[The World Below] A Question of Armour

It’s time for another blog for The World Below!

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Mi Amore

A nice, brief blog for you today, my fellow World Below spelunkers.

A question arose while our Creative Director Rich Thomas was reading through the manuscript for The World Below. Namely, he wanted to know how common armour (or armor, to those on the other side of the Atlantic (this is blatant Canada erasure. -Ian) ) is in the World Below. 

This got me thinking regarding the economy of armour and also forced me to review some of the character creation elements we have in place for The World Below. This line in particular:

Take one weapon, one armor, or one piece of adventuring equipment of importance to your character. Take two items of interest with little function.

Presently, at character creation, a player chooses a weapon or armour for their character, with the reason being that as soon as you’ve slain your first large bug or traded your first mined ores, you’ll be able to buy whatever you’re missing.

But I ask you, delving readers, whether this is a necessary step? It sets up the game so that the first few challenges will almost certainly be difficult. That, in turn, sets a tone for a harsh environment where you have to depend on your blade or your robustness to overcome a combative foe, but also depend on your allies, as some may be more inclined toward armour and resisting damage while others are your metaphorical glass cannons, rushing in with a whirl of steel, but fragile to damage.

An alternative, of course, is to allow players to give their characters both at character creation. This isn’t a game heavily dependent on X item costing Y GP or similar, so we don’t want to start characters off with a shopping trip. Should these base essentials just be assigned and taken as easily accessible, no matter who you are?


Frances Farmer the Llama Disarmer Didn’t Mean to Harm Her While Wearing Armour

These kinds of questions are ones I think we rarely consider, but are vital to keeping the mood right for a game, while also providing a mechanical heft (or weakness) to a character. 

It also affects art, as if we depict every character wearing metal and chitinous plate, it implies that most individuals roam the World Below in such a state of dress. If we instead go for the Conan / Masters of the Universe look of loincloths and negligible chest plates (looking at you, He-Man), that tells us and the readers something entirely different.

I invite you to think about this. When you picture the World Below, from whatever you’ve read of it so far, do you see armour as prevalent? Do you feel characters having armour at creation level is a must, or is it more interesting to choose between a weapon, armour, or a special item?

Let me know in the comments below! The most insightful commentator’s user name will end up in the book with some armour named after them!


Marmor is a Form of Marble

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22 thoughts on “[The World Below] A Question of Armour”

  1. It’s an interesting point – what to give characters to start with, and if they don’t have it, is it fun tracking it down later in-game, or just unnecessary work? I’m of the mind that if getting it feels essential and inevitable, I might as well let players have it from the start, as then we can get into more juicy content, rather than grinding for gear. On the flip side, limitations breed creativity, and give you something to aim for. I’d aim for a happy medium, suggesting that characters start with everything, but if players want more of a challenge, then removing one item of “essential” gear changes the balance.

    As for looks, If i see a character in full armor, i don’t always assume that’s the default, and the same goes if I see the classic Conan look – just because the armor isn’t visible, it doesn’t mean they don’t have some way of replicating the same effect.

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  2. If I’m crawling through tight places or walking and climbing over hard surfaces, rigid armor doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t squeeze through areas or gain purchase via friction as easily. Aesthetically, I think chitinous armor looks great. I’m just not sure how useful it would be day to day. So, I would prefer only having rigid armor over vital areas with the rest either exposed or some kind of leather or cloth armor.

    Insulation might also be an issue. I’m assuming the caves are heated in some way, but typically the underground is a pretty constant temp. I kind of imagine warm air circulating The World Below, but the stone is still cold to the touch. That would bring about condensation, and the more of your body you have in contact with the stone, the more heat it absorbs from you.

    I guess I lean most towards some kind of cloth or leather armor with hard parts over vital organs (like He-Man’s heart, I guess?) Also, I’m fine with everyone getting a weapon, armor, and some standard adventuring gear. You’re going to be adventuring, I assume you planned to do so and prepared.

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  3. Hmmm… I can see going both ways with it. What if they received two important items instead of just one? Then they could have a weapon and armor if they wanted, or adventuring equipment and armor, or a pair of weapons, etc. It would mean they’d still be relying on others for at least one category, but they’d have a bit more room for variety.

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  4. Does it always have to be a death that grants armour, though? lots of hard shelled things shed their outer layers on the regular, so would some resources be super abundant, like discared giant crab shells that can be broken up to make scale mail? Or like, dragon eggshells? I think I’d like some nice low level armors to pick from at the start but not just hard armor, like a friendly slime that hangs on to you. or anemones, like stingling nettles or something.

    Yes armor from the start but not all of them with just boring bludgeoning resistance. Armor that bites back.

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  5. I like the idea of subpar armor being available at chargen to show how dangerous the World Below is. That you and your local adventurers cling to mundane protections as your best line of defense against Kaos, and least until you have better options.

    Living underground, the armors could be made of different metals and minerals from the local environment, and maybe the type of metals used in the armors could you things about the wearer: where they came from, etc

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  6. If you know that you’re going to be in harms way, then you’d head out wearing something, even if it’s just a leather coat or thick clothing. On this note, it’s worth mentioning that heavy or layered fabric can do a good job of stopping (or at least reducing the damage from) bladed weapon attacks, and for a fair chunk of european history garments made of quilted linen were considered acceptable as entry-level armour for battlefield use.
    Having a range of qualities of armour available and being able to start with something fairly basic, but wanting to upgrade it soon as seems perfectly plausible to be.

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  7. Also from a game design perspective, starting with one item type and heavily pushing the players to get the other encourages more of a ‘loot-grinding’ playstyle, and suggests to new players that is what The World Below will be about. I think this is fine if it’s intentional, but if the focus is more on exploration and Kaos then, we should just start with a full set so players don’t have to think about inventory management unless that’s what’s fun for them

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    • Yes, this. Like, my understanding of the rules is that equipment isn’t incidental, but it’s also not meant to be half your character sheet like in D&D or Diablo, so ..yeah, don’t make it a loot grind at the beginning.

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      • This. The difficulty and grittiness of early combat encounters should come from the dungeons and the monsters in them.

        As for the world building, just because some resources are scarce doesn’t mean all resources have to be scarce. I can imagine some resources would be much scarcer underground (food, water, etc) while others would be more plentiful (ie., the metals and chitin/bone/leathers you can use to make armor).

        The type of armor you find in a settlement could also tell you something about the settlement, even lead to a plot hook. Ie, maybe one settlement only wears bone armor and refuses to wear chitin for religious reasons. Maybe another settlement has rare metal armors, but they have no mines or trade deals, so where did they get the armors? Thievery, a Faustian bargain, a dangerous smelting technique they keep secret? – Keeping armor available opens up these story hooks!

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  8. From my reading of the ashcan (and the blogs), it seems that TWB is emphasizing the spelunking aspect of the game more than the social. Starting off, it makes sense for a beginning adventurer to have either a weapon or armor, then through looting and quest rewards trade up to a more complete kit. I don’t see much of a problem with having to choose between one or the other, especially as, during chargen, the player is already factoring in how the rest of the mechanics (Skills+Attributes, theses, etc) will impact their effectiveness. Plus, if starting off with a more experienced party, I don’t see why you can’t have the option of allowing players to take both.

    I do wonder how many people will choose the adventuring equipment, though. It’ll be difficult for a player to justify the cost of losing combat ability over a +1 enhancement for certain situations, but this is coming from me not having a whole lot of practical experience with Storypath (Old or Ultra).

    On the subject of armor in lore, I think it should be saved for the most dangerous of denizens. Most of the standard adventurers or guards should have modular or piecemeal defenses, so that when there’s a couple of big dudes in full Dire Ant Plate standing outside a building, it really emphasizes the importance of who they’re protecting. Otherwise, during exploration, I figure most would want to wear flexible clothing with maybe some padding to protect vulnerable body bits.

    So maybe not full He-Man, though I can imagine a few barely-clothed folk here and there. The generations since society moved underground may have caused people to become more resilient or comfortable with crawling through caves in their undies or something.

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  9. I personally would always choose a weapon over armor, because what good is a full plate, if you can’t cut into the giant beetle chewing on you? You just die slower. On the other hand, you have to tell players, that want to play tanks, they just have to survive their first adventure until they can fulfill their main purpose, whilst Shiluetts just start to murder at the very first second. (Depending on what Synthesis you are putting out there.) Even with Kaos magic and some other cool stuff, people are having a hard time finding ideas, on what to do in a fight without a weapon.
    Honestly, I don’t want to see Conan armor in the world below. There are just too many hazards, that people actually would think, that bare-breasted is the way to go venturing into the depths. (Not, that there might not be exceptions, but generally people like to continue living.) If we wouldn’t want people to go full armor from the beginning, give them something makeshift, that erodes over the first adventure. Parts of animals, fabric, and only very few metals are making up most of the armors, that I envision for starter equipment.
    Generally, I could see a lot of “light” armor from strong fibers in the World Below. It doesn’t weigh you down too much, and is more adaptable for confined spaces and so on. The next most important element for armor would be parts of creatures, shells, bones, hide, and so on.

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  10. I agree with others–I’d end up choosing weapons over armor, and I think something like plate mail might be too heavy and inflexible for some of the terrains I’d come across. So, strangely, insect shell “plate mail” might be the worst armor you can get. I imagine leather or chainmail would be very highly prized. Chainmail over padding is really pretty good armor.

    I actually do think only one weapon or armor to start because scarcity is a huge theme of the game, and as much as I love how much wonder there is in the game, I want to maintain that darker bite and that reminder of scarcity every time I make a character. That appeals to me. Like, even having some flavor text like “Resources are scarce in the World Below. Choose armor or a weapon,” would be great for people to read every time they make a character to set the tone and the theme of the game even in character creation. Huge believer in that.

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  11. Is the picture of an antagonist or a protagonist? I hope it’s the latter, as that would subvert expectations.

    As I said on the previous post, I’m hoping for a preview about dragons, which we know exist based on the art. I’d like to see what The World Below’s unique take on them is.

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  12. From what I’ve been following, I picture armor being valuable, but anything in use is walking a fine line between protection and mobility. Sturdy enough that if you accidentally fall onto sharp rocks you’ll be mostly in one piece, but light and spread out enough to stay as out of the way as possible.

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  13. Hello! I just want my new name to show up places. ;-P

    I love the idea of characters getting a trinket or two. It starts telling stores right away when I’ve done it in other games.

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  14. Given this is a game of existential threat and survival, I’d go with fragile, ad-hoc armor for most characters. Sure, some powerful foes could have a full, functioning set of armor, but everyone else? Improvised, incomplete, barely functional. Having some armor (especially on your head) is better than no armor, so try to adapt something. But The Real Stuff is rare and you simply have to improvise.

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  15. I would opine that it depends on character concept, player’s play-style, and the campaign’s overall “lethality level” agreed upon by the whole table.
    A character designed as an artificer-type might pick a kind of “armor” better-suited to forge-work than combat but for whatever reason their ‘apron’ or ‘gauntlets’ are the only combat-gear they can bring into the field.
    An exploration-oriented character’s idea of ‘armor’ might be more akin to what we surface-grubbers would consider ‘personal protective gear’: reinforced padding for joints, hips, feet or hands, a helmet better suited to deflecting falling debris, and so on, but would still need some sort of generally-defensive weapon that could serve multiple uses; she may well have independently invented the World Below’s equivalent of a ‘folding entrenching tool’ or ‘Swiss Army knife’.
    Factor that in with just how often the average character will encounter significant and active threats to life and limb. Does the campaign begin in a settlement with well-designed defenses and competent defenders? Reduced need for everyone to have weapons and armor while ‘at home’; the ‘soft, city-slickers’ equivalent. On the other hand, if the starting point is competing with more than one nest of monsters for the same array of relatively scarce resources, then the PCs probably grew up with ‘raids’ as a fact of life and may well see no real difference between ‘armor’ and ‘clothing’, and ‘weapons’ become likewise as unthinkable to face the day without.
    Ultimately, I encourage discussion among the players to determine whether their characters ‘need’ armor from the jump, or whether the characters should ‘pick two or even three’, based on what they all agree for the campaign’s lethality-rating.
    (If you choose my comment, please use “Thaumaturgic Sergeant” or “Perrin Inkslinger” for my credit-name…)

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  16. Thinking on it, the existence of this blog post probably means this is worth more consideration than just a single line in the chargen section.

    Whichever way you decide on the default, maybe adding a note “(to tweak starting equipment and difficulty, see pg. XX)” and have that point to a section in the ST part of the book where you, basically, put in that blog post and maybe a few other things about how to make the game easier/harder or something.

    Because, while it’s good to have a default setting for starting equipment, it’s better if everyone understands why that’s the default for starting equipment, so they can change things intentionally.

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