🛠️ Why Equipment Matters: Tools Tell Stories
In Root, your equipment isn't just numbers on a character sheet - it's narrative currency. Every item tells a story about who you are, where you've been, and what you're prepared for. There are no +1 swords here. Instead, items are described by a handful of simple ideas - Value, wear, load, tags and ranges - and the rest is fiction.
Real-World Analogy: Think of equipment like a carpenter's toolbox. It's not about having the most expensive gear - it's about having the right tool for the job, knowing how to use it, and keeping it in one piece so it's there when you need it most.
🎭 Equipment as Character Development
Consider two Ronin with identical stats but different gear:
🦅 Wick the Hawk
Gear: an old Eyrie sword, a patched travelling cloak, a sealed letter she has never opened
Story: A disgraced warrior trying to win back her name through deeds rather than bloodshed.
🐺 Moss the Wolf
Gear: a heavy woodcutter's axe, battered leather armor, a string of trophies from old fights
Story: A brawler who solves problems by walking straight through them.
Same playbook, completely different characters - and the gear tells you which one is going to kick the door in.
💰 Value: The Woodland's Measure of Worth
Root doesn't price things in gold pieces. Everything is measured in Value. An item's Value comes from what it can do: roughly, its wear boxes, plus the weapon-skill tags it carries, plus any helpful traits or extra ranges, minus any drawbacks. A sturdy, versatile weapon is worth more than a flimsy one-trick tool.
How Value Shows Up at the Table
Your playbook gives you some Value to spend on gear; whatever you don't spend becomes coin.
A bag of coin is just another item - its wear equals its Value, and you mark it off as you spend.
One box of depletion is worth 1 Value, so your supplies double as spending money.
Clearing a box of wear costs 1 Value.
What something actually costs in a given clearing is the GM's call, and that's where the story lives. A Marquisate-held clearing might sell good steel but ask awkward questions; an Alliance sympathiser might trade you a meal for news. Money talks in the Woodland, but reputation often speaks louder - a vagabond with prestige among the locals can sometimes get through favors what coin can't buy.
⚔️ Weapons: Tags, Skills and Ranges
Root's weapons don't have damage numbers. When you hit with a weapon you inflict harm (by default, 1 injury), and what makes one weapon different from another is its tags and ranges.
Understanding Weapon Tags
To use a weapon skill you need both the matching tag on your weapon and training in that skill. A fencer without a parrying blade can't Parry; a sword with a Parry tag doesn't help someone who never learned it.
Helpful traits add to an item's Value; drawbacks (a Weighty item counts for extra load, for example) take away from it.
A weapon that covers an extra range is worth more Value. A dagger is great at Intimate range and useless across a clearing.
🗡️ Reading a Weapon
When you look at a weapon, ask four questions:
- Which ranges does it reach? That decides when you can fight with it at all.
- Which skill tags does it carry? Match them against the weapon skills you know.
- How many wear boxes does it have? That's how much punishment it takes before it breaks.
- What does it say about you? A noble's blade and a farmer's axe open different doors in a clearing.
The official Equipment Deck puts sample items on cards if you want ready-made gear at the table.
🎒 Load: How Much Can You Carry?
Root only counts significant items - weapons, armor, tools, a bag of coin. Each one is 1 load (a large item can count as 2). Small odds and ends aren't tracked.
Your Load Limits
You carry it comfortably.
When you travel long distances while Burdened, you mark exhaustion.
You can't carry more than this at all.
Example: A vagabond with Might +1 is Burdened above 5 load and has a Max Load of 10. One with Might −1 is Burdened above 3 and can carry at most 6.
🎯 Packing Principles
- Multi-purpose items: Rope can be climbing gear, restraints or a way out of a window.
- Pack for the job: What's waiting at the next clearing?
- Backup plans: Know what you'll do when your main tool breaks.
- Share the load: Don't all carry the same things - one vagabond's tools, another's coin.
- Leave room for depletion: You don't need to pack every little thing; that's what depletion is for (see below).
🩹 Harm, Wear and Armor
Your vagabond has three harm tracks, each with at least 4 boxes (advancement can grow a track to 6):
Wounds to the body.
Spent energy and willpower.
Supplies and resources running low.
Fill a track and you're in serious trouble - taken out of the action, with consequences the GM spells out from the rulebook.
🔧 Wear
Every significant item has its own wear boxes. When a move tells you to mark wear (a failed roll, a blade turned against stone, a lock that fights back), you mark a box on the item. If you need to mark wear and the item has no empty boxes left, it breaks. Repairing costs 1 Value per box of wear cleared - pay a smith, trade with a tinker, or spend depletion.
🛡️ Armor
Armor is an item with wear boxes like any other. When you would take injury and your armor sensibly protects against it, you can mark 1 wear on the armor instead of 1 injury. Armor won't help against poison in your cup or a fall off a cliff - the fiction has to fit. And when the armor runs out of wear, it's broken until someone fixes it.
📦 Depletion: Retroactive Packing and Money
Depletion is one of Root's cleverest ideas. Instead of keeping a shopping list of torches, rations and string, you mark depletion when you need something you could reasonably have brought. Needed a lantern in the tunnel? Mark depletion - you packed one. Need to bribe a guard? Mark depletion - that's coin from your purse.
Mark depletion to produce a small, ordinary item you plausibly had with you. The GM can say no if it stretches belief - nobody keeps a rowing boat in their satchel.
Each box of depletion is worth 1 Value, so you can mark it to pay for food, lodging, bribes or repairs.
Moves and GM moves can also force you to mark depletion - a torn pack, a long hungry trek. When the track fills, you're out of resources and in real trouble.
🏕️ Clearing Harm and Resupplying
Clears with rest - a box per day or night of real rest, or all of it with proper rest and care. Acting on your nature also clears exhaustion.
Needs medical care or a long rest. Shrugging it off on the road isn't an option.
Clears when you resupply - buying, foraging or stealing what you need.
Clears only through repair, at 1 Value per box.
🌲 Travel: Along the Path or Through the Forest
The Woodland is a map of clearings joined by paths, with deep forest everywhere in between. When you set out, the big choice is how you go:
You can also choose your pace. Going slowly gets you more out of the journey but exposes you to more danger along the way; pushing hard gets you there sooner at the cost of exhaustion. And if you're Burdened, a long journey costs you exhaustion too.
🧭 Before You Leave
- Who controls the route? Marquisate, Eyrie or Alliance patrols change how welcome you'll be on the path.
- What's your load? If you're Burdened, a long trip costs exhaustion - drop something or share it out.
- How's your depletion? Resupply before a long trek through the forest.
- How worn is your gear? Repair now, while there's a smith in reach.
⚠️ Optional house rule: weather and hardship
Root has no hunger, thirst or temperature subsystem, and doesn't need one. If you want a hard winter to bite, just use what's already there: the GM can ask you to mark exhaustion or depletion for a freezing night or a long march without food.
⚡ Equipment in Action
The best way to see how equipment works is to watch different gear open different approaches to the same problem.
🏰 Scenario: Into the Marquisate Keep
Your band needs to get inside a Marquisate keep to free a prisoner. Here's how different loadouts change the plan:
🥷 The Infiltrator
Gear: lockpicks, rope, a dark cloak, a short knife
Approach: Sneak, Pick Lock, Hide - roguish feats all the way in.
Risk: A knife only reaches Intimate range if it all goes wrong.
🎭 The Impersonator
Gear: forged papers, a stolen uniform, a good story
Approach: Walk in the front gate - Counterfeit and Trick an NPC.
Risk: If exposed, trapped inside with no easy way out.
⚔️ The Warrior
Gear: a heavy weapon with Cleave, armor, bandages
Approach: Wreck Something and Engage in Melee.
Risk: Loud. Armor wear piles up and the whole garrison comes running.
🔧 The Saboteur
Gear: tinker's tools, a sack of lamp oil, a bag of coin
Approach: Start a fire in the stores, bribe a guard, slip in during the chaos.
Risk: Fires spread, and the guard may sell you out.
🎪 The Equipment Philosophy
There's no "best" equipment in Root - only the right tools for your approach, your character and your situation. The most important piece of gear is often the one that tells everyone at the table who your vagabond is.
🎯 Try It at the Table: Pack for the Trip
🎒 Equipment Challenge
The job: Your band has been hired to look into disappearances at the village of Thornwick, two days away. The locals report:
- Travellers going missing on the forest road
- Strange lights in the nearby ruins
- Villagers too scared to go out after dark
- A local garrison that refuses to investigate
Your challenge: Kit out a four-vagabond band (say a Ronin, Thief, Vagrant and Ranger) that can investigate, work at night, protect frightened villagers and handle a fight. For each vagabond, decide:
- Which items they carry, and whether that makes them Burdened (above 4 + Might)
- Whether their weapons' tags match the weapon skills they actually know, and which ranges they cover
- Whether the band travels along the path or through the forest - and at what pace
- How much depletion they're willing to burn on "I packed that" before they arrive
🗺️ Next: Factions & Politics
You've now got moves, playbooks and gear. Next up is Factions & Politics: the Marquisate, the Eyrie Dynasties and the Woodland Alliance, the Denizens caught between them, and how your reputation with each one shapes what the Woodland will let you do.