Buying Equipment

Basic Set

Buying Equipment

You are usually able to buy what you want, within the limits of your starting wealth and your society's laws. But sometimes, the GM or the adventure may specify some or all of your equipment. For instance, if you're a soldier on a military mission, you'll be issued your gear; you don't have to pay for it, but you can't choose it yourself. If the adventure calls for it, the GM might impose more severe restrictions – your choices will be extremely limited if you are supposed to be a castaway on an uninhabited island! The GM is the final judge of what you can buy in all cases.

However you acquire your equipment, you should list it on your character sheet. If you accumulate a lot of gear, consider keeping it on a separate sheet. In all cases, you should list possessions you leave at home separately from those you carry in order to keep track of encumbrance (see Encumbrance and Move).

Equipment Lists

Each game world has one or more equipment lists that give cost, weight, and other statistics for important items. You can buy items that aren't on the list, provided the GM agrees; the GM sets the price. The GM should be open-minded! In high-tech settings, especially, hundreds of common items are unlikely to be listed...items you could go into any department store and pick up. If somebody really wants a vegetable dicer or a talking baby doll, let him buy one.

This chapter includes lists of weapons, armor, and general equipment for campaigns at a variety of tech levels. You are welcome to make copies of these tables for your own use.

Tech Level

Each item of equipment has a tech level. This is the earliest TL at which you can find the item as described. Many items will remain in use, with few or no changes, at later TLs. The notation "^" means the item requires "superscience" that rewrites the laws of physics; required TL is up to the GM.

Size Modifier and Equipment

Adjusting for SM: Clothing, life-support gear, and similar personal items assume a user the size of a normal, adult human (SM 0). When buying equipment for larger or smaller individuals, multiply cost and weight by a factor that depends on the user's Size Modifier:

SM	Factor		SM	Factor
SM -4	×1/20		SM +4	×20
SM -3	×1/10		SM +5	×50
SM -2	×1/5		SM +6	×100
SM -1	×1/2		SM +7	×200
SM +1	×2		SM +8	×500
SM +2	×5		SM +9	×1,000
SM +3	×10		SM +10	×2,000

High-Tech

ost legal equipment is available from shops or catalogs, but getting hold of expensive items (in general, articles that cost more than the campaign's average starting wealth or those that require licenses may involve dealing directly with a manufacturer, authorized dealer, or other specialist. This may be a fast and simple process for expensive-but-commonplace civilian items (e.g., automobiles), but it can take longer to find a specialized item and arrange for its sale – especially if it is valuable to collectors, requires a direct order from the manufacturer, or calls for special paperwork. The GM may require Area Knowledge or Research rolls to find exotic equipment, and/or Administration or Streetwise rolls to acquire it without bureaucratic headaches or shipping delays.

You Get What You Pay For

In real life, people pay exorbitant sums for gear that may or may not offer an advantage. Fads, fashion, peer pressure, and poor research can all steer a shopper down the wrong aisle. In GURPS, however, the transparent nature of equipment ratings means that the players know which items give the best performance – even if their characters wouldn't. Players who abuse this knowledge can challenge the GM's efforts to prevent the proliferation of powerful hardware in the campaign.

Luckily, the GM has a number of methods to control vantage shoppers. As in real life, the GM may force buyers to seek high-quality equipment by two equally valid routes: expert knowledge and ludicrous prices.

Expert Knowledge: An equipment hunter might roll against

appropriate skills (e.g., Connoisseur or Expert Skills) or seek guidance from Allies, Contacts, or Patrons. This is similar to the black market, but the potential consequences are less severe. Instead of being jailed or kidnapped, the unfortu- nate buyer is subjected to opinionated windbags, harassed by so-called “experts,” or swindled by dishonest shysters. If the required roll fails, assume that the gear is located but is only of normal quality . . . regardless of its price. Ludicrous Prices: A shopper with more money than good sense can simply buy the experience and contacts necessary to assemble superior kit. He might hire the world’s foremost experts (“I retained three Nobel Prize-winning scientists to solve this little problem for me.”), pay for extensive tests (“I want the entire shield inspected with an atomic force micro- scope!”), or at TL6+, simply take the brute-force approach (“Hire 100 Indian laborers to hand-make 10 a day apiece until we get a suppressor that rates -22 dB. Junk the rest.”). The result is the “best-quality” gear discussed on p. B345. The GM should allow a multi-millionaire who buys the com- pany and has it customize his gear to acquire such equip- ment with cash alone! Optionally, the GM may allow Equipment Bond (see above) or Weapon Bond (p. 250) to stand in for “quality” gear for character concepts that don’t involve great wealth. This can represent extreme-sports athletes, special-operations sol- diers, and others who constantly modify and tinker with gear they’ve assembled from off-the-shelf components.

See Also

• Legality Class