Greetings!

In my campaigns, clothing is often meaningful, interesting, and can be very important for player characters and NPC's alike. Clothing doesn't always have to be drab and boring! Furthermore, different clothing styles can be very important in communicating culture and social class and status. My players often go crazy ensuring that their characters are dressed to impress--at least, as much as they can afford! The women players especially place a great deal of importance on being fashionable. Recently, my players have been getting acquainted with Kaftans and Deels. both of these styles of clothing can range from ordinary colours and workman-like styles, to being very colourful, finely-embroidered, and fashioned of rich fabrics that are entirely impressive and appropriate in palatial settings and environments.

Different styles and kinds of hats can also be very interesting, as well. Have your players gotten enthused about gaining especially well-made, and beautiful clothing? Being fashionably dressed can definitely translate into some social advantages.

Oftentimes, I don't think that campaigns make any of these kinds of details meaningful or worthwhile in any way--but historically, a warrior, or a merchant, or just some woman dressed in a certain fashion, were definitely introduced and treated differently by nearly everyone around them, from common peasants to government officials.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on July 16, 2021, 05:05:04 PM
... clothing is often meaningful, interesting, and can be very important for player characters and NPC's alike...

I find a lack of clothing can also be meaningful, interesting, and very important...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 16, 2021, 06:36:37 PM

Quote from: SHARK on July 16, 2021, 05:05:04 PM
... clothing is often meaningful, interesting, and can be very important for player characters and NPC's alike...

I find a lack of clothing can also be meaningful, interesting, and very important...

Greetings!

*Laughing* Very true, Eirikrautha!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetings!

I remember reading for *years* that people in Western and Northern Europe--and maybe much of Southern Europe, as well, that people most often wore simple, dull, boring clothing, usually in the most basic of colours--gray, brown, white, or black. This impression wasn't just pushed in popular literature and Hollywood, but also by historians.

Then, I got into studying ancient and medieval Eastern Europe, India, and Asia, especially Southern Asia and China. Bursts of wild, vivid colour and different fabric and styles everywhere! Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Polish, Central Asian, Mongolian. Rich fabrics, crazy colours, furs, feathers, horns, all kinds of styles--for everyone, not just the noble elite. While all of those cultures are brilliant and very interesting, holy banana!--India, South-East Asia, and China outdid them in vibrant colours, fabrics, and styles. A dozen varieties of every shade and colour combination you can imagine! Taken together, though, from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, Persia, India, South-East Asia, and China, the vibrancy in colours and different clothing styles definitely portrays a very different picture from what has often been presented for Southern, Western, and Northern Europe.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I am currently working on an RPG set in the 1600's.  Fine clothing will offer a bonus to recruiting henchmen (i.e. crews for your ships), as will an exquisite sword on your hip, and jewelry.

Also consider introducing fabrics that are specific to culture and class.

This adds another dimension to the dress that PC's can affect. You can have a keffiyah of simple linen like a commoner - but having one of silk.. or even a in-setting special fabric is even better!

Reward your PC's with bonuses to social interactions for wearing the best attire for the occasion.

I spent a lot of time designing aesthetics for different regions in my setting.

For example, the Free Cities region spent nearly a century as an elven "protectorate" before they got their freedom about a decade ago. The elves had a very distinctive style with pants and a split tunic (for riding comfortably; this extended even to women's clothing with partial side skirts, sometimes hung from waist belts, worn over pants) being the norm and for the elven middle class and doubly so their nobility this clothing was ornately embroidered in bright, often contrasting colors (ex. red w. green, purple w. yellow) mixed with gold and silver thread.

So, while the cut of Free Cities fashion is very close to the elves (that aspect was largely practical), the general populace and its aristocracy went HARD in the opposite direction of the elves as a rejection of elven values; favoring blacks, greys and single muted colors with no embroidery at all. The main distinction between commoner and the wealthy is the quality of the material and how well fitted the outfits are.

Thus, there's something of a market exotic fabrics and leathers in the Free Cities. The latest fashion is items made of hydra leather after an alchemist found an arcane treatment that would allow the leather to maintain enough of the hydra's regeneration that it would repair any knicks or scuffs to its surface all on its own.

Silks from the distant Sun Empire are also always in fashion, though a recent trading partner has begun shipping extra-long stable cotton to the tailors of the Free Cities and the primadonnas of the Free Cities are always looking for something new (the current leadership of the Free Cities may have officially eliminated the nobility from its government, but the petty squabbles between the wealthy families haven't vanished and any opportunity to one-up a rival at the social gatherings that substitute for a royal court are just part of upper class society).

Do these clothes give bonuses or are they just flavor?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on July 17, 2021, 09:52:15 PM
Do these clothes give bonuses or are they just flavor?

The specific properties of hydra leather, cottons and the like as clothing are largely flavor (there's nothing like overt "clothing damage" in the system).

Mechanically though, all the gear has quality levels; poor, good, fine and legendary; and for clothing fine and legendary quality imparts bonuses to social checks with those for whom wealth and status are important (and poor quality clothing gives a penalty to same).

Hydra leather also works as a flavor material for fine or legendary quality light armor which basically means it offers the same protection while being lighter and easier to move in, not to mention possible additional actual magical properties that might be added to it. At a fluff level you can describe it as getting cut and damaged and then returning to pristine condition instead of just resisting damage to it entirely.