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Saturday, November 1, 2014

DF6, DF8, equipment catalogs, and My Game

Recently Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables and some of the items in it came up for discussion.

Here is how my game handles this stuff:

DF1: All equipment/magic items are available unless I say otherwise. The default answer is yes.

DF6: All magic items are potentially available, but only if they appear in play or indirectly in play (via rumors, etc.) Nothing is available for purchase off-the-shelf. The default answer for availability is no.

DF8: All magic items, unusual items, etc. are potentially available, but only if they appear in play, as DF6 items. The default answer for availability is no. Some items may be available off-the-shelf, but generally they are not.

Other supplements: As DF8. Not available unless demonstrated to be available, so don't ask until you see it. This includes Low-Tech, although most TL0-4 weapons are available.

Important note: never bet your character's life, development, future tactics, or end-game plan on any equipment you have not seen used in actual play. That which isn't shown to exist is not necessarily going to come into play just because stats exist for it.

This includes stuff I have personally written - if I wrote it, and I want it in play, it will show up in play, rest assured.

3 comments:

  1. Out of curiosity, what's your threshold for "unusual" for DF8? Presumably things like household goods and mundane clothing are OK, but what about, say, spices which grant modest bonuses to various abilities or the non-magical but bonus-granting climbing claws?

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    1. It's pretty much all the same. If it does something other than be valuable as wealth (jewelry, gems, valuable clothing) than it is subject to the case-by-case decision.

      I basically want to avoid players reading DF8 as a shopping list. It's a great source of ideas for me, not a Christmas wish list for them.

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  2. This is the way my DMs treated D&D equipment too; just because there's d20-compatible stats for it doesn't mean it exists. In fact, we ignored about half the equipment in the Player's Handbook as being redundant (long list of polearms, breastplate, etc.).

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