Assigned Equipment
 

I'd be interested in How to Be a GURPS GM: Equipment.

In particular, advice for gear assigned to players by organizations/patrons/etc.

In Action, you ignore personal wealth and just give the players that amount of money as organizational funds, so that's easy.

In other situations, however, the PC may have a fleet command position, standard issue gear, a manor from Status/Cost of Living, and some toys...

If the campaign is solely about the fleet command position, then one would, I think, take the Action approach (home is mere flavor). If the focus is on home, then the approach is reversed: the fleet command is flavor. If the focus is intended to be split... well.

If the GM already knows what "standard issue gear" is in the setting, then I guess that takes care of it (80% of starting wealth on Status et al., 20% on toys you can use at home, minor things you can bring with you on command, etc., and here's what the fleet assigns you).

Suppose, however, that "standard issue gear" is not defined. How would you go about defining it? What sort of variation might apply within "standard issue"?

Re: Assigned Equipment
 

Assigned equipment is just what somebody needs to do their job, though this may be defined by bureaucrats in the organization rather than the people who do their job.

"I'm sorry, but according to your job description, you don't *need* a blaster rifle. After all, your job description doesn't include fighting zombie space pirates." -- Unnamed bureaucrat who shortly had his brain eaten; he was still able to do his job and it was months later that this was noticed.

Re: Assigned Equipment
 

'Bureaucrats did it' is a pretty fitting excuse for a lot of weird or annoying things (or annoying lack thereof) in a military or other government organization, like why there are no seat-restraints on the starship Enterprise in most incarnations (apart from a couple of the movies, IIRC), or guardrails on a lot of structures in Star Wars.

Re: Assigned Equipment
 

You start by thinking about what's needed to do the job, and the variations of the job. The most common example of standard issue equipment is soldiers, and here's a set of pictures of British soldiers' equipment since 1066.

The variations are mostly commonly those within roles: within a squad, soldiers often have variations in armament (squad leader, machine-gunner, riflemen) and those ripple through to ammunition, cleaning kits, load-bearing equipment, and so on.

Then you modify for the wealth of the organisation, the degree of standardisation it demands, the environment, and so on.