Bags in Arcade Style D&D

 Arcade Style D&D

I play in or run five games that I would call Arcade Style D&D. Properly, I think this ends up being a sub-sector of the OSR style of play, but let me define what unites these games. 

They are short, with each session running an hour long.
The rule sets use simpler versions of D&D (OSE and Delving Deeper).

Combat stakes are high, with death a distinct possibility and frequent reality. 

The player party varies wildly in size and composition week to week.
Mapping is done by the players.
Goals are almost entirely player generated.

Other than the last, this lines up with a particular kind of experience for me. Not necessarily the image of the arcade where the Street Fighter Third Strike cabinet has stacks of quarters on top of it. Not the glossy barcade or Dave & Busters style teen/adult playground. This has midway vibes.

Posting up with the girlies to get XP.

It's highly social, player internal cooperation and friendly competition freely intermingle, and the overall attitude is full of bathos and a kind of sleight of hand. Challenge in these situations comes from novel (often secretly rigged) applications of skills and tools. But for those situations to be as fun as they can be, there needs to be a ground reality. Limited tools being brought to bear. 

Going forward I'm going to be referring to a game of Delving Deeper wherein we use a slot based inventory system. Most items take a single slot, although some can stack. Pack animals and porters provide bonus slots but are frequent targets of dungeon denizens. Wearing armor reduces your slots. 

These limitations, the limitations of planning, frustrated me at first. Why couldn't I just run back to the base camp and grab the block and tackle I hadn't written on my sheet? Why couldn't I carry all the treasure back in one go? Why have inventory management, famously tedious for many players of video games, be a part of our light arcade-y dungeon game? 

Productive Logistical Friction

In the wargame Cataphracts by Sam Sorenson the winner of most wars is the person who can manage their food well. Like in real life there is a constant scramble and struggle to keep your forces fed and this forces untimely engagements and moments of weakness from the combatants. It is annoying as a player to manage, rather than chits on a map, but not only does it represent the fictional world more effectively, it produces interesting situations via limitations. 

So to do limited slots produce interesting, challenging, and often funny situations. Everyone staring at a pile of six hundred thousand cold coins, desperate to convert it into XP, slowly realizing that as it stands they will never get it all back through the caves? Everyone biting their fingers as the scour their inventory of anything the can bear to get rid of? The planning and despair as talks about returning get eaten up by the press of time? 

These are productive. They are emotional. They are characterful. It happens over and over. 

If this represents the post-encounter inventory question, the pre-encounter questions are just as potentially entertaining. "Hold on who's got..." and "...wait a second what about...". The scramble for solutions for answers among the resources available to the players is part of the puzzle. How do we make a bespoke tool out of all the accumulated detritus and dungeon equipment we're carrying? How does what works become standard operating procedure? How does that then become an identity? 

These are productive and even dramatic. The flash of insight, the sudden fear when you get it wrong, these are part of the simulated world we can feel as players. They are produced by these constraints.

This too is one of the reason that (in dungeon-based or exploratory games), Vancian magic is so productive. It's why Gygax's exhortation about time-keeping is still bandied about today. It's why dwindling Willpower or Sanity in Delta Green matters. These constraints, these pressures, bring out our creative sides as players.

There are of course, other constraints. Social ones, fictional positioning, and mechanical constraints all press in on players and referees alike. But it has been my experience of late that these logistical constraints produce, by virtue of being viscerally understandable, some of the most fun and emotional moments in games.

The Bag of Holding

What then do we make of the Bag of Holding? It's as old as D&D as a product. It's right there on page 36 of the White Box. 

Right next to the Scarab of Protection from High Priests.

It allows you to carry 10,000 Gold Pieces as if they were 300. Under the White Box rules that means you can carry a thousand pounds. It massively minimizes all of the interesting things that can done with inventory. You can carry a house worth of gold wedged in there but more importantly you can carry thirty of practically anything. This could be creative, or productive, but in many cases it just means you have too much inventory. Unlike porters or mules, it'll never run or be hunted or betray you or die. It de-problematizes an interesting part of the game. 

So consider not using it, if that's your game. 

Consider, if you run more superheroic D&D in the style of later editions, that you don't need the permission structure. Inventory, in most Pathfinder and D&D 3/4/5e games doesn't matter like that. 

I'm not the first person to express this idea. Probably this is going to recur over and over and over again. Ultimately, I'm describing a type of fun and encouraging you to try it. To apply it to your games.

Replace quantum inventories in your Blades in the Dark game and see what happens. Change your new design and make your players plan, pre-choose their powers and their stuff. Make them decide and lock in those decisions. Let them feel what that produces. Apply constraints and let them solve for them.

1d26 Magical Bags

Enchanted or magical bags are part of not just the canon of D&D, but of fairy tales and fantasy literature. Endless coin purses, never ending feasts, bags you can disappear inside of. These are clearly resonant. But if the Bag of Holding (which might represent some or all of these) removes constraints we find valuable, what are some other bags we /can/ make interesting.

1. Bag of Aches: When you get older, everything gets more sore. Knees, head, sinuses. Somehow your skin gets sore. Not good. Somebody decided to do something about that and bagged up all their aches and pains in this bag. How they did it nobody knows but nowadays it works like this. It can cast cure light wounds on a human. Once it has cast cure light wounds it has to be emptied by casting cure light wounds reversed on another human. So long as it continues to alternate it can do this forever. 
2. Bag of Boldness: Someone hid their courage in this bag. Perhaps they had an excess. In any case opening the bag produces an upwelling and feeling of invincibility of everyone present, rendering them immune to magical fear. Hirelings, retainers and allies all automatically pass loyalty and morale checks and will not retreat even if commanded. Lasts 2d6 turns. Single use. 
3. Bag of Cold: This bag was previously the property of time-traveling frost giants, lost in time aboard their temporally flexible glacier. It learned from them the secrets of ice and winter and produces 1,000 coins weight of ice every day. There is no reduction in weight. 
4. Bag of Ejection: A fairy once learned to hate everything. Universal antipathy was its way an incarnation of opposition. It wanted to send everything as far from it as it could. So it wove it's disgust and annoyance into this knit bag, as big as it was. It will fit 100 coins weight of objects. As long as it is forcibly held closed it will grow more and more resentful until it breaks the drawstring or overcomes the person holding it closed to launch the objects as fast as it can away from itself. Attacks as four crossbows. 
5. Bag of Feelings: Annoyed? Sad? Afraid? Anything at all other than cold implacable logic? Well the god of scholars, tired of his servants bothering him with petty needs when they could be reading, gave this miraculous bag to his priests. It will siphon all emotion from a person. This causes them to treat their reaction roll as if it were the absolute average result. At last. Neutrality. 
6. Bag of Gilding: The god of craftsmen is surprisingly liberal with miraculous items. Shortcuts one might say. Tools and methods of finer and faster artistry his priests would likely respond. This is one such tool, granted to one of his favorites. It is a large burlap sack, eight feet tall and big enough around to it an armoire. When placed over an object or creature along with gold coins, it gilds the object or creature with gold foil. It is indiscriminate in its covering. A coin is able to cover 10 pounds of object or creature with foil and five coins will functionally encase a creature in gold, rendering it a statue unless it is of surpassing strength (17 or higher). Suffocation likely follows.
7. Bag of Holding*: The greatest wrestler of the age was named Katarina Broadbear. It was said she could defeat any opponent. She wrestled and defeated the demigod of strength. She wrestled and pinned the wild river Yatau. She wrestled and overthrew the mountain Kappela, turning it into the canyon of the same name. But when she met Jack on the road they drank together and made a bet. Jack bet that he had something she could not beat. He produced the bag he won from the devil, invincible as ever, and bade her climb inside. He tightened up the strings and let her struggle. She struggled for a day and a night. She struggled for a week through and through. But she never ame out till Jack freed here and she was forced to admit even if he wasn't stronger than her, the devil might be.  
8. Bag of Idleness: Everyone knew that Koala is just about the laziest animal you will ever meet. He was so lazy that when Snake came hunting Koala simply yawned. He was so lazy that when Tempest blew and raged all Koala did was chew his eucalyptus. He was to lazy to even be afraid. But he was always hungry. It was awfully tiresome to clamber about for eucalyptus. So Koala got it in his head that he should go see Spider about it, since everyone knew Spider was the best at letting his food come to him. Then Koala fell asleep. When he woke up he remembered what he was about and climbed along the branch to talk to his friend Spider.
   
   And Spider said this, "Koala, you are so very lazy. I am not so lazy because all day long I make my web. I make a special trap for my food. Because I work I can rest and wait. You should do some work."
   
   Koala did not particularly like this answer. So he looked around and saw Vulture and thought, "Vulture never hunts, Vulture must be lazy." Then Koala fell asleep. When he woke up he remembered what he was about and climbed down to go talk to Vulture. 
   
   And Vulture said this, "Koala, you are so very lazy. I am not so lazy because all day long I circle in the sky. I look out for my food. Because I pay attention I can soar and wait. You should pay attention."
   
   Koala did not care for this answer either. So he looked around and saw Man and thought, "Man is always sitting around. Man must be lazy." Then Koala fell asleep. Man came over and knocked Koala out of the tree and killed him. He took Koala's meat and made food and Koala's bones and made decorations and Koala's hide and made this bag. 
   
   He told the Bag, "Bag, you are so very lazy. I am not so lazy because all day long I think. I think how I will get my food. Because I think I can sit and wait. You should think."
   
   Bag, which was still somewhat Koala, did not like having been killed. But it thought and it paid attention and it worked. When Man opened up the bag and said, "Bag, bring me all those stones", the Bag would gather them all up. When Man opened up the bag and said, "Bag, get me all those fish", the bag would catch all those fish. But the whole time Bag was thinking and paying attention and working. It say that Man was getting lazier, working less and less. 
   
   One day Man, who had stopped thinking altogether about hunting said, "Bag, bring me some meat." Bag obeyed ably. But the meat was still attached to Lion. 
9. Bag of Jamming: Somebody told me the twilight prince, king of all thieves stole this bag from the blue wizard of the broken tower. I think they are a liar because why would a wizard want a thing like this?
   
   While placed over the handle of the door, it jams the lock. The normal key and picks will not work and the door is stuck fast, as by the spell witchlock. Works until removed.
10. Bag of Karma: The Wizard (there was only one then, just as there is only one now) met a traveling monk who taught him for a month and a day. At the end The Wizard had a badly malformed idea of morality and karma. 
    
    For every good deed you do a gold coin appears in this bag. The bag decides what qualifies as a good deed, unfortunately. Every time you find a bag or garment and return it to a safe and loving home, every time  you repair rather than replace a bag or garment, and every time you clean a bag or garment you gain a cold coin.
    
11. Bag of Lard: Dogmeel Menguy was the greatest thief in the small town he lived in. His secret, which was no secret at all because he would tell anyone at any time, was his "special little pocket". He had cultivated, over years, the most potent and slippery grease anyone had ever encountered. Just a drop and the heaviest millstone would glide like a duck on a river. He could simply blow over it and it would make hinges perfectly silent, so potently greasy was this grease. 
    
    No one will tell me what happened to Dogmeel Menguy. Maybe he slipped right out of reality and into Heaven. In any case, this is his pocket, cut out of his pants and sown up into a little bag. Fills with grease every eight hours which can be used to replicate the spell Grease, unlock any mundane lock, and do everything normal grease can do.
12. Bag of Molding: A perfectly normal bag, enchanted by a witch. Any food put inside quickly rots, covered in white mold. 
    
    The wise recognize the mold for its healing properties. By removing and drying it then pulverizing to a powder it can be used as a potion of Cure Disease once a week. 
13. Bag of Names: The charlatan Marlow infuriates me. He has this bag in his cloak of many pockets and it's one of his most annoying tricks. He opens it and pulls out a slip of paper. With an miserable twinkle in his eye he tells you the name on it and you suddenly remember how that person he has named owes you money or killed your mule or ruined your painting. Your feet almost work without you, marching off after that person and leaving Marlow to lie and cheat people less aware of his roguishness.
14. Bag of Old: In ancient times this bag was made by one of the Titans. It was their first attempt at folding objects to make a little pocket. A holder for other things that was not themself. They did a pretty good job. But they forgot to account for time. 
    
    The bag is still connected to those olden days and any object that passes through its small mouth falls backwards through time. When shaken out it will be as though it has experienced the millenia since the creation of the world. So far no one has found a practical use for this.
15. Bag of Phobos: Present opening to enemy. When opened it casts Phantasm, in the form of the enemies worst fear. Works thrice a day. Attempting to use it a fourth time summons a Shadow for every hit dice of the holder. Whoops.
16. Bag of Quickening: Do you, adventurer, ever find yourself without aid and assistance? Do you find yourself lonely in the great and vast darkness of the mythic underworld! Well worry no longer for now, at the low low low price of a dragon's heart and a mimic's pride, you too can have a friend whenever you need! That's right, with this exquisite silken bag you need merely place an object inside it and like magic* it will become animated before your very eyes!
    
    Objects up to the size of a human head become obedient animated servants 19-in-20 times. 1-in-20 uses, the object secretly plots to destroy the user. Obedient objects become dis-animated after 1d4 turns. Oppositional objects are animated forever.
    
    *It's like magic because it is magic. 
17. Bag of Repairing: Put an object in see it come together anew. Requires all pieces of a mundane object. Repairs them without blemish. Do not insert living beings.
18. Bag of Scolding: "You shouldn't have done that to Jake! You know he was waiting to eat those plums. He'll never forgive you for this. You were his very best friend and you betrayed him! I can't believe you. Not even buying him new plumbs and apologizing will fix this!" It knows what you've done wrong. When you open this bag it will begin to scold you for the action you have taken most recently for which someone holds a grudge against you. It will also hint at what you can to repair that rift, allowing you to re-roll the reaction roll with +2. 
19. Bag of Trawling: Toby Belch, wizard of the Gowanus, devised this artifact to provide more materials for his spells and artifice of detritus. He carefully wove it out of rat tails, plastic bags and plastic six-pack rings drawn from the canal. He found a drowned man and put the bag in the corpses mouth for six days. Then he came back and drew it forth, glistening. 
    
    A Bag of Trawling, when passed through a body of water, will dredge out a double handful of objects from beneath the water. It starts with the most valuable objects within a hundred feet but gathers up whatever less valuable things will fill up the mesh bag to the brim.
20. Bag of Ugliness: Bag on head. Everyone will assume you are viciously monstrously ugly, no matter how you look. It's human nature. They will barely look at you. 
    
    Casts Social Invisibility for as long as it is worn.
21. Bag of Voles: Perhaps these are to feed your cat. When opened it produces 1d100 voles. 1-in-12 chance to produce 2d4 Dire Voles instead. Maybe those are to feed your tiger.
22. Bag of Xenon: Jewel like coruscating silk. Abstract crawling embroidery that shimmers on the silk. An object of artistry and beauty. Fastened at the top with a strange clasp and closure, sealing it against all air and gases. When opened it produces four hundred cubic feet of Xenon a turn, displacing air in the same space. It will gradually fill a space with Xenon, extinguishing fires and eventually suffocating the inhabitants.
23. Bag of Yodeling: Who would want this? Triggers an immediate random encounter check with double likelihood when opened. Any creatures attracted will never be surprised. 
24. Bag of Zees: Never in my life have I slept so well. A bedroll, stitched tight at the ends, filled with goose down. A pillow at the opening for your head. When you slip into it it casts sleep and cure moderate wounds on you. Works once a day.