It occurred to me today that the current Carrying Capacity rules leave a lot to be desired in two specific ways. Here's the player experience of these rules.
One: They try to do something, but the book (read: another player, or the DM, citing the sacred text) says they can't. Perhaps they try to carry too much, and get told no. Or, they try to use some tool they think they're carrying, but it turns out they wouldn't have been carrying it.
Two: They plan to pre-empt these problems and bore everyone to tears. They waste a bunch of time cross-referencing rules, deriving carry limits that they'll forget the moment this is over, carefully dividing up equipment, maybe even plotting out possible things that could happen in the next little while, to make sure they have enough supplies and tools and the space to keep it all. Nobody's rolling dice or using funny voices. Nobody's stabbing any evil giraffes.
In a nutshell: The current carrying rules serve only to tell you no, and playing with the current carrying rules doesn't feel like playing.
---
With that in mind, here are some strange directions you could go.
1. Make it part of character creation. (Playing with them should now feel like playing. Specifically the part of playing where you're building your character.) I suppose you could write that certain classes are able to carry certain types of things, but that feels too abstract for my tastes. Certain races? Maybe. It would differentiate, say, elves from humans if elves could only carry "lightweight" things and humans could carry up to "heavy" things or something. But no, I think that still feels too disconnected, too broad. Humans have a lot of variation in how strong we are, it would feel wrong to say every human has the same carry limit. Wait a second... Variations in how strong you are... Could we tie it to the Strength score?! My God! But look, what I'm saying is that having it be a derived statistic means it doesn't feel like a build choice. For this path we want to make it feel like a build choice. So like... Do we offer some kind of choice to every character, where they can either be strong in the carrying-things sense or strong in some other sense? Idk. Equipment is usually considered at least loosely tied to character build so maybe you make it equipment based. Like you make several types of bag, each with unique powers -- this one lets you get stuff out of it in combat, whereas this one lets you put stuff into it quietly and sneaky-like, and so on. Like armor! But I fear that wouldn't really address the core issue.
2. Make it part of roleplay. (Playing with the carrying rules should now feel like playing, because it's a modifier to your regular roleplaying.) Which mechanics make players roleplay differently? Which ones have players most commonly reflect them in their roleplaying choices? In my experience it's exhaustion, charm, really low hit points, a streak of bad luck, Rage, and Expertise. Is there some commonality between these, and if so, can it be applied to the context of encumbrance in a way where, even if the character isn't mechanically affected much or at all by the encumbrance, the player will still usually act like it? Perhaps. Then they might l, like, decide to carry different amounts of stuff just because of the way their character would act with different amounts of stuff carried.
3. Make it part of action resolution. (Similar to previous, yeah?) For this one, you'd basically check your carry status every time you rolled a really common roll, and the roll would be modified in some way, or the outcome would be. So for example, you might subtract 1 from attack rolls for every 50 pounds you carry. Obviously that would break 5e's math but you get the idea.
4. Make it a list of things you CAN do, rather than things you CAN'T do. (The rules should feel now like they're not just telling you no.) Instead of saying "with a STR of 10, your limit is 150," you could say, "with a STR of 10, add the following action to your sheet: Carry Up To 150 Pounds." Sounds stupid, and maybe it is. But maybe not? You could add different actions for different scores or score bands. Probably just more of them the higher the score. You'd likely start wondering why your other ability scores don't have stuff like this, which might lead you to designing a whole new RPG, but hey.
5. Make carrying itself require a roll. (Back to making it feel like play.) At the moment when you decide to pick something up, is where I'd place the roll. I don't love this, because it's silly to suggest you'd have any real chance to fail until you really push at the edges, and if you don't have a real chance to fail (or if failing isn't interesting) then I don't think you ought to roll. It's possible to justify this in the fiction though. Some games have you playing little mice who can't carry big things, or like, everything's radioactive and it's really not about weight at all but radiation. But I guess we probably want to remain as setting-neutral as possible so I'm not feeling this one personally.
6. ???
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It occurred to me today that the current Carrying Capacity rules leave a lot to be desired in two specific ways. Here's the player experience of these rules.
One: They try to do something, but the book (read: another player, or the DM, citing the sacred text) says they can't. Perhaps they try to carry too much, and get told no. Or, they try to use some tool they think they're carrying, but it turns out they wouldn't have been carrying it.
Two: They plan to pre-empt these problems and bore everyone to tears. They waste a bunch of time cross-referencing rules, deriving carry limits that they'll forget the moment this is over, carefully dividing up equipment, maybe even plotting out possible things that could happen in the next little while, to make sure they have enough supplies and tools and the space to keep it all. Nobody's rolling dice or using funny voices. Nobody's stabbing any evil giraffes.
In a nutshell: The current carrying rules serve only to tell you no, and playing with the current carrying rules doesn't feel like playing.
---
With that in mind, here are some strange directions you could go.
1. Make it part of character creation. (Playing with them should now feel like playing. Specifically the part of playing where you're building your character.) I suppose you could write that certain classes are able to carry certain types of things, but that feels too abstract for my tastes. Certain races? Maybe. It would differentiate, say, elves from humans if elves could only carry "lightweight" things and humans could carry up to "heavy" things or something. But no, I think that still feels too disconnected, too broad. Humans have a lot of variation in how strong we are, it would feel wrong to say every human has the same carry limit. Wait a second... Variations in how strong you are... Could we tie it to the Strength score?! My God! But look, what I'm saying is that having it be a derived statistic means it doesn't feel like a build choice. For this path we want to make it feel like a build choice. So like... Do we offer some kind of choice to every character, where they can either be strong in the carrying-things sense or strong in some other sense? Idk. Equipment is usually considered at least loosely tied to character build so maybe you make it equipment based. Like you make several types of bag, each with unique powers -- this one lets you get stuff out of it in combat, whereas this one lets you put stuff into it quietly and sneaky-like, and so on. Like armor! But I fear that wouldn't really address the core issue.
2. Make it part of roleplay. (Playing with the carrying rules should now feel like playing, because it's a modifier to your regular roleplaying.) Which mechanics make players roleplay differently? Which ones have players most commonly reflect them in their roleplaying choices? In my experience it's exhaustion, charm, really low hit points, a streak of bad luck, Rage, and Expertise. Is there some commonality between these, and if so, can it be applied to the context of encumbrance in a way where, even if the character isn't mechanically affected much or at all by the encumbrance, the player will still usually act like it? Perhaps. Then they might l, like, decide to carry different amounts of stuff just because of the way their character would act with different amounts of stuff carried.
3. Make it part of action resolution. (Similar to previous, yeah?) For this one, you'd basically check your carry status every time you rolled a really common roll, and the roll would be modified in some way, or the outcome would be. So for example, you might subtract 1 from attack rolls for every 50 pounds you carry. Obviously that would break 5e's math but you get the idea.
4. Make it a list of things you CAN do, rather than things you CAN'T do. (The rules should feel now like they're not just telling you no.) Instead of saying "with a STR of 10, your limit is 150," you could say, "with a STR of 10, add the following action to your sheet: Carry Up To 150 Pounds." Sounds stupid, and maybe it is. But maybe not? You could add different actions for different scores or score bands. Probably just more of them the higher the score. You'd likely start wondering why your other ability scores don't have stuff like this, which might lead you to designing a whole new RPG, but hey.
5. Make carrying itself require a roll. (Back to making it feel like play.) At the moment when you decide to pick something up, is where I'd place the roll. I don't love this, because it's silly to suggest you'd have any real chance to fail until you really push at the edges, and if you don't have a real chance to fail (or if failing isn't interesting) then I don't think you ought to roll. It's possible to justify this in the fiction though. Some games have you playing little mice who can't carry big things, or like, everything's radioactive and it's really not about weight at all but radiation. But I guess we probably want to remain as setting-neutral as possible so I'm not feeling this one personally.
6. ???