Equipment

Equipment, for the most part, lets you do a job. A lockpick lets you pick locks; climbing gear lets you scale a wall; perfume lets you smell like a fancy courtier. Most equipment you use will fall into the above category, and it has no mechanical effect on the game.

(Trying to perform a task without the proper equipment can increase the difficulty of the action, or even make it impossible.)

However, when you acquire an item that matters to you, you’ll define two things about it that are special which mark it out from the many others like it. Make a note of one negative aspect and one positive aspect, for example:

• A warm but unfashionable cloak
• An over-written but insightful guidebook to the area you’re in
• An intimidating but hard-to-steer hot rod
• A fast but stupid horse
• Magic goggles that let you see through walls but not in front of you

If you take advantage of the positive aspect of the item, you roll with mastery on checks where you use it. If you’re forced into a situation where you have to rely on the negative aspect of the item, the difficulty of the action increases by 1.

Weapons and armour have slightly more complex rules, detailed below. (However, if you don’t want to get too in-depth on combat, you can certainly use the above rules for weapons too instead of tags; that’s up to your group.)

Buying and selling

One option, when building a world, is to come up with a currency system and price list for every imaginable item in the world and have players keep track of their spending. However: there is a much easier way, and here it is.

To buy items, the GM decides on the cost involved: D3 for minor purchases, D6 for moderate, and D8 for really expensive or exotic materials. Some items just can’t be purchased without expending a lot of effort to find a seller and do whatever it is they want (that’s worth more than money) to acquire it. Then the player makes a roll using whatever skills and domains are appropriate; on a success, they get what they want without incurring stress, and on a failure, they’d mark stress to a resistance like GOLD or RESOURCES or CREDIT RATING.

Weapons

Weapons inflict stress on targets based on their type. Most weapons have their stress dice in brackets after their name, but as a rough guide:

1 Stress: Unarmed damage

D3 Stress: Civilian or improvised weapons

D6 Stress: Military or professional weapons

D8 Stress: Heavy or exotic weapons

Range

The base range for weapons is up-close and personal unless they have a tag that confers an increased range on them. It’s up to you how granular you want to get with distance - you could have the Ranged tag and attach it to every projectile weapon, or you could break it down into Thrown, Short-Ranged, Ranged, Long-Ranged and so on. Ranges are relative to the situations and characters that feature in your story - a “long range” weapon on a spaceship has a significantly longer actual range than a “long range” bow in a low-tech survival horror game, but both use the same relative wording.

If you outrange your opponents you take a maximum of 1 stress per roll until they are close enough to use their weapons efficiently. If you’re outranged by your opponents, you’ll need to succeed on a roll to get close enough without marking stress.

Ammunition

If a character has a weapon that requires ammunition (bolts, bullets, arrows, etc) we assume that they have a ready supply of ammunition for it - there’s no need to track each individual piece. Running out of ammo, if it’s a part of the story, can be represented as fallout.

Tags

Weapons may also have tags attached to them that mechanically affect the way they’re used. Most tags will only take effect when a player uses the weapon; as a rough guide, if a tag refers to rolling dice, NPCs can’t use it. (Tags such as Piercing, though, can be used by both player- and non-player characters.)

Here are some sample tags:

Accurate: If the user takes a minute or so to set up the shot (as part of an ambush or surprise attack, and not possible once combat has started) they roll with mastery when attacking.

Brutal: When you roll for stress with this weapon, roll two dice and pick the highest. Multiple instances of the Brutal tag stack; if you managed to get Brutal three times, for example, then you’d roll four dice and pick the highest when inflicting stress.

Concealable: When you attempt to conceal this weapon, roll with mastery.

Dangerous: If your highest D10 shows a 1 or a 2 when you use this weapon, it has exploded. Take D6 stress; the weapon is destroyed.

Defensive: While using this weapon, you gain an additional Armour resistance slot.

Double-barrelled: You can use this weapon twice before reloading, or fire both barrels at once to give the attack the Brutal tag.

Extreme Range: This weapon can be used at extreme range.

One-shot: You can only use this weapon once per situation - it takes a very long time to reload.

Piercing: You cannot allocate stress inflicted by this weapon to Armour, unless the armour has the Implacable tag.

Point-blank: When used at extremely close range, this weapon’s damage increases by 1 dice size; at anything over medium range, it decreases by 1.

Ranged: This weapon can be used at range.

Reload: Once you’ve used this weapon, it cannot be used again until you spend time reloading it - and it takes a while, too.

Scarring: Causes savage, ugly wounds on targets.

Spread Dx: If you succeed on an attack with this weapon, you inflict half the stress you dealt to the original target to a number of other targets standing nearby, equal to the result of your Dx roll.

Surprising: The first time you use this weapon in a situation, roll with mastery.

Stunning: If you succeed on an attack roll with this weapon, you may declare that any affected targets take no stress, but their difficulty is reduced to 0 until they gather their senses.

Tiring: When you fail an action using this item, its damage decreases in dice size by 1.

Unreliable: When you fail an action using this equipment, it cannot be used for the remainder of the situation.

Armour

Armour confers additional stress slots equal to its value that can be used to absorb physical stress; at the end of every situation, clear all stress marked to armour. Armour can also have tags, like weapons:

Camouflaged: The armour is designed to camouflage the wearer in specific terrain; when they conceal themselves in that terrain, they do so with mastery.

Concealable: When you attempt to conceal this armour, roll with mastery.

Implacable: Piercing weapons do not negate this armour, but Devastating weapons do.

Heavy: When wearing your armour, you may not use the Pursue or Sneak skills to gain additional dice.

Example Weapons

Steampunk

• Grackler Heavy Revolver (D6, Brutal, Ranged)
• Mining Pick (D3, Piercing)
• Galvanic Resonator (D8, Ranged, Unreliable)

Space Combat

• Defence Batteries (D6, Point-blank, Reload)
• Experimental Laser Assault System “E-LAS” (D8, Piercing, Extreme Range, Brutal, One-Shot)
• Macro-cannon (D6, Ranged)

Battle-Wizards

• Lucifon’s Baleful Gaze (D3, Ranged, Stunning)
• Bolt of Heaven’s Wrath (D6, Ranged, Reload)
• Keshpeth’s Demonic Servant (D6, Defensive, Dangerous)