated and rather boring.

C&C had some interesting effects regarding encumbrance, as well, with containers reducing the encumbrance value but not the weight and a few other things.

Lord Torath
2015-06-04, 11:25 AM
There's an example in the 2E AD&D PHB of a magic carpet that weighs 50 lbs, but takes up 90 lbs of encumbrance, just due to the awkwardness of having a 5-foot-long roll of carpet on your shoulder. Put in on your pack horse, and it's back to 50 lbs.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-04, 03:56 PM
At least in part, though some of it might have been simple "pulled from the butt" numbers.

C&C had some interesting effects regarding encumbrance, as well, with containers reducing the encumbrance value but not the weight and a few other things. Hmm, that's pretty interesting. I'd like to see a complex inventory system like that used in a video game.


Torath: Specificity and detail has always been interesting in concept, but tends to bog down games, which has always interested me. The ability to get specificity and detail without slowing down the game has been something of a holy grail of design.

erikun
2015-06-05, 03:42 PM
Well I saw this thread a bit yesterday, and have been thinking a bit about it. If I might chime in...


Allow for undergarments/wrappings to go underneath items in a layer. There is really little reason why a person couldn't wear a bandana under a hat, or wear a shirt under body armor. Or, for that matter, why bandaging an arm would mean that equipment couldn't be worn on that arm.
Probably make items "stackable" in the same body slot, although stuff on top prevents access to stuff underneath - or at least, highly awkward to get to. You can still wear a cloak over your armor or backpack, although getting into your pack is all the more difficult. Wearing body armor makes it difficult to reach into your shirt pocket. Speaking of which...
Pockets. Stuff where you can store small items for increased carrying capacity, attached to clothing. One of the benefits to some articles of clothing is the number of easily available pockets the clothing offers. There should probably be a reasonable limit to how many pockets an article of clothing offers (probably 4 pockets per shirt/belt, 1 pocket for each arm and leg) and you obviously aren't going to have useful pockets in your hat.
Hidden compartments. Or in general, just ways of hiding something inside something else. In general, a hidden compartment would make an item less durable (since part of it is hollowed out) and the larger the compartment, the less "hidden" it is.
Ease of readying. Something that is in a conventient spot is much easier to ready and make use of. A sword in a scabbard at your side is easy to pull out; a dagger in the bottom of your backpack, not so much. In general, something you can quickly grab is going to be available immediately, meaning stuff easily drawn from the belt and something from a shoulder sling. Pulling something off your back or out of a leg strap would take a round to ready. More awkward places (like from a backpack under a cloak) would take longer.


I am thinking that a reasonably way to sort things out include: Head, Face, Chest, Arm(each), Hand(each), Waist, Leg(each), Foot(each). I'm not sure why you would include a Neck slot specifically for magical amulets, especially since they could either be worn under a shirt (on the Chest slot) or on top of armor (again on the Chest slot).

I think that the backpack (or whatever pack people are using) is going to be the trickiest problem. If you want to simplify it, just make it a large box with different sections, determining how long it would take to reach down and find something towards the bottom. It means you could still reach into a pack and pull out something towards the top, if you know where it is, but digging to the bottom would be awkward. Also, like clothes, limit the number of pockets (probably 4-6) to prevent people from just storing everything in a convenient pocket.

And try actually putting together a character with the rules, just to see if there are too many available pocket spaces or something similar for a reasonably-geared character.

Aotrs Commander
2015-06-05, 05:51 PM
Well I saw this thread a bit yesterday, and have been thinking a bit about it. If I might chime in...


Allow for undergarments/wrappings to go underneath items in a layer. There is really little reason why a person couldn't wear a bandana under a hat, or wear a shirt under body armor. Or, for that matter, why bandaging an arm would mean that equipment couldn't be worn on that arm.


I'd already assumed that worn items that had only aesthetic value wouldn't count (otherwise we'd be accounting for pants and socks and bras a stuff, which I think would be slightly unecessary...!)

(I perhaps could cut down the amount of space I've left for rings - currently assigned for two rings that Do Stuff and eight others, but on the other hand, I want to leave enough space equivilent to the amount of space we have on a traditional character sheet for writing down any powers. I could afford to just drop the eight other slots though (just for standardisation), and Apply Common Sense if the PCs want to play Undead/Neolithic Mr T...



Probably make items "stackable" in the same body slot, although stuff on top prevents access to stuff underneath - or at least, highly awkward to get to. You can still wear a cloak over your armor or backpack, although getting into your pack is all the more difficult. Wearing body armor makes it difficult to reach into your shirt pocket. Speaking of which...

Ease of readying. Something that is in a conventient spot is much easier to ready and make use of. A sword in a scabbard at your side is easy to pull out; a dagger in the bottom of your backpack, not so much. In general, something you can quickly grab is going to be available immediately, meaning stuff easily drawn from the belt and something from a shoulder sling. Pulling something off your back or out of a leg strap would take a round to ready. More awkward places (like from a backpack under a cloak) would take longer.


That's not a bad idea. Easy to implement - much more so than D&D! - since RM uses a pecentage action system - slapping an extra 10% action to "retreive item" (per layer) and call it a day.


I'm not sure why you would include a Neck slot specifically for magical amulets, especially since they could either be worn under a shirt (on the Chest slot) or on top of armor (again on the Chest slot).

Essentially, for the same reasons as D&D has one, a place to put all the magical amulets and whatnot, as seperate slot to put things like magical vests (which would also otherwise be chest slots).


I think that the backpack (or whatever pack people are using) is going to be the trickiest problem. If you want to simplify it, just make it a large box with different sections, determining how long it would take to reach down and find something towards the bottom. It means you could still reach into a pack and pull out something towards the top, if you know where it is, but digging to the bottom would be awkward. Also, like clothes, limit the number of pockets (probably 4-6) to prevent people from just storing everything in a convenient pocket.

At the moment, I've basically put four rows of twelve boxes for the pack, figuring I could use the number of rows as a guide to backpack size (and then not worry too much about modelling pockets). That'd be abstracted enough, especially since there is a limit on the amount of space on the character sheet (given you've got to leave some room for people to write descriptions of their items is they have properties or powers). WE're only going fo "fairly crude" after all.

If I simply combine that with the afore-suggested retrieval time and add +20% time per row, we're basically there (since getting anything out of your pack is much slower than out of pockets or out of your belt or whatnot - and actually +20% time is still very generous in a ten-second round, but it'll do).

Actually, +20% or more time to retrieve an item from any container (as opposed to a pocket/pouch) isn't a bad rule-of-thumb.


And try actually putting together a character with the rules, just to see if there are too many available pocket spaces or something similar for a reasonably-geared character.

That's the intention I'm working towards. So far, all the actual rules-modelling is essentially being done on via CAD on the equipment character sheet. When I get as far as starting to get the character created, the first lucky player will get to be the guinea pig.


[LIST]
Pockets. Stuff where you can store small items for increased carrying capacity, attached to clothing. One of the benefits to some articles of clothing is the number of easily available pockets the clothing offers. There should probably be a reasonable limit to how many pockets an article of clothing offers (probably 4 pockets per shirt/belt, 1 pocket for each arm and leg) and you obviously aren't going to have useful pockets in your hat.
Hidden compartments. Or in general, just ways of hiding something inside something else. In general, a hidden compartment would make an item less durable (since part of it is hollowed out) and the larger the compartment, the less "hidden" it is.

I am thinking that a reasonably way to sort things out include: Head, Face, Chest, Arm(each), Hand(each), Waist, Leg(each), Foot(each).

Armour I think warrents a slot because it's such a ubiquitous item. I think it is reasonable to say that if you wear armour, you can't access anything stored in the armoured location (as RM does deal with locational armour, you know that anyway.)

I went with back/shoulders (each)/clothes on the basis of finding a limitation to stopping the PCs stacking a pack, two-handed weapons and a couple of quivers as is the norm in a D&D party.

I am starting to think that what I ought to be doing is assigning boxes ONLY to slots where you can store items - stuff like head or face can just have a slot, like D&D.

(That would mean I can drag a bit of space on the actual character sheet back, which would leave me some room to perhaps attempt something like pockets - or the other thing not addressed yet, combat webbing. (Or bandoliers.) I reckon the way to handle those would be like with the belt and pack, just give it a row or two of boxes. The trick is to work out how many boxes: without a clearly idea of how much you can carry bin combat webbing, I'm tempted to say maybe four divisions of four boxes.)

So maybe if I do something like have a line for each slot (head, face, throat, armour, [clothes/torso], arms, hands (gloves, really), feet, ring, ring) like a D&D magic item slot and then have three lines for [back/shoulders]. I probably ought to have a left and a right hand slot, since that'll be wear people will be carrying weapons. But I probably don't need to be giving that boxes, like I have. (Because yes, okay, you can hold a gun and a pen in your hand, but you're not going to be doing that all the time...!) that should get me some more space on the character sheet, so maybe I can start working out what to do with pockets or where I could put a thing for webbing.

I'll go and have a fiddle with that re-organisation next...


Edit: Right. Currently, head/ face /throat /armour /body/ back*/arms/ gloves. right hand/ left hand/ ring/ ring/ feet. Each has one line, and basically you put one item per slot (regardless of size) (discounting worn aethetic items).

*Divided the line into three divisions, on account of not anticipiating items that Do Stuff will be placed here. If they are, the PC can just asterisk down to the misc possessions section.

Waist: Contains twelve boxes, with six lines.

Pack: Contains eight lines (plus one bonus one at the top where it says "pack" since it looks neater!); each pair of lines is attached to one block of twelve boxes.

Below that is basically the normal character sheet standard of 37 lines (with a location column) for miscellaneous stuff (including stuff owned but not carried slotless items, whatever.) I can probably afford to cut that down a bit more to put in either some more lines to the Pack section, or work out how I can put in something for pockets/webbing that's flexible enough to leave some manuvering room.

I think the next job will be to print one out and pick a couple of currently characters from here and there and copy their current load to it and so how we go.

Here's a link to a pdf of this stage, in case anyone of you at home want to play along as well!

Equipsheetv2 06062015 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1ckfstnts21b12/Equipsheetv2.pdf?dl=0)

LostOne27
2015-06-05, 08:43 PM
Since this hasn't been addressed yet and I have some experience with it, I'll throw my $0.02 in. As far as the webbing goes, here was my typical loadout (front only, starting just above the hips and attached to my vest)

8 magazines stacked 2 deep
1 frag grenades (space for a second, but I only carried 1 hand tossed frag)
1 smoke grenades (space for a second, but I only carried 1 hand tossed frag)
compass in a small pouch
misc pouch (typically had a map, marker, and water bottle in it)
first aid kit
single point sling for rifle
single point sling for M320 (single shot grenade launcher)

All of that was easily reachable and on the front of my kit. I also carried a camelback and assault bag on my back, a shoulder bandolier filled with water bottles that tucked quite nicely under my left arm and above the first aid kit, and a belt with slots for 12 40mm grenades around my waste. When necessary, we could trade out the assault bag for a medium or large rucksack to increase our carrying capacity...but that tended to get real heavy real fast.

I would imagine you could have some items that have differing amount of boxes available that serves as a layer over your armor that would work well, you just have to figure out how many boxes you want that to be. Old school military webbing (shoulder straps and belt - "Load Bearing Equipment") would have much less than a more modern day "Fighting Load Carrier" (FLiC) which are pretty customizable, so it wouldn't really matter how things were arranged, as long as you didn't use up all your boxes.

Best of luck!

goto124
2015-06-05, 09:47 PM
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130813135200/finalfantasy/images/1/15/FFXIV_Gilgamesh_Render.jpg

Aotrs Commander
2015-06-06, 05:33 AM
Since this hasn't been addressed yet and I have some experience with it, I'll throw my $0.02 in. As far as the webbing goes, here was my typical loadout (front only, starting just above the hips and attached to my vest)

8 magazines stacked 2 deep
1 frag grenades (space for a second, but I only carried 1 hand tossed frag)
1 smoke grenades (space for a second, but I only carried 1 hand tossed frag)
compass in a small pouch
misc pouch (typically had a map, marker, and water bottle in it)
first aid kit
single point sling for rifle
single point sling for M320 (single shot grenade launcher)

All of that was easily reachable and on the front of my kit. I also carried a camelback and assault bag on my back, a shoulder bandolier filled with water bottles that tucked quite nicely under my left arm and above the first aid kit, and a belt with slots for 12 40mm grenades around my waste. When necessary, we could trade out the assault bag for a medium or large rucksack to increase our carrying capacity...but that tended to get real heavy real fast.

I would imagine you could have some items that have differing amount of boxes available that serves as a layer over your armor that would work well, you just have to figure out how many boxes you want that to be. Old school military webbing (shoulder straps and belt - "Load Bearing Equipment") would have much less than a more modern day "Fighting Load Carrier" (FLiC) which are pretty customizable, so it wouldn't really matter how things were arranged, as long as you didn't use up all your boxes.

Best of luck!

Aha! Yes, this is pretty much the sort of thing I was looking for. Did you carry a sidearm (e.g. pistol) or a knife of some sort as well?

From a provisional count, that's 12 items on the belt (not counting any potential sidearm), 15 items on the sling (though I'd probably count the first aid kit as a two-box item, but that's okay, that maks it a neat multuple of four!)

I'd sya for the purposes of this system, you'd maybe fold the camelback and assault bag into one item (one back slot), count the water bottle bandolier as another back item (and say, call it four water-bottle slots?) and the M320 as another, with the rifle essentially being treated as carried in the hands.

Or you'd treat the bandolier as another webbing slot (bringing it to twenty, or maybe considering making small items like grenades half or something), and the back slots be the packs, and the shoulder slings.

(I would suspect that stocked up with your full gear (i.e. the full backpack and such), you'd be closer to maxing out on weight allowance, rather than space translated to game terms.)

(Also, the nominal amount of grenades carried I assumed when I wrote up the Aotrs source material is about four times too small!)

Edit: No, it isn't as on starting to look into grenade sizes and weights, I realised that 40mm grenades are the ammo for the M320!



That does remind me, though: I do need to make sure I cross-reference the typical infantry carrying load with RM's 10% of your weight encumberance categories (i.e. every 10% of your weight you carry (not including worn gear (e.g. armour), you get an encumberance penalty, which is reduced by your Strength bonus) and just have a check to make sure I reckon the result are credible, and adjust accordingly. (Since my own prior investigations into human weight carrying capacity a year or two back when I was considering writing my own RPG system showed there isn't another convenient formula or anything from which to go on.)

Accordingly to an article I found after googling, it said British troops in Afganistan in 2010 were carrying 145lbs (nearly twice the 80lbs used in the Falklands and "20lbs more than their US counterparts"), which was definitely Too Much - it was doing the soldiers damage - and was supposed to be gong down by nearly 30lbs. Convenient, that's at least a boundary figure...!

Okay then, according to RM (both by its charts and the formula based on volume of flesh in RoCoI), the weight of a 6' human is about 190lbs. 19 lbs per encumberance penalty threshold. 145 lbs falls in the x7 to x8 range (-50) and 30lbs less than that (115lbs) is in the x6 to x7 range (-40), though so close to the x5 to x6 range you could argue that a soldier, maybe being a little heavier because muscle or something, shoves it into that range (-35). Given a human racial Str bonus of +5, and assuming a Soldier is going to likely be and Armsman or Fighter (who prime requisites include Str, which means they can be at least a +10 bonus), that means a fully laden infantry soldier probably has a -20 encumberance penalty (which applies to base movement rate as percentage decrease). Which actually doesn't sound all that unreasonable, does it?




http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130813135200/finalfantasy/images/1/15/FFXIV_Gilgamesh_Render.jpg

Interestingly, because I haven't considered it much before... But that doesn't actually give you significantly more carrying space. (Maybe a little, because multiarmed creatures tend to be a bit taller, so maybe you could have a larger backpack...)

That said, I'm not going to worry about it at the moment, since this party (unlike some of my others) isn't going to have any nonhumanoids.

(Though as the neolithic party is from an entirely alien world and I haven't even decided what they look like yet, while I think it unlikely that I'll go down that route, I won't necessarily rule out more than two arms, though more than two legs is the more likely option.)



Edit edit: After a lot of research, pratting around (as I basically has to revise all the ruels on grenades - and suppressive fire since they were wrong plus putting all the weapons into metric...

I have decided that mags/clips should count as 1/2 items.

From LostOne27's inventory, then we have:

8 magazines stacked 2 deep (4 boxes)

2 frag grenades (2 boxes)
2 smoke grenades (2 boxes)

compass in a small pouch (1 box)
misc pouch (typically had a map, marker, and water bottle in it) (1 box)
first aid kit (2 boxes)

Shoulder bandolier filled with water bottles under left arm (all it webbing, 4 boxes)

(Total of 4 groups of 4 webbing/pocket boxes)

single point sling for rifle (back slot 1)
single point sling for M320 (single shot grenade launcher) (back slot 2)
Camelback plus assault bag (back slot 3)

belt with slots for 12 40mm grenades (6 boxes)
Possible side-arm (2-3 boxes)
Posible combat knife (2 boxes)
Spare belt slots (1-2 boxes)

Which seems not unresonable.

I shall now adjust the character sheet, and then I might actually get as far as trying to test a couple of existant charcters in this system...!

Aotrs Commander
2015-06-06, 05:03 PM
Having done that:

Character from previous Spacemaster party fitted in nicely - couldn't quite take all his spare ammo (if you ignored the fact he had interdimensional storage space anyway), but he could have bought a backpack, thought any more weight and he'd have been encumbered.

Second character (3.x) proved exactly why we needed this system! she was carrying two spiked chains, two longswords, a guisarme, a longbow (plus a quiver), a heavy mace and two daggers oh, and a shield. (She's a retired character now, so it doesn't matter.) Believe it or not, I'd audited her at one point, and she'd been carrying even more than that (about four spiked chains, six longswords, two guisarmes...!)

Scans of the sheets below, if anyone's interested! (Though they are in Bleakbane scrawl, so I make no promises on legibility...!

Spacemaster character (https://www.dropbox.com/s/5erg7779kll1mgu/MariusEquipmentExample.jpg?dl=0)

D&D character (https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks1uvazbpionhpy/HeatherEquipmentExample.jpg?dl=0)

Milodiah
2015-06-07, 01:49 PM
The important thing about inventory isn't how much you can carry, I find, but where it is.

This isn't maybe so applicable for D&D, in which the players are (95% of the time) wandering adventurers for whom "inventory" and "possessions" are one and the same, but for characters in a more modern game or a more *coughcoughrealistic* game where they have a home, a vehicle, an office, etc. it can be the difference between life and death on whether or not you actually BROUGHT your pistol.

And yes, I tend to ask players stuff like that. If they declare a longarm like a shotgun, I ask them where they usually keep it, and usually ensure they declare whether or not they're moving it. If they have a paramedic-grade first aid kit on their character sheet, that doesn't mean they automatically have it on them; I mean, mine is the size of a schoolbag, I don't carry it everywhere.

Whenever I play RPGs, I usually divide up my inventory into what's in my pockets at any given time, what's in a bag I tend to keep nearby, what's in my vehicle, what's at my house.