reciprocatingsands reblogged

LMAO GUYS IM CRYING

reciprocatingsands reblogged

sadlyuncreative

hell-homer

reciprocatingsands reblogged

baktuun-deactivated20200907

maplehoneys

reciprocatingsands

Boob poop

reciprocatingsands

You know that residual sadness? Not a simple “Oh I’m sad”.

It’s a feeling that literally sinks in your gut. It’s impossible to ignore it or stop it. It’s like trying not to throw up.

You just can’t forget it’s there. It’s just sitting there, waiting for acknowledgment.

No matter how much you ignore it or try to get rid of it, it’s still there.

You know that feeling?

reciprocatingsands reblogged

dmsden

The Family Sword – An Alternative to Standard Magic-Item Distribution

Hullo, Gentle Readers. As I prepare to start running my Seven Kingdoms campaign again, I’ve been pondering one of the magic-items in my game – a magic weapon wielded by the Halfling warrior Tilly Thistleshanks. He calls it O’goun.

O’goun is a sharash (a weapon that was created for the halflings of the Eberron campaign setting and which I’ve allowed to the halflings of my 7K campaign.) Tilly’s backstory described it as his father’s sharash and that it had been prophesied that this weapon would be wielded in the battle that ended the demon-gator Limba. I loved all of this material, because it gave me great hooks to run adventures in my campaign.

Right now, I suspect some of you are wondering if I let a player start with a magic weapon. I did not. Instead, I let him start with an heirloom – a weapon that I always intended to grow along with him. As Tilly leveled up, when I felt we’d hit certain milestones, I gave his sharash new powers. At first it became +1, then it gained the Scalebane property, then it advanced to +2. At that time, the party encountered Limba for the final time and slew him.

But that’s not the end of O’goun’s story!

As we head through the paragon tier, I intend for O’goun to pick up new powers, as well as a new creature to confront. By the time we finish Epic tier, I expect O’goun to be a legendary +6 weapon with some kind of crazy bane to help Tilly against one of the climactic battles of my campaign. And then, Tilly could pass it on to another hero, whereupon it becomes a simple weapon again.

Using this same model, it’s possible to create other legendary weapons and continue to advance them in your campaign. If Sting or Excalibur always stayed +1 swords, they wouldn’t be much good to Frodo or King Arthur at the end of their stories. And while there’s something to be said for going on a specific quest for a specific sword, there’s something endearing about a weapon that passes through various hands or stays as a hero’s faithful sidekick throughout his or her career.

Weapons don’t have to be the only items to prove to be heirlooms. A family suit of armor, a ring your Uncle left you, a cloak with the family colors – any item can turn out to be a magic-item that your players keep with them for their whole careers. The important thing is the emotional attachment that your characters develop for the items. Bilbo, after all, didn’t start “the game” with Sting, but, when he needed a magic sword, it was there, and, if The Hobbit actually were an RPG campaign, the DM could’ve had it gain abilities as the story went on, starting with glowing, then adding a classic “+” to it, and then perhaps a particular bane against orcs/goblins (having been forged in Gondolin for the Goblin Wars).

It’s important to map out a kind of path for the item in question. This can be something as simple as a protection ring that slowly gains in plusses over time or as complicated as something like O’goun, which increases in power as well as changing what kind of creature it’s particularly effective against. Once you have it mapped out, when you’re giving out magic-items, let the player holding it know that their item has leveled up. This can even be a source of adventure ideas. The player’s sword can’t level up until there’s a fire ruby set in its pommel…but that will require exploring the Crypt of Pyres to find a fire ruby in the first place!

As a final note, although I wrote this article from a fantasy game perspective, there’s nothing that says it can’t be adapted to other genres. In a superhero, sci-fi, or spy oriented game, your friendly tinkerer could make some new modifications to your suit of armor, your spaceship, or your super gadget car. In a western game, maybe the gun you carry picks up a reputation as being lucky (with a game mechanics bonus to go with it). Any game can benefit from this kind of “leveling up” of a player’s existing equipment.