Items cards
Props, Weapons, and Armor
Mind’s Eye Theatre: Vampire The Masquerade encourages players to wear incredible costumes, create authentic props, and (when it’s safe to do so) carry ornate weapon representations. The majority of items in the game are solely decorative, having no real combat capacity. However, items such as swords, guns, and armor have bonuses that increase a character’s combat potential, and therefore, those advantages must be quantified.
For obvious reasons, real weapons should not be allowed in Mind’s Eye Theatre games. Even nonfunctional weapon representations can be dangerous and should be carried only with advance Storyteller permission, especially if they are at all realistic and could be mistaken for actual weapons. The Mind’s Eye Theatre system does not use any kind of weapons, nor are participants allowed to strike one another for any reason, at any point in the game.
Weapons and other items used in opposed challenges should be represented with an item card. Typically, an item card is a 3x5” index card, on which the item’s statistics have been written. If possible, such cards should also contain a picture or description of the item. All item cards should be reviewed, approved, and signed by the Storyteller before entering play.
Items such as weapons and armor can be gained by spending downtime actions.
Equipment Generation System
In order to allow both flexibility and simplicity, Mind’s Eye Theatre uses an equipment generation system. First, determine the kind of item to be created, and then build it using the system below.
To begin, choose one of the following equipment categories:
• Melee Weapons: Hand-to-hand combat weapons, such as swords, knives, and clubs.
• Ranged Weapons: Weapons capable of inflicting damage at a distance, such as pistols, rifles, flamethrowers, and bows.
• Protective Gear: Equipment that protects a character from damage, such as armor or shields.
• Miscellaneous Gear: Equipment for use in non-combat challenges, such as lock-picks, a laptop, or a vehicle.
After you’ve chosen the item’s equipment type, you may choose special qualities for the item from the associated list of bonuses. Cheap, easily obtained, or improvised gear has only one special quality. Standard-grade or expensive equipment has up to two special qualities. No item may have more than two qualities.
Characters cannot use two weapons or receive bonuses from anything but the weapon in their primary hand, unless they possess the Ambidextrous merit.
Changing Equipment
In some cases, equipment qualities can be altered. For example, a shooter can change her gun’s silver ammunition out in order to reload it with incendiary ammunition. However, not all weapons can be so easily tweaked; a metal, silver-plated axe cannot simply be set on fire to provide a torch-like flame. At the Storyteller’s discretion, players can spend at least 10 minutes of time in-game altering their equipment’s qualities, but only so long as those quality changes make sense. Note that more difficult alterations may take longer to perform.
