Saturday 2 July 2011

Esoteric Equipment and Urban Activities

I've just finished putting together a document for my players of all the "esoteric equipment" (stuff like drugs, poisons, healing draughts, and so on) that they currently have access to, and some rules for living expenses and various things they can do in towns.

I thought I'd share it here, feel free to download the PDF and check it out if you like.

(The poisons list, by the way, matches up with those in the Labyrinth Lord AEC, but gives them names and descriptions, rather than just a number.)

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this very useful document Gavin, I'll be adding it to my DM folder.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, this is an extremely helpful document, thanks so much for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey guys, glad it's of interest!

    It's sort of been distilled down gradually from reading and thinking about various topics. I was surprised to find that Keep on the Borderlands is actually pretty good for advice on this kind of stuff!

    It actually highlights one thing I've not explicitly discussed on the blog before -- that I run my campaign with a vague amount of time, roughly a month, occurring between sessions. This makes working out living expenses and upkeep for things super easy, as you can just charge the participating PCs a fixed amount per session for their chosen standard of living and responsibilities. Before I started using this system I always had trouble keeping track of the fiddly bits & pieces of an adventurer's daily expenses, and often ended up just ignoring it, which was a shame because I think that kind of relentless drain on the PCs' coffers is very important!

    It is also very helpful for PCs who want to do stuff between sessions (buying items, research, etc), and to allow for the hand-wavey ability of PCs to travel around a bit, and for new PCs to potentially wander onto the scene (and for others to potentially wander away) -- which nicely accommodates the potential vagaries of player attendance!

    ReplyDelete
  4. To echo the responses of others a most excellent offering! - best Bill & Ted voice possible :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent! I especially like the bit about a Wizard getting one free spell per level due to the libraries of the Mages' Guilds. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Super helpful, thank you for sharing this.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's a lovely equipment list - a bit more filled with "magic items" than I would use, but that's all the campaign world. I applaud both the content and the formatting. The smoke torches are a great mundane item - and even the more magical stuff like healing draughts makes excellent treasure. I think what you've done here is something more folks should do for their settings, provide a list of adventuring items that are useful and give player's options and ideas.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I always find the basic equipment lists are ok for use when creating new characters, but that players always hanker after more obscure and interesting adventuring gear as a campaign goes on.

      You're right that the campaign I was running at the time when I wrote this list was relatively high-magic, with wizards' guilds and such.

      Delete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.