TheArmoury

ArmouryDatabasePipeDream

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There was some discussion about 'what does get used in the armoury anyway', so I thought I'd pour some of my frustrations from trying to ref interactives out of the armoury (linears weren't so bad because we knew what we wanted and packed just that into boxes first, moving the stress back to the interactives again).

Things which I particularly remember constantly looking for in the armoury:

• Plain shirts for generic humans
  • Peasant shirts for peasants (homespun / brown / flannel / otherwise rustic-looking)
  • Plain shirts for craftsman/townsfolk
  • Fancy shirts for merchants/nobles
  • Importantly, a noticeably different shirt to the last person I just went in as!

• Robes / long-sleeved tunics for making people a certain colour in a hurry
  • Colour-coded mages
  • Elementals, esp. summoned elementals for rituals
  • Demons, esp. summoned demons for rituals
  • Black for death churches
  • We've been using tabards and random shirts and headscarves and even sashes to try and cover people's arms and legs a lot with this

• Armour
  • Generic leather armour - we're getting on for 'enough torso pieces' but stuff that covers arms and legs is still in short supply, especially as most of the vambraces are too tight for most people
  • Metal armour - interactive NPCs basically never get more than two point armour without specific prior arrangement because we don't have any which means we end up either having guards which are lame or guards which are overstatted to compensate for the lack of armour when people storm buildings from an interactive, neither of which is good.

• Weapon loops / belts
  • 'Is there a weapon loop or drop scabbard left?' 'No.'
  • 3/4 of the PCs don't have their own weapon loops or drop scabbards either, so basically all the monsters have to carry their weapons in hand.

• Props
  • Absolutely anything which can be used as a generic Magic Tat prop - necklaces, that awful crown thing, a foam acorn - gets reused and reused and reused
  • Often needed at very short notice and the selection we have gets repurposed regularly
  • Because everything in the props box has been used as a major magic item (and some really daft things like belts as amulets etc) it's hard to send people in with mundane accessories to distinguish them
  • Basically all of the 'obscure stuff nobody uses' in the armoury has been pressed into service tied in a ball as some kind of thing because we don't have enough 'some kind of thing' physreps.
  • Some bags / containers / sacks would be really nice - several times I've had to tie the arms of bits of clothing in order to have something that an NPC can carry stuff in (either because they have too much stuff to hold or because they want to keep the thing they are carrying hidden).

• Sashes / organisation tags / organisation tabards
  • One of something is generally fine, two of something very common is fine, three of any particular thing is nearly impossible - more generic colour tabards to march in behind someone wearing the organisation one?

• Incorporeal kit
  • We have a couple of these but sometimes we want six wraiths coming in through the walls and people complain if incorporeal things go out in less than obvious kit

• Makeup
  • Once upon a time the armoury had some, but then it all got mixed in with each other and lost and ever since we have borrowed makeup off players instead.

• Other individual monster kit
  • Every time we got unique monster kit together (e.g. waistcoats for the Bedlam Boys) it got separated and buried in different armoury boxes, half of which didn't turn up to the next interactive.
  • Okay, so maybe it was just the waistcoats, and mostly Churchill's fault, I just have these bad memories of waistcoats.

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Would the armoury like some more drop scabbards? Last time I made some they disappeared within the term... --Pufferfish

Stuff like 'More plain tabards' is pretty trivial to make, tbh, especially if high-quality finishing isn't an issue. Maybe we should go on a mass Treasury-funded charity shop for Generic Human Kit... --Locksmith

TBH I think the greatest contribution that could be made to the armoury is sorting very commonly used items into boxes according to their actual use and having someone store the armoury who is willing to sometime during the week put the stuff back in the right boxes (and what the 'right box' is might vary depending on what the refs are running at the moment, but refs are probably too busy to do this themselves, which is a little awkward). We're looking at getting shelves for the spare room so we can store things more efficiently in there and hence store the armoury and do this. --ChessyPig

So you want more stuff fitting into some specific catagories, bits of useful armour, fresh props and new unique items, and some multiple instances of uniform-like kit. And for it to be organised and not to get lost. Fair enough, and I agree with Locksmith that a shopping trip might help. Also, why does the 'right box' change. I was under rthe impression that is was organised by 'type of kit' for easier use? --Darktachyon

Currently it's organised by 'type of kit'. If I know that I'm going to be kitting up mostly things that have to be black or white all over, I would prefer a box of 'black' and a box of 'white', whether they're plain shirts / fancy shirts / robes / tabards / whatever doesn't matter so much. --ChessyPig

Also, I just got a purple velvet shirt-type garment that can go in fancy clothes. It's *humungous* but works well as a posh tunic on a small person or a posh shirt on a big person :P --Locksmith