The Kit
Everything on this list is an object somebody walking a road would genuinely be carrying, and every one of them is written down by the detail that makes it that object rather than the generic version of it. The rope is knotted every arm's length so there is always something to put a hand on. The seventh pick in the roll is bent on purpose. The flask has two mouthfuls left, which makes it a decision about when rather than whether.
The set splits rather than scales, which is the part worth taking to another game. Five of these are a flat bonus that helps in every scene and never runs out. Five are a charge, two uses of something that fires when you say so, worth more than a bonus in the moment you spend it and worth nothing at all in the scene after. Two carry a little of both at reduced strength, for people who would rather not commit. There is no dud at the bottom of the list, because the player who won the argument about which job they were doing picks from this one last.
Knotted every arm's length, so there is always something to put a hand on.
Hemp, tarred black, stiff with it and stinking. The knots are the whole point: you can hold it, haul on it, or hand the end to somebody who is further down than you are.
Six in an oiled leather fold, and a seventh that is bent on purpose.
A tinker sold you five of them and you made the sixth. The bent one is for wards that were fitted badly, which is most of them.
Corrected twice in a second hand, which is how you know where the cellars are.
Drawn by a surveyor who was paid by the mile and corrected by somebody who actually walked it. The second hand is the one worth trusting.
Enough to stop your hands, not enough to make you stupid about it.
Pewter, dented, and the stopper is a whittled cork. Two mouthfuls is a decision about when, not whether.
Hand it over before anybody asks and nobody reads the seal twice.
The ring belonged to a man who no longer needs it, and the wire is so you can produce it fast. Confidence does most of the work; the seal only has to survive a glance.
Wrapped in waxed cloth, so the rain gets the cloth and not the pitch.
Ash handles, tow heads, pitch that has gone hard in the cold. Four is generous and you will still be counting them by the third Act.
A minute on this and the blade forgives you the first swing.
A grey block worn hollow in the middle, in a rag that keeps the oil off everything else. It is a small ritual, and it buys you the swing you should have taken first.
Coiled flat and kept dry, so it will not be the string that fails you twice.
Waxed, coiled flat, carried against the skin so the damp never finds it. It is not for a bow, particularly. It is for the moment something snaps.
Silvered on the good half, and it looks round a corner so you do not have to.
Palm sized, silvered, with a crack across one corner that you have learned to look past. Held at the right angle it tells you what is round the turn before the turn tells you.
Drop it in first and the dark tells you exactly how far down it goes.
Thin cord, lead weight, a knot at every fathom. Fishermen use it on rivers and you use it on anything you are thinking of climbing into.
Dented, kept in a breast pocket, and it has never once refused to light.
Flint, steel and a wad of charred linen, in a box that lives in a breast pocket and is warm because you are. Fire when you want it, and something to walk towards when you do not.
Who owes whom, in pencil, so you know whose name to say and when.
A palm-sized book of names, debts and who fell out with whom, kept in pencil so it can be revised. Say the right name in the right room and the room rearranges itself around you.
A magic item is a promise that the interesting thing is in the object. A whetstone in an oiled rag is a promise that the interesting thing is in the person who has kept it dry for two years. The second one is cheaper to write, harder to run out of, and it survives being handed to somebody at a table with completely different rules.
It also keeps the gear from being the reason you won. Every roll here is itemised, printed as the named things that made it rather than as a total, and a piece of Kit is one line in that list. Usually the shortest one.