Gear Slots and the Weight of Stuff
Shadowdark’s encumbrance rule is refreshingly blunt. A character has gear slots equal to their Strength score, with a floor of 10. Each item takes one slot unless the entry says otherwise. There is no math about pounds, no spreadsheet of grams. You count boxes.
Exceed your slots and every physical check comes at disadvantage. That is the whole penalty. It scales cleanly, it resolves fast, and it makes Strength worth something beyond swinging a sword. The dwarf with a 16 hauls sixteen things. The wizard with an 8 still gets ten, because the minimum protects the weakling from carrying nothing but a spellbook and regret.
The point of encumbrance here is not simulation. It is a decision cost. Every torch, every coil of rope, every sack of coins competes for finite space, so looting the vault becomes a triage problem instead of a formality. Rule it once, out loud, and the arguing stops.
At the table: When a player pulls sixty coins out of a hoard, remind them that coin bundles fill slots too; either drop the halberd or accept disadvantage on the climb out.