I love Encumbrance as a concept.
I hate Encumbrance rules.

I am looking for an ENC ruleset that easy to track for players and GMs, but makes sense in play.

How do you handle Encumbrance?

What game does it best? Why?

I ignore coin weights but otherwise play encumbrance RAW for Pathfinder.  That makes encumbrance rules a factor but gets rid of the need for players to say things like "Well we'll teleport back to town and buy a cart and two donkeys..."  I'm just not interested in the logistics of how PCs get a pile of coins and objet d'art back to town.  It's not something I want to spend game time fiddling with.  For M&M, encumbrance isn't a thing unless a character is carrying a locomotive around or something and it might not matter even then.

I use a slot system.  A human has 8 "slots" they can fill.  You can add slots by wearing a pack for example.

Each slot holds a certain amount of "stuff" say 2 daggers, or a bag of 500 coins or x days food an water, etc..  That's encumbrance as volume.

Then each filled slot has a weight.   If the stuff is mostly "light" then the weight of the slot is 1, if it's mostly average (almost all weapons, armor) the weight is 2; if it's heavy (like gold) it's 3.  How much you can carry without being slowed down in combat is determined by your strength.  If on a D&D scale it would be roughly equal to your strength.

Armor:  It's separate.  It takes no slots when worn but does add weight.

The character sheet has lines for each slot, you can write your stuff in, and there is a spot at the end for weight.

In the game I'm writing Characters have Careers and can buy Career Kits (stuff that lets them do the related skills without a negative modifier). The rules say a Character can wear one set of armor, carry two weapons, their Career Kit, and "walking around money". Anything more is encumbered and you move at half rate and have negative modifiers for combat and other skills. (I hand-wave most treasure as "stored" -- you can't get at it in combat but you aren't encumbered either.)

I think Lamentations of the Flame Princess does it best in a published game.

I recently saw a house rule that seemed pretty neat.

Quote from: everloss;930958I think Lamentations of the Flame Princess does it best in a published game.

Do you have a summary?

Quote from: Tod13;930967Do you have a summary?

There's a free version on LotFP site you can look at, but the gist of it is that you get a point of encumbrance for every five items you are carrying (but not wearing) and you get encumbrance points for wearing heavier armor. You count up encumbrance points and consult a little table on your character sheet to determine your movement speed.
The character sheet itself communicates the rules well.

Quote from: Cave Bear;930972There's a free version on LotFP site you can look at, but the gist of it is that you get a point of encumbrance for every five items you are carrying (but not wearing) and you get encumbrance points for wearing heavier armor. You count up encumbrance points and consult a little table on your character sheet to determine your movement speed.
The character sheet itself communicates the rules well.

That's a good way to do it.  Similar to the way I do it, the idea being to keep the math simple, single digit addition.  I think the idea of a table look up slows it down.  Better to derive a number straight from Strength, preferably Strength itself, then use multiples of that to set thresholds.

Quote from: Xanther;931008That's a good way to do it.  Similar to the way I do it, the idea being to keep the math simple, single digit addition.  I think the idea of a table look up slows it down.  Better to derive a number straight from Strength, preferably Strength itself, then use multiples of that to set thresholds.

Table lookup isn't so bad when its right on the back of your character sheet.

Quote from: Cave Bear;931009Table lookup isn't so bad when its right on the back of your character sheet.

I guess if it is small that works.  Real estate is at a premium on my character sheets but I like to leave room for a picture, companions, familiars, gear and notes on where you stand in the game world with various factions etc.

Encumbrance is burdensome.

Either you assign weights and volume for everything, which sucks...
Or you can replace them with abstractions like Mahoogans and Zots...then you need to assign Mahoogans and Zots for everything... Not the greatest replacement.

I swear that some days I think Swordbearer did it best. Their system? You get 10 things. Boom. Done. Go. Sure, it was wonky, but somehow I admire its simplicity.

Quote from: Spinachcat;930807I love Encumbrance as a concept.
I hate Encumbrance rules.

I am looking for an ENC ruleset that easy to track for players and GMs, but makes sense in play.

How do you handle Encumbrance?

What game does it best? Why?

AD&D 1st Ed.

Here's why. Because the real system I use is common sense. Namely, "If you can't explain how and where you're carrying it, you can't bring it with you."

Backpacks, sacks, and pouches all have finite carrying capacity. And the character only has one back and two hands. The belt is only going to support so much weight in belt pouches. You can get a little creative stringing multiple pouches along a shoulder sling, but then you can't similarly store a series of knives or daggers and expect to have ready access to them. You could also strap a couple large weapons to your back, but those will take longer to access in a clutch.

When I strictly enforce logic, it's so rare that a PC ever becomes over-encumbered by the rules that the rules never become a burden. If you know initially how much encumbrance the character is carrying (which can be determined antecedent to actual play according to standard equipment used), then it's just a matter of piling onto it when they're carrying out the lifeless body of a comrade.

Also, the "coin" as encumbrance unit is your friend. It's not just weight. It's also how awkward something is to carry. This allows you to flex according to the dictates of logic and still be within the rules.

Quote from: Tod13;930920In the game I'm writing [...]

Here is the actual text from my game. It is written "rules light" (meaning somewhat ambiguous). I decided not to write a game to deal with rules lawyers, but one I wanted to play.

QuoteCharacters can wear armor and carry two weapons and a Career Kit. Carrying more reduces movement by 1 per item. Money, gold, and other treasure are carried by the party as a group and do not affect movement, but the treasure is not available in combat. (For example, a Character cannot switch to a treasure sword in combat.) Small amounts of gold or gems are available.

Quote from: Spinachcat;930807How do you handle Encumbrance?

I use a basic encumbrance system derived from Runequest. You can carry a number of things equal to your Strength. Armor is given a small numeric value and light things are either 5 to a point (like daggers) or 100 to a point (like coins).

I consider keeping track of encumbrance to be 100% the GM's job. I keep track of everything. However, I don't have adjusted movement rates for encumbrance as I don't use movement rates, so the number of possible consequences is minimal (basically, the weight your carrying around affects how soon you tire out rather then how fast you move).