[Twilight Time] Fun Items (With Balance!)

[Heather Grove]

March 11, 2002 - Fun Items (With Balance!)
Volume 3, Issue 4

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Good morning!

This issue of the Twilight Time is dedicated to Richard Dansky, former
"Wraith" and "Vampire the Dark Ages" developer for White Wolf (and still
going strong as a writer!). I just got my comp copies for
"Dragon-Blooded" (for White Wolf's Exalted), and it's the second project
I've worked on with Richard. I also got a copy of one of his novels for
Exalted, "Chosen of the Sun."

You have to understand, Richard is responsible, pretty much
single-handedly, for the fact that I became an RPG writer. Without his
prodding I never would have even thought of the possibility. There would
be no Twilight Time. There would be no Burning Void Roleplaying
Resources. I would have gone on playing the occasional roleplaying game,
doing my writing, and keeping the two interests separate. He changed the
direction of my career for a long time to come. (Well, at least 7 or 8
years so far, and no sign of stopping yet.)

While Richard was at White Wolf he developed a reputation as a real
gentleman. He hung out on Wraith mailing lists and handed out
information whenever he could. He taught a handful of us freelancers the
value of professionalism and doing the best job we could. He ripped my
first couple of manuscripts apart - rightly so, because I had a lot to
learn (and still do). In the process he taught me a lot about writing
and the roleplaying business. Even after he left White Wolf he was still
networking on my behalf. At a time when I was busy enough that I might
have let the whole thing slip if left to my own devices, he kept me in
the business.

In short, all of this is his fault, through no small amount of effort.
So this issue is dedicated to Richard. May life bring him happiness in
all of his endeavors!

Have a great day,
Heather

PS - Welcome to all of the gazillions (okay, more like 100) new
subscribers since last time. We hope you enjoy the zine!


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Fun Things to Hand Out (That Won't Unbalance Your Game!)

Copyright 2002 by Heather Grove and Jeffrey Howard

Every now and then it's nice to hand out something a little fun and
special to the player characters (PCs). The trouble is, you don't want
to hand out too many really powerful things because you could unbalance
your game - the PCs become too powerful and they run roughshod over your
world. You could find a way to take their advantage away from them, but
you're often better off just not giving it to them in the first place.

This leaves us with a quandary: how do you give your group the
occasional cool, neat, or interesting thing without making the PCs way
too powerful? The secret is in how you define "cool stuff." Many people
just think of interesting items as falling into one of two categories:
worth a whole lot of money, or having great powers. Instead, we're going
to define a few other sorts of neat and interesting items that you can
play with. You can make them worth some (but not too much) money, or you
can make them mildly magical or powerful, or they could be completely
mundane - their only value the context in which they're placed.


The Plot-Relevant Item

Whenever you're in the middle of a complex, convoluted, wild, or just
plain cool plot that has your players saying "wow!", consider throwing a
plot-relevant item into the mix. The party might be excited to get a
trophy to represent the amount of work they put into a plot. Or they
might find an item fascinating simply because the plot surrounding it
was similarly fascinating. You can use the dramatic build-up to your
plot as a dramatic build-up to the item as well.

Think about the plot for a bit. Is there a particular item that you
would consider representative of the plot? This might be the disputed
item that started the first argument that led to the war, or the lucky
charm of the sorcerer who was behind the dastardly plot that the PCs
foiled. Find a way to work that item into the unveiling of your plot.
Try to make its discovery a bit exciting, dramatic or interesting.


The Item Once Owned by Someone Amazing

Pepper the background of your world with interesting people. Let your
non-player characters (NPCs) have their heroes and their villains as
well. Don't make the PCs the only amazing people to have sprung up in
your world. Then allow the occasional item once owned by an ancient hero
or someone's idol to make it into your game.

After all, in real life people go to ridiculous lengths just to get
their hands on items once owned by their favorite celebrities. Seed your
world with its own celebrities. Wait and see whether your PCs become
fascinated by any of them (try to make some them relevant to the hopes
and dreams of the PCs). Then introduce an item once owned by such a
celebrity. Perhaps it's a weapon - not incredibly powerful, but at least
a little spiffy. Maybe it's a trinket or amulet of some kind. Perhaps
it's a book or journal, or something else relevant to the person's life,
hobbies, interests, or family.

Add in another little bonus - having such an item might make certain
people more favorably disposed toward the PCs. ("You wield the Axe of
Kartan? He was a great hero to my people! Sit down and let me tell you
some stories...") If the celebrity in question is still alive, he might
be willing to give the PCs an audience and perhaps even do them a small
favor if they return his belongings to him.


The Historically Relevant Item

If your world has an interesting history, with plenty of historical
events (wars, famines, dragon-slayings, revolutions, magical
cataclysms), then you could introduce an item relevant to the history.
What about the magic item once used to end the war - now useless and
cracked, but an object of awe nonetheless? What about the sword used to
kill the dragon, with traces of its dried blood still caked in the
corners about the handle? 

Wait to introduce this item until the relevant bits of history have come
out during the course of the game - otherwise it'll be just another
sword or amulet. Try to pay attention to *which* bits of history
interest your players and their characters, and play off of those.


The Personally Relevant Item

Another alternative is the item that is personally relevant to one of
the PCs. This could be a family heirloom. It could be something once
owned by the PC's mentor, or some hero of the PC's profession or tribe.
It could be a gift from a beloved family member, or an item the PC once
owned years ago that was stolen from him. It could be a symbol of some
sort of rank he has attained or some trial he has passed. It could be a
trophy representing something amazing he's done, or a birthday present
from a friend.

It helps to wait until the PC has built up some personal relationships
before you try to work this one in. These items are much more personal
if there's a close relationship to make them important.


The Unusual or Unique Item

This item may not be very powerful or worth a lot of money, but it's
probably one-of-a-kind, or close to it! This is the weapon forged from a
meteor that fell to earth, or the item from another dimension made of a
material that cannot be found on the PC's world (or made using
technologies or skills unavailable on his world). This is the hide of an
albino dragon, born only once every 10,000 years.

This item is often best handed out as a part of some epic quest or
struggle. Unique items are made all the more unique by the unusual plots
and circumstances in which they're found.


What Such Items Can Be Worth

Of course, in many of these cases it's appropriate that the item have
*some* interesting power to it, or be worth some amount of money - which
is just fine as long as the amount of money isn't too ridiculous and the
power isn't too broad and unbalancing. So how do you go about picking
such a value or power?

Many of the items described above might be valuable to collectors or
historians, who won't necessarily have huge amounts of cash to spend. So
it's easy to make them worth a decent chunk of pocket change without
making them worth so much that the PCs will be able to buy something
ridiculous with the profits. Alternatively, the PCs might be able to
trade the items for favors or use them as the basis with which to forge
new alliances. This is an even better option than giving a monetary
worth, since favors and alliances are more unusual and interesting than
plain old cash.

One trick to making items of small or moderate power interesting is to
make the power unusual. Don't use it to duplicate a spell effect already
in game, or a common magic item. Pick something a little out of the
ordinary. Try to make it relevant to the history of the item. If the
item is from another dimension, perhaps it summons some weird creature
unique to that dimension to act as the wielder's familiar or helper. If
it was worn while stopping a magical cataclysm, then maybe it bears
traces of that wild, warping power within it.


Drawbacks and Flaws

You can also balance the power of an item by including a few drawbacks -
hidden flaws, trouble that the item attracts, and dangers involved with
using it. Perhaps activating the item takes five years off of the user's
life, attracts monsters, or has a 1-in-20 chance of summoning a demon.

Think carefully, however, to make sure that the drawback isn't something
the PCs can shrug off. For instance, if they can magically alter their
own ages, then taking five years off of their lives isn't really a flaw.
If they're capable of killing a demon, then summoning one won't make the
item dangerous. 

At the other end of things, if the flaw or drawback is particularly
dangerous or possibly deadly, then make sure that the PCs know this
before they use the item! The whole point of a flaw or drawback is to
give the PCs incentive to not use the item too often. If they aren't
aware of the flaw and it's capable of killing them, then your objective
of giving them something neat that they can only use once in a while
won't be reached. Instead you'll just kill them, which isn't much fun.
So make sure the PCs have reason to believe that there's a danger to
using the item.

Even better, make sure the danger isn't something that will kill them
out-of-hand. The demon, for example, might be more interested in getting
them to do it a difficult favor than in ripping their hearts out,
particularly the first time or two that it's summoned. If possible, you
should lead up to deadly flaws gradually and obviously - they shouldn't
happen immediately or with no warning.


Restrictions, Narrowness, Lack of Control, and Lack of Information

In order to keep the item's power from being too unbalancing, make it
*narrow.* This means that it isn't a broad, applies-to-everything power
- it's something that only applies to a narrow set of circumstances.

Alternatively, add in a certain lack of control. Items that only
activate under certain circumstances, particularly circumstances that
aren't understood or aren't controllable by the PCs, can keep an
otherwise powerful effect under control. Perhaps the amulet they found
only works on clear, starlit nights when the moon is full. Maybe it
activates automatically during an earthquake. This is another area where
knowing the background of the item can help you. If you know who
designed it and why, you might be able to come up with restrictions that
would have made sense to the creator or the circumstances he found
himself in.

You can also add a degree of strategy this way - the PCs may have some
powerful resources under their control, but they have to maneuver their
foes very carefully to work them into position to take advantage of
that.  To use a mundane example, what if the PCs get their hands on a
high-powered sniper's rifle in a game where people mostly use pistols?
Sure it'll make their life easy the first time they use it, but what
about after that? Their enemies are likely to spend a lot more time in
difficult-to-shoot locations after the first sniper-killing. Law
enforcement will watch rooftops. PCs carrying odd brief cases might be
searched. People will learn to look up! The PCs will have to put some
effort into getting their enemies into the right situation in order to
use their advantage.

Even an extremely powerful item isn't necessarily unbalancing if it
takes the PCs years to unravel all of its abilities. (Ever seen the TV
series or comic book "Witchblade"?) Entire plots can be wrapped around
the gradual unveiling of powers, the restrictions that go with them, and
the ways in which the PCs *can't* control how they're used. Many a
classic fantasy story has had the stunningly powerful item that sits
undiscovered on someone's mantle or finger for decades. Ancient items
rarely come with instruction manuals, and their original owners probably
didn't run around telling everyone what their spiffy items could do!


The Fun Extras

Load the history of the item up with plot hooks! If the item was worn
while stopping a magical cataclysm and has traces of that wild power
within it, then maybe it could be used by a dastardly villain to
re-create some minor version of the cataclysm. If the item is from
another dimension, then maybe someone could make use of it to rip a hole
open to that dimension, sparking a very unusual journey.

Also remember to come up with unusual, interesting, or beautiful
descriptions for such items. The items should reflect their origins.
They should attract a little attention, captivate the senses, or disturb
the viewer. As I'm fond of saying under many circumstances - use your
details!

Related articles:
Interesting abilities I: Things to think about
http://www.burningvoid.com/pipermail/void/2001q1/000011.html
Interesting abilities II: Variation
http://www.burningvoid.com/pipermail/void/2001q1/000012.html


What's Your Opinion?:

Comments on this issue's topic? Suggestions? Tips? Special topic
requests? Drop me a line at (heather at burningvoid.com). If I pass any of
your suggestions on (either through the newsletter or the RPG resources
page), I'll attribute them to you. Be sure to tell me if you don't want
me to use your name and/or comments!


Next Issue:

A list of weird, unusual, and mostly low-powered items that you can toss
into your game. Coming in just a few weeks (early April)!

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SITE UPDATE:

Burning Void Roleplaying Resources:
http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/resources.html

As we've mentioned a few times in the past, we are slowly (one small
piece at a time) redesigning the web site. For the first tiny increment
in this plan, take a look at the main page of the site:
http://www.burningvoid.com/
or the roleplaying resources page linked to above, and check out the
cool banner donated by Johnathan Jones! Check out more of his work at:
http://jjoneslogos.tripod.com/

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/mental4.html
Mental Illness in Roleplaying IV: Admission and Understanding
This time we delve into a few ideas on plots and themes when working
issues of mental illness into games.

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/rpworld4.html
Game Worlds Designed for Roleplaying IV: Mysteries and Secrets
A few things to consider when working secrets into your game world. The
difference between a mystery and a secret, and why one is more useful
than the other!

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/rpworld5.html
Game Worlds Designed for Roleplaying V: The Trials and Tribulations of
Arc-Plot
Not sure whether you should use lots of arc-plot in your game world or
avoid it altogether? Here are some thoughts on the nature of arc-plot
and the issues you might want to take into consideration.


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TIPS FROM OTHER GAMERS:
(copyright remains with the person whose comments they are; posted with
permission)

[Editor's note: All tips and stories this week are regarding last
issue's topic of parties in roleplaying games. These stories and
suggestions just go to show that there are quite a few variations on the
theme, and all sorts of ways to keep things interesting and
unpredictable!]