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Author Topic: How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?  (Read 2036 times)

Cave Bear

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« on: November 07, 2018, 02:51:21 AM »
You gentlemen would obviously not buy a game with over one hundred pages of non-magical weapons, armors, and adventuring gear. What's the point where you say "enough". 50? 20? 10? 1? 1/2?

Omega

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2018, 03:01:52 AM »
D&D devotes a couple of pages to mundane equipment. You dont need alot of prose to describe some of this stuff. You can usually fit it all in a page or four.

5e has something like 100 pieces of equipment and devotes a little over 3 pages on it. Then adds over 40 tools/kits and a page devoted to describing them. And close to 30 more items pertaining to transportation, animals, tack, and conveyances. And something like 15 trade goods. So about 185 items. Not including Armour, Weapons or the 100 trinkets.

Shawn Driscoll

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2018, 03:02:57 AM »
Quote from: Cave Bear;1063451
You gentlemen would obviously not buy a game with over one hundred pages of non-magical weapons, armors, and adventuring gear. What's the point where you say "enough". 50? 20? 10? 1? 1/2?

I don't care what is inside of lunch pails.

S'mon

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2018, 03:52:25 AM »
I guess about 8 pages for a fantasy game. A sci-fi game might have 30 pages of stuff like spaceships & weapons.

Chris24601

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2018, 05:16:34 AM »
My fantasy game has (all counts include descriptions and rules for each item);

- Trade Goods - 0.5 pages
- Armor - 0.5 pages
- Weapons - 2 pages
- Spellcasting Implements - 1 page
- Adventuring Gear - 1.5 pages
- Food, Lodging and Services - 1 page
- Beasts and Tack (with game stats) - 3 pages
- Vehicles - 2 pages
- Structures - 1 page
- Siege Engines - 0.5 pages
- Traps - 1.5 pages

So it looks like 14.5 pages for mundane gear. That said, the book also has another 6.5 pages of minor magic gear that can be purchased (alchemical items, ritual scrolls/books and minor permanent items about on par with cantrips) as well.

Willie the Duck

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2018, 08:13:58 AM »
Quote from: Cave Bear;1063451
You gentlemen would obviously not buy a game with over one hundred pages of non-magical weapons, armors, and adventuring gear. What's the point where you say "enough". 50? 20? 10? 1? 1/2?

It is absolutely going to depend on the game and expectations. If you are running an OSR dungeon-crawl game, where you the DM feel comfortable adjudicating the effects of a bag of caltrops or a 10' pole, but where the PC is making hard choices on encumbrance to bring into the dungeon (it being potential treasure they can't carry out), then a big list of item costs and weights is necessary, but actual item descriptions and use mechanics can be omitted. If you are doing a complicated mechanistic game where you need to know what adding a basket hilt to your sword does to your parry maneuver, then you need more page weight in description. If you are playing a 'you have light armor, a shield, and a one-handed weapon (do you want it to be a sword, axe, hammer, etc.?)' kind of game, particularly if treasure isn't important and encumbrance is more loosey-goosey, well then maybe a page or two total.

All of that assuming pseudo-medieval. Both sci-fi and certain modern genres (spy capers, cliffhanger, etc.) tend to worry about equipment more.

nDervish

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #6 on: November 07, 2018, 09:40:21 AM »
Quote from: Cave Bear;1063451
You gentlemen would obviously not buy a game with over one hundred pages of non-magical weapons, armors, and adventuring gear.


We wouldn't?  I bought Arms of Legend (for Legend/MRQ2/sort-of RQ6/sort-of Mythras), which is 160 pages and basically an equipment catalog.  The chapters "Adventuring Gear and Basics", "Trading and Quality", "Armour", "Weaponry", "Transport", and "Beasts and Cohorts" make up the first 137 pages, with "Enchantments" and "Alchemy" filling out the remainder.

I also have the Old World Armoury (for WFRP), at 130 pages, which is all non-magical (although there is an 8-page chapter on gunpowder weapons, which you may or may not consider "non-mundane").  And Supplement 4: Central Supply Catalog (for Mongoose Traveller 1), at 190 pages, all mundane (unless, again, you consider post-crossbow technology to be "non-mundane").  And I could surely find more in my collection, but those are just the three books of "over one hundred pages of non-magical [equipment]" that immediately came to mind.

Tod13

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #7 on: November 07, 2018, 11:03:56 AM »
Quote from: Cave Bear;1063451
You gentlemen would obviously not buy a game with over one hundred pages of non-magical weapons, armors, and adventuring gear. What's the point where you say "enough". 50? 20? 10? 1? 1/2?

0? In our homebrew, we went with "Adventurer pack containing most items needed for exploration. Specify unusual or unique items."

Tod13

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2018, 11:06:12 AM »
Quote from: nDervish;1063469
We wouldn't?  I bought Arms of Legend (for Legend/MRQ2/sort-of RQ6/sort-of Mythras), which is 160 pages and basically an equipment catalog.  The chapters "Adventuring Gear and Basics", "Trading and Quality", "Armour", "Weaponry", "Transport", and "Beasts and Cohorts" make up the first 137 pages, with "Enchantments" and "Alchemy" filling out the remainder.

I also have the Old World Armoury (for WFRP), at 130 pages, which is all non-magical (although there is an 8-page chapter on gunpowder weapons, which you may or may not consider "non-mundane").  And Supplement 4: Central Supply Catalog (for Mongoose Traveller 1), at 190 pages, all mundane (unless, again, you consider post-crossbow technology to be "non-mundane").  And I could surely find more in my collection, but those are just the three books of "over one hundred pages of non-magical [equipment]" that immediately came to mind.

Yup. At the other end of the scale, we backed the Orbis Mundi 2 - Real Medieval Life Kickstarter, which is 600+ of pages of this sort of stuff.

ffilz

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #9 on: November 07, 2018, 11:20:41 AM »
I like the amount of equipment in old school games like OD&D (even AD&D, though that's starting to get a bit long), RuneQuest, and Classic Traveller. Those three games also have reasonable weapons lists (AD&D again starts to get out of hand).

I've gone through phases with booklets of equipment, but I've come to really appreciate the old school short lists of equipment.

Essentials:

Reasonable weapons and armor list
Some cost of living prices (we can extrapolate if we need more variety for role playing purposes)
A reasonable list of the types of gear needed for the types of adventures the game promotes
A reasonable list of mounts and vehicles for getting around

One thing that is often missing though is some idea of what non-adventurers income is. I think that would be helpful to understand the prices.

Frank

nope

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #10 on: November 07, 2018, 11:27:34 AM »
Some of my favorite supplements are virtually pure gear catalogs, actually. GURPS High Tech / Low Tech are the first examples that come to mind.

Not that I think that's a necessary thing, mind you. It depends a lot on the kind of game you're playing and the system you're using. In D&D I really wouldn't want or envision needing more than three pages tops, one for mundane weapons, one for armor, and one for miscellaneous.

I think I'd even be happy with a simple Light/Med/Heavy generic armor and weapon listing, then a Tiny/Reg/Large generic miscellaneous item listing coupled with abstract encumbrance. Boom, 9 entries, done.

Rhedyn
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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #11 on: November 07, 2018, 12:17:15 PM »
I can get pretty far with just Item name + price. I prefer as much as possible in that format.

Anything over 20 pages of detailed descriptions and how everything interacts with your rules feels a little much to me for mundane "I can Wiki what this is".

tenbones

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #12 on: November 07, 2018, 01:17:26 PM »
Some of my favorite books is Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog, Cyberpunk's Chromebooks, Smith & Robards Catalogue for Deadlands, Galladinium's Fantastic Technology and Gundark's Fantastic Technology for West End d6....

So yeah - I like gear.

The reason why I like gear books/lists is it says something about the conceits of the world at large and the assumptions of what and how people live. As a GM it's your job to moderate and emphasize/de-emphasize that gear and it's need.

Steven Mitchell

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #13 on: November 07, 2018, 02:47:16 PM »
I like a lot of gear, but I don't like players having analysis paralysis digging through gear options.  I'm not sure how that translates to a list size.

steelshadow

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How Much Mundane Equipment Is Too Much?
« Reply #14 on: November 07, 2018, 03:03:31 PM »
My favorite book back in 2nd Edition was the Arms and Equipment Guide, and I dearly wish I could get something like it for 5th edition
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