Encumbrance for Mothership RPG
Encumbrance is a bit of a touchpoint for rpg players. Some insist it's hard to have a meaningful game without it. Others think it's a trivial chore & they came to chew gum & kick ass, not to do accounting.
For me, I like an encumbrance system as it ties into resource management & meaningful player choices which I think add to potential sources of tension & player investment = good gameplay.
Deciding what gear to take forces a decision- that's fun & gets them invested or regretting it later. Even if misjudged, they made a choice & they care. This is more desirable & more fun than, "oh you just have all your full loadout + spare mags in your pockets"- more desirable & more fun to me anyway. But choose your own badwrongfun bro.
But I also sympathise with the "accounting is not fun" camp. So I prefer a system that is concrete rather than abstracted numbers, and this achieves this by asking players to describe where the item is carried- that way it engages players with visualising their character, assists the DM in decision making (about what gets broke or how long to retrieve stuff or how much you can carry). This system does that- you can visualise what is in road of the fall/blast & what is in danger when they shoot you from behind & you Crit fail Armour saves... 2 mins admin for better/ fairer gameplay + added tension/visualisation/engagement- imo... I'll take that.
Sounds fiddly but it's actually pretty quick in practice + makes sure everyone is on board with what is reasonable to carry- or in a game with future-stuff like Mothership, how big IS a laser cutter exactly...
I base it off the Matt Rundle anti-hammerspace item tracker -which is quite a handle but a neat little system. It uses "rows", with each row having 3 "spaces" or slots.
Smaller items e.g knife, crowbar, scanner, revolver= 1 space;
Medium things like an o2 tank, tool set or SMG= 2 spaces;
Larger things like a rifle, rigging gun, spear take 1 row (3 spaces);
Truly bulky things like a laser cutter or corpse= act as overburdened= Dis on Speed checks. Easy to remember & killer on initiative. So fast & light is a viable option vs tanking.
Hard mode is= big things must be in spaces on the same row. (my preferred)
For Mothership I make the caveats (somewhat playtested & doing ok): Full Battle Dress= Disadvantage on Speed checks (as PSG) but use all available slots & can "triple stack" one space, e.g. put 3 grenades or 3 ammo in one space. One space only.
Hazard suits or Vac suits take 2 rows. Easiest if you mark this on the sheet, as it happens frequently.
I add an extra row for being "overburdened" the effects of which are the same as wearing FBD. If you are FBD + overburdened= Dis on Speed checks + Fear saves for surprise & Body saves for avoidance- slow off the mark but no combat penalties as in my experience players always dump stuff off for combat anyway- this ties the penalties to initial reactions, more intuitive & less exploitable...
So my character sheet (online, shared google spreadsheet) looks like this...
PS. Trivial items like cred sticks, ballbearings, individual bullets <10, regular clothing, hats, gemstones, hand terminals (as opposed to scanners) & what have you come free, within Warden discretion.
All the gear= safety, which is the opposite of horror...
PPS. Whoever made that great online sheet, get in touch so I can credit you.
