Inventories

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The space containing game elements carried by diegetic characters.

There is often a need to support functionality for managing items in games where players control characters that can carry several of these. Inventories prove a solution to this by letting players examine, discard, upgrade, repair, and in other ways through a separate representation that the main game world.

Examples

Roleplaying Games grew out of Miniature Games by focusing on individual characters, including their equipment. This lead many such games, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, and Mutant, to have Inventories and rules for how much the players' characters could carry (although these were often ignored).

This was carried on both in text-based computer versions (e.g. Kingdoms and the Zork series), "character"-based ones (e.g. Nethack and Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress), and graphical ones (e.g. the Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Dragon Age series). Dragon Age II make use of a common Inventory between the player's character and his or her companions.

Inventories can also be found in other type of computer games, e.g. Maniac Mansion, Minecraft, and Torchlight. The storage areas available to players in CityVille, FarmVille, and Zombie Lane can be seen as Inventories also.

Using the pattern

The typical design of Inventories consist of deciding how to provide functionality for how the Game Items carried by Characters can be interacted with. The most common characteristic of Inventories is to limit the number of Game Items that can be stored in them, effectively creating Resource Caps.

While probably the most common action available through Inventories is that of dropping Game Items from them, many games provide other functionality where selecting which Equipable Items to outfit oneself with in probably most common. The Fallout series provides ways of negating the effects of Deterioration while Minecraft supports Crafting. While it may be natural to consider Inventories available to players those of their Characters it may also be that they can access the Inventories of other Player Characters or Non-Player Characters. This since Inventories provide the basic functionality on which many actions that enable Transferable Items rely on, e.g. Stealing and Trading.

Free Gift Inventories are a special case of Inventories which contain Game Items that players can give to other players but not to themselves. They are typically present in games (e.g. CityVille and Zombie Lane) on social media platforms, primarily Facebook.

Sockets have similarities with Inventories, and may in some cases be a feasible alternative to Inventories. Dragon Age II does a combination of Inventories and Sockets by having a common Inventory for the Player Character and the Companions but Sockets for the Game Items actually equipped by them.

Interface Aspects

Inventories are often instantiated as Secondary Interface Screens, e.g. in NetHack, the Fallout or Dragon Age series. Dragon Age II combines this with functionality for exchanging Transferable Items while Minecraft provides support for Crafting in its Inventory. It is quite common to begin Game Pauses when these kinds of Secondary Interface Screens are entered, although this can break Diegetic Consistency (Minecraft is an example of a game which does not do this).

However, Inventories can be shown in other ways. Tabletop Roleplaying Games often make the Inventories part of Character Sheets while games with Illocutionary Interfaces, which are typically text-based, do it as part of the main interface.

Consequences

Inventories are a way to modulate both Characters and Game Items, often to introduce Resource Caps by limited how many of the latter the former can carry. Since Agents that have Game Items in their Inventories are control of those items, the pattern instantiates Ownership.

Inventories may conflict with a Diegetic Consistency simply because they represent Game Items differently than in the Game Worlds or that they allow unrealistic amounts of Game Items to be carried. However, this is significantly magnified if entering Inventory game modes through Secondary Interface Screens invokes Game Pauses.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Ownership, Resource Caps, Stealing, Trading, Transferable Items

Can Modulate

Characters, Game Items

Can Be Instantiated By

Character Sheets, Free Gift Inventories, Illocutionary Interfaces, Secondary Interface Screens

Can Be Modulated By

Equipable Items, Game Pauses

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

Diegetic Consistency

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements