scrap notes, system for equipment , skills and background

Brendan  (http://www.necropraxis.com/) was asking about one roll equipment systems and asked if I should bother typing up one of mine and he was like yeah do that and I was like yeah cool and man if you don't like run on sentances you must be hating this blog

ANYWAY:

Been trying to jam as much of the character creation system together as I can and also keep it "new school" in the sense you get have a special snowflake but not in the way that requires 2 hours of creation.

This was my way of putting skills, starting equipment, and background together:

PAST:
Your past determines what stuff you have and any usefully capabilities you may have picked up.
When you are playing the game and you try something that requires an ability check and you think that your past might be relevant tell the g.m. If they are convinced you will get an Advantage to the roll. Make a note of this, because you will get Advantage any other time a situation similar to this happens. Then make a Intelligence check. If you succeed you can keep bringing up your Past in future. If you fail, that's it. That is all your character managed to get the hang off.

You may choose or roll a past from below. The weapon and armour description is mainly for how you picture your character, ignore it if it is not interesting. If you to have a Past not on here either talk to the g.m before hand and arrange something or just write it down and pick 4 items from any pasts equipment. HOWEVER you will have 5 seconds to do so. If pick something that is not actually there that counts as a wasted choice. You will need someone else to count out loud at you.

1. SCAVENGER:
Starts with:
Sacks, long hooked pole, protective mask, shovel
your weapons and armour is:
"scrouged and repaired"

2.HUNTER
Starts with:
dried meats, snares, calls, scent
your weapons and armour is:
"self made and simple"

3.REFUGEE:
Starts with:
esoteric cultural item, concealed jewellery,compass,trade item
your weapons and armour is:
"distinctive and unfamilar"

4.PEASANT:
Starts with:
domesticated animal, basic trade good, lard, homebrew
your weapons and armour is:
"repurposed tools"

5. PETTY CRIMINAL
Starts with:
bad drugs, stolen valuable, blinding dust, caltrops
your weapons and armour is:
"stolen and/or easily concealable"

6.DILETTANTE:
Starts with:
jewellery, weird drugs, reading material, clockwork toy
your weapons and armour is:
"gaudy and distinctive"

7:EXPLORER
Starts with:
lantern, maps, crowbar, chalk
your weapons and armour is:
"ancient and rare"

8:MYSTIC
Starts with:
divination tools, spirit cleansing incense, fireworks, blankets
your weapons and armour is:
"anointed and festooned"


Design notes:
There is only 8 because I'm having a lot of new people play soon and too many choices actually slows people down apparently. I love them myself but hey. The pasts are biased to ones that kinda lead to a life of being a wandering danger junkie as opposed to a general cross section of life.
If someone wants to be a broke blacksmith or a disgraced scholar that's fine though.
Need to rethink some of equipment .

No one has a tent or some other stuff but plenty of the Pasts have jewellery or trade goods and I figure trying to trade flour for a tent or trying to find a fence is a good way of meeting people and starting stuff.
Otherwise desperately ill equipped is fine too.

Still haven't worked out how I want to do weapons and armour and I might leave off the descriptors in the final version, as they might confuse beginners.

The schrodinger's skill system owes a debt to Zzarchov's excellent Neoclassical Geek Revival

Terrain:UNDER LANDS

Here are some new terrains to sprinkle around your maps or elaborate fisher-king fantasy life

BRAMBLE HELL:

Like a tangle of blackberry but with canes girthing in metres. The underlayer is passable , the ancient bottom canes arching at about 2-4 metres above you.
It's very dark , dusty ,  with a few patient lichens,  eldritch fungus and ghostly ferns. Moving vertically is an engineering project, with metres of wood, sword length thorns (technically prickles)  , and eye searing sap.  The middle layer has a bit more light,  weird dirt pockets with bizarre microbiomes , and bird nests. The top layer is a violent sea of green and crimson waving thorn cane. And birds. And insects. Violently territorial birds and insects.

 RESOURCES:
unique fungus, herbs. Emperor bramble sap. Bird eggs of some obnoxious fairy tale quest variety.

HAZARDS:
Occasional cane collapses (see Rocs below), thorns, sap,  cordyceps fungus.

BEASTS : Weasel like elegated pangolins of a variety of sizes; The smallest slinking around the tops eating birds the biggest slinking around the bottom and eating you. Rocs like to make their nests in the middle layer , sometimes causing collapses.  Dali Stilt mini elephants that migrate vertically as they grow. Spiders. Mites. Ticks. Beetles etc. Spiders that make themselves bird costumes to get birds to try and fight them. Giant red-eyed vorpal Kiwis.

OTHERS: Dueling ant knights sculpting the throne bases like ant castles , beetle grumble men, dancing fungus, millennium seeds , thorn entombed castles (maybe the cause of cargocult ant people behaviour) ,


FROZEN SKY TIDE LAND:

Underneath frozen sea ice somewhere where the tide goes out for half a year at a time.
The drowned can fake their lives better when it's out and will trade for props for their sad mummery. Most things hunker down or wander out with the tide. The crustaceans mainly rule but it's the perfect place for spirit world diplomacy

RESOURCES:
wrecks, shellfish (pearls), anything that otherwise would require going underwater to get. Corals.

HAZARDS: collapsing roofs, lurking anemones like an anus rock for your foot to enter. Ghosts. Spirits of cambain dead. Dream eating coral.

BEASTS: crustaceans (fortified tank like lobsters, long legged hair stealing crabs , eerily bone scrying isopods ) scythed beaked penguins sliding on their bellies to murder you , spirit court fox courtier. Polar bear mercenaries seeking work in the spirit worlds.

OTHERS: A shipwreck trapped in the ice above  accessed from the gash in its belly. Isopod fortune teller. The drowned that are forbidden the afterlifes of sea or land and make fake ones.