Whitehack Houserules

So I wanted to put together a short guide for my players in my Death Was Pleased campaign. I'm only adding a few things that are direct author suggestions for game tweaks and a couple of quality-of-life tweaks.

Referee's House Rules

Attribute Generation: Roll 3d6 in order for each of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Two of these scores may be swapped.

Silver Standard: We will be using a silver standard for our campaign economy. Read all values in the gold as silver. Treasure earns 1 XP per silver piece value.

Inventory Slots: Characters have ten inventory slots. Three of these slots are always quick access, representing items that aren't tucked away in pouches or bags. If they possess a backpack, sack, or similar container, they gain five additional inventory slots. Heavy objects take two or more slots per referee discretion. 1000 coins and 100 gems take a slot, anything less isn't worth counting. For every uneven number of additional objects beyond a character's current slot maximum, the character moves one category slower. If slowed, characters may strain to move faster.

Splintered Shields: Similar to how characters may save or roll once per battle to reduce damage, shields may be sacrificed to avoid damage. Anytime you take damage, you may opt instead to say your shield absorbed the blow. The shield is shattered and must be discarded, but all damage from the hit is negated. Against AOE damage effects, the shield may be sacrificed for an automatic save and half damage. 

Commentary

Given that Whitehack rewards both low and high stat rolls, I'm perfectly fine with 3d6 down the line. A simple stat swap covers everything else I need. As for the silver standard, after reading Delta's house rules (a decent amount of which are almost already conceptually or mechanically in Whitehack to my surprise) I decided to swap over. Seems to be a nice way to allow gold to have real value, both monetary and for carrying convenience. Along the lines of carrying convenience, inventory slots are being used as even with the simplified weight scheme in the core rules it's still too much bookkeeping for my tastes. Abstracting slots, bags, and still having strength rolls to strain encumbered movement will keep things simple, still allow clever item management, and still reward high strength when it comes to hauling junk around. On a final note, as this is not a "deathcrawl" or "miserycrawl", having shields as ablative armor makes characters a little stickier and is a fun rule that I have used before that both my players and I enjoy. 

I think the above changes will allow players to have effective characters, be able to carry more loot and adventure longer (you won't be leaving an area sooner with most of its treasure untouched due to it being to much to carry), and place emphasis on resource management being key to success and survival (give up the shield to tank the damage? Discard equipment to fill a bag with relics? Risk straining to carry your overburdened self to safety? I'm all about these micro level decisions as the party adventures).

I look forward to seeing how well these function and tweaking these as we play.