Equipment and Resources

The clothing and armour a character wears, the weapons and tools they wield, the charms and potions they use and the materials they consume all exist as both physical props in the field (known as physical representations or phys reps) and as items in the game, governed by the rules in this wiki.

Sourcing Phys Reps

Curious Pastimes understands that not every player can afford to kit themselves out with all the weapons, armour and tools they might want from their first event – or even knows where to look. Any sincere effort is perfectly acceptable, and players and staff alike will gladly make allowance for new players.

Vendors can be found onsite at every main Curious Pastimes event, selling LARP weapons and armour, costumes, tools, tent dressings and other items. Any number of online stores offer a range of products as well, although players are encouraged to visit Curious Pastimes’ social media spaces to ask for advice on known and trusted vendors – especially for LARP weapons.

For players of a crafty bent, online instructions and tutorials cover almost anything one can imagine, and sewing pattern catalogues such as Simplicity offer patterns for a huge range of period and fantasy clothes for fancy-dress, which work very well for LARP when made from more durable fabrics.

Second-hand shops and car boot sales can be a rich resource, especially for tankards and dishes, throws, tent decorations and other dressings to give an in character space more of a natural, lived-in feel.

Lastly, other players may be happy to lend weapons, armour and other phys reps to new players. Faction commands may have a cache of lendable kit, or be able to point newcomers to players who may be able to help. Always feel welcome to ask for help.

Equipment

Equipment refers to all the enduring things a character must wear, hold or use in play to make full use of their skills: weapons and armour, tools and workshops and laboratories, magic wands and amulets, and so on.

Character equipment falls under five broad headings.

• Weapons: Every character can fight with at least a single one-handed or small weapon; fighting with larger weapons, two weapons or a weapon and shield requires specific skills. All weapons must be constructed to specific standards and regularly checked for safety and suitability.
• Armour: Armour comes in various weights and constructions, and requires specific skills to wear; note that wearing armour can limit spellcasting ability. Characters must be wearing a suitable representation of their armour on any given location to benefit from it. Armour must look the part and provide reasonable coverage, and must be constructed to safe and suitable standards.
• Tools: Scoundrel, Invocation and Gathering all require tools or implements for some of their functions. Magicians don’t require tools for basic spellcasting and rites, but at higher levels – especially if they proceed into Demonology, Necromancy, Thaumaturgy or other mystical disciplines – they may make use of wands, staves and rods, amulets, mirrors, censers and braziers and other mystical tools (see also the Bind Path Focus rite).
• Workshops: Creation skills all require some sort of facility in which to do their work: an alchemist’s laboratory, a crafter's workshop or a surgeon’s bed. At minimum, a workspace should include a surface to work on – a table, bench, mat or bed – and at least three tools, fixtures or fittings as appropriate.
• Miscellaneous: Beyond the necessities are a world of items that add depth and character to the game: chests and boxes (which may have locks or traps on them), benches and tables, tapestries and banners, musical instruments, religious symbols and shrines, boardgames, dishes and drinking vessels, to name just a few.

Damaged and Broken Items

Any item may be damaged in game, with weapons, by spells such as Shatter, by acids or burning or by other means. There are three degrees of damage.

• Damaged: The item is bent or shattered, straps snapped, moving parts misaligned etc. Armour damaged in battle is always considered damaged.
• Broken: The item has been burned, partially melted or dissolved, badly rusted or preternaturally weakened or otherwise damaged beyond easy repair.
• Destroyed: The item has been wholly melted or dissolved, disintegrated or otherwise damaged beyond all recovery.

Damaged items can be repaired quickly and easily by a crafter at their workshop, or repaired in the field with armour staples or via the Mend or Repair spells, while broken items must be substantially recrafted, at a cost in work units and materials. Destroyed items cannot be repaired. See Repairing Crafted Items.

Repairing an object made up of many easily removable parts (e.g. an alchemist’s laboratory) may additionally require a skilled character to spend work units assembling and identifying components; a referee can give guidance on requirements.

Equipment Quality

Equipment comes at various levels of quality, types of material or other features construction.

• Standard: By default, all equipment is standard quality, with no game effect beyond meeting the need for the item. Standard equipment never costs any in-character money or resources – a crafter can simply roleplay making or repairing it in their workspace, without spending work units or materials. It requires a phys rep but no item card.
• Superior and Mastercrafted: Higher quality superior and mastercrafted items have an in-character cost, and need to be purchased from traders or made by a skilled crafter using work units and materials. Higher quality equipment generally grants some skill bonus or enhances magical or other effects. Such items must have an item card, which signifies their existence and may need to be presented to a referee to receive any bonus.
• Ornate and Signature: Richly decorated ornate items are plated or inlaid with precious metals, inset with gems, baroqued with fine carvings and embellishments etc., adding to the value of the item but otherwise having no game effect. Distinctive signature items are made by specific named crafters and can be identified on sight by knowledgeable merchants; they have additional scarcity value, and in some cases may have further game effects. Like high quality items, they have a specific in-game cost, and must carry an item card; the value of any embellishments, in materials and work is listed separately on the back of the card.
• Silver, Cold Iron and Other Materials: In a world where werewolves and magical beasts abound, items made from silver alloy, from the rare unrefined metal known as cold iron and other more exotic materials are cherished. Weapons made from such metals may grant special damage calls, and cold iron items in particular are immune to magic. Like higher quality or ornate items, these items must carry item cards.

Crafted items lose quality over time, becoming standard items, unless maintained, at a cost in work units and materials. An item which has expired can be restored, at a greater cost.

Magic vs. Cold Iron Aside from granting the relevant damage call, all cold iron items are completely immune to direct magical effects, including spells or magical abilities that alter (e.g. Transmute), damage (e.g. Shatter), enhance (e.g. Corporeal Weapon) or repair items (e.g. Mend). Cold iron cannot be enchanted or invested by Invocation, Thaumaturgy, Ritual Magic or other magical disciplines. Cold iron items are subject to spells or abilities that indirectly affect them, including information spells (such as Identify Materials), or spells that move or manipulate them without harming or altering them (such as Fumble or Telekinesis). This immunity doesn’t apply to abilities that use the Mundane call.

Enchantment and Investment

Any piece of equipment (except those made from cold iron) may also be enchanted, invested with magic power by various means. Enchanted objects may have any imaginable properties or abilities, which may apply either to the item (e.g. a weapon with a special damage call) or to the wielder (e.g. an amulet that grants an extra body hit).

Enchanted items are subject to various limits.

• Continuous and At Will: A continuous enchantment applies constantly, while an at will enchantment must be activated, but may be used as often as wished, with no limitations.
• Uses Per Day and Magic Points: Some items can be used a certain number of times per day, or have a pool of magic points that can be spent on the item’s powers (by default, magic points can only be used to activate the item’s stated powers, not accessed by the wielder for their own use). These limits apply to the item, not the wielder: an item that grants three uses per day, for instance, may be used twice by one character and once by a second character in the same day, not three times by each character. The pool refreshes each day; unused points or uses do not carry over.
• Charges: Some items – including all items made by Invocation – are created with a total pool of charges, which are held over from one day to the next (provided the item doesn’t expire, e.g. trinkets expire at the end of the day they are created). By default, charged items cannot be recharged; once the last charge is expended, the item is destroyed.

Enchanted and invested items must carry an item card, which may need to be presented to a referee to use their abilities. All enchanted items lose their enchantment over time, becoming mundane items again or being destroyed altogether.

By default, items can be used by any character, but some are more restricted. Certain items require a specific skill to use, generally relevant to the ability, e.g. an item that grants bonus work units that must be used by a character with a relevant crafting skill (unless stated otherwise, weapons always require the relevant combat skill to wield). Items may instead be bound to a specific user, or group of users. Skilled and bound items will state any relevant requirements on the item card.

Spells vs. Magic Items Like cold iron items, enchanted items are largely immune to lesser and greater spells that directly affect them, including spells or magical abilities that alter or damage them (e.g. Transmute or Shatter), but not to information spells (e.g. Detect Magic) or spells that affect them indirectly (e.g. Telekinesis or Fumble). This applies even to items temporarily enchanted by spells and abilities such as Magic Armour. Some exalted spells can affect magic items to various extents, including Disenchantment and Disintegrate.

Artefacts

Every faction is home to a tiny handful of very rare and special items called Artefacts. Most are said to have been fashioned by the gods themselves; all are tied, in some way, to the legends and beliefs of the peoples that wield them.

Artefacts have remarkable mystical properties. As weapons, in particular, they are extraordinarily powerful; not every creature can be killed outright by the Artefact damage call, but there is nothing in creation that cannot at least be badly injured by one of these weapons.

Like magic items, artefacts are resistant to most spells. Even exalted magic is largely unable to affect them directly.

Consumables

Many items with game effects are temporary and consumable, working for one use only before being destroyed or transformed. Unlike equipment, there is no uncarded level of quality with no game effect; all consumables are carded and have an in-game value.

One-Shot Items

One-shot items are low-cost enchanted or crafted items which have a game effect – often similar to casting a spell, using a martial skill etc. – and are consumed in the process (i.e. they’re essentially charged items, above, with a single charge).

• Potions and Poisons: Brewed by an Alchemist and variously drunk, rubbed onto the skin, inhaled, or applied via a weapon, potions are formulas that heal or otherwise benefit the subject, while poisons harm or afflict them in some way. A potion or poison must be represented with a flask, bottle or pot with a capacity of around 35ml.
• Trinkets and Sigil Stones: Crafted from various materials and invested via Invocation, trinkets and sigil stones are small, disposable items – a wooden chip, a twist of wire, a glass disk, a leather thong or similar – with symbols on them, which can be snapped or crushed, releasing a single casting of a spell. A stone should take the form of a small wooden, clay or stone tablet; a trinket can be represented by any suitable small, disposable object.
• Scrolls: Drawn with magical ink onto good paper or vellum, a scroll likewise stores a spell until read out loud. A scroll must be represented by a sheet of A5 or larger paper.

All one-shot items expire over time, after which they lose their effectiveness or crumble to nothing.

Resources

Resources are the materials from which other items are made. All resources decay over time and will expire; some last longer than others but, in the end, even the most hardy resource will also decay into uselessness.

Resources can be bought or bartered from non-player characters, looted from monsters or otherwise gained as a reward from plot, gathered by the skills Foraging, Gathering or Scrounging or harvested from the bodies of fallen foes. Some resources must be refined from other resources, preparing them for later use in other processes.

• Creator Resources: These include ingredients such as herbs, seeds, animal blood or venom, ground horns and other natural materials foraged from the wild, and materials such as timber from trees, ore dug from the earth, fleece gathered from animals and other natural materials, paper, cloth, glass, gemstones and other materials both raw and refined. These resources are fashioned by alchemists and crafters into potions and poisons, weapons and armour, clothes and scrolls and all manner of things. Some materials come in varying levels of quality.
  Some resources may bear a specific description on the card (e.g. wood may stipulate oak or pine, or a high quality cloth may state linen or silk). Some projects require specific materials, but if no such requirement is given, this description has no mechanical effect.
• Ether Spheres: Appearing in the world shortly after the construction of the cantle frame in 1123, ether is linked to the remaking of the world in ways not yet understood. A mystical gas or vapour found in places of strong magical potential, ether is trapped into spheres by the Worshipful Guild of Ethermongers, in which form it can be used by ritualists to govern the newly-unpredictable circles – and for other purposes besides.
• Magical Inks and Amalgams: Brewed by Alchemists like potions and poisons, magical inks and amalgams are used by invokers to trap magic into scrolls, talismans and other items.
• Other Materials: Powders and candles, incense and oils, cloths and bonds and other items – many skills in the game use resources made, found or bartered for various purposes.

All resources lose potency over time, after which they become useless.

Staples and Bandages Two special consumables exist primarily to allow crafters to store work units to use in the field: Armour Staples: Used by a blacksmith to quickly repair damaged armour. Surgeon’s Bandages: Used by a surgeon to keep a mortally wounded character alive, partly heal them, or clean a poisoned or infected wound. Very skilled blacksmiths and surgeons can learn to make better use of these resources, or to produce other resources with more dramatic effects.

Item Tracking

All items – other than standard items based on a player’s personal phys reps – are labelled and tagged in various ways. These labels hold information about the items’ mechanical effects (if any), and are used for recording ownership and tracking charges and upkeep. They also play a role in in-character theft.

• Item Cards: Any high-quality or enchanted item, or item made of special materials, is always accompanied by an item card detailing its properties and effects, which must be kept with the phys rep at all times.
• Tearable Cards: Resources and one-shot items are always accompanied by an item card detailing its properties and effects, which must be kept with the item at all times. The card is torn in half when the item is used, which confirms that the item has been used, and reflects its destruction.

Charges, Uses Per Day and Magic Points Items with charges, uses per day or magic points are accompanied with item cards, but must also bear some means of tracking uses, such as tearable cards, one card with tick boxes or a string of beads.

Expiry

Every carded item in the game except artefacts expires sooner or later, including resources, crafted items, and one-shot and enchanted items.

• Resources: By default, raw resources spoil two years after harvesting, unless refined or used. Finished resources spoil three years after refining, unless used.
• Crafted Items: Mundane superior and mastercrafted items last three years until degrading to standard items, but can be maintained by a skilled crafter. Expired items can be restored.
• Potions and Poisons: Potions, poisons, inks, alloys and other items created via Alchemy last three years until they spoil, becoming useless. The expiry of more complex and rare potions may differ.
• Invocation Items: Trinkets, sigil stones, scrolls and talismans have durations between one day and one year, listed on the card, after which they crumble to dust.
• Enchanted Items: Ritually-enchanted items may have a set duration, or may require constant maintenance. When the enchantment expires or is allowed to lapse, the item turns back into a standard quality mundane item.

The expiry date of any item is listed on the item card, along with any item-specific maintenance requirements.

Ownership

The character that owns any given enchanted item is recorded on the item database for reference, and in some cases (especially bound items, or items that require continuous upkeep) printed on the card. Crafted items aren’t usually registered in this way.

In the event an item is given to (or stolen by) another character, the item will need to be presented to the Game Organisation Desk to have the registered owner updated. This also facilitates the return of a stolen item’s phys rep.

Unique and Plot Items

Typically only items with game effects are tagged and tracked, but from time to time an item with a storied past – a famed former ritualist’s ceremonial robes, a book of scripture, the weapon used to kill a legendary enemy – may be entered into the item database even if it is a mundane, standard-quality item. Unique items like this are given item cards like other special items.