How are you supposed to use the Remember Tools section in Remember Tomorrow?

Question

My friends and I were taking our first crack at the light-weight cyberpunk game Remember Tomorrow. We were rolling up characters, and we found it really opaque how we were supposed to roll up gear in the Remember Tools section.

First off, the corebook has Engineering, Consumer, and Motivation all laid out next to each other in the Tools section, but it seems like it would only make sense to roll on the first two tables to determine the type of gear.

Then, having rolled the manufacturer's name, it's unclear how you are supposed to know what kind of gear (cyberware, vehicle, weapon, etc) to choose from. Do you roll on the lists of specific pieces of gear as well, and if so how do you know which one to roll on? Do you just need to somehow know that ERMA is associated with cyberware, or can you choose any kind of gear you want to associate with the ERMA brand?

The char-gen example given in the rules is not particularly helpful, as it only shows a player choosing one piece of gear, and it does not address any of these points.

Answer 1

As p10 says, "pick or choose your gear." The third column at the top of p44 is for randomly rolling your Motivation, the section right before Gear in chargen.

The bottom of p44 is the list of gear pieces themselves. If you want to roll randomly for it, notice the slightly grey grid of numbers on the left side, from 1-10. That's the table guide. Notice the whole table is laid out in the same style of block for each kind of good or enhancement. Inside each of those blocks, the elements are laid out in exactly the same way.

So, let's assume you want a piece of Gear and you want to be completely surprised by it. You want it to be consumer produced, so you roll to see the brand. 5, so it's a Kalophone ... whatever. Roll again. 10. That's the bottom right column, it's a Life Style thingy. Roll once more. 9. That's bottom left, so it's High Fashion.

You grind brain for a bit and realize your character has a Kalophone Datavore, a rather high-end piece of neo-modernist superphone that's as much a fashion accessory as a piece of kit, and you're proud as Hell of the thing. Or you're ashamed, because it was a gift from your ol' Da. Or whatever.

But now you've got gear.