I went with a Diablo style. A backpack can hold 30lb of gear, 5x6 grid. Each item has its lb be how many of these slots are used up in the bag, with their shape determined by the player. Is the HandAxe which is 3lb 3 slots in a row or is it crocked to the side. And so forth. You can carry Pouches on your hip equal to 1+StrMod(Min 1). Each pouch is 3x2 Slots and Coins are weighted with 50coins filling 1 slot and any 'spillage' starting to fill the next. Now your daggers can be carried in pouches 3 at a time... I felt that itself was quite an interesting method and want to try it again in a future game.
Nice! This reminded me of the Resident Evil 4 inventory grid where shapes matter, and turns it into a kind of mini-game of how things can all fit in your pack.
I liked the idea of a familiar and the parties shared loot and it gave me an idea...create cards that represent the 'stuff' in a given room as a way to encourage the party to use whats around them. If they see a card for chandelier they may ne more likely to use it in a tavern brawl as an example. Ill try it out in my next session to see how effective it is.
Excellent idea! I'd love to hear how it goes! It reminds me of the Fate system that has the idea of zones and aspects for areas where you might have a battle. The aspects might be something like "a precarious stack of crates" to provide inspiration for more dynamic scenes. Having a set of cards like that could quickly generate a much more cinematic experience!
The thing about the vanilla system is that it's completely abstract while remaining horrendously number heavy. "I can fit 100 pounds and have 20 cubic feet in my back pack" The first part requires full attention to detail from the gm towards every carried item hence if anyone forgets about it you have a bag of holding, while the second part is the abstract that puts brakes on the game "Hey gm is this chair 20 cubic feet? Well I don't know metric let me Google this" My current approach was to just ignore the mechanic since I didn't want to do it but giving players scaling inventory slots sounds amazing. Thanks for the mechanic.
I just recently learned that the Artificer class's ability to basically create a bag of holding throws a wrench into all of this for me! That's in my online game though so not as big of a deal.
I found a somewhat adjacent version of this system that I love and seems to work a lot better for players than variant emcumberance, draw out a grid of squares that its roughly, 10, 11 or 12 squares per point of str. the player has (depending on how hard you want it to be, some dont work out to a whole number that worsk well with a square grid, so just round up or down a little as you see fit or agree with your players, it'll never be more than a few inventory squares), and make each item take up one square of the grid inventroy per pound-ish of weight, making fun shapes as you like but mostly sticking to things like 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, exc. players can visaually place items in their inventory and see how much space they have very literally, so fuss! There's even a foundry vtt module for it called griddy. (also if you have a small or large character, just half or double the inventory size after calculating their normal size based on str. as needed) You can also make bags that can carry more items in smaller seprate grids, increasing the value of hunting down special items or preparing before a long journey.
The best way to keep track of your inventory is just to use a tablet or phone or laptop and google docs spreadsheets. Takes all of 2 minutes to set up what your maximums are and then you can add or remove on the fly while also keeping track of where things are on your character. And the way to get around looking up how much stuff weighs is to just not look up how much stuff weighs and make up a number for the weight on the spot and only look it up later if you're not sure. Most of the time your guess will be close to what it should have been anyway.
So i use 10 slots at hand and your strength score in a bag. So up to 30 slots for a strong boy. Overall pretty generous but i also give out tons of consumables over magic weapons and armour and the ability to drink potions on hand for 15 ft of movement. My logic being itll slow you down slightly but you can absolutely drink while moving. Plus it stops parties "needing" a healer and if you HB a broken potion the party still only gets to use it once.
Reminds me of diablo inventory, great idea. There is also an MTG card creator program that allows you to create custom cards and import whatever artwork into the card. I print them out on heavy glossy photo paper. Definitely more time involved in this particular one, but if you dont have a card for a particular item, its super handy. Great job by the way. Im enjoying your channel 👍 keep it up! /Subscribed
LOVE Shadowdark! Without telling the story for the third time today (LOL) I needed to make my own rules in 2016. Shadowdark is like what I made, but … good! So obviously if you're playing the game with kids you need to double down on the carousing and wenching to spend all that hard-won loot, right? 🤣 I mean … I was nine when I first played 1E and we DID in fact go carousing as part of getting information and there was wenching happening around us. We weren't doing that because … nine, not yet interested, but I can see people clutching their pearls if they knew we were doing any of it in our games. I like the idea of item cards from board games, and it's kind of cool how Mausritter does it for a TTRPG, except the little cardboard chits are guaranteed to get lost messed up. Making the chits into cards and putting them in a card binder sheet seems perfect. You're also giving me ideas for my Shadowdark games.
Finding fun ways to spend your loot is on my list for future videos! My assumption is that fun also means 'doesn't take too much game time' ... but we'll see I guess.
I don't get very excited about stuff in games much nowadays so I generally just ignore this sort of admin part of the game. However I did get carried away with the game Core Space which has all of these tactile elements like tokens for all your gear and physical chests to empty (It's tomb robbing in space not regular SF btw, pretty much a dungeon crawler boardgame with minis). I would certainly consider doing this if I played a more loot oriented game again. I briefly played a witch in pathfinder & would give out cookies as tokens of my healing powers which was fun too.
What are your suggestions for representing money? My wife particularly doesn't love the accounting part of the game and something tactile might be good for her.
@@savevsjustin Just checked. It does. I think it could use a second or two of lead in. I know the first time I watched I dragged the timeline back to start a few times thinking something was amiss. Keep'em coming. Enjoy your presentation and your pacing is just right for me.
I went with a Diablo style.
A backpack can hold 30lb of gear, 5x6 grid. Each item has its lb be how many of these slots are used up in the bag, with their shape determined by the player.
Is the HandAxe which is 3lb 3 slots in a row or is it crocked to the side. And so forth.
You can carry Pouches on your hip equal to 1+StrMod(Min 1). Each pouch is 3x2 Slots and Coins are weighted with 50coins filling 1 slot and any 'spillage' starting to fill the next. Now your daggers can be carried in pouches 3 at a time...
I felt that itself was quite an interesting method and want to try it again in a future game.
Nice! This reminded me of the Resident Evil 4 inventory grid where shapes matter, and turns it into a kind of mini-game of how things can all fit in your pack.
I liked the idea of a familiar and the parties shared loot and it gave me an idea...create cards that represent the 'stuff' in a given room as a way to encourage the party to use whats around them. If they see a card for chandelier they may ne more likely to use it in a tavern brawl as an example. Ill try it out in my next session to see how effective it is.
Excellent idea! I'd love to hear how it goes! It reminds me of the Fate system that has the idea of zones and aspects for areas where you might have a battle. The aspects might be something like "a precarious stack of crates" to provide inspiration for more dynamic scenes. Having a set of cards like that could quickly generate a much more cinematic experience!
@@savevsjustin oh yeah! I was just going to name the stuff but some descriptive words could really help!
Index Card RPG allows characters to have 10 Equipped items and 10 Carried items. Index Cards are perfect for DIY items.
I’ve been meaning to try it out!
I recommend the players create their own item cards with a stack of index cards cut in half! For the absolute cheapest option
Great info. Made me think about possibilities. Best effect that a video can have. Well done!
Thanks John! Sparking ideas about new ways to play D&D is one of my main hopes for this channel!
I have a ton of cards, and this is a GREAT idea. I may be doing this. Great video!
Thanks! I'd love to hear how it goes with your group!
man i love your videos! it’s amazing your video quality for you channel being so new!
Thanks! I enjoy editing video and have been learning a lot! For a short time it was a small part of my day job, but sadly not so much now.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess uses a similar slot system that works very well.
I've heard lots of good things about Lamentations but haven't checked it out yet! Sounds like I should!
The thing about the vanilla system is that it's completely abstract while remaining horrendously number heavy.
"I can fit 100 pounds and have 20 cubic feet in my back pack"
The first part requires full attention to detail from the gm towards every carried item hence if anyone forgets about it you have a bag of holding, while the second part is the abstract that puts brakes on the game "Hey gm is this chair 20 cubic feet? Well I don't know metric let me Google this"
My current approach was to just ignore the mechanic since I didn't want to do it but giving players scaling inventory slots sounds amazing. Thanks for the mechanic.
I just recently learned that the Artificer class's ability to basically create a bag of holding throws a wrench into all of this for me! That's in my online game though so not as big of a deal.
Once again, some great advice and helpful links, Justin. I find myself checking in with TH-cam to see when your next video is dropping 😁.
Thanks! That's very encouraging! Right now, between work and games, I'm trying to get a video out about every other week.
I just can’t believe you roll a natural 20 every single intro.
Just not during my actual games!
I found a somewhat adjacent version of this system that I love and seems to work a lot better for players than variant emcumberance, draw out a grid of squares that its roughly, 10, 11 or 12 squares per point of str. the player has (depending on how hard you want it to be, some dont work out to a whole number that worsk well with a square grid, so just round up or down a little as you see fit or agree with your players, it'll never be more than a few inventory squares), and make each item take up one square of the grid inventroy per pound-ish of weight, making fun shapes as you like but mostly sticking to things like 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, exc. players can visaually place items in their inventory and see how much space they have very literally, so fuss! There's even a foundry vtt module for it called griddy. (also if you have a small or large character, just half or double the inventory size after calculating their normal size based on str. as needed) You can also make bags that can carry more items in smaller seprate grids, increasing the value of hunting down special items or preparing before a long journey.
Nice! It reminds me of the inventory system/minigame in Resident Evil 4!
The best way to keep track of your inventory is just to use a tablet or phone or laptop and google docs spreadsheets. Takes all of 2 minutes to set up what your maximums are and then you can add or remove on the fly while also keeping track of where things are on your character. And the way to get around looking up how much stuff weighs is to just not look up how much stuff weighs and make up a number for the weight on the spot and only look it up later if you're not sure. Most of the time your guess will be close to what it should have been anyway.
There is no best way for everyone.
A lot of people can't handle spread sheets.
I once made my group clay tokens for items.
So i use 10 slots at hand and your strength score in a bag. So up to 30 slots for a strong boy. Overall pretty generous but i also give out tons of consumables over magic weapons and armour and the ability to drink potions on hand for 15 ft of movement. My logic being itll slow you down slightly but you can absolutely drink while moving. Plus it stops parties "needing" a healer and if you HB a broken potion the party still only gets to use it once.
Most of my players are potion hoarders. They either forget that they have them or they want to save them for ... something else!
Reminds me of diablo inventory, great idea.
There is also an MTG card creator program that allows you to create custom cards and import whatever artwork into the card. I print them out on heavy glossy photo paper.
Definitely more time involved in this particular one, but if you dont have a card for a particular item, its super handy.
Great job by the way. Im enjoying your channel 👍 keep it up! /Subscribed
Nice! We played with an MTG card creator a bit but never thought to use them for D&D. Great idea! Thanks for checking out the channel!
LOVE Shadowdark! Without telling the story for the third time today (LOL) I needed to make my own rules in 2016. Shadowdark is like what I made, but … good! So obviously if you're playing the game with kids you need to double down on the carousing and wenching to spend all that hard-won loot, right? 🤣 I mean … I was nine when I first played 1E and we DID in fact go carousing as part of getting information and there was wenching happening around us. We weren't doing that because … nine, not yet interested, but I can see people clutching their pearls if they knew we were doing any of it in our games.
I like the idea of item cards from board games, and it's kind of cool how Mausritter does it for a TTRPG, except the little cardboard chits are guaranteed to get lost messed up. Making the chits into cards and putting them in a card binder sheet seems perfect. You're also giving me ideas for my Shadowdark games.
Finding fun ways to spend your loot is on my list for future videos! My assumption is that fun also means 'doesn't take too much game time' ... but we'll see I guess.
I don't get very excited about stuff in games much nowadays so I generally just ignore this sort of admin part of the game. However I did get carried away with the game Core Space which has all of these tactile elements like tokens for all your gear and physical chests to empty (It's tomb robbing in space not regular SF btw, pretty much a dungeon crawler boardgame with minis). I would certainly consider doing this if I played a more loot oriented game again.
I briefly played a witch in pathfinder & would give out cookies as tokens of my healing powers which was fun too.
Nice! As a player I might be tempted to charge into combat just so I could get ‘cookie-healed’!
A "Grabbit Hole?"
Nice!
So good I loved this
Cool idea for any age
Thanks! Our current campaign is a mix of kids and adults. Both are enjoying it!
What are your suggestions for representing money? My wife particularly doesn't love the accounting part of the game and something tactile might be good for her.
I totally agree with your wife! I cover that a bit in another video: th-cam.com/video/pe1fyAwCLmU/w-d-xo.html
Awesome! I'll take a look at that later tonight!
The video seems to start in mid sentence. Is that my browser?
It should start with "Telling stories of epic adventure..."
@@savevsjustin Just checked. It does. I think it could use a second or two of lead in. I know the first time I watched I dragged the timeline back to start a few times thinking something was amiss.
Keep'em coming. Enjoy your presentation and your pacing is just right for me.
@@rufuslynks8175 Gotcha! Thanks for calling that out! Learning as I go!
Wish i would have found this video 5 years ago. I made my own system its not as fun looking as this one.