Equipment

ForeSight (1986), pp. 65–70 — a best-effort cleanup of the machine-extracted original; expect residual OCR noise. Compare with the source PDF. About this restoration.

[6.0] Equipment

Characters in FS will almost certainly want equipment of sorts other than weapons and vehicles. This section of the rules provides a very incomplete list of equipment available to FS characters at given technological levels. The descriptions of the items are minimal, but include the following pieces of information:

Skill/Field: any skill or field which the item can be used in conjunction with; this does not mean that the item is necessarily appropriate to all tasks involving the field.

PM: a modifier to tasks making appropriate use of an item (eg. an artist could expect to use his camera's +1 PM to improve his photographs, but this does not mean the camera makes a good club). Similarly, if the equipment is required for a task, and has a detrimental PM, this must also be applied. An R indicates that the skill or field listed is used to repair the item.

Wgt: the mass of the item, usually in kg. A Wgt of '-' indicates an item weighing a less than twenty-five grams. The units of mass used are: g, grams; kg, kilograms; t, tonnes (1 t = 1000 kg).

TL: the tech. level required to produce such an item.

Cost: price in SVU, with following suffixes: c, x100; k, x1000; M, x 1 000000; G, x 1 000000000. (The last is not used here, and is listed for convenience).

Notes: some other aspect of the item; an example of such a device from today, or from fiction; notes on the item's use, etc..

Designer's Notes: there are an awful lot of weapons available in FS, which to some extent contradicts my desire to minimise the bloodier aspects of role-playing. This is not a reflection of my subconscious, I hope, but simply reflects two things: [a] weapons can be defined in a small amount of space; [b] man tends to think of new ways of building weapons faster than most other things, and so providing representative weapons from each TL requires a fair amount of space. A lot of primitive weapons are provided since if one wants to include swords (one may as well be thorough) and there will be a Fantasy supplement (HindSight ) covering other aspects of low-tech living. Source material in FS is, shall we say, sparse, but further information, by way of clarification is available from me, and by way of more detail from the FS sourcebook (ForeScene ).

In summary: ForeSight details the rules of the system; the source material (you know: lots of guns, and cars, and aliens, and things like that) will be contained in ForeScene (for Science Fiction role-playing) and both the rules and source material required for Fantasy role-play will be in HindSight. Why am I saying this here? I don't know, but it's designer's notes, so who cares?

Toolkits

The following table gives basic sizes and costs for toolkits of varying efficacies at different TLs. These toolkits are required by anyone wishing to Implement, Diagnose, or Repair using a Field of Knowledge with a Sz (size) rating. A toolkit is field specific, and is referred to as a quality-field-kit (eg. Standard Electronics-kit). To determine the size and cost of a particular kit at a given TL, index the quality desired with the TL to find the basic size, which is multiplied by the Sz of the field it is to be used in conjunction with; the basic price is multiplied by the same number, and then divided by (TL-2)2. The PM is used for tasks involving the toolkit's field.

Not only do sunglasses enable you to look amazingly smug, they cut out the high frequency light of type A and F stars, and make you more inscrutable (ie. when you wear reflective sunglasses, anyone looking at you gets a -1 modifier to Empathy; they also tend to be less friendly, but you're a Player Character, so who cares?). Available from any drugstore ... TL5, 200g, 10svu.

Climb kits are extremely unpopular with mountain climbers; they take all the fun out of falling off mountains. The pistol-like attachment can fire a titanium alloy spike into soft rock from a vertical distance of 200m, or an adhesive anchor 300m (PM -1, Short 10, Long 30-50, DC 61, forget about reloading in combat). The harness will pull 100kg that far in 2 minutes (longer if the 100kg doesn't like being banged against rockfaces). Includes 500m of line. In general game terms it gives a +2 to Climbing. TL6, 4kg, 250svu. 500m line: 1kg, 50svu. Spike: 150g, 20svu.

Briefcases not only look sharp, they're useful for carrying [read: concealing] day-to-day equipment and items, such as packed lunches, newspapers, and DEXAXTM needle pistol ammunition. This case features genuine imitiation leather finish, and a seventeen digit combination lock.

The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation SuperHacker Intelligent Termlnal™ was designed for the express purpose of bypassing modern computer security systems. As such, it gives its user a +1 modifier to Programming tasks directed at penetrating a security system on top of any modifiers for other equipment he/she is using. Of course, possession of superhackers is frowned upon by the police ...

In ForeSight, suits of armour (including spacesuits, powered armour, and the like) are pretty well custom built. See [4.4] for details on armour.

section is vehicles, Likewise, you'll find information on the weapons which are covered in used in ForeSight in [4.4] Combat Equipment. Travel and Vehicles.

Note on batteries. A "gram of TL8 battery" is the standard unit of electrical energy in ForeSight (roughly equivalent to one kilojoule, or about 740 foot-pounds), used in standardising weapon power consumptions, and energy storage and power generation capacities. The entries given under mass are grams of TL8 battery you want to store in the battery, and add to this the maximum output per tenth of a second (this is necessary to power weapons) and multiply it by the factor given for the TL of the battery you will be using. The costs for the batteries are given per kilogram.

Note: Computers continue to get smaller and cheaper at higher TLs.

For higher TLs of the Hand Computer, see Computers.

Note: Holsters may be used for handguns only. A handgun which is more than three times as massive as its holster incurs a further +1 to Con.

Note: The quantities of explosive given here have approximately equal destructive capacity.

Personal Flyer — a self-contained unit utilizing items described elsewhere; includes an inertial locater. (Skill/Field: Personal Flyer, R.)

Note: *affects movement as exoskeleton, and can (must) ignore terrain for purposes of movement (and cover) while in the air.