06-07-2015, 11:28 AM | #1 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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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. |
06-07-2015, 12:56 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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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.
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The World's Tallest Dwarf |
06-07-2015, 01:32 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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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.
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06-07-2015, 03:58 PM | #4 |
formerly known as 'Kenneth Latrans'
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Wyoming, Michigan
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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.
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Ba-weep granah wheep minibon. Wubba lubba dub dub. |
06-07-2015, 04:21 PM | #5 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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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.
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06-07-2015, 04:56 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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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.
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06-07-2015, 09:08 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?
Quote:
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06-07-2015, 09:37 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Lancaster, Ca
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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...) |
06-07-2015, 09:45 PM | #9 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: How much attention do you pay to encumberance?
Quote:
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). |
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06-08-2015, 12:00 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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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. |
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basic, encumberance, gca |
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