Roundstart Equipment Documents

[iaada]

Last week's Maintainer Meeting (27 September 2025) brought up concerns about PRs changing round start gear, and what gear should be available. These docs attempt to translate that meeting and provide a more concrete form to the definitions, and give the decisions a documented place on the repo.

These docs aren't finished and are marked as stubs. I included some questions for how to expand them, particularly for loadouts which have a lot of decisions still hanging. I feel that these can serve as a start for those discussions while having something on the books for turning down micro PRs changing things.

[ArtisticRoomba]

My hero

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

More docs for the maintainer meeting!!!

[slarticodefast]

Thanks for taking the time to write this, like Roomba said, this is a heroic effort ❤️

[Hitlinemoss]

Loose thought: we currently have trinkets that serve some semi-practical purpose (e.g lighter, clipboard, technically towels) as well as trinkets that are purely cosmetic/fun (lizard plush, headphones, LGBT pins). Might be worthwhile to split trinkets into two categories, one for "useful" items and one for "useless but fun" items? Though I'm not sure if that's off-topic from this general roundstart-item design-doc.

We do also have job trinkets now, and one minor problem I've bumped into is that (due to being a separate loadout group) these are counted towards a different maximum limit than "generic" trinkets. Though depending on what actually gets counted as a "job trinket" that might not be a problem per se, I'm more just remarking that this makes the item limits a bit more of a headache (e.g if we want players to have a hard cap of 3 "pointless" items)

[Partmedia]

Thanks for taking time to start this doc. I feel that it is not necessary to split it into so many different parts at this time, because it seems like that would just make information needlessly difficult to find. If you want a summary, maybe include a table at the top with links to specific guidelines to anchored headings below.

[Partmedia]

Overall, I feel that the document doesn't sufficiently explain the decision making process to determine whether or not a specific item should be included in a particular starting location. The purpose of the design doc is so that anyone reading the doc can with relative confidence determine if a change would be accepted or not.

If I were reading the doc, I don't think I could make a call on whether or not adding a T-ray scanner to some of the listed locations would be accepted or not.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Thanks for taking the time to write this document. I've left my thoughts on some items below.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Gloves shouldn't be available in the loadout. Gloves instead should be in other places like a vend or a wardrobe. People should need to go to wardrobes/maints/vends in order to "build their fit" as its fun and allows you to show off something you spent time on.

IMO this deepens detective gameplay as everyone wearing gloves is quite boring and dilutes the experience.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Loadouts should not contain armor. They are equipment that is essential to the job, and having duplicate armor in the locker allows heads of staff to give out extra armor to other staff which invalidates the point of it being scarce. Antagonists can also steal the armor and have a fairly powerful piece instead of it not mattering because the Captain/HoS can just pick up their spare.

Note that this introduces a bit of an annoying predicament as offering player choice as to style leads to requiring multiple pieces of armor in the lockers which defeats the point of scarcity. However it is better than offering double duplicates - a set of armor in the loadout and a set in the locker.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Trinkets should not be bloated to shit (sorry). A lot of items in the trinkets should instead be obtainable in-round throughout the map or in vends - stuff like the cigarettes/lighters in the trinkets section is pointless when we have dedicated machines for them (smokes vendor). It makes the feeling of scarcity in the later parts of the round nonexistent if you just have the thing you want in the beginning of the shift.

[iaada]

Another rewrite started, though I didn't have time to finish / start loadouts. I addressed the reviews and squished it into one page, which I think was the right idea. I have the page start off with a set of definitions to hopefully add clarity to what kinds of items go where.

[Hitlinemoss]

General feedback on a few sections.

[Hitlinemoss]

I would probably also mention shoes here (though I guess those aren't technically universal since diona characters can't wear shoes). Would be weird for players to show up to work barefoot despite having their full uniform otherwise.

[iaada]

I'd like to make shoes optional in loadouts. I hold a radical anti-shoe agenda. Mechanically shoes are most interesting in their absence (glass shards, etc.), so we need more ways to get those pigs free. One such way is to give RP focused players the option to nerf themselves outright and not show up with shoes in the first place.

[Hitlinemoss]

I'd like to make shoes optional in loadouts.

Oh, to be clear, I don't think shoes should be required if players want to intentionally not have them. Mostly I just mean that the option of shoes should be part of the minimum loadout requirements (and a pair of shoes should be selected by default).

[Hitlinemoss]

When expanding this section, it might be worthwhile to mention loadout groups that are universal to all roles. (IIRC right now that's just glasses and trinkets, though down the line the trinkets group could probably be broken up into smaller groups because right now it has some items that are purely cosmetic, some items that have niche gameplay utility, and some items that are very important for characters with disabilities.)

It'd probably be worth clarifying that these kinds of loadout items should almost always be generic equipment, since they're available to all roles by definition and therefore shouldn't be associated with any particular role. There should probably be some kind of balance guidelines for what items should be used here, too, because we want to avoid having certain "meta" loadout items that are so useful that they're universally chosen by most players (e.g sunglasses, crowbars).