History Main / BagOfSharing

* ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' uses mechanics similar to ''GuildWars''' Xunlai Chests: anything one of your characters puts in a chest can be retrieved by your other characters.

* Firefight mode in ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' and ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' has lives (remaining respawns) as this. In Halo Reach, when playing Versus Firefight, there are settings that let the humans add more to the pool by killing the player-controlled Elites.

* ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle'' has the characters in three separate time periods, but they can share items by putting them into the time-travelling port-a-johns that are central to the plot. One of the first puzzles for the girl trapped in the future is how to GET to the port-a-john. You can't pass every item (sometimes requiring a different method of getting them through time), and some of them change when you do this, and you can't pass living things.

* Particularly jarring in the Norad II mission from "Starcraft", where you are trying to rescue a general from downed ship that is surrounded by enemy forces. Periodically, the enemies will attack the ship and you lose if it is destroyed. Luckily, there are SCVs on hand to repair any damage done to the ship. However, the minerals and gas used to conduct the repairs are taken from your base's supply. Kind of strange, considering there's an entire enemy base between your base and the ship.

* Averted in ''Franchise/FireEmblem'': Every character has an individual inventory (in the GBA games, of only five items!). There is a supply caravan, but how, or if it can be accessed in a battle differs depending on which game in the series you're playing.

* Completely averted in the PS1 RPG ''VideoGame/ShadowMadness''; When the characters are forced to split up at certain points in the story, the game makes the player divide the inventory AND money up between the groups.

* ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle'' has the characters in three separate time periods, but they can share items by putting them into the time-travelling port-a-johns that are central to the plot. One of the first puzzles for the girl trapped in the future is how to GET to the port-a-john.
** However, you can't pass every item (sometimes requiring a different method of getting them through time), and some of them change when you do this.
** You can't pass living things ([[spoiler:requiring you to [[HarmlessFreezing freeze]] them]]). For two other items, you actually need them to change, requiring {{the Slow Path}} ([[spoiler:the sweater needs to be washed a hundred thousand times in order to fit a hamster]] and [[spoiler:wine needs to spoil and turn into vinegar]]).

* Averted in ''ShadowHearts 2''. When playing as Anastasia, you have your own separate inventory and equipment, and can't access any of the normal cast's items (with the exception of still being able to see the Inventory option, which lets you view items but not use them).

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'', ''WarhammerOnline'', and many others have it straight when it comes to the Guild bank, but they played with it when it comes to your own characters. Each characters you have has their own personal bank account that are not shared with each other. You can send items to your other characters using the mail system with a small fee. Soulbound items may not be sent, but heirloom items may only be sent to your other characters, not to other players. In later patch in WorldOfWarcraft, items sent to your other characters arrive instantly without delay. Player characters of different factions however, may not trade items directly as you cannot buy the items put in auction by your other player characters.

* The SNES strategy RPG ''{{Ogre Battle}}'' has only one inventory ''across an entire army.'' The N64 sequel averts this by having each squad carry its own inventory.

* In the ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank'' series there are occasional segments where the two eponymous characters are separated, yet still manage to share any collected [[GlobalCurrency bolts]]. This can mostly be overlooked considering how short these periods of separation are - Except in ''RatchetAndClankACrackInTime'', where they're apart for almost the entire game.

* [[LampshadedTrope Lampshaded]] in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}} 2''. When you get access to your shared stash, Claptrap starts to give some awkward, [[{{Handwaved}} hand-wavey]] explanation before giving up and saying [[BreakingTheFourthWall "It's for twinking items between your characters, okay?"]]

** Also played straight in all the 'main' Franchise/ResidentEvil games before VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 - by the Magic Boxes that appeared in save rooms. Everything placed in any Magic Box was accessible from any other Magic Box in the game, even if it's the first time you've opened a particular box. (Admittedly, a post-game-clear option in the GameCube remake of the first Resident Evil had each box only carry it's own contents - like normal boxes, in other words.) The peak of the Magic Box ridiculousness came in ''Resident Evil: Code Veronica'' right after Clare's game stops and Chris's begins. Chris can access anything Claire had in her Magic Boxes ''despite the fact that the two of them are on different continents.''

* ''Almost'' averted in ''NeverwinterNights2''. Each character has a separate inventory, but items can be freely and instantly moved mid-battle between characters at the opposite ends of the battlefield, even if one of them is unconscious.

* ''{{Dubloon}}''. [[AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent When you take control]] of Riley, he retains all the stuff Russel and Anne acquired. The game {{handwave}}s this with Anne "sending all the stuff to him", apparently in some sort of [[HyperspaceArsenal Hyperspace Invisible Bag]].

* In ''AnimalCrossing,'' each player has his or her own storage... but said storage can be accessed from ''any'' storage-type item in your house, regardless of where it is, and it always goes to the same storage space. In ''City Folk,'' this gets even more absurd, as the Gyroid Lloid in the Auction House can ''also'' access the same storage space, even though you're miles and miles away from your house. ''New Leaf'' takes it even further; you can access your storage from friends' towns, even though you have to take a train just to get there (and if it's over the internet, the game flat-out says the town is far away).

** ''VideoGame/BaldursGate: Dark Alliance II'', semi-averts this; oddly, gold is shared but not items.

* ''VideoGame/{{Baldurs Gate}}'' averts this completely. The characters have separate inventories and while they can exchange items at will, it only works if they aren't too far apart.

** Playing ''Baldur's Gate II'' with the expansion can give you a literal BagOfSharing. If you pick up the BagOfHolding in Spellhold and then the one from Lazarus in ''Throne of Bhaal'', you will find that they all share the same inventory.

* Averted in ''LiveALive''. Each character has their own inventory in each chapter. In the final chapter, when all characters join together, you get to keep the equipped items for each character when you meet them and all items gained stay with the leader.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' had individual inventories, each character had 4 weapons and 4 pieces of armor and they could not be shared or swapped during battle. The party could all access the same potions, because they're easy to pass around.

* Completely averted in the PS1 RPG ''ShadowMadness''; When the characters are forced to split up at certain points in the story, the game makes the player divide the inventory AND money up between the groups.

* Averted, also, in the ''{{Might and Magic}}'' games. Each character has his or her own inventory, which has grid squares. Though shields are proportional to potions in the way that a large shield covers 4 by 4 and a potion bottle two by one, it's nonetheless a little less nonsensical.

* ''VideoGame/MartianGothic'' has item storage as quite LITERALLY a series of tubes.

* The adventure game ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle'' has the characters in three separate time periods, but they can share items by putting them into the time-travelling port-a-johns that are central to the plot. One of the first puzzles for the girl trapped in the future is how to GET to the port-a-john.

* In ''SecretOfEvermore'', the boy and his dog share an inventory no matter how far they are separated. This is most noticeable at the start of the second world when the boy and the dog are separated. The boy can buy a new collar for the dog, and when the game switches to the dog's location all the way across a vast desert, the dog can equip the collar.

* All characters sharing an account in ''LaTale'' can access the same banked items and items stored in the Astro Store.
* GuildWars has the Xunlai Storage chests in every city, town, and mission outpost, that is accessable to any character on your account willing to pay the Xunlai Agent a one time 50gp fee (plus 50gp more if they want access to the crafting materials storage pane).
* In its 1st expansion, WorldOfWarcraft added the Guild Bank, which anyone in your guild (with the proper permissions from the guild leader) has access to. It allows a common pool of resources, but can only be accessed when your character is at one of the few Guild Vault locations in the game (all of which are inside major cities, well secluded from the adventuring areas).

* Corporations in EVEOnline have a communal ISK wallet, and may use communal item and ship storage at stations where the corp owns an office or at the corporation's starbases. Access is granted through the convulated Corporate Roles system, and being EVE, thefts are not uncommon.

* [[BanjoKazooie Banjo-Tooie]] has Banjo and Kazooie with access to the same items when separated... even though Banjo can't use them, he can still collect them for Kazooie.

* An extreme example in ''SaGaFrontier2''. The story is told as one giant split party section as you play as either Gustave or the Knights family and Gustave only teams up the the Knights once. This does not stop them from sharing items for no reason. The NPC that retrieves equipped items from other party members lampshades this: [[AWizardDidIt "don't ask me how I do it."]] The most {{egregious}} case is when an old advisor has a flashback to his young adventuring days, before the start of the game and can still equip anything. To top it all off, once someone from either party has mastered a technique, everyone in both stories know it. People you have never met can show you how to perform ultimate killing moves.

* ''{{Martian Gothic}}'' has item storage as quite LITERALLY a series of tubes.

* ''SuikodenV'' also has an interesting example... in the final dungeon, you temporarily split up into 3 groups, and yet continue to share the same inventory -- which comes in handy for putting together the pieces of the ultimate armor, which each group finds bits of...
** This trope was averted in the [[SuikodenI first game]]. Each character had an inventory space and could only use items from their own inventory. Armor takes up slots of this space so a character wearing full armor could not hold as many items as one without. When characters are separated from you, you can no longer access their inventories. In the [[SuikodenII second game]], each character has a three slot inventory for items such as medicine or antidotes and separate slots for armor. Then there's a larger shared inventory but items from this could not be used in battle.
** Actually, {{Suikoden}} in general never employed the BagOfSharing trick. The ''SuikodenV'' specific example, along with ''SuikodenIV'' are mere exceptions (that prove the rule).

* Firefight mode in ''Halo3ODST'' and ''HaloReach'' has lives (remaining respawns) as this. In Halo Reach, when playing Versus Firefight, there are settings that let the humans add more to the pool by killing the player-controlled Elites.

* The adventure game ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle'' has the characters in three separate time zones, but they can share items by putting them into the time-travelling port-a-johns that are central to the plot. One of the first puzzles for the girl trapped in the future is how to GET to the port-a-john.

* {{Minecraft}} introduced ender chests. Each occurrence of those chests have the same inventory (for the same player). So two players opening the same chest see different inventories, but each player can open any of those chests anywhere to see the same inventory in all of them. This inventory is still safe, even if the very last chest is destroyed. Highly useful for servers where theft can be an issue.