Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
I'd suggest nearly the opposite.
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Same here.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is a resource-management game: you must carefully track HP and FP, arrows and potions, every dollar and every ounce, all while paying close attention to marching order, light sources, disposition of NPCs among the party ranks, and the balance of warriors to casters to rogues. That's
why so much of the genre turns on the mad quest for ever-higher value-to-weight ratios. It's also why big, strong warriors are important even when brainy casters and agile rogues technically outclass them in many ways.
Whereas in a modern thriller, what matters is concealability, not weight. If the PCs have sufficiently high Holdout skills, and nicely tailored garments and holsters to match, then they can carry a lot of hardware around even if they aren't that beefy. If they try to carry full-sized rifles and bazookas around, then they're going to run into trouble regardless of encumbrance. A single, mostly plastic 7-lb. rifle is a bigger issue than 30 lbs. in the form of cuffs, folding knives, handguns, pepper spray, spring batons, Tasers, etc. stuffed into one of those fancy armor vests intended for everyday wear under a business suit.
Thus, I tend to track encumbrance in gory detail in even the most tongue-in-cheek of hack 'n' slash gaming but lend no thought to issues of bulk or concealability there . . . whereas I zealously track concealability and force Holdout rolls in modern-day campaigns while rounding encumbrance to "close enough." My last campaign was about modern secret agents, and they managed to hide enough small items on them in carefully designed undercover load-bearing gear that they sometimes hit Light or even Medium encumbrance and were slowed down. All the PCs cared about was not being caught with illegal stuff on them; if they were in a hurry, they drove. The campaign before that was about fantasy heroes who could run around in armor, brandishing weapons all they wanted, yet they often carried less than they liked because of the need to hike everywhere and maneuver in many-times-a-session melee combat.