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
Most 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 unfortunate 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 microscope!"), 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. The GM should allow a multi-millionaire who buys the company and has it customize his gear to acquire such equipment with cash alone!
Equipment Bond
Optionally, the GM may allow the perks Equipment Bond or Weapon Bond to stand in for "quality" gear for character concepts that don't involve great wealth. This can represent extreme-sports athletes, special-operations soldiers, and others who constantly modify and tinker with gear they've assembled from off-the-shelf components.
The Black Market
An item that's illegal to own – or stolen – may be available from one or more outlets in the underground economy. This is the black market.
Availability
Acquiring black-market goods usually requires a Contact who knows how to get in touch with the local underground. To do so, the Contact rolls against his effective Streetwise skill. A PC without a Contact can use his own Streetwise skill to locate new connections. The players specify what they're looking for, and then the GM decides on the item's local availability, applies any modifiers, and rolls in secret.
- Modifiers: A penalty equal to the local Control Rating; any Cultural Familiarity modifier; +1 if the area includes a major shipping port, borders a low-CR country, or has ineffectual (corrupt, undermanned, etc.) law enforcement; -3 in an unfamiliar area (Contacts seldom have this penalty, but PCs often do!).
Failure may result in unwanted attention from local cops or criminal syndicates. Critical failure means the buyers walk into a police "sting" operation, are ambushed by other criminals, or acquire dangerously defective goods!
Legality and Antiques
The GM may choose to make obsolete weapons – and, optionally, other antiques – available at an increased Legality Class. For every two full tech levels by which a device is obsolete, increase its LC by one, to a maximum of two over its starting LC. On reaching LC4, there are no controls at all on the item. Of course, the LC of some things won't rise with TL; in particular, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are always likely to be tightly controlled.
- Example: Deputy Marshal Rufus Kingsland,
banestorm victim, grinned as he rubbed the gleaming brass of the Gatling Model 1874 displayed in the gunshop window. Despite the motorized carriages that clogged the streets of a strangely unfamiliar Amarillo, Texas, he found himself still wishing that his battery had gone up the Rosebud with Custer instead of being left in the rear with Terry. No matter now. He had a score to settle with a Cheyenne devil. He sidled up to the counter, tipped his hat to the youngster with the spiky blue hair, and said, "How much for that there coffee mill gun?"
- At Kingsland’s original TL5, a Gatling gun is LC2. But in 1985, three TLs later, it has been obsolete for well over a century! As such, the weapon – or an exact replica, even if made at TL8 – has its LC increased by 1, making it LC3.
- After signing some papers and parting with a pocketful of gold Double Eagles to grease the transaction, Kingsland managed to get gun, tripod, and ammunition strapped onto the mules he'd bought at that new-fangled stockyard. He saddled his old roan and led the mule train down 6th Street, passing by lines of beeping carriages. It was time to break out into the badlands and track down that brujo...
Markets
The term "black market" describes all businesses that operate illegally. They might sell proscribed goods and services, deal in forgeries ("Don't mind the wet ink, officer."), or simply circumvent tax or safety laws to undercut their legitimate competitors. The GM may set up various niches within the black market that cater to specific customers and that require specialized Contacts or skill penalties (see above) to deal with. Examples of specialized black markets include:
Electronics:
Supercomputers (prototype or custom-made) and banned software ("Guaranteed to break the intrusion countermeasures on that military mainframe...but owning it will get you 20. Still want it?"). Failure means that the product you bought doesn't work as advertised or is a fake. Critical failure means that very angry people know exactly where you are ("Who's knocking at the door?").
Medical:
Cut-rate surgical procedures ("Dr. Pain will see you now..."), unlicensed (but cheap!) clinics, stolen organs (with the previous owner still attached), and prescriptions and permits for drugs ("Works just like Viagra, except that it causes cancer in lab mice."). Failure means you don't find what you're looking for, or the seller can't provide the amount requested. Critical failure means you leave with scars, placebos, or an angry amputee on your trail.
Combat Gear:
Military vehicles ("Chinese copy of the T-55 tank, fresh from the factory."), undocumented firearms (the fall from the truck erased their serial numbers), and body armor (with a minimum of unpatched bullet holes). Failure means you can only get an inferior version of what you're looking for. Critical failure means hardware that blows up in your face on first use or that's being tracked.
Prices
The black market operates in competition with the legitimate market for many goods. To sell items that are readily available through legal channels, it can only compete by making them easier to acquire (which is rare) or by selling them at lower prices (by not charging taxes, unloading cheap copies, or fencing stolen goods). Easily copied media and textiles can sell for as little as 5% of the usual price. Almost everything else sells for around 60% of full price.
The black market is opportunistic. If an item is hard to acquire legally, dealers will ruthlessly exploit their edge over the legitimate market. Successful haggling with the Merchant skill can bring the price down – but black-market dealers rarely have any incentive to offer discounts!
Local availability and demand are major factors in the final price. A war-torn country may have an abundance of LC1 military weapons that desperate locals will happily sell for a huge discount to anyone with hard currency...while electronics and food have outrageous markups. A rich, peaceful country may have a thriving black market in cheap alcohol and pirated movies, but LC0-3 weapons might not be available at any price.
Gray Markets
"Gray markets" are pseudo-legal means of acquiring controlled – or at least questionable – goods. Private citizens who sell one another legal weapons for cash can create a steady gray market in unregistered weapons. A legally prescribed drug can generate a gray market if resold without a prescription. A thriving gray market in body armor may exist because a company refuses to sell its product to civilians, even though they may legally possess it, but does business with police and security personnel without a rigorous ID check.
Gray-market goods are easier to find. Roll as above, but at +3 to skill. As well, the GM should assess far less severe penalties for failure.
Outlawed Goods
Outlawed (LC0) goods are those banned by governments that are willing and able to enforce a strict ban. Historically, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons have been outlawed. A civilian looking to purchase a nerve-gas shell, a tactical nuke, or a weaponized strain of Ebola virus probably won't have much luck.
Locating outlawed goods is best handled as an adventure. Failure can mean anything from kidnapped loved ones ("Deliver the package or we kill the girl.") to imprisonment ("Two men were arrested today in a police raid on a warehouse in...") or death ("The Solsnetskaya do not appreciate your incompetent business practices.").