Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-07-2015, 11:28 AM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

For me, that's driven by the extent to which a character relies on equipment. GCA makes it easy to tune weights in detail, and provides a strong motive to do so with its automatic dodge calculations, but if a character has no need to carry much, as was the case in the 1960s Psi Powers campaign we were playing a couple of years ago, there's just no motive to do so.

For the current TORG campaign, I have the only character who wears metal armour, and Move, as much as Dodge, was my motive to buy more ST and Lifting ST, to get down to no encumbrance.

In Weird War II, Dodge is the key factor, and there's no armour worth its weight apart from helmets, but pistols, uniforms, and assorted stuff all weigh enough to make distributing stuff between basic load and a droppable pack worth spending a little time on. While doing that, I found the table for clothing weights by TL on p65 of High-Tech, which I bet lots of campaigns don't bother with.

For the Infinite Cabal game I run, we have a ST-based character who carries most of the stuff, and the other PCs don't have enough load to worry about: encourage your fellow-players to create characters who are both strong and Selfless.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 12:56 PM   #2
gruundehn
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

Encumbrance should be plot driven, like most of GURPS details. In DF or MH perhaps the encumbrance rules should be ignored so the players can get to the fun of slaying the enemy. A modern detective story should have the encumbrance rules pretty strictly followed as a character walking around with full Kevlar armor, five or six weapons of various types and sizes, and three or four backpacks full of survival gear would cause a lot of comment by passers-by and interest by the police. Especially if the character is a "98-pound weakling" from the old Charles Atlas advertisements.
__________________
The World's Tallest Dwarf
gruundehn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 01:32 PM   #3
weby
 
weby's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

We use GCS as the place to have character sheets, instead of only for character building, so our games have the encumbrance tracking on by default.
weby is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 03:58 PM   #4
simply Nathan
formerly known as 'Kenneth Latrans'
 
simply Nathan's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Wyoming, Michigan
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

I prefer to round all armor, weapon, and other equipment weights to whole pounds, or a half-pounds for certain small items like full potion bottles (0.25 or less just becomes "neg").

Round Basic Lift to full pounds from ST 2 and up.

Round encumbrance levels to "Not encumbered" (the current No and Light rolled into one) "Somewhat encumbered" (medium) and "Heavily encumbered" (heavy/X Heavy).

I like a little bit of granularity, but not the amount GURPS uses by default most of the time.
__________________
Ba-weep granah wheep minibon. Wubba lubba dub dub.
simply Nathan is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 04:21 PM   #5
evileeyore
Banned
 
evileeyore's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

I always use Encumbrance. It doesn't always get tracked exactly during game play (for sake of 'moving it along'), but between games it gets settled.
evileeyore is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 04:56 PM   #6
mr beer
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

I use encumbrance like Evil Eeyore above. Fully tracked but not in game, unless something unusual happens to trigger a recount.
mr beer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 09:08 PM   #7
Rasputin
 
Rasputin's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
I always use Encumbrance. It doesn't always get tracked exactly during game play (for sake of 'moving it along'), but between games it gets settled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr beer View Post
I use encumbrance like Evil Eeyore above. Fully tracked but not in game, unless something unusual happens to trigger a recount.
Count me in with the above. I do have a general idea of who is near going over his encumbrance level, and my players know what their encumbrance is once they drop their packs. Of course, if they flee, they might not get their packs back.
__________________
Cura isto securi, Eugene.

My GURPS blog.
Rasputin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 09:37 PM   #8
Stix4armz
 
Stix4armz's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Lancaster, Ca
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

The games I play in are mostly DF or similar type games and we always track encumbrance because like you said it does matter for Dodge and Move. The characters who wear heavy armor buy more ST to accommodate and the casters or lighter armored characters tend to stay behind them.

One of the first things all the groups pitched and bought was a wagon with oxen to carry loot and extra gear, which meant that everyone could get extra specialty gear that they might otherwise leave due to encumbrance issues. However, we all track what we're carrying and what is in the wagon because it can matter if say your wagon is stolen (getting it back with only our backup weapons was exciting) or if you get to a mountain pass that won't allow your wagon to come with (we wound up leaving some stuff there and continuing on without it; we'll have to buy a new one later).

Basically its not been a huge concern because everyone kind of gets there stuff set the way they want it and the only times we're carrying extra is on our way out when everything is dead and it doesn't matter that our Move and Dodge is reduced a little. Although that would certainly be a good way to catch an adventuring party off guard (I really hope my GMs don't read this post now...)
Stix4armz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-07-2015, 09:45 PM   #9
evileeyore
Banned
 
evileeyore's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasputin View Post
Count me in with the above. I do have a general idea of who is near going over his encumbrance level, and my players know what their encumbrance is once they drop their packs. Of course, if they flee, they might not get their packs back.
This is accounted 'accurately' at all times in my game. What they toss into the pack is either a known number (as I've figured it out in advance) or a fuzzy number which is generally closeish and is figured in down time.

But if they are choosing to add it to their "always carried" list, then I either figure it out, or round the fuzziness up a bit (that way if it comes down in weight later they are happy).
evileeyore is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-08-2015, 12:00 AM   #10
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?

I tend to use it a lot, because I'm tending to run lots of Low ST melee action, and armour is a big advantage.

But equally my players habitually uses pack animals, wagons if they can etc so it doesn't get silly.

On the occasion I run more modern stuff it really depends on the genre. (as the the article "modern Warfighter: Gear" in Pyramid 3.57 points out though modern military load out add up pretty quick!)

EDIT: and yeah if a pack gets dropped I tend to know what that means in terms of weight.
Tomsdad is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
basic, encumberance, gca

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:33 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.