I’ve been thinking about a simpler system based on a minimalist view of inventory.
Imagine if things were “tiny”, “small”, “medium”, “large” and “huge”.
Tiny things can accumulate in almost unlimited numbers - individual matches, sand, pills. Only their weight really is of importance. But finding individual items is almost impossible, so unless they’re fungible you could have a hard time finding what you want.
Huge things are practically impossible to fit in any pouch you could hold. You’d need to lift them wholesale or strap them to your body to move. Things like car frames, large jerry cans, very large weapons and so on. Regardless of weight it will be difficult to carry more than one of these things unless in a specialized containment device (like a sheath or strapped on) but you’ll be able to get it quickly.
In the middle, it’s in the middle.
So let’s say your average backpack would be one large pocket, one medium pocket and two small pockets.
One large pocket, like the main pocket of the backpack, could carry about four medium items comfortably, like a nail gun, a 2-liter bottle, a full size gun like a Deagle and a loaf of bread. Maybe you could stuff in one more mediumish thing, like a laptop and all that would happen is it’s a little slower to remove anything from the backpack because it’s “overstuffed”. You could fit a few small things, like a screwdriver, pocket knife and flashlight, but now everything’s getting a little harder to retrieve because its “disorganized”. You could also throw in some tiny stuff, really any number of tiny things, like matchbooks and pebbles but now those are really hard to find and might fall out when you’re getting other stuff out because the backpack is “littered” with stuff.
A medium pocket, like the secondary pocket on a backpack would be able to hold one medium thing, like a pair of sneakers, or about four small tools, like a hacksaw, wrench, and two bananas.
And so on and so forth. Duffel bags have multiple “huge” pockets. Purses can be worn and have a single “medium” pocket and maybe two “tiny” pockets. Putting away and using tools from these pockets cause modifiers to how long it takes to do something like light a fire. If my only firestarter is a tiny lighter in the large main pocket of my sack, littered with stuff, it’ll take me far longer than 6 seconds to pull it out and use it.
You could use small ropes to strap things like gallon jugs to a backpack. Add a carabiner as a quick disconnect to make it faster to detach and re-attach.
Could be cool and it could cut down on the number crunching of the current system. Or it could be a micromanagement pain in the ass hell.
