The Premise
From discussions on the Discord, it seems that a lot of the inventory management of Untold Dawn will be done with pockets in clothing as well as containers. To that end, I believe we need a robust system to allow easy management of inventory items.
The Problem
Inventory management shouldn’t be a chore! Let’s lay out a simple outfit with reasonable amounts of pockets:
- A pair of jeans - 4 pockets
- A T-shirt - one breast pocket
- A jacket - 2 side pockets
- A backpack - A main compartment and two smaller compartments
What’s likely to happen is that we fill our backpack first, then, when that’s full, we’d grudgingly put items in our clothing pockets. The problem then becomes, how do we find what we need when we need it?
Arriving At A Solution
look in backpack is old hat. While I certainly think that option should exist, it shouldn’t be the only tool at our disposal. If that’s the only thing we have, folks will get lazy. Lazy players combined with hoarding tendencies isn’t good for the game over all.
So What’s The Solution?
I think the solution is multi-faceted, and should consist of smaller parts fitted together to create a system that will allow players to organize their stuff should they choose, but also, just chuck something where there’s room if they’re in a rush.
Designating Pockets / Containers Per Item Type
If this were a medieval MUD, we’d expect to put arrows in a quiver, a sword in a scabbard, and a dagger in a sheath. It would certainly be nice if some containers came pre-programmed to accept only certain types of items; however, let’s say we have a player who is creating wooden objects to sell at a festival. They’ve obtained a belt pouch, and want to only use it to store wooden toggles. I feel this should be something that can be designated and remembered for future use, but with all types of items, even subtypes. An example would be breaking ammunition into subcategories such as archery, projectile, rocket-propelled, etc.
If you know you have it
If you know your character has something in their inventory, you should be able to retrieve it without having to care where it comes from. Every item that is able to be carried and contained should behave in this manner, from rocks to weapons, and everything in between.
Stadh and Stow
I’ve seen a stash and stow system before, and it’s a good system, but I think we can flesh it out further. In the system I’ve encountered, you could set a stow container and a stash container. However, in our case, I think stash could be a command that simply finds a container in your invenotry that will accept the item, and has enough capacity do so. For containers with pockets, the command would iterate through them until it found one with enough capacity. If none, it moves to the next container and tries there.
Stow, on the other hand, should be a little more granular. The aim here is to designate a pocket or container that we want to hold something. It shouldn’t be able to override what already exists, i.e. if we buy or make a holster, it would hold a pistol. We shouldn’t have the ability to designate it to hold herbs, for example.
Here’s an example of invoking stow for the first time.
>stow apple
You have no pocket or container set for food items. Try:
stow apple in right pocket of jeans
or
stow apple in backpack
Once done, you would simply be able to stow apple, and it would go to the correct pocket or compartment of the designated container.
Summary
I’ve attempted to outline a way to make inventory management less of a chore while still maintaining the ability to organize our inventories. It isn’t by far, the only solution, and I look forward to hearing about any refinements to this idea or even new ideas that would accomplish the same goal.
