Hands and Muscles, encumbrance the GBI way

[Argentsaber]

Encumberance: Hands and Muscles
I have been testing a modified version of the Ghost Busters D6 RPG encumberance rules, summarized here with the hopes the community will help me find issues. As a side note, I’m not sold on the name “muscles” for generic unit of weight, but it’s what the source uses, and I have yet to come up with anything better, and don’t want something as generic as “weight” (which in my experience makes most players get out their calculators).
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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
G'Kar, Survivors (Babylon 5)

[Argentsaber]

Hands
The bare bones is that everything has an encumbrance rating based in "hands," a unit literally describing how many hands it takes to make use of an item. This means a pistol is 1 hand, a rifle 2 hands, and a carbine 1.5 (possible with one, but easier with 2). While I have started a master weapons and equipment list, the main thing is to stay consistent. In most cases, figuring out how many hands for a given item should be common sense.

Fingers
In the WEG-GBI rulebook “anything that can be put in a pocket and never thought of again” is discounted (assigned a value of “0 hands”). This is stuff like a cigarette lighter, pencil, etc. In my modified version, I introduce the concept of “fingers” as a unit, five fingers being roughly equal to one “hand.” After some experimentation with lighters, pencils, shotgun shells etc. I have found this to be reasonable, providing that an organized group (say 20 pencils all neatly parallel in a bunch) are treated as a single larger item. In the context of Starwars, things like a code cylinder or comlink would be “one finger.”

Bigger Items
Large things should be restricted by common sense. The example I generally go with is the E-Web Heavy repeating blaster. All together, it’s a 6 hand weapon (you can see three stormtroopers cooperating to set it up in Empire), with the heavy tripod being equipment that grants -2 hands when deployed, effectively reducing the weapon to 4 hands, allowing two people to use the weapon (the gunner and the support tech operating the power unit) despite requiring 3 to move about.

Mitigation
There are several ways to allow a character to carry much more than the 2 hands of equipment their number of limbs would suggest (with appologies to CRMcNeill to whom I grant 4). The GBI rules cite examples like the light on a miner’s helmet, and the various pockets on the Ghostbuster’s uniform jumpsuit. We all understand the concept of pockets, right? Well, in addition to this, Star Wars has things like the Mandalorian Death Commandos who are festooned with an entire arsenal, stormtroopers with a batman-esque utility belt, or a rebel pilot with a datapad on the thigh and a few dozen mysterious cylinders about the calves.. but even the most basic outfits typically come with a belt. Through which one can stash a pistol even when lacking a proper holster.
Without specialized equipment or clothing/armor, the typical person can carry the following: one hand on the head/neck (binoculars or IR goggles), two hands on the back (a backpack, a rifle on a sling and a guitar on a strap.. whatever), two hands on/in the belt, and generally twenty finger sized items in pockets, tucked into boots, etc.
Common equipment can greatly enhance the amount of equipment that can be carried. The belt, for example, can carry a pistol much more comfortably in a holster.. a basic one (as used by an imperial officer) takes up two fingers on the belt, but can hold a 1 hand pistol, while a gunslinger’s holster might take up 3 fingers but allow the character to draw and fire simultaneously (still imposing MAP however). A small pouch takes one finger but can hold 3, and a larger one (think military “dump bag”) might take 2 and hold 6. As an aside, while it at first seems nonsensical to be able to use the capacity of a pouch to add more pouches, this is actually done in some tactical gear setups.. but a character with this going on is going to be EXTREMELY obvious.
Specialized equipment can be uniform (such as the above noted stormtrooper belt) or customized (think Boba Fett), and is generally not overly difficult until you try to do more than double the existing carrying capacity. Practically, I have been using the rule of common sense in this regard, and when common sense is being stretched I generally require custom work which is either quite expensive or done via spending character points (as described in the first edition in the “improving equipment” section).
Overdoing it
It’s obviously possible to cram 10kg into a 9kg bag, but it’s not advised. As the amount carried increases, a penalty is applied which is effectively the same as that for wearing armor. Equipment customized with character points can reduce this in exactly the same way as the armor penalty, and the two stack.
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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
G'Kar, Survivors (Babylon 5)

[Argentsaber]

Muscles
In GBI, “muscles” is the equivalent to Strength. This is important because you could fill a backpack with bic pens and barely notice, but if you fill it with bullets there will be an unsubtle difference! In order to largely dispense with spreadsheets, this aspect of encumbrance is abstracted (despite the fact that the lifting skill could be used to calculate a character’s acceptable load). For the purpose of simplicity, each character can handle one reasonably normal handheld item per pip of strength without any significant difficulties. Characters that have raised their lifting skill may carry a bit more, though at a cost. When using lifting to exceed the carrying limit, that character replaces strength with lifting skill to calculate the amount that can be carried, but the MAP applies (in a similar fashion to a Jedi “keeping up” a power). This can be done multiple times by extremely strong characters.

Heavy items
Some items are exceptionally dense, and are designated “heavy,” taking an entire die of the character’s muscles to carry rather than a pip. Anything that is too heavy to be covered by this system should not be treated as carried equipment, but rather a skill usage of lifting in itself, with the requisite roll against DC (modified by other weight carried if appropriate).

Light Items
Light items are not ignored, but are treated as a group. A good example would be Luke’s survival equipment from the x-wing (rations, canteen, lamp, firestarter, etc.) would all be listed individually, but the muscles they take to carry would be lumped together (in this case probably 5-6 pips or more.. it was filling a small crate after all). The same could be true of a gun belt.. you’d list all the items on it, but the whole thing, gun, ammo, comlink, etc. would all get one summary rating (making it easier to know if you need to ditch your items to swim better for example)
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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
G'Kar, Survivors (Babylon 5)

[Argentsaber]

Objects of Opportunity
Games should be cinematic. There is generally no need to recalculate encumbrance mid battle. When it becomes tempting to do so, it’s likely more reasonable to make it a traditional lifting skill check instead (Mando and the E-Web comes to mind). Likewise, if a particular character wants to carry an unlimited supply of breathmints, just call it “unlimited breath mints” and go from there. On the other hand, characters in the habit of pilfering every grenade and power pack for future use aren’t terribly in the spirit either, so that’s a case where you might want to figure out where the heck that stuff is going and how much it will affect the character for the rest of the game. As with anything, it’s as much common sense as not.
_________________
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
G'Kar, Survivors (Babylon 5)

[CRMcNeill]