Letters from the Apostles

Aah, equipment. One of those things I both love to play with and absolutely tear my hair out over. So why not some ramblings on stuff I do with it and/or plan to do with it?


Equipment kits

Over the last *mumble* years I've picked up the habit (from several places) of putting together starter "equipment kits" (or whatever you like to call them) for new PCs to pick from -- a handful of useful and/or interesting objects, themed, usually with a perky identifier attached. Something like

Shepherd: leather satchel, shepherd's crook, sling+stones, woolen mantle, pouch of wolves' teeth

or

Moonchild: silver mirror, fragment of pearly stone, packet of tiny white mushrooms, curved knife, bundle of bamboo

It's worth noting, mind you, that as I use them these are in addition to some standard starting stuff, and starting funds to kit out with some basics. (picking a packet of themed stuff shouldn't screw you out of basic functionality.) Frex, in Lindwyrm I decided that a starting PC gets one weapon, clothing, an equipment kit, and 4d10 gp. When I'm running some flavour of BD&D I'll staple the weapon+clothing+kit onto the starting funds for classes, etc etc.

Is it more stuff, including weapons? Yes. Do I care? No. The equipment kits are backgrounds-in-a-bottle and that alone makes it worth it; even just for a difference between PCs of different classes.

Consider a fighter. Let's give them the clothes on their back, and a longsword. (very stereotypical, lol.) What kind of feel does this sprouting character get if you add that Shepherd packet up above? What about if it's the Moonchild kit? Why did either of these lead to adventuring?

How about this one?

Duelist: noble's silk token, mending kit, letter of commendation, letter of blood feud, handful of captured ribbons and crests

Or this one?

Greyword: ciphered notes, double-lined satchel, changeable seal ring, innocent letters, coded poetry pages

Makes you wonder what this fighter might have done, or want to do, or or or ...


Faction equipment

The above makes great shorthand for faction members also, whether PC or NPC. Consider the following:

The Broken Sun
"The light is fading from the world. Preserve what you can of it, for those to come."
Grey and pale yellow; crescent sunburst
Kit: grey shawl fringed in yellow, healer's kit, painkilling draft, lantern, folio of manuscript fragments

Someone carrying around that combo, and with those colours or motif on their gear; well, that tells you something about them.


Adventurer's "pack" (or gear, or whatever)

I like the idea of allowing the purchase of an indeterminate "adventurer's pack" that's essentially buying [x number of] times that a PC can say they have some common-or-garden bit of adventuring tackle when that bit is needed -- "oh hey, yeah, I got twine!".

(it's like the assumption that buying ammunition equals [x] amount, if "ammunition" was assumed to be of any kind.)

It saves a certain amount of bookkeeping, and a lot of angst -- especially when, like me, you're running a lot of duet games and having absolutely everything covered equipment-wise can be a big ask for one PC, even if there's a hireling or two involved. Besides, in a setting where adventuring is A Thing, someone would have come up with the idea in general. I just can't be arsed to list out everything, lol.

(I'm far from the only one to tinker with this; off the top of my head I've seen it in DURF -- which I'm pretty sure is where my leanings crystalized away from usage dice -- and at least one version of GLAIVE.)

Initially I played with this idea using Usage Dice from The Black Hack; but I didn't like that randomness, even relatively constrained randomness, that much. You spend your monies, you get [x] uses. Nice and simple.

Of course nothing's stopping anyone from buying gear singly either (moar shopping!) and an adventurer's pack sort of thing should exchange convenience for price. Something like 5gp per "use", or the like. Also, this presumes "common gear"; rope, chalk, oil, charcoal, iron spike, wooden stake, arm's-length of canvas or cheesecloth, torch, candle, basic ration, etc. If you want specialized things (specific tools, silk rope, blank scroll) or fancier things (spices, wine, coloured ink), the adventurer's pack won't do it for you. It should also be fairly bulky -- but don't overdo it.


Am I saying anything new here? Ahahahaha hell no, a ton of people and published games do stuff like this. But it's why I'm doing it, so, eh --