Inventory Management as Diegetic Milestones; or Angband Fangirling

There is little I can say about inventory management in the GLOGopshere that hasn't already been said. Arnold Kemp's inventory was the best first solution I saw while I was still a neophyte with Inventory and Inventory Jr, but always shall we iterate. Mausritter has its adorable and supremely diegetic item tokens and backpack grid.  While I am typically opposed to the abstraction of inventory management such as the usage of Usage Dice in Blackhack and dislike the wealth abstraction system of Prismatic Wasteland's design, there are certainly tables that love it. I even chafe against Blades in the Dark's retroactive load rules though within the game own's framework it keeps the games ad-hoc breakneck high-stakes pace moving. 

Similarly, light in the dungeon remains up for debate, even recently. Though I agree that "torches should last 1-hour and weigh 2 lbs" Kaponkie's idea for light as saving throws is delightful and very keen and has something I think we all desperately crave and scrabble for in our heartbreakers and home games. 

Elegance. 

I am one of those bizzaroids from the Cambrian that thinks Elfgames are best played with an Excel file and yet I understand that while such solutions are brutally effective, they are, in a word inelegant. I think we all long for the "hit point revolution", a magical imaginary rule for inventory management as good and enduring as HP has been for health. A solution that is both simple and effective and easy to remember and despite the everlasting cries of "it makes no sense!!!" nevertheless, stays. 

I do not have such a solution. But I do think I have a way to make managing inventory rewarding. But first we have to go back to 1993 and discuss ANGBAND!

Gorgeous. 

Angband is super fucking cool. It is also the hardest game I have ever played. Long story short it's one of those early Roguelikes, coming out 13 years after Rogue and being based on the game Moria. In the game you take on the roles of a race/class adventurer combing through the first 99 procedurally generated ASCII dungeon levels of Angband, an evil fort from Tolkien's Silmarillion to find Sauron and kick his ass. Then you can go to level 100 and kick Morgoth's ass and be crowned king of Silmarillia or something. I'm not sure because out of like 50 characters I've only had one make it past dungeon level 50 and he only got to level 79 before a pit fiend disintegrated him.  

Rest in peace gentle Garg XVI

This is what the game's inventory management screen looks like:

Harrowing. 

Here's what your equipped screen looks like

Harrowing-er.

If HP is to elegance, this is to getting clubbed over the head in a dark alley by a very very blunt, very strange instrument. Like a flugelhorn. It's a simple list, conveniently color-coded, and fiercely efficient. It eschews reality (you can simultaneously wield a bow and sword and carry potions in stacks of 40) but its own internal logic is very sound. 

What makes it interesting is this the most efficient this character has ever been and he's only getting more so. Let me explain. 
 
When you first make a character, you begin with very little. You carefully scrounge around the uppermost reaches of the dungeon armed with only a torch and some sling stones and if RNG is kind, a dagger. You crawl, space by space, slowly lighting up your path and revealing the shape of the dungeon. You test unnamed potions, read bizarre scrolls and hope they don't poison you or teleport you five levels lower. You collect everything and your inventory quickly fills up and all the while you can't even see the shape of the dungeon level and until you've been everywhere. And then you find a Scroll of Mapping. 

It maps but not lights out about a quarter of the dungeon in rough circle around you. It weighs half a pound and only works once so you treasure it. You only use it for hard or confusing levels, and you soon stack as many as you can and weight be damned, you'll drop that sick Flail of Demon Slaying before you'll leave those scrolls behind. The same goes for Scrolls of Treasure Location to efficiently find loot, Potions of Heroism to counter fear-based status effects and Wands of Hold Monster for obvious reasons. 

So you ration them all. Weigh the odds every fight. These are valuable resources after all. And then you find a Rod of Mapping. It weighs half a pound, and besides a short cooldown it never runs out. Now you never need scrolls again. You're free! And you dump them on top of the nearest corpse. That's a valuable slot and you weigh less so your speed goes up and you survive fights better. And the game is doing this kind of thing all the time!

Heavy one-time use scrolls are replaced by rechargeable wands and staves and eventually rods. Resistances (to the games various and extensive elemental effects) begin with temporary potions and rings in coveted ring spots and weak shields, and eventually unique legendary armors cover several at one time freeing up spots for more powerful shields and rings and potions. Even your class can aid you. Warriors become immune to fear at level 30, negating the need in your equipment. I've found some cool artifact weapons that make you immune to some effects, a rare treat indeed that eschews the need for potions of resistance. 

Light too, that ever-present 10 HD bugbear, is improved with treasure acquisition. Torches, which only last a cool 5000 turns can be replaced with a lantern that light up more space and last a hefty 15,000 turns. Lanterns too are replaced with magical counterparts that need no oil or are enchanted with Brightness, showing more of the dungeon. Eventually you'll find the Phial of Galadriel which needs no fuel and can also cast Light Room. I am sure as I progress deeper I will find yet more treasure which exist as superior or at least lateral equipment. 

In short, treasure of all stripes, makes managing your inventory easier by making you need less. That is the reward. 

~~

While this certainly isn't a novel idea, to some degree, I think Elfgames miss the mark on this. D&D 5e, obsessed with progression, replaces many core parts of the game with class abilities and spells and whole classes (looking at you Ranger) very early on, robbing you of the joy of becoming more efficient. Banning Goodberry is infamous amongst modern DMs seeking to make inventory tracking matter, in a game that seems largely disinterested in tracking much of anything. Goodberry should be a euphemism for druid kidneys and should be a mid-level reward for brutally massacring a druid. 

The OSR of course has done much better, with our slots and stones and encumbrances and so forth. But I think the scene has not considered the next question of inventory management progression (what a phrase). We know copper becomes silver becomes gold becomes gems but what of our torches and lanterns? What of all this mapping talk of late? Drawing maps by hand is fun (I make my players do it) but would I or perhaps you be so brave as to give them a Rod of Mapping? How would you even make that work? Rations are great to track but what treasure exists out there makes it so you don't need to eat anymore? 

Already diegetic progression exists in the phyletic tree that begins with B/X and its grandfather OD&D. The fighter and the cleric get their castles and churches, wizards find their spell scrolls. Obviously, we expect gold and treasure to make their lives easier in the fiction but I think equipment too, needing less and less of it can be its own reward. 

I challenge you to challenge inventory management in your game and to make things that make inventory tracking worth it, if only so eventually you don't have to. 

~~~

A Bit About Hirelings

I love hirelings. In my fantasy heartbreaker you will abound with hirelings to feed the ego of your venal and vice-ridden character, all tracked on your handy dandy Wretched Lot sheet (the only people worse than you wretches, are arguably those wretches who follow you). They fill an interesting and to some degree frustrating, middle ground in inventory management. They don't make managing it easier (you're just offloading the work onto either a separate sheet or heaven forbid the referee) but they give you more room to carry stuff. They only "matter" insofar as they can be threatened by the world they exist in and the players attachment to them. These things must exist in tension, and the rules should support that tension; Peasants wanting to live (morale) balanced against player greed and a system that doesn't let you churn through NPCs (reputation?) makes for fun gameplay. 

In short, I think hirelings are not necessarily a reward that makes inventory management easier, but something to play around with more that can be rewarding. Convincing an ogre to join the Wretched Lot is fun and badass (especially when it has its own desires) and certainly a kind of reward (think how much food he can carry (or eat)). 

~~~

I am told there is a tax. Here are my (not novel) equipment tracking rules and d7 things that suck to track and their magical reward replacements

Equipment 

You can carry a number of stones/slots of equipment between your Flesh (FLSH) score (1d6-1) and twice your Flesh score with neither malus nor bonus. A stone is 15 lbs. or the size of a cantaloupe, whichever is less convenient. Write each discrete piece of equipment on a note card and put them in a stack. You can quickly and easily access a number of the top cards/equipment equal to your FLSH. 

Conan Rule: If you carry less than your FLSH, you gain a +1 bonus to damage and initiative. Your speed is incremented one size (1d4 => 1d6=> 1d12)

Hoarder Rule: If you carry more than twice your FLSH score, you gain a -1 malus to damage and initiative and you look like a fool or worse, a miser. Your speed is decremented one size (1d12=> 1d6 => 1d4). 

Armor Rule: Armor uses slots equal to DR. Heavy cloak =1, gambeson=2, chain =3, shield =+1. The system eschews plate for players but it's a whopping +5 DR for heavily armed foes. 

Rule of 3: Light things that can be bundled are three to a stone
Rule of 20: Tiny things that can be grouped are twenty to a stone

Write each discrete piece of equipment on a note card. When you take damage that would destroy items (acid, fire, android lazer beams), draw a card from the stack counting up from the bottom equal to the sum of the damage. It is destroyed if the destruction makes sense. 

D7 Rewards
(I'll add to this if anyone has any additional ideas!)

1.Mapping.  Mapping Imp, fits in a pocket. In exchange for doing nothing when the opportunity to do good presents itself (as the best devils offer) and when supplied with chalk and slate, it will scout ahead and map out the next few rooms for you in perfect if verbose and exacting detail due to their quixotic minds. Also due to their quixotic minds they will not note extreme temperatures, deadly vacuums or intense radiation since they are unaffected by it. When slighted it may omit key details like a large ogre, pit trap or the like. Can be found in the servitude of witches and hags, or in the bottoms of chests they've been locked in, bored for a century, in which case the first gig is free. 

2. Food. Elf Pellets, Rule of 20. These golf ball sized pellets are swallowed whole and give you nourishment for as long as three days. Actually, the nutrient dense droppings of cockatrice and basilisks, who eat stone and bone to extract minerals. The unnecessary fats and proteins are thusly extruded. 

3. Ammunition. The Thirteenth Arrow of Misfortune. It greedily fills a quiver. A single dark arrow said to be whittled from the Tree-Prison of the Chaos Serpent (whose one put-out eye is the moon) and tipped with one of its teeth. When placed in a full quiver of 12, it binds them all together, becoming indistinguishable from the rest. The thirteenth arrow fired always crits and always causes the greatest disaster and chaos an arrow could cause, ricocheting around corners to do so. For everyone person in the room you declare you Hate, this arrow ricochets once more. This could be severing ropes, killing lovers or destroying something precious. No one will ever forget what you wrought and you are glad for it. 

It is not a specific arrow, just the 13th fired. When the quiver is depleted, it magically regifts you with 12 ordinary, blood-soaked arrows. 

4. Ammunition. Rod of Zapping, Rule of 3 when strongly bound for such mighty rods are like opposing magnets. When activated it fires ZAPS that do the damage of a bow with a maximum range based on its length (they can be stacked like markers). It can fire however many ZAPS you need in a ten-minute cycle but then must recharge. I'd link the recharge time to the Underclock; when the sum of Underclock rolls equals the number of ZAPS fired, it recharges. 

5.  Food. Gastrolith of the Tyrant King. A large stone once in the belly of a great crocodilian king. If swallowed, a mighty task indeed, you need only eat once a week. 

6. Travel. Snapsticks, Rule of 3. A pair of sort of thin wooden doweling rods, favored amongst thieves. When the first of the pair is broke over the right knee nothing happens. When the second is broken over the left knee, you and some friends are teleported back to the where the first was broken. 

7. Weight, Amour.  Maille of the Elytra Prince. DR3, 1 stone. This dark lightweight armor scintillates a rainbow of colors in the light, made of the carapace of a former beetle knight. Exceedingly rare as it cannot be given away and dead beetle knights rarely die peaceful deaths. To wear it is to honor that knight and owe allegiance to the Elytran throne. 

Class Progression As Less Not More

Let me expound on the title. I think the best class progressions let you ignore or even better, break a rule. An example: 

"A fighter's favorite weapon uses up no slots while in his possession."

This of course requires you know how the equipment/encumbrance rules work in your system or heartbreaker of choice. But it's less to remember because your class ability is the exception to the rule. The best ones should let you outright break a rule. Consider a rule like "No one can read magic innately." Then you go roll up a wizard and lo and behold

"A wizard can read magic innately."

Immediately very cool and I think, counterintuitively, good rules design. The subject of memory has been brought up before. Everyone shares the rules knowledge "no one can read magic" (Automatic rule) except the wizard who will remember because it makes them feel very cool (good use of Extemporaneous rules).

This should exist in opposition to restrictive rules such as poorly thought-out weapon proficiencies of recent editions. "Only fighters* can use martial weapons." Absolute hogwash of the murkiest order. A wizard carries a sword because it's faster to kill knaves that way then they're choking out chthonic incantations and besides it looks both rad and badass.

I think D&D and the OSR could do a lot more with this so here's some more examples off the dome. 

Everyone begins play with 1 MD naturally and can hold 1 spell in their head in the Vancian way, after having read a scroll or spell book, with great straining. But a wizard can hold 5 this way before their brain explodes. 

Everyone can pick 2 weapons they're deadly with at character creation. A fighter may pick 4 and if it's their favorite, it costs no slots to carry. 

Coins are always 300 to a slot. Thieves however can sneak in an extra 100 per slot if they tell no one.  

Druids (a made-up class) cannot use metal armor or weapons. However, a druid's wooden weapon, if it has never known a thinking creatures' touch, is harder than steel in their hands.

I think the common interpretation of Thief Skills from early versions of the game are a good guideline. Anyone may attempt to move quietly, but only a thief may attempt to do so silently. Similarly, anyone can attempt climb a wall but alas the sheer surfaces are reserved for the sticky-footed rogue.   

Now an obvious counter to this claim is to look at the 5e ranger who simply gets to succeed in their chosen element. One might argue that here we see the Ranger gets to ignore the rules so this should not be lauded hmmm?  Cockamamie gibberish of the purest distillation. Here the Ranger nullifies the rule it breaks. It would be the same as saying "All of a fighter's weapons cost no slots while they carry them."

Note that this is the same hogwash we defenestrated earlier but in reverse. "Only rangers can travel without being lost" is the same as "only fighters can use martial weapons." The solution is to fix the rules that they're allowed to break which stink in the first place. Observe:

When a group becomes lost, you may attempt to reorient yourself by seeking a landmark, observing the direction of the sun or following water, all taking 1 watch. A ranger however may do so in a ten-minute turn provided he can see the stars, a body of water or observe wild animals, though he cannot use the same stars, water or animals twice in one day. 

You must sleep 8 interrupted hours each night to regain HP. A ranger may regain HP irrespective of how much he is harried as long as he sleeps at least 4 hours. 

When observing tracks anyone can roughly determine two of the following: origin, direction, rough party size (more than one, more than ten etc.) or answer a specific question like "do they have prisoners?" A ranger can accurately determine two or roughly determine three.  

~~~

An idea: Maximalizing play procedures for classes inverse to their proficiencies. A fighter has to remember very few rules when fighting whereas a wizard must jump through many hoops, or rather everyone has the same baseline for combat except fighters who need not consider much at all. 

For example: an imaginary ruleset where one must consider initiative, weapon strike accuracy, weapon deadliness and combat fatigue

"When combat begins, determine initiative by [favored method] or else foes act before you. To strike a foe you must roll below their AC but above their HD. Unless the foe is bloodied or you have [advantageous fictional positioning] your attacks are dangerous [1 Wound], not deadly [Instant Death], unless you've mastered the weapon. At the end of each round you have Wounds, roll above Wounds or become Fatigued which gives [Relevant Combat Maluses]. Unless you are a Fighter..."

"...As a Fighter, you always go first. To strike a foe roll below their AC. Unless a foe is supernatural, all your strikes are deadly and will kill in one hit. You ignore Combat Fatigue."

Perhaps rather than all at once, your system of choice uses templates/classes and each template/level lets you ignore an additional rule in your favor. I am reminded of the (still in progress) Seven Part Pact by Jay Dragon where each wizard rules their own domain, being experts in it. Rather than protecting class identify, this design reinforces it. This does have the potential issue of disempowering a player because they never learn certain rules but maybe that's ok. Our time is precious and system mastery be damned maybe when I play a fighter I don't wanna think hard.

I think this could also be fun with a magic system as well. Let's assume the GLoG magic as a baseline (+4 casting dice, spell books and scrolls etc) but with some astrological flair I've been working on. 

"To learn a spell, you must study it from a book or scroll and its relative place in the Spheres [or other extraplanar fantasy jargon]. You must spend at least 8 hours studying and experimenting with the spell to determine its Sphere of Origin (which planet it hails from), practicing the verbal and gesticulatory phrases and motions to insulate it from your brain and expel it from your mind and determining its metal associate for physical casting requirements. Nonetheless, it may require additional specific archaic material components (chrysalids, copper twine, a human skull)"

To cast a spell, you must first prepare it under the culmination of its home Sphere e.g. when it is highest in the sky, typically around sunrise (a special book may be required for this or an orrery), which takes 1 Turn (ten-minutes) per spell prepared. You can prepare spells equal to half your MND score. Each spell prepared beyond this introduces racking headaches, nosebleeds and intrusive thoughts and memories. Mishaps when casting these extra spells act the same as Major Wounds to the head, save that a helmet cannot protect you. 

If prepared and you can read the scroll or spellbook pertaining to the spell (typically requiring a lectern or a free hand) and the basic material component in a free hand (traditionally a wand, rod or staff of the correct metal) you may roll your magic dice and cast the spell. If in combat, you begin casting before your foes act but finish the spell after they go. 

Unless you're a Wizard..."

"...As a Wizard you may learn a spell with an hour of experimentation and then prepare the same spell. You can prepare any spells by studying them for an hour at sunrise, when the sun refreshes magic across the surface of the Irf (you can picture the path of its home Sphere innately, they are the same stuff as ley lines under your feet, perhaps the very same thing altogether). You may prepare spells equal to your MND score though spells prepared may be prepared beyond this but busy your mind with whispers, compulsions and obsessions that are both your own and not. Mishaps when casting these spells act as Minor Wounds to the head, save that a helmet cannot protect you. 

A prepared spell cast from a book needs no basic material component such a wand or staff however it may increase the potency of the spell (+1 to any die result) and you will still require any specific material components. You may cast with a book as above but if you prepare the spell focus you can cast it in the Vancian way. Additionally, if cast under the correct planetary conjunction, at the right time of day, under the effects of certain herbs or tinctures or with implements of the correct metal, you may roll extra magic dice, supplied to you by the universe."

I guess in summary, playing around with carving classes out of the existing rules means there are less rules to remember, just exceptions to them that reinforce class identity. I think this also has the added benefit of making things you have to add to the game like magic for example, make it feel more rare and special, a time when slowing down to consult the rules is ok because Fireball or Rhialto's Reticent Disintegration is about to be cast.   

*Here meaning fightery classes like barbarian, ranger etc.