Party Stash and Quickslots: Convenient or immersion-breaking?

[CrazyCrab]

Hi everyone,
planning a new campaign for my Meetup and I'm wondering just how I can improve upon my last game. While it was a great campaign I've given my shortcomings a lot of thought and I'm doing my best ot solve some of the issues I had with it.

The game (most of them are, in fact, it being a public Meetup) is an open game - while each game has a stable player-base, every now and then a newbie shows up. Sometimes they come back for more. Sometimes they just leave halfway through. While it is a good setup for meeting new people, it gets quite clunky when it comes to diving loot, managing rations, ammunition, potions, etc, among other things. In addition, a lot of people 'call dibs' on things like potions, then never use them. In fact, they most likely forget they got them in the first place... while someone else can actually use them at this very moment.

So, here's an idea.

All the ammunition, the rations and consumable items (like traps, med-kits, potions, scrolls...) go to the party stash instead of character inventories. Same applies to gear that they find, yet nobody wants at this moment - 'no, you cannot sleigh of hand the 4 plate mails to sell them in town without the rest of the party noticing you'. Happens more often than I'd like to admit, in all honesty. Especially with newer players. These are shared by all party members and used when necessary. They can be sold with a majority vote - with 3 druids, who needs potions of Barkskin after all?

Each character has a number of 'Quickslots' equal to their Proficiency Bonus, assuming bandoliers, pouches and pockets. That's how many consumable items they have at the ready and they can take that many items from the stash to hold on their person - using these items is a standard procedure, as described in the PH. Changing your items or refiling them is an action, as you search your backpack for another Healing Potion, etc - this also means that a character can't just 'CHUG CHUG CHUG' potions over and over. It also incentives planning, actually using the things you have collected and it neatly reminds you of the things you have.

I'll be making equipment cards for most items, so it should be clear who has what.

What do you think?

[TurboGhast]

This seems like a good way of managing inventory for a party of random players. It also avoids some other immersion breaking problems, like a party member with consumables that could make an encounter much easier being missing, and denying everyone else their equipment.

"Belt Slots" is an alternate term that could be more immersive.

[LibraryOgre]

While it might mess up "immersion", I don't think it would do so any more than characters appearing and disappearing according to their player's ability to make it or behave themselves. It seems a good technique, and just explain up front "This is how we do this at this table, for various reasons."

If you need a sop to immersion, go with "As you travel, things get shifted around to different people's packs. Who carries it at any given time isn't important, until it is."

[JeenLeen]

Sounds like a cool method.

One downside I see is a player being annoyed that another player 'wasted' a potion or scroll by using it at a (in his opinion) bad time. Especially if the annoyed player found the item and had an intended use for it. But that's just part of this style, and seems worth it.

How would you handle situations where, say, there's one Potion of Healing but all 3 PCs want it in their belt slot?

[KnightOfV]

Equipment cards sounds like a good idea since your group changes a lot. Alternative idea, if a new person shows up, give them 2-3 potions to start and tell them it's for their character and they can use it however they want. If they forget, its on them. If they leave and get replaced, next person gets the same extra goods to start. If the group finds more potions, characters that have the fewest potions get first pick.

I stopped keeping track of rations/ ammunition over the years. It's not really fun to track, slows the game down, and unless you are playing a super gritty realistic game (some people do) it never matters in the end. I also don't bother with encumbrance (though if you want to carry something around that's heavy, do some strength rolls and common sense. I've found that immersion is good, but quicker play is better immersion than a lot of un-fun numbers to track. I just assume everyone has 'enough' food, and archers can recover/craft/loot enough arrows to get by.

Ultimately, try different things, do what works best for you, have fun, etc, etc, etc

[LibraryOgre]

Sounds like a cool method.

One downside I see is a player being annoyed that another player 'wasted' a potion or scroll by using it at a (in his opinion) bad time. Especially if the annoyed player found the item and had an intended use for it. But that's just part of this style, and seems worth it.

How would you handle situations where, say, there's one Potion of Healing but all 3 PCs want it in their belt slot?

Dice for it. "Everyone roll a d20. Highest roll gets it."

Or "Bob is 1 and 2, April is 3 and 4, and Jim is 5 and 6." Toss a d6 in the open. "Ok, Bob gets it."

You might also go with a round-robin selection.... Bob picks one item, then April, then Jim, then Bob, etc., until all have their slots filled.