When I left Pearl Harbor, I had probably triple my allotted weight. Why did I not get to chose what gear came? I got to choose it the first time. Why not every time? I had well over my weight limit just in ammunition. The referee could have decided to just drop me with my weight limit in ammunition. That wouldn't have been particularly useful with no gun to shoot them through. No money, no clothes, just bullets and no gun.
I'm just wondering why players don't get to pick their gear their gear on every verse.
On a different note, please pray that I can get to talk to my old friend Mike Jones. (I feel comfortable giving the last name because it might as well be John Smith)
As long as it's not the Mike Jones who goes by Mickey and sang with the Monkees, right...?
The real question isn't why you don't get to pick which stuff does and does not go with you on later verses, but why you got to pick it in the first place. The answer to that is that the referee doesn't really know what you own from which to choose, so he can't make choices for you.
If you were doing this for real, your character would not be able to select what goes with him; it would be up to the referee to make the decisions. There are some inherent guidelines to this.
- First, it's rather obvious that if you have something so large (like your van) that it alone would exceed your weight limit, it goes no matter how important it is to you.
- Second, the referee is supposed to protect the things that you have demonstrated are important by constant use--those things would have more scriff in them than other things that you do not use so much. Thus you're unlikely to lose your sleeping bag or your weapon of choice, because these are things which in the course of play you probably have mentioned using quite a bit. You are more likely to lose the book you thought might be useful but have never read.
- It is more likely that you would lose things that have never versed with you rather than things which have, unless the newly acquired things have become very important in terms of how much you use them.
- It's perfectly reasonable to decide that things that went with you because they were in a container that is no longer going with you aren't going with you--such as gear you stored in the van that was "on person" the first time but not tne next time.
In short, when you're dying you're not thinking about what you're going to take with you; the things that go with you are the things that the referee is persuaded are closely associated with you in some way. He has the option to slice off the list at the point he thinks it hits your maximum, on the assumption that the list is set up in the order in which you obtained it so if you didn't discard or eliminate something from the upper part of the list, the point at which you reached your limit would be the point at which nothing else became associated with you. We expect the referee to be fair, to take into account a lot of factors, to enforce the rule, and to keep it simple for himself at the same time.
--M. J. Young
Wait just a minute here MJ!!!! I could have sworn you said that the equipment was what you subconsciously decided to take with you if you had to go on a long journey and didn't know how long you would be gone, and didn't know what lay ahead. Under that reasoning, the player should pick it every time. I can't subconsciously decide it, so I guess I have to consciously decide it.
What your character subconsciously chooses to take are those things which through his actions are obviously connected to him. What he subconsciously does not choose to take are those objects to which he through his actions has shown no attachment.
The blurry part is the middle ground, such as things you have acquired but not used--but that's why there is a weight limit and rules for how you, as a player, get to determine what things your character disowns. As long as you keep your equipment under your weight limit (which for you, heading into your fifth world not counting home, will be 292 pounds) the referee makes no decisions. You have your chance to make those determinations now. If you don't make them consciously, control of the decision goes to the referee's assessment or your attitudes as expressed in your actions.
If you've got a thirty pound computer that you use every day, you can't decide you're going to leave it behind because it puts you over weight and you want to bring the laser blaster you've never used even once. You have an inherent temptation to make the decisions unfairly; the referee is less biased on such questions.
Granted, it's not always easy for the ref, particularly when someone is so terribly over weight as you were--but it is not easier for you to make the judgment concerning to what things you are subconsciously more attached, as that's got to be made objectively based on your actions in relation to those things.
--M. J. Young
Well, why doesn't the referee ask the player what stuff he wants to keep?
Because you don't know what your subconscious wants any better than the ref does (ant that's because it's your subconscious):
You have an inherent temptation to make the decisions unfairly; the referee is less biased on such questions . . . it is not easier for you to make the judgment concerning to what things you are subconsciously more attached, as that's got to be made objectively based on your actions in relation to those things.
What you bring with you isn't consciously decided by anyone in-game; it just happens naturally, based on what you've been using most and what's most important to you on a subconscious level. Because no-one is making the decision, but the ref still has to know what happens, the ref decides - just like every other time stuff happens that the player doesn't control.
Scott's got it exactly right: what goes with you at the moment you verse out is not something you decide consciously, and therefore cannot be decided by you, because you would make those decisions consciously. It is something outside your control, and therefore falls to the ref to decide.
Again to underscore the point, if you want to make these decisions consciously, you must make them consciously: as part of play, at a moment when you are not versing out, you must dispossess yourself of those objects you want to exclude from your equipment. If you sell it, gift it, trash it, or simply declare over it that it is not yours anymore and then leave it behind, it comes off your weight limit. So you can take conscious control of what goes with you by in game taking conscious control of what goes with you. If you fail to take conscious control, you did not take conscious control, and thus you do not have conscious control. Since you do not have conscious control, you cannot exercise control consciously over what you take.
--M. J. Young
What if I trained hard in a world to increase my strength and could thus naturally carry about 300 pounts of weight like it was nothing, would my weight limit increase?
That's more complicated.
You have to remember that you have several categories of "thing that go with you". In your case, Harry (the cat, for those who don't know) is an associate; he travels with you because he is also a verser at this point, and he will go where you go. Thus he does not count as your equipment, and anything he takes with him counts as his equipment, not yours. (You don't control what things Harry takes with him, but you can assist in figuring out what things those would include.) You also have your "on person" equipment: anything you are actually controling at the moment you verse out goes with you as an extension of yourself. If you have a three hundred pound backpack and it is on your back, then it goes with you and does not count toward your weight limit at all. If you set it down in the corner before engaging in the duel that proves fatal, then it does not go with you unless your weight limit is high enough to include it. "Weight Limit" for version purposes indicates the total mass of objects separate from yourself which do not go with you by their own independent will but are carried with you when you travel from universe to universe without having direct contact with you.
If you verse out piloting a starship, the starship is on person equipment and does not count for your weight limit. (If it is someone else's starship, you might have a contested equipment problem, but that's a separate issue.)
Your weight limit increases naturally, by 10% per universe. That means when you entered your first universe (Tropical Island, right?) you could bring 200# of gear with you. When you left that world, the limit was 220#; when you leave this world it will be 242#, and when you leave the next world it will be 266.2#. Leaving your fifth world the limit is 292.82#, pretty close to three hundred by then. Again, this does not include what you are carrying--that goes free.
--M. J. Young