Wednesday, September 2, 2009  A Preponderance of Encumbrance
You know, I’m sitting here, and I can’t think of a single
game—ever—where I’ve used the encumbrance rules as written.
Either we simplify, we hand-wave it, or we use common sense.
From the Rules Cyclopedia and Palladium Fantasy of when I
started gaming to the Castles & Crusades, Rolemaster, and HARP
of today, it just one of those parts of the buffalo we don’t
use.  Now, that’s not to say I let characters get away with
anything; if you have 5 longswords, 2 full backpacks, a rubber
tree plant, a spare chain shirt, and 50 feet of rope strapped to
your back, and you are of middling strength, you’re not going to
be winning any races (or moving that much at all, potentially).
We still do generally practice resource management—just not down
to the decimal.  So, this is my question to you: am I in the
minority here? Do you pay a lot of attention to encumbrance? Why
or why not? If so, what does it bring to your game? I’m curious
to hear other thoughts on thi