The Burden of Weight

Running a hex crawl can be a challenge, especially if it's your first time. I recently finished a six session campaign of Hot Springs Islands, and I learned a lot.
In my experiments with some other hex crawls, I found that without a system for tracking time and weight, many of the encounters lacked significance.
 

If Mark Brown has taught me anything, it's that systems can influence gameplay. You can actually alter a player's psychology by changing how they're allowed to interact with the world.
 

I wanted my game to have a desert island survival feel, so I tailored my game to meet those needs. When I think of desert island survival, I think...

• Find water
• Find shelter
• Find food
• Build weapons
• Explore
• Get help
• Get rescued

 In a nutshell, a desert island scenario is all about resource management.

...But D&D 5E doesn't model survival without some tweaks, so I started tweaking.

 
Let's say the party finds a cave full of treasure. Some is in the form of decent weapons and armor, but mostly it's gold and gems. Without systems for time and weight, the players say, "we pick it all up," and you move on. When they have a chance, they'll dump it at the nearest vendor, or it will be forgotten on their character sheet for the rest of the campaign (because gold in 5E is curiously pointless).

 

With a weight system, however, players are more selective and careful. They know they can't carry everything back in one, or even several days. They have obligations to NPCs, items that are being crafted, etc. and the clocks are ticking. Grabbing these mundane weapons means throwing out some minor magical trinkets. Plus, on Hot Springs Island, factions don't trade with gold, but rather with monster parts.

 

So they leave most of it. Maybe later, they'll task some of the NPCs at their camp to retrieve it. But then again, it's dangerous for a caravan to move that much wealth through the jungle...

 

The second scenario is much more interesting. I love when players have to make suboptimal choices. Players will often make decisions that minimize risk, even if it's less fun.

 

I hate getting bogged down in minutiae. This is one of the reasons I avoided running "real" D&D combat for years. When I set out to tweak D&D, I decided that all of these modifications needed to be easy to remember and fast to track. Dungeon World's weight system blew my mind a few years ago in its speed and simplicity. Here's how it works:



Each character starts with a base "Load" value equal to a number + their strength. That number changes depending on their class, which you can see below. Also note that in Dungeon World, you use the Strength STAT, not the MODIFIER. For my game, I used the modifier. The smaller storage capacity meant more interesting decisions, and the option to award "inventory upgrades" as loot.

• Barbarian: Max load 8+STR
• Bard and Rogue: Max load 9+STR
• Cleric: Max load 10+STR
• Druid: Max load 6+STR
• Fighter and Paladin: Max load 12+STR
• Ranger: Max load 11+STR
• Magic Users: Max load 7+STR

Items are broken down into four categories:

• Large (2 weight or more)
• Medium (1 weight)
• Small (1 weight per X)
• Tiny (0 weight)

An item's weight is determined by an abstract combination of the item's bulk and its actual weight.

Large items might include long swords, longbows, 200 coins in a sack, or a thick spell book.

Medium items might include medium-sized or collapsible weapons, light armor, crafting kits, large trinkets, a few small books, etc.

Small items are things like potions, throwing knives, food, arrows, etc. These vary depending on the item. 5 potions is 1 weight, 20 arrows is 1 weight, 5 days of food is 1 weight, and so on.

Play it by ear. I simply assigned weight values as things came up. Consistency is key here: A short sword always weighs 1 unless there's a good reason for it not to. Don't be a jerk. Remember, we're trying to simulate a whole world, and that requires consistency.

Tiny items are inconsequential; jewelry, letters, small personal effects. Basically any useless item. Be careful here, as this could be exploited pretty easily. When in doubt, it's 1 weight.

Also, 100 of any coin denomination is 1 weight.

Note: You have probably noticed that this can lead to odd situations where players can carry 1 less of something to avoid the full stack size weight. For example, a person carrying 19 arrows might try to make the case that it doesn't weight 1 until they have 20.  The point of this system is to be fast, loose and abstract. None of my players are annoying enough to push the issue, so I was lenient. If you feel like your players are seriously exploiting it, and that's an issue for you, make a change.

 

In part 2, we'll talk about time.