So I'm currently in like the Alpha stages of planning a new campaign. Its gonna be a bit different than I'm used to doing. All of my previous campaigns have had some huge mystery to solve and often the BBEG is not fully known by the players till the end of Tier 2/Beginning of Tier 3.
This Campaign, I'm going to go with a much more "classic" feel. In the new world I'm building, there was a huge war between the 3 gods (2v1) and the Evil diety won and began his reign as an evil god-emperor. I'm letting the players have a much more involved role in building the world so that they feel connected. (We're Essentially building the world together, if you're curious how, I can explain later!). The point of this, is that the game will take place in a world that's been ruled by an evil god-emperor for centuries and therefore REALLY sucks to live in. The only "quest" I'll be giving to the players is "Beat the BBEG" and I'll let them figure out how they wanna go about that. 

Ok, Background done! Now for my question! Because the world is heavily ruled by this BBEG, I imagine that most weapons aside from hunting equipment are probably hard to find for the common folk. This campaign is going to have the "zero-to-hero" theme so my players will all be "The common folk" at the start of the campaign. To reflect these ideas in character creation, I planned on using the "purchase" option for starting equipment, but rather than letting them go shopping from the PHB, I make a "shop" for them that contains what would actually be available. For weapons and armor, it would feature items like:

Hunting Bow (shortbow)
Hunting knife (dagger)

Fishing spear (spear)

padded and leather armor

and adventuring gear would be similarly edited. The way I'm thinking, is that this will kinda guide their early "quest" ideas towards "if we gonna cause problems for the emperor, we need better equipment" and an early quest I can give them would be something like raiding a small patrol of the emperor's soldiers.

HOWEVER! My party can be really particular on fairness between players and this plan gets a bit wonky when it comes to full casters and arcane foci. It wouldn't make sense for the emperor's law to allow selling foci to common people (and magic in common folk is gonna be rare in this world). So I thought "maybe I'll just let them start with it?" but then the casters won't have the same "zero-to-hero" progression cause they'll be starting with everything they need. but If I don't give it to them, and make them acquire it like the weapon users, their class will be severely limited as most spells will be untastable.... hmmmm......

So to summarize questions:
1. What are some more items that could be in this modified "starting shop"?

2. How do y'all think I should approach the Foci conundrum?

Thanks all :D! 

Isn't an arcane focus something which is used instead of material components without costs? Preventing them from having one is probably the equivalent of denying people swords. Just make sure that by the time the fighters have decent weapons or armour, the spellcasters get their foci!

For the local shop, light armour would be the only thing and that would probably be for catching boars. weapons could extend to short swords for the same purpose. Clubs and such would be easily improvised and hammers are tools so that's going to be in there as well.

I would look to plan an encounter to balance things out. Start with them without arcane foci (thus needing material components) and then when the party has gained notoriety, have the BBEG (or their underlings, more likely) send a team to take them out - whic hhappens to include exactly the right amount of arcane foci for the party! they deal with the attack, kill or incapacitate the opponents, and take their foci.

Back to the shop...

Nets, for certain, for catching things.

perhaps have some antique armour and such available from wealthy peoples houses (suits of armour stood in hallways, for example) and have the manufacture of such things be illegal. If the law said to have these things destroyed, guaranteed wealthy people will have hidden them instead.

Weapons on display in taverns, like "The Spiked Mace Inn" with a spiked mace hanging above the bar, could be ideas.

I think this sounds like quite a fun idea - but I wouldn't neuter the starting equipment for long.

• Denying heavy armour like Chainmail to fighters forces all melee to be Dex based
• Dex based classes are barely penalised
• Druids aren't penalised at all
• Rogues will have next to no penalty
• Casters will all have components pouches instead of arcane foci, which are functionally identical
• If you deny casters foci and pouches, they basically can't cast most of their spells
• A barbarian with a maul (an easily obtained double handed mallet) is not much different to a barbarian with a greatsword except that it limits player choice
• Does denying gear really hurt a monk at all?

I think that this could be a fun way to run a single session - kind of in the way that "you wash up shipwrecked" or "you are in prison, escape and find your gear" would be fun. But classes are reliant on equipment, and there is a reason that they start with different levels of gear.

The result of neutering the equipment is simply that you'll have to scale down the encounters. Limiting weapons will cause your party to be a bunch of quarterstaff wielders, limiting armour turns everyone to make Dex based characters.

Overall I think that this could be fun for a 4 hour session, with lots of unarmed attacks going on or whittling staves from trees, but give them their proper equipment by the end of the session or it's too punitive to some classes.

It sounds cool, but maybe there’s a way to throw the martials a bone. Like the fighter’s family has hidden away great-great grandmas longsword and chain mail she used when she was a resistance fighter against the BBEG. It’s old and rusty and has a -1 until they can find a blacksmith willing to help them fix it up. It gives them a little something, an early adventure hook, mechanically still puts them in that grittier place. and it feels like they haven’t had their class abilities (like martial weapon proficiency and heavy armor proficiency) taken away.

As thoruk said, I wouldn’t worry about the focus at all. They’ll just use component pouches until they find one — it’s tough to outlaw spider webs and pieces of copper wire. Though I could also see guards trained to notice such things. If someone has a collection of these strange and very particular odds and ends on their person, they assume it’s a rogue spellcaster and arrest them.

Keep clearly in mind what D&D is designed to do, because the harder you fight against it, the harder time you and your players will have.  Tier 1 is called "Local Heroes."  Those are your player characters, they are just the sorts of people that the "Folk Hero" background talks about.

Instead of making up your own stores with tragically limited items, pick which background player character are allowed to take, let them take the standard gear for it, and nothing more.  If they have extra stuff, let them sell it back for gold, and then maybe they will be able to visit the local General Store, where simple weapons and light armors would be easily, if not cheaply, available.  I doubt the Big Bad has agents in every tiny little village watching for treachery.

That takes care of Question 1.

As for Question 2...

• Foci or not, a Wizard is easy to discover, because spellbook is hard to hide.
• Sorcerers don't need material components for many of their spells, and with Subtle Spell, don't actually need any.
• Warlocks with the right build can conjure Mage Armor as often as they like, and a Hexblade can also summon a weapon of any kind, in any shape, out of thin air.
• Clerics might need things that would make them easy to identify, like holy symbols.
• Druids don't need a darned thing that would be easy to recognize and are nearly impossible to restrain.

As a final note, Bards have the most terrifying weapon of all to use against an ancient god-emperor who is a crushing dictator.  Catchy little tunes that tell tall tales about the Big Bad and make people laugh.  No denial ever catches up with a juicy rumor.  Even the Big Bad's "allies" are going to be amused, and always remember, uneasy is the head that wears a crown.  It's hard to maintain absolute control when people are s******ing behind their hands at you.  People have to respect you in order for you to remain in power.  Even gods need respect, or they don't get worshiped, and while no true god can die, something does happen when people lose faith in them.  Their remains can be found floating around in the Astral plane.

Have one or both of the gods who were defeated send mortal agents into the world to make contact with the player characters.  A revolution only really requires someone with a good deal of wealth to get things rolling.  The player characters might start going from village to village, town to town, making allies and forming a cabal.  They would need the usual "cell structure" to prevent betrayal from within.  I'm sure that the Thieves' Guild in a major city would be delighted the help out, given that the cut they are getting from the Big Bad isn't likely to be much.  Local temples probably would provide places to hide and heal up.

That's only Tier 1.  That's the "start out at zero" stage.  Tier 2 is "Heroes of the Realm" where the player characters are going to be spreading out into other nations looking for allies, Tier 3 is "Masters of the Realm" where the player characters are likely to be rulers of those nations, and Tier 4 is "Masters of the World" where the player characters finally get their shot at the Big Bad, at the forefront of a huge army loaded with magical items of every kind and description, artifacts of immense power, and all singing those catchy little battle-songs they first started spreading around in Tier 1.  I bet the Big Bad would hate those songs more than death itself by that point.

If I were trying to do this, I might focus on durability rather than inventing new items. Something like this:

• a fishing spear has the same stats as a spear, but it breaks after 5 uses or a fumble or something
• component pouches are confiscated on sight
• a spoon can secretly be a wand if you inscribe the right stuff on it, but it also breaks after channeling magic 5 times
• you could fashion some crude armor but it's going to fall apart after 5 hits

If your players are anything like mine, just knowing that the stuff they have is inferior to normal equipment will be enough motivation for them to quest for the good stuff.

And yes, some spells that require like a strand of hair or a pinch of salt or something will still be accessible regardless, but this seems good enough to me. I wouldn't overstress about a mechanic that will only last a couple sessions.

First quest: Find a black market and buy cool stuff! Maybe the players start out with wimpy tools for the first session or so, but let them hear whispers of underground influences early. On a similar note- is there a hidden resistance the players can find/start in this world? Surely they aren't the only ones upset about evil god dude.