"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 16:58 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Jefferson project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E Sawyer, Lead Designer

More On Inventory: Do you feel ripped off when your high strength, low intelligence characters don't get many skill points? Strength-based encumbrance systems don't FORCE anyone to do anything, unless you count "making difficult choices". High strength characters get to carry a lot and hit creatures really hard. High dexterity characters get to tumble around like ninjas and throw daggers into stirges at thirty paces. People who have low strength or low dex can't do those things as well. That's why the player has to make choices about what kind of character(s) they want to make.

We could also make a 3D backpack to allow players to place their objects in approximations of real space, too. I don't know why the hell we'd waste our time doing that, though, since a weight-based system already forces players to make difficult choices about their party composition.

I can GUARANTEE that not a single DM posting in this thread ever checks their players' character sheets to make sure that the volume of their gear is realistic. It is so often the case in RPGs that the largest things are the heaviest that putting a volume system in comes close to being redundant. Armor? Big and heavy. Greatswords? Big and heavy. Rocket launchers? Big and heavy. People don't carry many giant stuffed teddy bears out of dungeons. Even in a system like Diablo, you wouldn't be too hard pressed to carry numerous suits of armor around if you had four or five party members. For practical purposes, characters are going to hit their weight limits before a similar volume restriction -- so why does it even matter?