Organize inventory control

[cubap]

How should this be managed? What characteristics fill inventory and how can belongings be moved about?

[cubap]

volume and weight

I like the idea of just having two limiters for carried items. Some containers or wearables could reduce one or the other, as can minor processing. For example, bundling sticks can reduce the volume without impacting the weight, having a basket in hand can increase the volume that is transportable (really the basket's inventory then, not the characters), wearing a satchel can reduce the effective weight of anything that is put inside, though volume is still a consideration (again, for the satchel's inventory).

[cubap]

overall concepts

In most cases, inventory should be difficult to swell and oversized items would require additional equipment to move. A basket, for example, is a great way to gather more fruit, but would have to be set down (hence map debris now and not in the character's inventory) to draw a weapon. Carts and such make moving items easier. Perhaps the concept of a cache should be implemented early on to allow for some sort of "ownership".

A relationship between items and their users may be helpful in determining the effect of taking someone else's tool, food, etc. Anything once used may have an expiring "owner" so that a scavenger who takes a long-dead characters jerkin is not as evil and someone who swipes all the meat from a cache as the hunter is out.

Any negotiated trade would only include items for which the character had ownership, though obviously not just what's in inventory. A lumber salesman would have a pile of planks to which she may exchange the rights to a dozen to someone for traded metal which is not "in inventory", but in a stockyard and a wheelbarrow, for example.