ToME WikiKhymChanur: A new artifact for ToME 3: a highly modified bag of holding. You can 'A'ctivate it while it's in your inventory to put items in or take items out, it can hold an unlimited number of items, and it never grows any heavier. However, it has two important restrictions:
1) An item can only be placed in it once.
2) The only way to take items out is to upend the bag and dump all of its contents onto the ground.
These two restrictions would keep it from being used as a portable home. It would primarily be useful either for collecting loot in the dungeons and bringing it back to the surface, or as a way for possessors to carry around spare corpses.
NeilStevens: I'd really rather not see this, because this would just let you shovel in loot all day long. DG was wanting an artifact that gives maybe one or two slots for extra items. Such a bag would just blow the storage situation wide open.
Orvin: How about an equippable backpack item that provides a few extra slots (maybe depending on the flavor of backpack), but cannot be equipped at the same time as a quiver?
NeilStevens: A larger, artifact backpack is certainly possible.
Derakon: Don't we already effectively get this via the Rod of Home Summoning?
ShrikeDeCil: Why is the 'slot restriction' something that is actually desired in the first place? Several requests to "add realism" have been shot down as making the player jump through hoops for little apparent benefit. Being able to carry 100 rings would add more realism... while removing the artificial limitation of excess-trips-back-to-town. The weight limit is the 'real' limiter preventing someone from returning with 100 suits of DSM. Half of the 'we have excess junk' problem is not that the junk is inherently _completely_ useless. Just that "A Mushroom of Cure Serious Wounds" is not going to successfully compete for space in my pack with "A potion of cure serious". Unless I'm so weenie that I just don't have any such potions. They both take up a slot for the same thing -> one has to win -> that's the potion which I can buy -> why do we even have (most) mushrooms again?
The 'pack management' aspect is inherently 'unreal'. There's always enough space for all of the stuff you want to actually _use_. Even things for out-of-depth monsters usually. The space you're clearing out seems to always be for how much loot you want to carry out at the end. You can't just dump it at the staircase and collect it when you're returning to Bree, because the level will be 'gone'.
NeilStevens: If there is no benefit to the restriction, why do people chafe at it so? I maintain the restriction is effective, and forces the player to make decisions about what to carry back.
ReenenLaurie: Personally I have a problem with the fact that stacking and the 24 (how much is it?) item slots doesn't make sense. On the one hand you can carry 99 scrolls of satisfy hunger, and 99 scrolls of identify (198 scrolls), 99 potions of healing (bottles that can break just by clinging against each other), but I cannot take 26 different items together.
To me however, the inventory management has the following benefits:
- It makes you go back to town, and this is a natural break in play, giving you the oppertunity to relax your mind from the concentration periods during the game.
- Errmmm... any more? (you may add here)
Several disadvantages / irritations:
- Sometimes you're "forced" to return when you don't really want to.
- Some junk things you'd like to carry around, you cannot.
Back on topic though: The first restriction is not useful, and would be extra work for the programmer to keep track on each item on whether it's been in the bag or not. Nah...
Second restriction is cool. 
The existance of the rod of home summoning points to the fact that the inventory system is an irritation for enough of the developers to actually introduce this item. Personally I'd like to see a belt/bandolier/backpack/bag/large bag/chest inventory system, each with different access speeds for within battle. If you don't want to take out an item quick, leave it in your large bag (you know the one you sling-over-your-shoulder-and-automatically-drop-when-fighting-and-automatically-retrieve-afterwards,(and -the-game-cannot-be-bothered-with-this-level-of-admin) so-effectively-you-have-it-with-you-all-the-time-*gasp* - bag). Not used for weapon switches because even a worm mass will multiply 8 times in that time and wriggle you to death.
NeilStevens: I dispute your bolded point. Firstly because it predates me, secondly because DG lets in lots of things because they sound fun, thirdly because I'd like to know who put it in to begin with.
DarkGod: Yup, that I do 
But you have to admit they usualy end up fine Now I'm not a big fan of inventory limitations as they are now. But I recognize their value as a strategic force. If you can come up with ways to keep the strategic value without such limits, fine I'd be happy. You should make a new page to explain your belt/... stuff Reenen, this one is getting a tad crowed.
Orvin: Added my take to IdeaArchive/Items/Bulk
NeilStevens: OK, let me explain why storage space 'realism' or anything approaching it is a bad idea for ToME.
The item list, and in fact the whole basic item structure, is written with the assumption that the items work as they do. If carrying capacity were limited primarily by weight rather than by type, then for the most part jewelry would have to be eliminated. Their power density (money too, but that won't matter in T3 since we're getting rid of selling) is huge with respect to their size and weight. The same applies to scrolls.
And the same applies in reverse to potions: we assume the player can carry huge stacks of potions, but with such a system it won't really be possible anymore. Do note how this interacts with object destruction and the values of protection from object destruction.
Archery would also be made dramatically easier, since arrows being so light and small, would become much easier to carry regardless of the number of kinds you have with you.
So, until I see a careful evaluation of all the tradeoffs here, and the specific reasons that this would be FUN, we need to keep the inventory as it stands today.
Those who disagree ought to make a module. I imagine DG could easily make the current encumberance check code module-replaceable.