Twilight2013 starting equipment scarcity

[adimar]

I am about to start a new twilight 2013 game.
And am going over the starting equipment rules. These state that each character can have up to his emergency load of stuff.
My main problem with this is that it doesn't take into account the consumables rarity.
i.e. The book mentions how consumables like small arms ammo, batteries & canned foods become very rare (not to mention things like antibiotics, heavy weapons ammo and survival rations)

I was thinking of applying a penalty to the starting cost in terms of weight allowance of rare equipment (also as a guideline to barter price).
Rare stuff: (x5 weight/price)
small arms ammo, canned goods, MRE, trauma plates, biodiesel, alcohol fuel
Very rare stuff (x10 weight/price)
heavy weapons ammo(anything over 7.62), antibiotics, survival rations, batteries, gasoline
It's weight in gold (x20 weight/price)
guided munitions

anyway you get the idea. How does this sound?
How did you handle this issue in your game.

Adi

[Brother in Arms]

Nothing wrong with limiting items by increasing the cost.

What about other things that are super common to us today but totally worth money after shit collapses. I guess they would be considered luxury items. Here are a few things that can be pretty sought after.


Smokeless tobacco "chew,dip,snuff "(especially popular with U.S. forces)
Cigarettes
Bic Lighters
Alcohol
Condoms
Hand Sanitizer
Baby wipes
Birth control pills (can be so women have no period)
Tampons (can be used to plug bullet holes)
Sanitary napkins(can be used as bandaged)
Quick clot
Latex Gloves
Chewing gum
100 mile per hour tape(duct tape)
5 hour Energy Shots
No doze
CLIFF Bars
Gatorade powder
Protein Powder
Beef Jerky


That is all that comes to mind at the moment..

[B.T.]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

...
Chewing gun
...

Really?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by adimar

<snip>
Very rare stuff (x10 weight/price)
heavy weapons ammo(anything over 7.62),
<snip>

I think you can afford to adjust the weapons ammo up to anything over Soviet 14.5mm but keeping special ammo like .338 Lapua for the next category given the small number of .338 weapons in service.
There's so many Browning M2 and DShK HMGs in service around the world that ammo for them is likely to be almost as common as 7.62mm - although special marksman/sniping ammo of these same calibres should be treated like the .338 example above.
Even the 14.5mm KPV is relatively common given it's use as armament on Soviet/WarPac armoured vehicles but more so because of its use for AA protection on both land and sea amongst WarPac and Soviet client states.

[stormlion1]

Just curious, where are you starting from? Europe? Asia? North America? Things like these effect what you have access to when everything went to hell.

[adimar]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

Just curious, where are you starting from? Europe? Asia? North America? Things like these effect what you have access to when everything went to hell.

I'm trying to decide between a classic European & middle-east campaigns. Being Israeli (IRL) I think my players might get a kick by having the playing environment be their own back yards.

Adi

[Brother in Arms]

I'm in agreement with SSC

.50 BMG (12.7x99MM NATO) wouldn't be too hard to come buy given the amount of M2 HB machine guns there are out there. As well as anti-material rifles (even personally owned ones here in the U.S.) You will find it in common use with all NATO units. Especially if any mechanized units are encountered.

12.7x108mm for DShk would also be common around the rest of the world especially 3rd world (not at all in the U.S. though)

14.5mm KPV (14.5x114mm) is very prevalent within the Russian military and ex warsaw pact and client states. And would also be in common use with mechanized units.

Any kind of sniper or MATCH ammo would be harder to find. .338 Lapua is a great example. But also 7.62x51mm NATO M118, or M118 LR.

I don't know about 7N1 or 7N14 for the Russian SVD. But it would definitely get shot up before they went to using machine gun ammo.

Food for guns (and thought)

Brother in Arms

[CDAT]

One more on how common .50BMG ammo is. My last deployment for our .50 we had ammo that was made in 1945, so if they still have ammo made then, and are also making new ammo there has got to be lots of it.

[Damocles]

Originally Posted by adimar

anyway you get the idea. How does this sound?
How did you handle this issue in your game.

Adi

Here's how it sounds to me: You have the whole game world to throw at them. They have one character with whatever crap they have in their pack. Now you are going to micromanage that? It's an RPG game, not a hyper-realistic simulation of world economics following WW3.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Damocles

It's an RPG game, not a hyper-realistic simulation of world economics following WW3.

If I pulled my last gaming team together again it would consist of
A HR director
A CEO/CTO of a tech company
A forensic accountant
A Mathematics professor
and 2 computer programmers.

I have gone on a few trips with these people and spreadsheets are the norm for planning ANYTHING. They would eat up the micromanagement aspect being discussed.

[DigTw0Grav3s]

I'm a big fan of giving PCs enough water to drown in.

You want a Anti-Materiel Rifle? Sure, it's yours. You didn't own it, though. You scavenged it. You've got one magazine for it, and it's at Wear 7.

[stormlion1]

Done to me once was our characters were sent out with basic loads from the FOB on patrol and when we got back after three days we returned to discover the FOB devastated and no sign of any personnel. Plenty of equipment and miscellanies but no people or vehicles. Essentially you have most anything a FOB might have but only so much room to carry stuff in the vehicle. The amount of unneeded junk that got brought along was staggering, but the Rolls of Toilet Paper came in handy that I brought.