Saturday Morning Gaming: Loading Up

You’ve rolled up your character. You’ve picked your skills. You’ve applied your bonuses. You’ve chosen your feats.

You’ve just got two more things to do: Roll your wealth then buy your starting equipment.

I don’t know about you, but this is the least fun part of the game for me.

How many sling bullets do you get? How many ball bearings?

Caltrops? Chalk? Rope? Hempen or silk? How many torches? You’ve got to get a flint and steel…

And, at the end of all that, you don’t use any of it. Maybe the rope.

One DM we had gave us a 3×5 card and said that we could have whatever we could fit on one side of the 3×5 card and it had to be readable. So, for the most part, we just kept track of our arrows or bullets and figured that we could ignore any rules about climbing up a wall or going down one. Or encumbrance! Jeez, encumbrance.

It helps you realize why every sitcom has the characters able to find a parking spot right outside of the restaurant. A story devoted to parking 4 blocks away and walking would just be excruciating. The point is what happened at the dinner!

Or, I suppose, maybe they’ll get mugged or something.

But keeping track of minutia isn’t particularly *FUN*. It gets in the way of fun. It’s the thing you do so that you can get to the fun. Why not just elide it and get to the fun like they do in the sitcoms? You luck out and find a parking spot in front of the restaurant. Wham! You’re there.

Well, my group has discovered a fun system called “Blades in the Dark” that is probably the most elegant I’ve ever seen when it comes to the loadout.

Check it out here, at the bottom:

You have access to all of the items on your character sheet. For each operation, decide what your character’s load will be. During the operation, you may say that your character has an item on hand by checking the box for the item you want to use—up to a number of items equal to your chosen load. Your load also determines your movement speed and conspicuousness:
1-3 load: Light. You’re faster, less conspicuous; you blend in with citizens.
4/5 load: Normal. You look like a scoundrel, ready for trouble.
6 load: Heavy. You’re slower. You look like an operative on a mission.
7-9 load: Encumbered. You’re overburdened and can’t do anything except move very slowly.

And what does load mean? Well, it’s currency, kind of. Like, if you are playing a scene where your characters are agreed to have a “normal” load, that means that you have 4-5 load points to spend as the story progresses.

Do you find yourself in a situation where you need a lantern? Spend a load point! You pull the lantern out of your pack. Encounter a wall? Take out some climbing gear! Oooh. Climbing gear costs two load points…

You’ve only got two load points left…

Hoo boy. It’s a locked door. Now you’ve got a choice. You have two load points left. You want to use one on a lockpick set?

You’re not even inside the building and you’ve spent most of your load points!

Wait, there are other people in the group… Make one of them use a load point.

And as your group gets closer and closer to their objectives, they’re spending load points to deal with what they encounter rather than checking to see if anybody remembered to pack a Mirror, Small Steel.

The entire game system is fun and worth looking at, mind. It treats a session as if it were a caper rather than a dungeon crawl. Get in, get your item, get out. You’re not there to cleanse the world of Kobolds. You’re there to get the macguffin and leave.

Lots of little fun dynamics, lots of fun complicating issues, and a roll system that will have the players say “I almost wish I had failed completely to only marginally succeeding…”

But, if you ask me, the best thing about the system is that it’s got an absolutely magnificent system for keeping track of what you’ve equipped before you go into the lion’s den: whatever you want! But not everything you want.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is “Bag of Holding” by jazzmodeus and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 )