“Equipment” in the SOLAR SYSTEM is a somewhat flexible term: not only tools and gear, but also masses of people, vehicles and natural weapons have been considered equipment. The dramatic significance of equipment in the fiction is its external nature to the character himself; we’ve chosen to emphasize this by giving equipment separate, distinctive rules. They can be used to emphasize realistic considerations (“having a sword against an unarmed man is a big deal”) or for purely dramatic purposes (“this particular sword symbolizes kingship, therefore it has mechanical impact”), as desired.
Equipment more than most other rules has a somewhat problematic history in TSoY. The original equipment rules of the game have not interacted too well with my own play: at first I spent a couple of years outright misplaying against the intent of the rules, and when I corrected my understanding, it proved that the rules didn’t fit the bonus dice heavy crunch environment at my table.
My intent with these new rules was to build them to be essentially compatible with the old ones, to make it easier for individual groups to pick and choose their own preferred approach.
When a character has an important tool, such as a signature weapon, the player may choose to have it emphasized via the SECRET OF EQUIPMENT. The Solar System rules for DECLARED equipment may also be used if desired.
Each piece of equipment has a QUALITY VALUE as an Effect; this is derived with a Barter (I) or suitable crafting Ability check, depending on how the character came by the equipment. The quality is important when another character is trying to destroy the equipment, and it sets the upper limit for the equipment’s usefulness in other ways as well.
The two main mechanics for a piece of equipment are EQUIPMENT RATINGS and IMBUEMENTS. A given piece of equipment will usually have equipment ratings equal to its quality rating; it may also have at most that many imbuements. However, each imbuement increases the INTRODUCTION COST of the equipment, so having them is not always a good thing.
This has not been so much of an issue in other settings, but in TSoY I seem to constantly bump on the matter of unrealistic equipment: a character might have a comb that helps him attract horses, or some such unlikely combination. The fantastic environment seems to encourage this, as in fact it is perfectly possible to have such a comb in this game.
The way I deal with this is to be clear on whether equipment and its ratings are mundane or “magical”, and judge accordingly. It’s perfectly reasonable for a character to buy a horse that helps him move faster, but buying a horse that helps him write letters would take a bit more doing, because normally I would assume that such horses weren’t for sale in most places.
Mundanity is judged mostly by the Story Guide. Usually it comes up when a perfectly ordinary smith wants to create some strange and wonderful device. That’s when I get to consider whether such a creation really is possible without Elven magic or some such source of supernatural mojo. Some groups will specifically want to make fantastic equipment easy to create, so do by all means draw the line between mundane and magical as you see fit.
Some crunch only applies to equipment used in different ways. These are not classifications of equipment itself, but of how it is used. A TOOL is any equipment not used against an opponent. A WEAPON is an equipment used offensively to affect an opponent, while an ARMOR is used to protect oneself.
The equipment rating is a value in the range +1–3, combined with a short phrase describing where it might be applicable.
For example, a simple sword might have an equipment rating “+1 to injure men or beasts”. This sword would then be applicable when the character using it tried to injure men or beasts with it.
Each equipment rating is associated with a different scope of effect: higher ratings come only from more specialized equipment, like so:
| +1 rating applies to certain sorts of activity, with the scope roughly similar to an Ability. |
|---|
| A telescope for a +1 when examining distant things. |
| The Book of Light for a +1 when convincing people. |
| A horse for a +1 when traveling overland. |
| +2 rating only applies in specific circumstances, akin in scope to the SECRET OF SPECIALTY |
| A firebomb for +2 at burning a thing. |
| An Ammeni perfume for a +2 in convincing people attracted to you. |
| Snowshoes for a +2 when traveling over snow and ice. |
| +3 rating applies in very specific circumstances that rarely come up of their own accord |
| A helmet for a +3 against head-blows. |
| A royal charter for a +3 when convincing people to go along with it. |
| A shallow boat for a +3 when traveling in the Zaru marshes. |
Each equipment may have at most three +1 ratings, two +2 ratings and one +3 rating, provided the equipment quality suffices. Most likely these ratings overlap in one piece of equipment, providing increasing specialties within a single field of endeavor, but that is not mandatory.
Despite being a bit lengthy thing to explain, equipment ratings are useful because they can be hooked into other crunch to provide different effects. They also have one basic use that is available to anybody with an equipment rating at hand: should the character make an Ability check in a situation where the rating applies, the player may opt to replace the check result with the value of the equipment rating. The dice roll simply doesn’t apply, although it is rolled normally. The only cost of this is that if the check would have been a FAILURE (0) without the equipment, then the equipment’s quality quality drops by one.
To make this unequivocal: the equipment rating replaces the result of the check, and does not care about the character’s Ability level. It’s not far off to say that the character is withdrawing from the conflict and letting his equipment do the struggling, whereas he merely makes an Ability check to see if he can keep the equipment from breaking.
The default effect of equipment ratings isn’t cumulative, but if a character has some crunch that makes several pieces of equipment sensible, then I allow each individual piece of equipment to be used once per check as long as the action makes sense in the fiction. The Story Guide might wish to lean on traditional fantasy RPG aesthetics in this, with single-handed and two-handed weapons, shields and such.
IMBUED items are a lateral depiction of equipment. They are items with integrated Secrets in them that a character can use through the item. Imbuements are useful in depicting not only wacky magic items that do stuff for you, but also for mundane equipment that does more than just improves Ability checks. A character might, for example, have a heavy mace with the SECRET OF KNOCKBACK inherent to it, to coin a mundane example.
Existence of Imbuements does not increase the Advance cost to own an item; instead, an imbued item has an INTRODUCTION cost: first time the item is used for anything in a single scene, the player has to pay a Pool cost equal to the number of imbuements it has. This goes even if the item is just used for its ratings; the presence of imbuements makes taking the item out a weighty matter.
Which Pools the imbued item drains is established by the Story Guide when the item is introduced; the profile remains unchanged after that. Be colorful about it: heavy anime weapons take Vigor, items with many parts take Reason, that sort of thing. An item’s quality rating sets the maximum number of imbuements an item may have.
Although the imbued Secret is used just like it would if the character himself possessed it, Pool costs and all, in the fiction it is usually not the “same” Secret that people use. Thus imbued Secrets don’t care about fulfilling requirements, can’t be used to learn the original Secret and so on. When I particularly want to emphasize that I’m not talking about a natural Secret that characters learn, I call imbued Secrets IMBUEMENTS. So an imbued mace doesn’t strictly speaking have the SECRET OF KNOCKBACK, it has KNOCKBACK IMBUEMENT. One other difference between Imbuements and Secrets is that the former are usually somewhat narrower in application: the character has to use the item in question to activate the Imbuement, for example, while the Secret version can be used in any situation.
The simplest method for gaining equipment is to DECLARE it. Aside from Story Guide decision á la SOLAR SYSTEM, players may purchase the SECRET OF EQUIPMENT all but instantly by deciding that a character’s horse or armor or hat is important enough to pay an Advance for. Most Story Guides seem to be fine with this; I myself used to be hardass and demand a character to go buy or steal or otherwise gain a piece of equipment interesting enough for this, but nowadays I’ve come around: if equipment has been established as existing in the fiction and it’s not in the middle of a conflict, it’s the player’s decision where he wants to spend his Advances.
When the SECRET OF EQUIPMENT is spontaneously declared like this, have the player make a suitable Ability check to represent the quality of the item, in case such a check hasn’t already been made. If no pertinent Ability jumps out, the Story Guide may well decide the quality of the item freely: the item would probably be between MARGINAL (1) and GREAT (3), but it’s the Story Guide’s call. The equipment ratings for garnered equipment are determined by having the player first pick one equipment rating, after which the Story Guide names the others based on his sensibilities. Declared equipment is always “mundane” in the aforementioned sense, I’d expect.
Rated and/or imbued equipment costs an Advance to own. It is not uncommon for characters to go to Advance debt with suddenly garnered equipment while they gather experience to learn to use it properly.
Losing equipment allows a character to regain the Advance invested in it. This goes for gifts as well: giving a piece of equipment to another regains an Advance for the giver, while the receiver has to invest an Advance.
Characters with suitable Abilities can create equipment by declaring it, as per above. There are also Secrets that make the process more efficient, such as the SECRET OF CREATION. Imbued items are complex enough that I don’t usually allow creating them by declaration at all, unless the imbuement makes very much sense.
Whether a character can use a piece of equipment depends on the fictional situation, so one way to prevent it is to disarm him with suitable action. Also, the equipment may be outright destroyed just like if it was an Effect; an Ability check against the quality of the item suffices.
Equipment that loses in quality also loses equipment ratings, and might lose imbuements if the quality drops low enough. The user of the equipment chooses which ratings and imbuements are lost. The ratings can be regained by repairing the equipment with a suitable check; the imbuements only come back in repair if that seems to make sense in the fiction; otherwise they need to be recreated from scratch.
| Secret of Equipment (specify) |
|---|
| The character owns a piece of rated or imbued equipment. The Effect rating of the equipment is a free Effect with no upkeep, although fixing the equipment (rerolling the Effect rating) costs normally. |
| Secret of Creation (Ability) |
| The character is skilled in equipment creation using a particular Ability. When he creates rated mundane equipment, the player gets to choose all of its ratings. The player may also imbue the item with mundane Secrets, and determine its introduction cost profile. |
| Cost: VIGOR per item’s quality, 2 REASON per imbuement. |
| Secret of Equipment Mastery |
| The player can consume a ‘+’ overflow die to activate an applicable equipment rating: the rating acts at a level one step higher than normal for this check. |
| Secret of Weapon Mastery |
| The player can consume a ‘+’ overflow die to activate an applicable weapon rating: the opponent’s check suffers penalty dice equal to the rating. |
| Secret of Armor Mastery |
| The player can consume a ‘+’ overflow die to activate an applicable armor rating: an incoming Harm is reduced by the value of the rating. |
| Secret of Tool Mastery |
| The player can consume a ‘+’ overflow die to activate an applicable tool rating: he immediately gains the rating in pool points usable freely as bonus dice or in activating Secrets. If not used, the points become a free Effect. |
| Secret of Overflow Control |
| The player can use empty ‘ ‘ overflow dice in lieu of ‘+’ dice when activating his Secrets. |
| Name Imbuement |
| The item has a name, it’s unique and famous. The character may call out the name when introducing the item to pay the item’s introduction cost out of suitable Effects related to the item. |
| Expert Imbuement (Ability) |
| The item is complex and difficult to use. The character using it has to succeed in the chosen Ability check when introducing it. The introduction cost is reduced by the check result, but failure damages the item’s quality by one. |
| Null-rate Imbuement |
| The item is not broadly useful, and does not have ratings. Instead its introduction cost is halved, round down. |
| Secret of Signature Equipment (specify) |
| A piece of equipment the character owns is particularly important to him. Reduce the introduction cost of the item by two points when he is using it himself. |
| Secret of Shattering (Ability) |
| The character can destroy equipment and other material Effects with particular fluency when using the chosen Ability. In normal conflict his check result is deducted from the Effect’s value even if he lost against it; in extended conflict he can pay Pool associated with the Ability to increase damage he causes to an Effect. |
| A Simple Sword |
| This sword’s quality rating is GREAT (3), so we might consider it a masterwork weapon. It’s the sort that might be used in Maldor or Goren. |
| Ratings: +2 against other swords. +1 for fighting against people. +1 for fighting animals. |
| My Amazing (4) Warhorse |
| A horse wouldn’t necessarily be equipment, it could be just a color element or a character in its own right. Making it equipment emphasizes that it is essentially furniture when the character is not using it. This trained horse provides a discount to its introduction cost with a CAVALRY (V) check. It can trample others with the SECRET OF MIGHTY BLOW. It can also see spirits and associates INSTINCT with CAVALRY (V), perhaps due to its northern stock. |
| Ratings: +3 for charging in formation. +2 against infantry. +1 for fighting outdoors. +1 for traveling overland. |
| Imbuements: Expert (Cavalry) (V) Mighty Blow (V) Spirit Sight (I) Retrain (Cavalry, Instinct) |
| Cost: 2 VIGOR and 2 INSTINCT per scene, minus the Expert deduction. The introduction cost is not paid for merely having the horse in the scene, but even using the ratings triggers it. |