I have an invisible mage hand that can pick the keys out of the jailers pocket. If you want me to roll for collecting every arrow… I will One dice at a time

Well, for most games it isn't useless items. Most of it just isn't useful *to you*. Either your gear is better, or it's for a combat style you don't use, or it's consumables like potions.

I don't think you understand game design if you can't understand what's meant by "ruining the economy." It means that the player gets so much money that there's essentially no use for it anymore. They can buy anything that's available without concern. For example, in Morrowind you can craft potions with ridiculous value, then use that to pay for levels from trainers and buy the best items, then pay for enchanting to make them even better. It trivializes the game. The only option at that point is to just limit what can be purchased. That's a much worse solution than balancing the game's economy so the player has options to spend money on, but critically *they can't buy everything*. Video games are about making decisions. If you don't have to decide anything than why not just watch a movie? The game needs to present you with options, and you need to choose what you will and won't do. The economy is a great place this can happen in a game that's balanced well.

I'm talking about the things you can't use, like bowls and trinkets and other stuff that games frequently include as 'white' items that *literally* cannot be used. Those things that exist to be sold to vendors. They have been in many of the roga I have played. In the rpgs that don't have them, there isn't a vendor that buys stuff and no 'economy' that exists.

Bows are OP until you have limited arrows

That's almost exclusively a Bethesda thing, at least to the extent it's an issue. Technically it's in Tainted Grail some, and Larian games a very small amount, but never in enough quantity or weight to be an issue, nor are they ever worth enough to bother with.

I don't ask characters to keep track of ammunition, but if they are using a crossbow or some type of gun, I will absolutely penalize them for not remembering to reload between combat. Or forgetting to retrieve thrown weapons. Its just always funny in an evil sort of way. "I'm going to attack the troll!" "Alright, how do you want to attack?" "I'm going to throw my enchanted spear at it!" "Your spear is a level down, back where you last threw it when fighting those goblins earlier." *Shocked pickachu face*

Eh, didn't have better things to do at the time, and wanted to shout out MPMB's PDFs. Amazing tool.

 > Arrow! Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true King under the Mountain, go now and speed well"

I memorize which items have a good weight to value ratio and don't pick up the junk. When I was young I would take everything in multiple trips, but I ain't got time for that now.

>Morrowind you can craft potions with ridiculous value, then use that to pay for levels from trainers and buy the best items Did you actually play Morrowind? I can't think of a single one of the best items in Morrowind that was available for sale. You either had to steal them or they were loot. Also most of the vendors in that game were pretty broke. To sell anything of "ridiculous value" You had to find the mudcrab merchant out in the middle of nowhere. Gold didn't trivialize that game at all. Exploiting alchemy did.

No, the best items in the game are enchanted by the player easily. It's not required, but enchanting you can create better magical items than are available to find, and with the specific enchantments that you want. I agree selling stuff was annoying, but it wasn't that hard. You just sell as much as you can and buy back other light valuables. Then when you buy something you use the valuables first.

If they're talking discord specifically I've seen bots in servers that track inventory for you. Just click a button. If they can be arsed to do that then they're truly beyond help.

One campaign I ran devolved into that. The players had formed an elaborate money laundering and counterfeit scheme involving illusions and extremely high rolls to sell lesser items as the more expensive versions. Was a lot of fun.

But jars aren't worth as much as doors

I've played with someone like this once. It is infuriating to have to halt the flow of the action just so that everyone can take their time and describe shitty little menial tasks they are doing and that should just be left to reasonable expectation so that they don't give their petty DM the oppotunity to fuck them later. There are so many ways to create fun challenges for players, being anally adversarial with the players is not one of them. They only person deriving joy from that is the shitty sadistic DM. Sorry for the very personal attack, but bruh.. I got triggerd just by reading your last two sentences.

There are some formats where inventory management becomes interesting again. We tried doing a Hexcrawl earlier this year and there was a lot of interesting gameplay to be had in the risk/reward management of how many supplies they wanted to carry vs how much they wanted to invest in pack animals, limiting their ability to carry loot back, carrying this vs that, guessing how much they'll use before they can resupply or where future resupplies might be, gambling on whether to press forward and risk running out or turn back, that kind of thing.

I keep track of ammo until it becomes clear it becomes a non issue (ie: when the party gets rich enough that it doesn't matter.) Then at this point I only keep track of special ammo.

Look, you started by saying Bethesda games don't have encumbrance but Skyrim was the first game I thought of that had stuff you couldn't use but had some kind of value and weight and encumbrance was a huge part of Skyrim when wearing heavy armor. There is even a whole strategy of figuring out value for the weight to increase the amount of value you get when selling. Baldur's Gate 3 and I assume earlier ones have the same thing. We are talking about the games that have those things when saying they are an issue. Of course it isn't an issue in games that don't have it, but when it exists it absolutely is an issue, especially when game mechanics include a 'loot all' option. There you need to drop what you don't want. Hell, inventory management by space and encumbrance have been a thing for all the years I have played rpgs. Not having either seems more like the exception to me.

I have never had a door stolen. We have to do some paperwork to steal a stone statue that insulted you and then swung it's arms to fight you. But they used it as the figurehead on their ship