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From: bb@lanl-a.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Bags of Holding
Message-ID: <3206@lanl-a.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Oct-83 15:32:47 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl-a.3206
Posted: Thu Oct 27 15:32:47 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 31-Oct-83 21:06:41 EST
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 42

==============================================================================

A while back I posted a solution to the Kill Orcus problem that involved
getting Orcus into a bag of holding and whisking the bag away to the
Seven Heavens.  I mentioned that that sol'n would work only if the
way the DM understands bags is the same as my own.  How do you out there
(Flame about English -- I wish we had a reasonable 2nd person plural)
handle bags?  I tend to let mine be smaller and lighter than recommended
in the DMG, and I have never burst any of my player's bags for being
overweight (they do tend to be careful about that).  I allow them to get
large items into a bag, telling them that the mouth of the bag seems to
stretch around an object but shrinks very quickly once the article 
is mostly inside.  

Other issues are:  how does one get something out of bag with lots of
stuff in it? (random rolling or does the desired item come into the
pc's hand when she goes for it?)  Can one dump a bag, emptying it of
all of its contents?  Do sharp items placed inside a bag have any
chance of puncturing it?  What happens when one tries to turn a bag
inside out (I just say it turns inside out and nothing is lost -- the
bag looks just the same as always and has the same properties it had
before -- ie, topological transformations in xyz space have no effect
on it.  Can living objects be placed in the bag and if so what happens
to them?  ( I say they come out dead, though dead meat will stay fresh
forever in such a bag -- my pc's have dragon meat stuffed in theirs).
What's the safest way to destroy a bag?  What happens when one places
one bag inside another?  I know that some of these questions have
been answered in the Dragon and in the DMG, but I usually don't like  
their answers about such things, they tend to be explosion happy.

I am  interested in how you handle these issues.  Bags of Holding are
very good items for characters to have, they covet such things and are
very distressed when they lose them.  This last week my group started
with 5 bags (3 of which they stole/won), and ended with 1 (they destroyed
the three and their contents so their owners couldn't trace them, and
had one encased in stone when fighting a xorn) and now the magic user
is essentially level 0 weak, having only a cat familiar and those
spells memorized from the last time he looked at his books.  He is 
not happy and is urging the rest of the group to go and recover the
bag while he stays in the hideout doing the cooking and cleaning.

b2   Bryan Bingham    ...ucbvax!lbl-csam!lanl-a!bb