So I thought about this one a bit ago, mainly because my Visual Novel World has an adventuring component that relies somewhat heavily on Dungeon World rules.
Originally shared by Josh C
Suppose I wrote a book called Visual Novel World based on the character creation of Class Warfare and featuring an Adventure Mode based loosely on DW combat, but uses Cool, Hot, Smarts, Sports, and Weird as the attributes (with max being +3 as usual).
It occurs to me that players as it stands can have an infinite amount of stuff, baring only my personal restraint on handing out gear. I gave everyone 9 “picks” at the start of the game (or at least up to 3 picks per Archetype), but that says nothing about what they can carry. So I was thinking a quick and easy way to fix it is to give the starting 9 “slots” plus a factor of… Sports? Cool? Both? Either? Blood (the higher of Sports or Cool, +3)?
If it’s Sports and Cool, then characters could have up to 15 slots assuming a factor of 1, or 18 for a factor of 2.
If it’s one or the other, a factor of 2 gets me 15 slots and a factor of 3 gets me 18
If it’s blood, then a factor of 1 gets me 15, but a factor of 2 gets me 21
What would a slot be?
>>>An infinite number of yen notes
>>>100 coins
>>>3 ammo
>>>A number of slots equal to an armor’s natural armor rating
>>>1 slot for one handed weapons, 2 slots for either 2-handed tag, +1 slot for Clumsy
>>>Somewhere between 5 and 15 pounds depending on if an item is large and bulky, or small and easily pack-able
Should I bother?
What is the purpose of tracking gear, and how granular do you want it?
If your game is going for tactical simulation, doling out explicit slots and determining what can fit in them makes great sense.
But if you are developing a tactical simulation game, Dungeon World / PbtA may not be the best foundation.
If you simply want an abstract system to keep things generally reasonable, a Load system like DW doesn’t require a lot of accounting.
But if inventory management isn’t critical to the experience of the game you’re running, you may not need to develop a system at all. In that case, provide the players, including GM, with advice:
Think about what a character is carrying; if it strains credulity, ask the question: “How does she carry all that?” Let the fiction dictate what is plausible, and if the player wants the character to cart more stuff around, find options in the fiction to support it, or use a GM move to require that they decide what to leave behind.
“What is the purpose of tracking gear, and how granular do you want it?”
The purpose is “I want to, because some of my players will be engaging in a slightly more tentacular form of murder-hoboing, and carrying shit back to town to sell is a staple of that type of gaming”
As for how granular I want it, I have no idea.
“If you simply want an abstract system to keep things generally reasonable, a Load system like DW doesn’t require a lot of accounting.”
Basically that, although I use the word slots for both the number of spaces a character can have, and the number an item can take up. The post as written covers generic “number of slots taken up” for whatever, but it is my intent to convey a lack of certainty and attempt to ascertain how many slots a player should have.
“Think about what a character is carrying; if it strains credulity, ask the question: “How does she carry all that?””
Yeah. For me slots and credulity are inextricably linked.