Equipment
One-pager — the keystone. Everything you can own, drive, wield, or wear is an object: a basic object (a noun) plus modifications (adjectives). Weapons, armor, vehicles, and tools are just objects with extra stats. NPCs and monsters use the same pattern (see those pages).
Object = noun + adjectives
A basic object is the noun: sword, pistol, sedan, backpack. A modification is an adjective with a defined game effect: fine, shoddy, sporty, cut-down. You build the item you want by putting adjectives in front of the noun — and that's exactly how you say it at the table: a cut-down pistol, a sporty sedan.
This is also how the catalog stays short. If a "new" item is really a variant of one you already have, it isn't a separate entry — it's an adjective on an existing noun: a carbine is a light rifle, a destrier is a warhorse. One good adjective often covers several real items: the weapon-specific cut-down gives you both a sawn-off shotgun and a snub-nose revolver — easier to conceal, worse at range. One noun, many items.
Stats every object can have
Most objects need only a couple of these; list a stat only when it isn't obvious.
- PM (Performance Modifier) — the ease-factor modifier for using the object as intended. A +1 sword is a better sword; it does nothing extra when used to hammer nails. Some objects carry several labeled PMs (a melee weapon has Attack, Parry, and Damage).
- Size / Weight — for carrying, concealment, and encumbrance.
- TL — its technology level (and so whether a given culture can buy, repair, or originate it — see Technology Levels).
- Price — in svu.
- Fail — how prone it is to break or jam, if that ever matters.
- Damage Scale — for very large or tough objects (see Damage).
Categories
Each category is its own short, alphabetized list with a few category-specific stats:
- Weapons — Attack, Parry, Damage (with type and penetration), Reach or Range, Usage (one/two-handed, etc.).
- Armor — Protection (by damage type), and the penalties it imposes (perception in a helmet, coordination in gauntlets, agility in a heavy suit).
- Vehicles — Cruise, Max, Terrain, Accelerate, Turn, Redline, Passengers, Cargo. Spacecraft are vehicles; an electric/hybrid drive is a TL6 modification, not a new category.
- Tools — the PM they grant to the task they're for (binoculars, lock picks, a surgeon's kit).
- Other Stuff — everything else, with the minimal stats it actually needs.
Modifications (the general set)
These apply to almost anything; categories add their own.
| Mod | Effect |
|---|---|
| Custom / Quality | Pay a lot for one specific advantage (+1), often with a minor offset — usually reliability or weight. This is also what a character's own skill produces when they customize gear: a successful craft/tune task makes something Custom. |
| Cheap / Shoddy | Worse across the board, and especially unreliable — but much cheaper. |
| Poorly Maintained | Even more unreliable than Shoddy, and sometimes worse in other respects. A condition, not a price point; gear drifts here through neglect. |
| Reliable | Fails far less often. More expensive. |
| Light | Smaller, lighter, often cheaper — but a little worse, or lower capacity. |
| Heavy | Bigger, heavier, more expensive — higher capacity or sturdier. |
Grain note. ForeSight's modifiers are ease factors — steps on the EF ladder (0, ¼, ½, 1, 2 … 15), applied before SC = Score × EF. A single step is a powerful lever: +1 EF adds your whole Score to the success chance in the sweet spot (Score 15 at EF 5→6 goes 75% → 90%, i.e. +15), and about half your Score down at the ¼/½ rungs. (Contrast ForePlay, where +1 was a flat ~10%, tapering at the edges.) Two consequences: modifiers stay small — a modification is usually just ±1 EF — and the same +1 helps a more skilled character more in absolute terms. When porting ForePlay numbers, its +2 or +3 maps to roughly +1 EF here, never one-to-one.
Descriptions: say what it is and why you'd want one
List entries get minimal descriptions — but useful ones. The job of a description is to tell a reader what the thing is and why a character would carry it. D&D famously listed a 10′ pole and never said it was for probing floors for traps from a safe distance; don't do that. One honest sentence beats a paragraph of stats restated in prose.
Designer's Note: "objects are nouns plus adjectives" is the same idea that runs through NPCs, vehicles, and even background factors. Learn it once and the whole back half of the book is the same move applied to different lists. (And you already speak this language — nobody says "pistol, cut-down"; they say "cut-down pistol.")