3 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

OK I'm fuzzy on this then.

Are you saying you have them specify what's on their person vs. what's in their backpack vs. what's on the ship?

I mean, the utility belt item is just an Enc granting item, it doesn't actually have anything on it the players wouldn't already have included in their inventory...

The way they used it was to have incidental little things in it that were too minor to log in inventory. I had them specify exactly what was in it instead of letting them pull out even trivial stuff. No one has any of the talents that allow you to pull things out of thin air but if they buy it with XP I won't make it a waste and it will work RAW. I call anything that lets you produce items from nowhere a bag of tricks, even if the tricks aren't useful.

Part of my motivation there was that I was tired of constant inane stage direction concerning items like lip balm and protein bars.

Some Players like to have an inventory list and I'm not going to take away their moment when they can point to that one perfect thing they've been carrying around that saves the day so I encourage my Players to maintain a reasonable list. I don't require every little item but weapons, armour, special tools (anything that gives a bonus or is larger than ENC 1 that does something you can't do with out it), extra reloads, and number Stimpacks have to be listed if you want to have them. Other than that if not written down it's DP or Talent, this may sound harsh but we flip DPs a lot in my sessions so it still remains a cost but it's not an onerous one. This also gives me an opportunity to say no or place an obstacle between them and the item they want (add some drama), plus it gives those Players who do like to keep track of things that little moment I mentioned earlier.
I am however more concerned with Encumbrance because it is a valuable balancing tool and forces Players to rely on role playing rather than gear to solve all their problems. I don't track it but I trust my Players will and they're pretty honest and they know that if it sounds like they are carrying all the things I may ask them to do a quick calculation. Honestly though it's come up once in the last year of play and they were only over by a couple of points so they handed a tool kit to another PC to carry. This actually came up later during a combat where they need that kit and so they had to deal with under fire. No one complained, in fact it added to the situation and that combat was more exciting.

So in short, track your stuff but you still have access to DPs if you forget or don't think of something important. Keep track of your ENC or at least don't abuse it to the point I notice it.

On ‎8‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 4:43 PM, FuriousGreg said:

Some Players like to have an inventory list and I'm not going to take away their moment when they can point to that one perfect thing they've been carrying around that saves the day so I encourage my Players to maintain a reasonable list. I don't require every little item but weapons, armour, special tools (anything that gives a bonus or is larger than ENC 1 that does something you can't do with out it), extra reloads, and number Stimpacks have to be listed if you want to have them. Other than that if not written down it's DP or Talent, this may sound harsh but we flip DPs a lot in my sessions so it still remains a cost but it's not an onerous one. This also gives me an opportunity to say no or place an obstacle between them and the item they want (add some drama), plus it gives those Players who do like to keep track of things that little moment I mentioned earlier.
I am however more concerned with Encumbrance because it is a valuable balancing tool and forces Players to rely on role playing rather than gear to solve all their problems. I don't track it but I trust my Players will and they're pretty honest and they know that if it sounds like they are carrying all the things I may ask them to do a quick calculation. Honestly though it's come up once in the last year of play and they were only over by a couple of points so they handed a tool kit to another PC to carry. This actually came up later during a combat where they need that kit and so they had to deal with under fire. No one complained, in fact it added to the situation and that combat was more exciting.

So in short, track your stuff but you still have access to DPs if you forget or don't think of something important. Keep track of your ENC or at least don't abuse it to the point I notice it.

I would say that this sounds to me like a great way to do it. I have some issues with one or two of my players in one of my weekly games with "Accounting Challenges" which resulted in my Inventory obsession, but if I didn't have them I would prefer to do more like what you are talking about because I feel that is in the spirit of the game.

At this point, what has happened though is the **** Character Generator gives the player access to, and knowledge of all the items in all the splat books. This makes the Itemization aspect of the game kind of wide open from the get go, which I enjoyed for the first few campaigns, but now I am tired of the Go-To items showing up on starting characters.

In reading through the character creation rules it looks like Rarity does not get rolled for starting items, so like any game if players want to get something more powerful they will often include it in the pitch for their character or just put in on the sheet and see if it gets gigged.

So what I have done is to get rid of most of the non-iconic items in the splat books (something that is just in a splat book because they wanted a better version of an existing item so they call it a Tagge-Co Model 55 Kitchen Broom instead of the Core Rulebook Kitchen Broom and give it Pierce 2 and Vicious 1) and to create a generator that will apply qualities and stat changes to base items. If a base weapon is manufactured without Qualities, but there is another one that isn't much different in cost but has Qualities on it then it would stand to reason that the lesser gun or item is just junk or at least substandard. But if most items are the base items and those other items are special, then the Treasure "feel" of those special items is very appealing to me.

For shopping: I use the RAW Rarity but I throw a lot of Setbacks on for stuff that I think would be more rare than they say in the book, of if in the current context of the game finding a Corellian Cutlass because your last one bit the dust isn't very likely. I also feel like a roll is in order to see if the character even knows about the equipment in the first place. I'm from Tatooine and have never left it but my farm boy knows what a Corellian Cutlass or Battlement Power Armor is automatically? The sometimes underused Knowledge skills could come into play there, or the Weapon Skill itself used as a knowledge check. I'm not talking about the ability to use this stuff, because in Star Wars everyone knows how to use everything, but I'm talking about not being automatically, comprehensively aware of all equipment.