[Twilight Time] Bride of Instant Plot Hook II (yet more items!)

[Heather Grove]

April 22, 2002 - Bride of Instant Plot Hook - Items! Part II...
Volume 3, Issue 6

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Good morning!

I know that April Fool's Day is over, but seeing as this is a 
continuation of an article that came out on April 1, a couple of the 
items will still be a little weird & wacky. Believe it or not we're 
still keeping up with weekly articles on the web site, a new zine 
issue once every three weeks, and link collection updates once a 
month. I removed a few sites from the listing for being effectively 
dead - don't you hate it when a site is still up, but hasn't been 
updated in years, and all the links (including to their own articles) 
have finally gone dead?

We're well up over 700 subscribers (welcome to the new folks!), we 
have several new articles up that I think you'll enjoy (check out the 
update section after the article), and we have some great reader 
comments enclosed toward the end. So I hope you enjoy the latest issue.

In the meantime, one of our cats is having eye surgery in a few days, 
so wish him good luck!

Have a great day,
Heather


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Bride of Instant Plot Hook - Wild & Weird Items Part II!

Last issue we started out on our item-quest - lots of weird items you 
can drop into your games that won't unbalance them. We covered 
plot-relevant items, historically relevant items, items once owned by 
celebrities, and personally relevant items. This time we're going to 
get more into the mechanics of items that are unique, flawed, 
restricted, and so on. If you haven't read part I of this article yet, 
you can find it at:
http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/twilighttime/2002/000002.html
If you haven't read the article on non-unbalancing items that spawned 
this two-part monstrosity, you can find it at:
http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/twilighttime/2002/000001.html
We've been following the categories laid out in that article.


Unusual and Unique Items

As so many movies and books have told us, "unique is always valuable." 
You might not be able to get a lot of money for a unique item, and it 
might not give you world-altering powers. But it's bound to get 
attention in some way.

Unique items make great candidates for symbols of office - royal 
scepters, mayoral seals, and so on. They're also good candidates for 
prophecies. After all, how better to identify the subject of a 
prophecy than by identifying a unique item that he bears? They also 
make great subjects for theft and other sorts of unwanted attention, 
and perfect plot hooks in general.

#1. The party finds a melee weapon that appears to be made of glass, 
with an edge every bit as sharp as that implies - except that it 
cannot break or be shattered. No one can determine what it's actually 
made of.

#2. The party finds a gem that shifts colors over time. It looks like 
a totally different gemstone at different times of day, or in 
different seasons or months, or even different years or decades. 
Perhaps the change is tied to some cycle in your world that isn't so 
clearly defined. (Hint: if you want your players to catch on to the 
gemstone's nature, have them get their hands on it right before a 
point of change in the cycle.) The gemstone is set in something 
beautiful and a little alien-looking, perhaps a ring, circlet, 
pendant, or scepter of unusual design.

It has certain powers that depend on the phase it's in. They're 
related to the color, or to the type of gemstone (you can find books 
that will tell you what qualities are associated with different 
gemstones), or perhaps to the cycle the stone is tied to. If the stone 
is tied to the seasons, then the effects might be climate or 
weather-related.

#3. The party finds a remarkably lifelike statue of a beastly little 
gargoyle-like creature (or a dainty, pixie-like thing) - clearly 
something out of fantasy, because nothing like it exists on your 
world! When the statue is spoken to directly, it comes to life and 
does as its "master" bids. How does it determine who its master is? 
Well, that's the tricky part, now isn't it? Perhaps it's whoever 
speaks to it first, feeds it, keeps it for a certain period of time, 
speaks a command phrase, wears a certain ring, performs a certain 
ritual or spell, or some other requirement that suits your needs.

You have three choices for keeping this particular "item" from being 
too powerful. Either the little beast has low stats and no particular 
special powers - it can only do simple things for its master. Or it 
has strict limitations and weaknesses - sunlight will kill it, or if 
your game has an alignment system it can only harm, steal from, or 
otherwise negatively affect creatures of a certain alignment.

April Fool's: Or it's a mischievous little imp, and doesn't have to 
strictly obey it's master. Perhaps it tends to get distracted from its 
duties by opportunities to make trouble! It pulls practical jokes, 
tries to make dignified or important people look silly, and otherwise 
gets itself and its "master" into all sorts of trouble. (As always, 
try to make sure it's useful enough to keep its PC master from feeling 
too screwed over by this.)


Items with Drawbacks and Flaws

The trick with flawed items is to try to balance the positive with the 
negative - the item should be somewhat more useful than not. You need 
the item to be  useful enough that it's worth keeping around (and seen 
by the PCs as valuable). You want it to be dangerous enough that it 
will only rarely be used (the more powerful it is, the less often you 
want it to be used). Balancing these two things can be difficult.

Remember that the less powerful the item is, the less you have to 
convince your players not to use it too often. The more familiar you 
are with your players, the more you know what they value and what they 
consider an unacceptable risk, the easier a time you'll have with this.

#1. One of the traditional flawed weapons of the fantasy genre is the 
blade that must draw blood before it can be sheathed. It does extra 
damage when it hits, but if the PC draws it from its sheath and 
doesn't end up drawing someone else's blood with it, he must draw some 
of his own (do some damage to himself) before he can sheath it again. 
Variations include the blade that must take a life (for particularly 
powerful weapons), or the blade that causes misfortune (or presages 
disaster) whenever it is drawn.

The April Fool's version of this: the blade that wants something 
totally off-the-wall, gratuitous, or silly before it's put back in its 
sheath. It wants to be sung to; it wants its bearer to compose a poem 
about how lovely the blade is; it wants to be flattered and told how 
beautiful it is; it wants to be cleaned, sharpened, and polished (even 
if it's still clean and sharp).

#2. Another traditional flawed item is the item that gives the wielder 
power over something or someone but eats away at his mind or soul. 
This is a ring that allows the wearer to charm people, but each use 
causes him to lose a little more touch with reality, or makes his 
nightmares that much worse, or twists and warps his thinking 
(gradually making him evil). Reserve this one for a really good 
character-player - madness, nightmares and soul-twisting evil don't 
have a lot of effect on characters whose players aren't into that 
aspect of roleplaying.

#3. A device of augury (tarot cards? Crystal ball? Reflective pool? 
Rune-stones?) could give results entirely in metaphors and symbols. In 
the case of tarot cards and rune-stones this should be inherent to the 
item anyway. In the case of crystal balls or reflective pools, this 
might surprise your players a little more than usual. Every portent of 
the future becomes a puzzle that needs to be solved. This prevents 
such devices from being instant plot-busters, while still allowing the 
PCs to make use of them.

The April Fool's version: the device of augury that gives results 
entirely in the form of nursery rhymes, psychedelic visions, 
gratuitously silly riddles, or something equally wacky.


Items with Restrictions, Control Issues, or Unknown Aspects

One of the best ways to figure out appropriate restrictions is to 
think about the history of the item. What would the creator have 
wanted? What would have been useful to her?

#1. Weather-control items can easily have restrictions that make 
sense. An item that brings rain might only operate during high heat or 
a drought (the creator wanted to make sure it could only help, not 
harm). An item that causes tornadoes might only operate in certain 
specific climates (the creator wanted to make sure it could only be 
used on his enemies' kingdom, not his).

#2. What about a protective item that decides for itself when it's 
needed? It could be some sort of force field that protects the wearer 
from weapons. But the device itself decides when it's needed, and the 
creator's idea of when it would be needed might not be the same as a 
PC's. In a well-balanced game you'll often find that the narrower such 
an item's effects are the easier it is to create. So the creator had 
plenty of reason to make an item that did only what he needed it to 
and no more.

Perhaps his enemies only used one particular weapon (or type of 
weapon), and the force field will only kick in when such an item 
appears to be nearby (whether or not it's in the hands of an enemy!). 
Perhaps the creator only considered one (or several) races of creature 
to be enemies, and the field will only kick in when members of those 
races are within combat range (whether or not they're the wearer's 
enemies).

#3. Perhaps the PCs found a device with many buttons, labeled in an 
unknown language. Figure out what the creators would have used it for 
and make a list of the functions. The PCs can, of course, try pushing 
buttons and playing with the item. They can also try to find a way to 
translate the language (particularly if they have other samples of it).

Make sure that some of the functions depend on what's going on around 
the PCs at the time or what they've done first. For instance, say the 
device has to do with food - its preparation, storage, and eating. 
Whether a particular button appears to do anything or not (it slices! 
It dices! It juliennes fries!) depends on whether a potato is fed into 
the tube first, or the device is placed overtop of a food item, or a 
separate button (which releases the blades) was pressed first. (All 
right, so that's a particularly April Fool's example. I'm sure you can 
come up with something much less silly than a food-prep device.)

Putting in contingencies and context-dependent relationships like this 
turns the exploration of the device's effects into a longer-term 
endeavor that requires puzzle-solving, or quests to find out more 
about the people who created it, or bits of research here and there 
during down-time. A good rule of thumb, however, is that the more 
effort the PCs have to put into figuring out what the device does and 
how it does it, the more useful the device should be to them - which 
of course makes our potato slicer a bad example unless you have 
players that enjoy a good joke now and then.

If possible, turn such a device into a puzzle that requires some 
thinking and some in-game quests and research, rather than simple 
random button-pressing. The former can be an interesting plot; the 
latter is boring.


One-Use-Only Items

I'm going to throw one more category in that wasn't in the original 
article - items that can only be used once, or items that can 
effectively only be used once or twice. This category comes with one, 
very important caveat: keep in mind that players and their characters 
can be very creative and clever! Think hard about whether any of the 
characters might be able to think their way around any of the things 
you've done to guarantee that an item won't be useful for long. If 
possible, have a back-up plan in case they think of something that you 
didn't!

Perhaps the party gets their hands on a huge, futuristic cannon-type 
device that can take out a building with ease. Sounds insanely 
overpowered, right? There are any number of ways to keep it from being so:

#1. Lack of consumable components - the cannon can only be used with a 
certain type of ammunition which cannot be made in the party's society 
and world. Or, if the cannon uses (and uses up) a particular kind of 
gemstone not found on the party's world, then they won't be able to 
keep it operating.

#2. Lack of fuel - the power-pack has enough energy for one or two 
shots, and it cannot be recharged given the party's tech level.

#3. Lack of repairs - the cannon breaks down easily. This isn't a 
problem for its makers, who can just as easily repair it. But the 
party's world lacks the technology to make the repairs.

#4. Lack of understanding - the party doesn't know that if they don't 
press the odd buttons in a certain order, then the cannon will 
overheat and melt down after one use.

#5. Lack of context - the cannon is designed to be used on a special 
set-up designed to support its weight and the recoil generated by its 
use. Without that, it can do a lot of damage to itself and the area 
around it when used.

These ideas can be generalized to other items to create one-use-only 
or short-term-use items. These things can seem pretty amazing to the 
players and their characters, but they won't unbalance the game long-term.


Hopefully these articles have given you a few ideas for ways in which 
you can hand out neat things in your game. Too many people feel that 
there is only a choice between handing out neat things and unbalancing 
the game, or not handing things out at all and keeping things under 
control. Luckily that isn't the case - you can keep the game fun while 
still handing out toys for the PCs. Enjoy!


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:

Create your own instant plot hooks! Coming in just a few weeks (mid-May).

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SITE UPDATE:

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

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/rpworld6.html
Game worlds designed for roleplaying VI: Game material will be used!
The cardinal directive that most RPG writers seem to forget sooner or 
later - anything they put into a game will be used by the people who 
play the game. If they don't plan for that, then their material could 
be useless (or at least awfully frustrating).

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/rpworld7.html
Game worlds designed for roleplaying VII: Scope, Scale, and Epic Level
A few words on what scope, scale, and epic level are, how they'll 
affect your game world, and how *you* can affect *them.*

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/Essays/mental6.html
Mental Illness in Roleplaying VI: Research Resources
In earlier articles I've mentioned the fact that a little research can 
be awfully useful when working mental illnesses into your RPG. But 
where do you go to do that research? This article will point you at 
plenty of web sites and books to get you started.

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

 From Jason Leisemann:

As usual, your article was excellent - several reminders of things to 
throw into my next story and/or game.  One thing, though.

One type of "plot hook" item I didn't notice (though, admittedly, it 
could be in the next article) was perhaps the oldest one in the book - 
the Villain's Bane item.  Would probably go under Plot Relevant items, 
as it's main usefulness is to a current plot, but basically it's that 
one thing that can get the villain with relative ease - in fairy 
tales, it's frequently something like a flower, in stories, the 
ancient weapon that was specifically made to deal with demons/dark 
elves/wizards/dwarves/aliens/mutants/what-have-you.

Perhaps one of the best examples (in my mind) is in a story from the 
Brothers Grimm - one of their fairy tale witches (can't remember which 
one) was defeated when the hero thrust a special flower into her face, 
and undid all her magic, changing his beloved back into her human form 
(from the bird the witch had turned her into).

Maybe a better way to handle it would be the way seen in Final Fantasy 
4 (Japanese version - 2 in U.S.) - there's a scene where one of the 
monsters has a vulnerability to metal weapons, so he's focusing his 
power into a magnetic field in his cave, so you can't use metal.  An 
item you pick up previously allows you to break his concentration and 
fight him on a more even level.

That aside, still an excellent article!

Thanks for putting these together - very helpful all around.

[Editor's note: a category I hadn't thought to include in the 
non-unbalancing items article. It makes a lot of sense - it's very 
narrowly focussed, and the item doesn't necessarily have power in its 
own right - it just has power over the villain. A great idea!]


 From David Stoddart comes a suggestion that readers might enjoy 
submitting work to the Games Workshop publication "Inferno!" 
Submission guidelines can be found linked to from the following URL:
http://www.games-workshop.com/blacklibrary/contri.html


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