Nothing says “RPG Dinosaur” like an equipment list.
Back in the old old days, itemised equipment lists were the norm, and were a working component of the game: a component that a lot of us could comfortably ignore, but in many ways given equal priority to levels, hit points and saving throws.
In our modern era of hippy games, there are no equipment lists. Games like Don’t Rest Your Head and Hollowpoint don’t even require equipment per se. DRYH‘s talents are entirely contained within the dice system–it doesn’t matter which power, all that matters is scale. Hollowpoint’s gadgets are a kind of one-use trait–so if it’s not really possible to separate a character from their equipment because it’s a trait, is it really equipment?
In the two decades in between, we have a whole load of games where equipment was sort of implied and sort of not. We didn’t bother tracking how heavy something was, or itemising the contents of a pack. Equipment was relegated to a little box at the very bottom of page two of your character sheet (you know, the page no-one reads).
That’s interesting. A whole part of the game system was deprioritised, despite having a defined game effect. As with most things it started with Vampire, where there was a little space on the sheet for weapons, and nothing else.
When I ran LotFP there was a clash of these two cultures. Some my players didn’t look at the second half of their character sheet; they’d all assumed they had a basic level of equipment (or objects to hand) that would allow them to perform whatever action they chose. Case in point:
GM: he’s drowning in the quicksand.
Player: OK, I’ll throw him a rope.
GM: what rope?
Player: the rope I carry everywhere.
GM: is it on your character sheet? If it isn’t, you don’t have it.
This isn’t the player’s fault. In a modern game, or even a 20 year old game, we’d assume a basic level of fluidity and common sense with carried equipment. But this was an OSR game, and I was being a bit of a prick about it.
In a hippy game the discussion might be:
GM: he’s drowning in the quicksand.
Player: I need to get him out!
GM: what’s your plan?
Player: well, I have my pack with me–it’s got all sorts of stuff in it. Maybe a rope or something.
GM: roll COOL. If you get a success you have the rope and you can help him. Otherwise, find another way.
The hippy game sidesteps this whole issue with a trait-based resource management mechanism. In doing so it also sidesteps the issue of game world economies, but in many cases that doesn’t matter if what you can do is wholly encompassed in your dice pool (or whatever).
Equipment still matters in games like D&D with long times between levels, as it’s the only mechanism the GM has outside x.p. to reward the players or give them an advantage.
Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe
What is kit, and what is just a trait by another name? Kit is anything that forms a transferrable bonus (e.g. someone borrows your armour) or anything that’s essential for the use of a skill (e.g. a lockpick). It’s only worth differentiating as “kit” if you intend to separate it from the original owner.
Games without transferrable/deniable kit can wrap “kit” up with non-transferrable character traits; equipment function is secondary to character ability. It’s a very “story” or “mythic” approach. Everway is an example: in the example fight between Fireson and a couple of ghouls, it’s noted that Fireson is armed with a sword, but it’s nothing more than one nebulous advantage in the fight–the main factors are the Fire and Earth scores of each side and the draw of the Fortune Deck.
It raises the question of whether or not your players actually like mucking around with equipment lists. For the Everway player the weapons, tools and armour of a given character are motifs that project their image into the game, just like habits and speech. D&D however will appeal to players who like to organise/optimise their own resources, accepting penalties if they fail to do so.
Currency
But seriously, who wants to keep track of gold pieces, much less dollars? That’s the problem with games like Vampire: Resources or Wealth is a dotted trait, but the stuff that matters–swords, guns and armour, things with in-game effects–are measured in dollars. Of course you can always apply some kind of conversion but even so, a PC with no dots of Wealth will chose to go naked as long as they can scrape together enough pennies for bullets.
All of this links back to the Currency of the game, and I’m talking GNS Currency with a capital C. If equipment provides an advantage it should be measured on the same scale as all the other traits, or otherwise not measured at all.
If you don’t bother to measure it, then the GM simply decides to allow equipment for all, or prohibit it for all. That’s desirable for several reasons–say your game is in a totalitarian state where firearms are just not allowed, then posession of a prohibited weapon becomes a plot point. Or say you want to up the threat level of that state, so you arm everyone equally. In each case having a weapon stops being the thing that differentiates PCs from NPCs, forcing the group to focus on what does make them different.
Otherwise if you’re going to make players “pay” for equipment, there are a few ways you can achieve this:
1. Set Menu (dietary restrictions apply)
There is no choice. You assume that a flautist has a flute, a mechanic has a monkey wrench and a thief has a mask and a bag with SWAG written on it. Spell foci in Runequest work like this–if you can cast the spell, you’re assumed to have a focus. If they player has the skill, they’ve already paid for the kit.
If you play this way then you remove a lot of the negotiation around “can I have XXX”. However just because you remove the negotiation it doesn’t mean you remove the equipment as a tangiable object, i.e. something that can be taken away. The decision to deprioritise equipment (as in Everway) is a separate choice.
2. All-you-can-eat Buffet
Players sign up to a particular “package” where they can pick out as much stuff as they want up to a certain level of functionality. In Vampire, for example, you could make equipment availability dependent on a certain threshold–wealth, status or rank.
Conspiracy X uses a point-buy approach for resources. In a lot of ways it’s not much different from assuming kit based on skill set, although it’s a shared resource.
Since players will often use the best available equipment–it doesn’t matter how many guns there are in the armoury, they want the big one–there’s no need to break things down into dollars here, either. A point system equates to a certain level of performance in-game and has the same Currency as other performance indicators (skills and whatnot).
3. A la Carte
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p>Players can buy anything they can afford, as long as it’s available to buy (D&D model). This puts the responsibility on the players to plan everything they would need in advance. While that’s unfashionably old-school, it is part of the game that some people like–kit is another PC resource and a factor in winning or losing.
It may seem that this is the most complex approach, but it can absolve the GM of a lot of responsibility. There’s no tiresome negotiation on whether the BFG2000 comes with the Illuminati Orbital Mind Control Laser Package. It’s their money, let them spend it how they want.