Encumbrance confusion

[Theo]

Getting into Death on the Reik, I'm looking into the various trade rules (the "River Life of the Empire" and the trading rules in the 2E, and that apparently means I need to get my head around the encumbrance rules for reference. But they appear at first glance to make no sense at all.

Is there any rule of thumb as to how much an Encumbrance Point actually corresponds to in actual weight? 2E suggests that 10 coins weigh an ENC, and 1E that a typical coin weighs an ounce, meaning an ENC would be slightly under 300 grams, or slightly over half a pound. That would make sense for a pint of beer weighing 2 ENC... but a hand weapon "weighs" 50 ENC, which would be something like 30 pounds. I appreciate that ENC also factors in bulkiness, but I still can't find some solid reference Point and I have no feeling at all for how much, say, 250 ENC Points means.

"River Life of the Empire" suggests that a medium-sized trade river boat has a cargo capacity of 45 000 ENC (and a large one twice that). How many tons would that correspond to? This is the kind of thing I need to have at least some idea of.

Does anyone have a clue? I don't need anything perfect that makes sense of everything, just some sort of touchstone to base a rule of thumb on.

[CapnZapp]

Are you asking specifically about 2E rules? (Encumbrance rules vary widely between editions)

[Theo]

Are you asking specifically about 2E rules? (Encumbrance rules vary widely between editions)

1E or 2E is fine. 1E is probably better since I mainly need it for trading in DotR, but either works.

Edit: 1E or 2E are the rulesets I have access to now. Haven't got 4E yet.

[Hyarion]

From the brief look I've had at some of the 2e encumberance rules, it looks like it may be trying to take into account both weight *and* bulk. Meaning that while gold crowns may be heavy for their size, they are relatively compact and easily stored. A sword on the other hand may not weigh a lot, but it is rather bulky by comparison and cannot be compacted (or divided like a group of 10 coins can be put into 2 pockets) into a more accommodating shape. All that is to say that I don't think there is a 1:1 correlation between ENC and weight.

Google says a Conestoga wagon could hold 6 tons of cargo, but they weren't buoyant/able to be used as a boat. So I would put a medium boat at 3-4 tons of cargo, being about the same size but obviously not leaky. Large boats then probably are in the 6-10+ ton range. That's a rough guess. To make things easy, I would just say that for large cargo type vehicles (boats, wagons, whatever) 10,000 ENC is roughly equal to about a ton.

Hope that helps!

[Bitsa]

WFRP Companion gives enc per cubic yard for boat hold space.
I think it's 4000 or 5000, but don't quote me I could be way off...

Edit: m sure it's there, but can't find it now. There are some numbers given for boats though: 20k enc for an 18 yard (total boat length) boat, +4000enc for each yard longer than that up to 24 yards, then +6000 enc for each yard longer than that

[Theo]

From the brief look I've had at some of the 2e encumberance rules, it looks like it may be trying to take into account both weight *and* bulk. Meaning that while gold crowns may be heavy for their size, they are relatively compact and easily stored. A sword on the other hand may not weigh a lot, but it is rather bulky by comparison and cannot be compacted (or divided like a group of 10 coins can be put into 2 pockets) into a more accommodating shape. All that is to say that I don't think there is a 1:1 correlation between ENC and weight.

Google says a Conestoga wagon could hold 6 tons of cargo, but they weren't buoyant/able to be used as a boat. So I would put a medium boat at 3-4 tons of cargo, being about the same size but obviously not leaky. Large boats then probably are in the 6-10+ ton range. That's a rough guess. To make things easy, I would just say that for large cargo type vehicles (boats, wagons, whatever) 10,000 ENC is roughly equal to about a ton.

Hope that helps!

After checking with some other sources on pre-modern boats, that seems like a reasonable rule of thumb and makes sense with the cargo capacity of the riverboats in DotR - a medium-sized river boat like the one the PCs acquired would take about 4 1/2 tons. So that works. Thanks a lot!