I love tactile D&D accessories. As my current campaign has gone on, the physical tabletop has grown fat with spell cards, condition rings, maps, minis, and more. My party revels in bringing some new toy to the table that enhances play. On paper, then, I should be all about PackMule, an immense new inventory system for Dungeons and Dragons.
Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, PackMule is a card-based inventory system. It solves a problem specific to the 5e character sheet - a lack of room for recording loot. To solve the problem, the design team has created over 1,600 individual cards to represent every item in Dungeons and Dragons.
I mean it - every single item. There's a card for a single copper piece and your standard 50 foot of hempen rope. Magic items, from the banal to the legendary, are covered. Tools you forgot you chose during character creation are presented alongside your go-to weapons and armor.
PackMule even introduces a pack of crafting materials to flesh out the basic crafting rules found in your Player's Handbook. It'll take some DM discretion to determine what resource helps make what, but it adds some crunch and flavor to your basic downtime activities. Heck, if you want even more items, PackMule even plans to set up a custom card system, where it'll ship your homebrew cards right to you (from the US).
That's a lot of paper, and it needs somewhere to go. The Kickstarter also includes a variety of binders you can store your bits in. Each of the DnD classes has a custom, embossed, faux-leather binder to handle their personal inventory, while the larger Dungeon Master binder covers everything else. Having handled one myself, these are pretty swanky (though I wish the spines were embossed with something pretty, for display on a shelf).
As well as swanky, these binders get heavy. If one was dropped on me from a great height, I fear I would not survive. That's not great news for D&D players who need to travel light, and it's not great news for the plastic wallets inside said binders. Some of those in my review copy's have already burst from the sheer weight of the pages.
I love tactile D&D accessories, but I also love practical D&D accessories. I regard PackMule with the same distant awe that I do dedicated board game tables - a glorious yet unnecessary luxury that enhances small aspects of your game.
Do I love the concept, and like the execution? Absolutely. Would I buy and use it? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong, PackMule does a lot right. It is a more organized approach to inventory than a single piece of paper.
Its art, while generic (perhaps because AI was used for "early concept exploration for simpler item-image ideas", though not the final art), is bright and logical. This, combined with clear text formatting, make the cards easy to use, and even easier to find at a glance. The binder helps matters further by introducing handy dividers to keep your weapons, armor, currency, and so on separate.
PackMule would definitely delight my D&D party. I can picture the glee on their faces as I hand them a card for the magic item they just discovered. But that brief moment of joy comes with trade-offs.
Mainly, it's the pure bulk of PackMule that puts me off. When I was first sent my review binders (and the many, many card packs to fill them), I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed.
The PackMule team had kindly sleeved most of my Dungeon Master's binder for me, but tackling the remaining packs would take hours. The thought of handing these cards to my friends fills me with excitement, but the thought of getting those cards to the game - via public transport, no less - instills just as much dread.
Personally, if I were to opt for any pledge, it'd be the cards only tier. The Kickstarter page offers all the 'core set cards' (basically everything minus crafting materials and a few bonus boosters) for $69. If you're in need of a nice binder to hold all those cards, you can grab that too for $109 - $40 extra.
Higher pledges go up to $639, and they add various player binders, a heap of extra cards, and some exclusive loot chests to hold a smaller, more travel-friendly number of cards. Like I said, it's a luxury product. And, as the title says, it's one I respect, but will probably never use.
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