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This post is part of a series of Blogs where I work on my home-ruleset, 'The Sanic Hack.' You may or may not gain better comprehension from reading the other posts in this series.
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Howdy, Farmhands!
Worn Gear in Into the Odd/Cairn is pretty straightforward. There are 3 main kinds of armor, all bulky, with increasing levels of protection and a higher pricepoint. There is then the option to include Shields, Helmets, and/or Gambeson to go under the actual armor, each adding "+1" in whatever configuration you choose. Armor as a Stat caps out at 3, so you can't fill your inventory with Helmets and become invincible. For a game of medieval fantasy, this is the bare minimum you need, really. But, I'm writing a game of Blorbos going on Adventures; and a big element of going and seeing a new place involves shopping while you're there. How do I give the player the sensation of customizing their look with Worn items while still maintaining the inventory management element of the chassis I'm using? Also, I really don't want to write out a super long list of every Shoe style available to Hedgehog.
Let's start with the replacement for Cairn armor (not Armor, keep up) with "Costumes" A Costume is assumed to be a full set of clothes, but its pieces cannot be separated mechanically. These will come in 3 tiers of Price and Armor; similar to the Brigadine, Chainmail, and Plate tiers found in Cairn. +1 and +2 Costumes should be purchaseable, with the +2 Costume being harder to find. Then, we'll call items that add additional points of armor an "Accessory." These can be any individual piece of clothing, but only 1 piece of a larger outfit. Here you'd have your Shoes, your Scarves, your Hats, and your Bracelets. If a party of technicolor furries were to go to the Jungle Island and shop, they'd find suitably Tropical looking doodads to buy. Shark-tooth necklaces, masks carved from stone, maybe an umbrella made from Gorilla hide. These are all "Accessories", though, and are mechanically identical : +1 Armor.
In a game based on Into the Odd/Cairn, the real reason to pass up 1 mechanically identical item over another comes down to the game's approach on problem solving- the Gorilla Hide umbrella might make walking through a trap involving a spray of liquid NOT risky, for example. In order to reach your MAX Armor, 3, with only Accessories, however, you'd need to use three whole inventory slots on your person for them. That's a large chunk of your base 10 slots, so what are you to do?
My solution is to make every "Costume" of the highest tier, +3 AMR, craftable. In this theoretical, designing said "Costume" and at least 1 "Accessory" for each component of the design would be part of writing an Adventure. Collecting and combining the 3 Accessories compresses them into a single bulky card. Mechanically, once you have one Outfit with Armor 3, you don't need to look for any more. But with every major location having a new Outfit to find, and thematic Accessories to customize your character with, there's a lot of motivation to go out and explore, if only to dress up your blorbo. For DMs, this means they can either brainstorm ideas while doing prep for the adventure or BS a description in the moment. If it's an Accessory, it's +1. If it's an Costume, it's 1 to 3 with it's price being 20, or 40 of the game's currency.
How does this Math? To get +3 with the cheapest purchase, you'd need to spend 4 slots, 2 for the +1 Costume and 2 +1 Accessories, each their own slot. Bumping up the price (though you'll need to actively search for it), you can only use 3 slots for the +2 Costume and 1 +1 Accessory. Successfully finding and them combining the three specific +1 Accessories compresses them down into a single +3 Costume, making it a worthwhile endeavor even if it takes a while.
At least that's how it works in my head. Some of you are probably reading this and shaking your heads slowly. Lucky for me this isn't your blog and I can post whatever I want. Surely, I will never need to make a future post detailing how this went horribly horribly wrong!
Further Thoughts -
The original bsky thread that led to this post was written off the back of "Kludgebuckets", which supposed a grid based system for building and maintaining vehicles, and the next post in this series will wrap that chunk of thought up in a neat little bow. This feels a bit off; like I'm only making this post to prime you for the next... But, no, that's exactly what I'm doing. Hopefully this wasn't a complete waste of your time, and the next post in this series comes out soon. (I begin to don the hot dog costume and prepare to find whoever did this)
Until Next Time,
Farmer Gadda
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Thank you in particular to Tanuki543 for your continued support!
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