SELL SELL SELL!
There’s a reason that today’s comic references Tolkien. The One Ring represents the biggest, fattest McGuffin in all of fantasy. It is also exactly the sort of object that I’d hesitate to give PCs.
When an artifact registers on legend lore, comes with its own cut-scene, or otherwise elicits gasps of recognition from around the table, it ought to go without saying that it has the capacity to change the game world. Just take the Deck of Too Many Things. It can be wildly fun or dangerously wild, but it will shake things up. If you’re the sort of GM who’s set on introducing the thing, chances are you know this and have come to terms with it. You’re aware of how off-the-rails your campaign can get, and you think that’s good fun rather than a narrative-destroying nuisance. But when your McGuffin has a clear arc attached to it—when you’ve spent hours of game time debating at the Council of Elrond only to have some NPC wizard declare, “It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed.”—you’re moving dangerously close to railroading. The whole point of the Council of Elrond is that the One Ring has a single viable quest line attached to it. That restriction works well enough in a novel, but it does not play well with the chaos elementals known as PCs.
Be honest here: If your party were at the Council of Elrond instead of Frodo et al., what are the chances you’d have taken the prescribed path? I don’t know about you, but my players would have tried the One on for size, baited the Ring Wraiths into an ambush, told Elrond to stuff it, and summarily broken my plot in half. And that’s not their fault. It’s my fault for giving them more power than I’d intended.
Think about what artifacts really mean. When you introduce a super-powered object into your game, you’re handing narrative power across the screen and into the hands of the PCs. These are world-shaking items, remember? That means your world is gonna get shook. So if I’m not prepared to see a One-Ring wearing Aragorn march on Mordor, I’m not going to introduce the possibility. Imagine a new GM tossing a Ring of Three Wishes to a first level party, then getting upset about “throwing out my campaign notes” when they sail off in their new spelljammer. If your first reaction is, “Who the hell would give a first level party a ring of three wishes?” then you understand where I’m coming from.
My advice is simply this: If you’re going to give power to your players, make sure you’re prepared to watch them wield it. You can either protect your plot, or you can let your players go HAM on the game world, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
So what about it, guys? Have you ever seen a MacGuffin cast Warp World on a game? Did it annoy your GM, or was it a source of unexpected fun for all parties? Let’s hear your best tales of game-breaking items down in the comments!
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oh FrodNO, thats a bad move there fighter (heh gettit), as far as macguffins casting warp world we had one in the form of a high priestess of Chauntia in one of my old games, she was supposed to be pretty much a chosen and therefore one of the most powerful druids in the world but thanks to some godly relations that were oddly similar to what Cyric did to Mystra she was lacking some of her boom since Chauntia spent the campaign in a coma.
I digress, High Awesome Super Druidess as she was proved to be fallible to the charms of our rogue who spent pretty much the entire campaign romancing her and refused to leave her side, pretty much forcing us to lug a super duper NPC the length and breadth of Faerune which went swimmingly until the aformented rogue nearly died, the druidess flipped out and ended up levelling a couple of cities with Storm of vengeance.
Pretty much changed our quest from find relics and protect druidess into hide the Zucchini for the rouge and lie low from the huge bounty for the rest of us.
It did turn out well in the end when our wizard and rogue ended up snatching all the relics via teleport and invisibility but for a while there I thought the campaign was gonna turn into an international manhunt for our characters.
So what was super-druid like on an encounter basis? Did you basically point her at problems to make them disappear? Were there any constraints put on your use of this “magic item?”
Admittedly Super druid was pretty good about that, she was generally a non-violent type and pretty much sat back and buffed us with relatively low-level spells and was loath to use any of the stronger stuff because it would syphon energy from Chauntia and would make the potential recovery time worse, so yeah there were restrictions and she wouldn’t just explode all of our encounters but we certainly found it a really strange experience.
The only other really jarring use of her powers was when we all got trapped in a mineshaft after the entrance got destroyed by the baddies and while the rest of us began to asphyxiate and die she calmly used move earth to tunnel us out.
Overall it was a really positive experience but causing Balders gate to not exist anymore is a pretty drastic change to the topography of Faerune.
I think this story is interesting in comparison to CommandoDude’s comment further down the page. Do you feel like your ability to use this druid’s power was “artificially restricted” as per CommandoDude’s examples?
My friends once wanted to play Lord of the Rings. I was surprised at how normal the game was being: they enjoyed running from the Nazgul; they enjoyed meeting Tom Bombadil and actually got into his whole silly thing; they had fun carousing and blowing their cover in Bree.
Then Frodo got stabbed, and leaped from the summit of Weathertop shouting, “HA! GOT YOUR KNIFE!”
Normal service kind of resumed at that point. No regrets though, it was a really fun game.
The Nazgul are some of the most terrifying beings in Middle Earth. Bound to serve the One, these twisted shadows of a past age exude an aura of palpable dread. Nevertheless:
https://pics.me.me/a-gretchen-felker-martin-scumbelievable-no-matter-how-carefully-you-construct-37326276.png
So true!
Fighter is the hero no one needs, but the one Frodo/Elrond deserve for not checking alignment before handing out world-saving assignments.
On the plus side, Paladin and the Anti-Party just got a fun new assignment. And I’m pretty sure Smite Evil works on Nazgul.
Makes for an interesting “what if?” in terms of LotR timelines. A wraith on horseback trying to make it back to Mordor with the One Ring in hand, with all the goodly creatures chasing after them…
So my story is less aboot what happens when the party takes a plot macguffin, and more aboot what happens when a Paladin paladins all over the plot device.
So there’s a dangling story thread from Storm King’s Thunder that picks up in Tomb of Annihilation where there’s an artifact with potentially apocalyptic uses. The guy who has it is content to live the ’70s Incredible Hulk TV show as his life and be constantly on the run with it. This is portrayed as noble for some reason.
My Paladin was involved in a couple of sessions of SK’sT before ToA came out, so to bridge the gap and explain the level loss, it was assumed that he failed to find the MacGuffin to keep it safe, and spent 4 down-levels worth of time being in a depressive stupor between adventures to justify the level loss.
We eventually encounter Mr. Banner himself who has been trapped in the Fey Summer court. The assumption was that he would travel with us due to mutual goals, but I had other plans. I outed his doomsday device to the Fey and told them “It needs to either be destroyed or go in the deepest darkest hole you’ve got. (Phrasing!) I don’t know how to destroy it, so unless you do, you’ve gotta keep it safe.” They agreed, but took Dr. Banner hostage too.
And that’s how I prevented a major plot point by being a responsible adult and tattling.
So… Are the Summer Fey a stable and level-headed lot with no propensity for spying or information leaks? Just saying, that mess might not be over with.
What’s really interesting to me here is that it’s a player rather than a GM trying to nip destabilizing forces in the bud. Usually it’s the other way around.
Well spoilers for SKT, ToA, and some books set in the realms:
The artifact in question is the ring of winter. It’s a sentient CE artifact that routinely tries to control its’ wearer into doing CE things in the hopes of getting its’ wearer killed by someone more powerful so it can (Banner (who’s actual named Artus Cimber if you wanna go googling) is not immune to this mind control) find its’ way to a CE being powerful enough to unlock its’ ultimate power of plunging the world into eternal winter. I suspect the Summer Court would object to that goal.
Part of the reason Banner keeps the ring, rather than calling one of the countless NPCs in the realms who can cast Plane Shift to drop it into the Holy Water sea around Mt. Celestia where no evil could realistically obtain it is that it also prevents him from aging, and his wife (Who is immortal) is in another dimension and he wants to wait around for her. This is portrayed as a noble and heroic thing, ignoring the fact that he’s endangering the world for a relationship.
As to your second point, what kind of hero would leave a potential apocalypse out in the open?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/weapon-focus
Well yes, it was a rhetorical question where the answer was “A bad hero”.
Is this Diablo 2? Cause it sounds like Diablo 2. ;p
Pun 1: don means put on so din means put in. Pun 2, pala means shovel, so pala-din means put a shovel in. Start digging.
What I hate is when DMs or adventure path books will give powerful items to players but then try to play a cop out by artificially restricting the item. Doing stuff like making an alignment restriction, making it intelligent, or having some kind of will save mechanic, etc.
Essentially they are very blatantly trying to have their cake and eat it too, since this powerful item exists but they EXPECT the party to be unable to use it. I am reminded of one of Pathfinder’s APs, where you acquire a very powerful artefact called the Occulus of Abbadon with crazy strong powers and a requirement to be evil. I half wanted to change my character to evil just to wield that item, make the AP writers reap what they sow.
A little bit of that complaint was in my mind when writing this comic. “Here’s a ring! You can’t use it because dire consequences!”
I’d be curious to get your take on Wrable’s “super-powered NPC druid” example a little further up the page. Would that feel like an artificial restriction to you, or does that kind of story line restriction pass the sniff test?
In any case I don;t think taking the rig to Mordor was the best option anyway. What about sending it to the Valar on one of the white ships and having them deal with it. Even if they couldn’t destroy it they could cast it out of the world like they did with Morgoth and Sauron would never be able to retrieve it
I’m not a good enough Tolkien scholar to provide the correct answer, but I believe there’s some “one way trip” or a bit of “they’ve withdrawn from the world” nonsense. Remember the point of the Council of Elrond is to make the plot of the story necessary. If someone had brought up the Eagles for example, Gandalf would have said something like, “They have their own wars, and will not come at your beck and call.”
So let me tell you about my humdinger of a magic item I whipped up for the party. The strands of Fate a golden rope tied into a simple knot, the longer the owner has it the longer the rope grows at any point the wielder may pull the knot free and turn back the wheel of time to a point they desire.
It’s secondary function is that any point the user is making a decision that will have a major impact on their life it glows brightly to let them know to tread lightly.
No clue why but I decided to let the players try and get this magical item. At any point in the game they can time travel back and try to avoid any dangerous situation, raise those they lost or win lost battles.
Trouble is they’ll go back in time but their bodies won’t so they’ll have a big issue with losing the gear they earn and the physical and magical experience.
That’s my big macguffin.
You might be interested in a comment that my (failure of a) reddit thread got:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/aggr18/has_a_powerful_artifact_ever_derailed_you_game/ee66b3t/
Time travel is freaking’ hard!
First of all if my party were in the Enron Council they will do what is honorable and correct to do. No matter the personal gain or your stabbing needs, sometime one must do what is good for the world and for one. We will take the ring to Mordor where it belongs… right in the hands of Sauron, rightful owner of a ring stolen ages ago by a Numerorean of ill reputation in a illicit act of pillage that counts as a war crime.
About the artifacts on general. What about the solution of You-can’t-use-it. It only works on the hands of his maker, a good fail-safe certain Maia should have considered. If the problem is the party getting power they are not prepare for, then make it inaccessible. Power you can’t use is no power at all. You can also doing a unreliable power. Lets say the One Item only works, at all or maybe successfully, in the hands of his rightful owner. If you try to use it maybe can do something helpful maybe not, maybe it works only because it want to returns to his master hands and recognize helping the heroes accomplish that. The One Item can be risky to use “Each time you use the OI there is a 50% chance that 2D6-3 Item’s Wraith appears and attack the party”. The item can corrupt its user: “Each item you use one of the OI power check the table N-N and consult how much corruption points your character gain. If he accumulates more corruption points than his wisdom score he becomes a NPC under DM control.” The DM is not the only one who does the adventure, if the heroes try to use the One Item maybe allow them to use it can be a good idea. Give the first level party the Ring of Three wishes and see the chaos they provoke then make them repair what they broke, without the wishes. Easy to break, difficult to repair, like a young kid grieving the death of his father for circunstancies cause by the party and their wishes and all that. Ask Strahd if getting what he wished for solve his life 🙂
Well once the party was in that mountain under… Neverwinter? Candelkeep? Our DM then make use of a random loot table, next session after that we were in Mount Celestia under siege of the occupying forces of Khyber. More fun, or more correctly even more fun, was when the party puts its hands on a Deck of Many Things, the thing is that the DM recognized how problematic that game can be, so he made us take a card but with different rules. One person can get only one card, the effects are temporal, once there is not cards on the deck the effect end and each card return to the deck. So the pc of the group take each his own card then the deck ends in the hands of the town people passing from person to person unleashing more chaos. Like the vicar getting persecute by devils, the local rouge establishing a orphanage and that kind of things. A deck of many things can be fun when the party needs to resolve the effects of the artifact unleashed in a peaceful port town.
I know it is the Elrond Council, but my keyboard continue to betray me, while it conspire with Chrome to make me look like bad.
I dig that take on the deck of many things. It’s like Jumani, where you have to play through to the end until all the dire consequences magically go away. All of he shenanigans, none of he campaign ruining.
Eh, i haven’t think of Jumanji now you say it. Yes kinda like that, but with more participants. Fun for all the family, ruin for all the town. Apparently our DM has good ideas when he needs to improvise something after someone eats his campaign notes 🙂
I think I told you all about the bard party, allow me to eleanorate on a particular venture which made me have to rethink how danger in the city would have to approach them.
They just started their bardic gig and had a few good runs around a couple of taverns where one of the local gangs call their turf. They got in good with the gang and they’re suppose to introduce the party into the wider crime organization. But first they have to test the gang’s mettle; sure they might be all bards but they need to hold their own in a fight too. Basically what I was going to do was a pretty standard gang fight sort of dealio. But the mistake I made that would throw it all away was that I gave the bard party a fan club.
These not-quite-cohorts NPC’s were more or less a physical gauge on the party’s popularity, with things like what their age, race, their neighborhood, and occupation being as an indicator of who they could appeal to. Their fan club was small at first, only three people, all human, fairly young folk who work at the dock. But the bard party went to their fan club and told them to spread some info about a concert they’re going to be holding for the gang, and they made sure everyone knew about it.
Showtime. Concert happens and I figured this would be a good time to have the rival gangs show up and cause some disruption. The party explicable said no weapons so my criminals would obviously have an advantage here. Oh if only I remembered all my bard spells. All the bards casted Unearthly Chorus, a spell that lasts for ten minutes and could charm anyone who fails the charisma save. And thug NPC’s don’t have a charisma save bonus. Within two turns the whole gang of bad guy thugs were charmed by the party, who used their time preforming to convince everyone present that violence is bad but community is good and all that Jazz.
And naturally this would increase their fan club, but I was at an impass. I didn’t mind the bardic party gimmick and to be fair in the idiot who sent the thugs after a party of bards at a concert, but I was worried about their growing fan club and what they’d do with it. PC controlled NPC’s are already a D&D boogieman and I didn’t want them to abuse it, but at the same time I’ve already introduced it to them and had no legitimate means at the time to take it away. Even later on when I made a smear campaign against the party their first focus was to regain their fan club, so it wasn’t as if the players didn’t want it either.
In the end I decided to roll with it, though I had to make the gangs smarter too. The ones who took the party seriously either invested into anti enchantment stuff or simply new better than to visit them during a concert. We had some more traditional dungeon runs in between shows and performances up until eventually the group had to disband for real life reasons.
Did they actually abuse their power at any point, or was that just a worry you had?
This is precisely the reason I tend to use people as my Macguffins rather than magical items. It can be far harder to try and game a person who has their own Will to handle your problems. For example, I ran a sci-fi game laden with psychics where my Big bad was a guy with a possession style Mind Control power. The adventure started with him trying to capture a young woman who had powerful Bio-kinetic abilities, allowing her to heal from grievous injuries and basically be immune to aging. He wanted to be immortal too. That was less of a macguffin because her powers weren’t world shattering (She could only sustain immortality on one person other than herself), but she was also not capable of leveling encounters for the players.
Consider also making your macguffins powerless on their own, but the “key” to some other event. Perhaps the Staff of the ancient hero Spudnik has minor abilities of its own, but its real power is that it can unlock the sealed Capsule of Chaos, in which Spudnik imprisoned the evil and corrupted Monkey demon, Fuzzbutt.
Solid advice. Have you put this mess into practice in your games?
I knew a guy that once had a pouch full of Feather Token: Tree. He trivialized many fights by just making Oak trees spawn and shape the terrain. In one case of naval combat, he needed a spotter to actually see the other ship (fog and darkness), so I used a Dancing Light. Once he could see the target, he tied a feather token to an arrow, fired it, hit the ship, then magnified his voice so he could activate the tree. The other ship wasn’t built to have an oak tree piercing its hull, so it was an easy encounter.
Yeah, we realized soon after the GM didn’t like that item, so we only used it in a pinch, but for a while those feather tokens were amazing.
More to your question, I have never actually played in a game with a MacGuffin. Just items that cause shenanigans.
I’ve heard stories about those silly things. I tend to think that it’s possible to rule lawyer the problems away, but that tends to annoy players. Did you guys collectively decide, “Yeah, that mess is a little OP,” or did you feel like your GM was killing the fun by discouraging shenanigans?
Yeah, a deck of many things basically defined the course of that one 3.5 game I occasionally reference. Things like having someone gain so many levels they have to be replaced with a different character to not ruin the game balance and accidentally handing out new people as property to characters and the like really messes things up.
I honestly wonder what was going on in the mind of whoever first wrote up the Deck of Many Things. They certainly couldn’t have been aiming for long term games.
I actually do intend to hand a legendary (not in the mechanical sense) item over to the PCs in the D&D game I’m running, but it won’t be world altering. And in fact I’ve already handed them a very minor artifact…. that’s pretty much only relevant to snake related issues and lets people poison undead and fiends nearby. So again, a “powerful item” but intentionally aimed at being “legendary” and impressive and not game breaking.
Forgot I wanted to mention this.
I also just started running a homebrew game that revolves entirely around characters have a single magic item they grow the strength of as they explore the world (and exploration is what the game is about more than it is about combat or any other matter).
How rude!
SOME of us may want to hear about what magic items you’ve plopped down in the Starter Pak, and yet here you are, dangling it tantalizingly with no further detail.
I’m actually happy to provide details. But I actually am unsure which game’s items you want to know about.
Nice! What ruleset are you using for these “legacy items?” I’ve seen the concept a few times, and although I always find it intriguing I’ve never quite pulled the trigger myself.
If you mean the homebrew game, it’s incredibly simple mechanically. It just involves rolling d100s to see how well they do (for the character in question factoring in what they’re good/bad at and the circumstances).
Regarding the items themselves, they pitch me a fairly simple magical item (though hopefully something interesting) of not incredible power.
From there as they level up (which is just whenever I say happens), they can choose how the item grows in the power that it grants them. It could increase some aspect of the wielder’s physical nature that somehow relates to the item (such as making them stronger), it could enhance or change the magical effect of the item, it could grant some effect relating to exploration and travel, or it could allow them to cast a “spell” from the item with whatever limitations we feel is appropriate after a discussion.
Are you referencing these things at all?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/scaling-magic-items/
It’s a neat reference point, if a bit more systematic than I’d like.
(I can’t reply to your comment Colin so I’m replying to mine again.)
For that game, not at all. That game is much more about flavor and must less about crunch.
In fact I’ve never seen that, but I knew such a thing must exist somewhere. However one of the items I mentioned for the D&D game I’m running will be somewhat like that. Though it probably won’t work out exactly as it would if I was using what you linked specifically.
Occurs to me I might as well give an example to explain what I mean.
So one of the characters’ item is “the Red Rod of Catching”. Which is a red wood fishing rod that has the magical property of being likely to pull up something useful. It’s not guaranteed, but overall at the very least it’s exceptionally useful as a fishing rod since you’re more likely to catch a fish with it and you might pull up some other random items as well.
When that character levels up, they’ll then be able to choose how the magic item’s benefits to them grows.
Maybe it will become good at catching large animals that aren’t even fish.
Maybe it will grant the wielder better reflexes.
Maybe it will become able to be used as a retractable grappling hook.
Maybe it will allow them to cast a spell that entangles a single target once per hour or maybe a spell that entangles all target in an area once per day.
Things like that.
I enjoy powerful items that have both intrinsic and narrative drawbacks. Risk-reward is powerful for people like Rogue, Cleric may relish or detest a new yet interesting rule or ability and how that works with his or hia parties current build, and “the fate of the world” is Wizard’s jam.
I think to make it less likely Fighter would sell it you need to understand what these powerful (if not dangerous to have) relics are actually worth. That sword of ultimate slay-slay the nay-nay may be worth 999999 gp in the book, but no merchant in their right mind would ever pay that for an item, even one that has such a power as to twice-slay the elusive double-nay. In fact, I bet that no shopkeep would even pay HALF price for that. Who would they even sell it to? Does the merchant really want to blow their entire companies current liquid net worth on a SINGLE item? Doubtful. Usually if my players try to sell items like the ring, the sum is a pittance in relation to its actual worth. Wraith here is probably handing over less than Fighter makes on a regular goblin raid.
… I will leave it to you to imagine what a regular goblin raid for fighter looks like, or which of the five sides he fights for. Spoiler – it’s the side of himself, because the more sides he can fight the more xp he can gain.
I gather that you’re a fan of Paizo settlement rules and the concept of “purchase limits.”
Also of note, I am now imagining Fighter in all manner of big CGI battles. Dude would go HAM at the Battle of Hogwarts.
Humorously enough I started thinking how to make the One Ring for 5e and I’m still having trouble two weeks later trying to make a negative about it that ties with the “Power corrupts.” theme of Tokien that doesn’t rely on “If you use this your alignment will change.”. I dislike that sort thing because it feels to me that I’m forcing the player to do something when I want them to buy into it and fall on their own.
Though that does rely on the player willing to play ball with their character and that’s a whole ‘nother thing.
It’s almost as if some concepts work better on the page than the tabletop. 😛
I happen to think alignment is a neat idea, but you’ve got to have the right kind of table to pull it off. Or rather, you have to have a right table. There are many ways to do alignment, but you need to get everyone on the same page for any of them work.
Anywho, if you aren’t down for alignment change, take a leaf from the deck of many things. There’s a % chance that putting on the ring will summon one or more wraiths, and there’s a % chance that the ring will suck out your soul and leave you as a husk.
I once gave a dragon to my party so they had a chance in battle against an immortal wizard. They didn’t abuse this power at all. I guess one of the reason was that the players were new to roleplaying stuff and preferred to be railroaded opposed to making their own adventure. But they get to fight knight duel on a dragon, that made them happy.