Starting Equipment (Midnight)
Characters in MIDNIGHT use the normal rules for starting equipment, ignoring variables like an item’s worth in the character’s starting region, but use vp instead of gp (see A Barter Economy for clarification on the economy of occupied Erenland). Characters may begin play with weapons, armor, shields, adventuring gear, tools and skill kits, clothing, or anything granted by their racial descriptions. All other items are either too valuable to waste on an adventuring lifestyle, like beasts of burden that could be used for food or to assist in agriculture, illegal to possess, like warhorses or wagons, or simply do not exist in MIDNIGHT, like smokesticks, sunrods, and other special alchemical substances and items. Characters may also spend starting vp (and should) on enough food to feed themselves for one week.
Players are encouraged to spend as much of their starting vp value as possible on this equipment, and any vp not spent on a specific item is lost. While a starting character could use this opportunity to ignore an item’s regional worth by stockpiling valuable or hard-to-find goods, keep in mind that he may not begin the game in a situation to take advantage of that wealth. A beginning character with a wagon-load of goods and no weapons or adventuring equipment is likely to have it taken from him, or have to abandon it, fairly early in his career, leaving him worse off than a “poor” character that began the game with basic weapons, armor, and survival gear.
The source of a character’s starting equipment is up to the player and the DM; it might be a collection of family heirlooms, the contents of a randomly discovered cache, belongings found on a dead traveler, items granted by a resistance organization for services rendered, or some other windfall or situation that the player and DM agree on.
Restricted Items
Some items are so valued by the
cultures from which they stem that they
are not available under normal circumstances.
Characters may not begin play
with restricted items unless access to
those items is specifically mentioned in
their racial descriptions. Additionally,
such items should not be purchasable in
normal gameplay, but should rather be
rewards for courageous and selfless service
to the culture with which the restricted
item is affiliated or the goals of dangerous
quests.