Anachronistic Weapons Aging Like Fine Wine

Everyone loves swords. And not just for fantasy games. In every game. No one cares if they’re anachronistic and don’t make sense. They’ll use them anyway. Swords in our modern games. Swords in our sci-fi games. Does it make sense that the mecha fights with a sword? No. No one cares.

It’s OK if it doesn’t make sense. It is more important for a game to be fun than to be realistic. But thinking about why swords are in the game can build verisimilitude that makes the game more engaging and interesting. So what kind of worldbuilding would support introducing old weapons into modern or futuristic games?

Ancient Weapons, Ample Power

Here is one idea. When a weapon is first created, it works as expected. The vast majority of weapons are destroyed, lost, or worn down to uselessness over time.

A few weapons survive though some combination of luck, craftsmanship, and careful preservation. Through magic or whatever equivalent supernormal force exists in the setting in question, these weapons slowly accumulate an animus of power. The longer they continue to exist in a usable state, the stronger they become. If they continue to see active use through the years, they accumulate power more quickly.

These need to be genuine weapons designed for use in combat. This does not include weapons designed for ceremonial or “parade” purposes – it only applies to weapons used in actual battle, with the intent to inflict harm. 

Such weapons become more deadly and powerful. But they’re not supernaturally durable, and can’t be substantially changed from their original construction; they can’t be reforged or re-engineered with more modern techniques and materials. Any repair or maintenance would have to stick to comparable materials and techniques from the weapon’s creation. A neanderthal’s obsidian axe would be immensely powerful because of its great age, but could only be used a few times before it would break. An ancient stone arrowhead would likewise be very powerful, but comparatively fragile.

In this world, this aspect of weapons is a relatively new discovery. Perhaps someone can mass-produce modern weapons that would take advantage of this quality in several hundred years, but that’s outside the scope of the game world. For the time being, those who wish to leverage the power of these ancient weapons must find the rare pieces in museums or private collections or ancient battlefields that survived to the present.

Parceling out the GM's Hats

There are TTRPG games with a traditional GM, and there are GM-less games. Is there any useful space in between? 

I previously wrote about games in which the GM role switches mid-session. As I said at the time, I think that mid-session-switching games will only appeal to a narrow band of experienced players. If your entire group is made up of GMs who have past experience running games, sure, no problem. But that’s not most groups.

I started thinking about this some more after some conversations with several players who had strong creative instincts, but were reluctant to run their own games. I generally believe that most people are too hesitant to try running a game. They believe it’s a unique skill that they don’t possess. I usually advise them that it’s much easier than they realize, and they should at least run a one-shot to try it out. And I still believe that.

But after those conversations, I also realized that the reasons players don’t want to run games are more nuanced than just hesitation. Some potential GMs love worldbuilding, but hate rules. Some are interested in tactical and crunchy mechanics, but don’t like portraying NPCs. Some are happy to act as a master of ceremonies, but don’t want to serve as a judge. 

Some of these preferences are things these people should interrogate to see just how deeply they are rooted. But some of them are just hard stops, and keep people from running games, if they aren’t comfortable wearing each of the hats on the GM’s many-armed hat rack.

So could we divide GM duties into different roles?

A couple caveats before I proceed. I have not (yet) tested this idea in a game, so it could shatter on impact with actual players. I’m also sure that some game has done this before; I just don’t know which game it is. I’m not suggesting that this is a completely new idea.

The Architect. This is the part of the GM job concerned with creating stuff during prep. It might be worldbuilding or dungeon maps or even creating monsters. Players who love laboring over intricate backstories and lore are well-suited to this role.

The Actor. This role characterizes NPCs. Players who enjoy roleplay itself will gravitate toward this role.

The Adjudicator. This is the judge, the GM who interprets the dice and the action of the world. Players who know the rules front to back often enjoy this role.

The Antagonist. The antagonist is simply a player who controls monsters and other hostile creatures. Their resources are limited to what the Architect has placed in the current milieu; but they can otherwise devote their tactical energy to providing a challenge for the players. A player who loves combat – or just coming up with complex plans and ambushes – can handle this role.

This is a simplified model; we could make a longer list if we needed to. And most games won’t need or want four different GMs. But two people could wear two hats each; for example, a creative type who enjoys serving as architect and actor, while leaving the crunchy stuff to a second GM who acts as adjudicator and antagonist. And these roles can’t cover everything the GM is required to do; the GMs would need to navigate places where their roles leave gaps, or overlap. But I believe it would be an interesting experiment.

Searching for the Answer

“Is there anything else interesting?”

“I look around some more to see if there is anything unusual.”

“I search the whole room for anything useful.”

Anyone who has GM’d more than a few games has probably heard variations on these statements from players -- particularly in games with serious exploration elements. The players know (or at least suspect) that there is something worth interacting with in the space. Something that will get them what they want – treasure, information, or an edge in a potential conflict. So they ask again for more detail on the place they're exploring. And ask again. And again.

I don’t think players are intending to misbehave here. Navigating a shared imagined space, primarily through question-and-answer, is difficult in the best of circumstances. The players are trying to engage with the fiction. 

But when players try to move forward by repeatedly executing general searches, it feels like moving around the room in a video game while blindly spamming the action/interact button. That’s understandable when you get stuck in a video game, as there are limited ways to communicate with the game. Sometimes you have to either look things up, or brute force it.

But the GM does not suffer from that limitation. The players can (and should) ask any number of variations on their questions. The GM just needs to help them understand how that dialogue works.

I’ve found it helpful to explain that when players want to extract more information from the physical space their character is interacting with, one of two things is possible*:

• When I (as GM) introduced the fictional space or set the scene, I listed everything that was of interest; I did not purposefully omit anything their character would be interested in.
• If there is something they would be interested in beyond what I identified at the beginning of the scene, it will only become apparent through deeper interaction with the objects and people already established.

*I suppose that “I forgot something” is another possibility, but that’s not something the player can solve; I need to correct those errors on my own time.

It can also help to simply prompt the player to be more specific. The illustrative examples I provided at the start of this post are characterized by their ambiguity and generalness. So the GM should ask more questions to advance the scene. 

• What do you mean by “interesting”? This tomb has been sealed for a thousand years, there are many “interesting” things within it. What specifically would be most interesting to your character in this space? 
• What do you mean by useful? Were you expecting to find something in particular in this space? What particular problem is front-of-mind for you right now?
• What do you mean by unusual? You’re exploring an alien spaceship. Everything about it is fundamentally unusual. Where are you focusing your attention?

“Cursed” Magic Items From My Game

Last week: Auditing the Cursed Items of 5E D&D

I took a dive deep into my notes from the 5E games that I ran from 2017 to 2023 and came up with some interesting examples of "cursed" magic items, along with retrospective notes on how they were received. 

Storm Heresy Amulet (Magic, Amulet, Thunder, Lightning, Cursed). While attuned to this item, the wearer gains a +1 bonus to saving throws. They also gain resistance to fire and cold damage, as well as vulnerability to thunder and lightning damage. The item is cursed and cannot easily be removed or de-attuned.

This was one of the few items I found in my notes where the cursed status actually worked somewhat like how 5E's rules suggest, and prevent the wearer from de-attuning. In this instance it was applied to make it harder to swap item in and out, depending on the dangers faced. Note the +1 to saving throws makes the item compelling even if a PC expects that the resistances and vulnerabilities will be a wash.

Octopus Statue (Magic, Creepy). This small statue is clammy to the touch, and your breath smells faintly of seawater as long as you carry it. Once per day, if you roll a natural 8 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you may reroll. You must use the new result. Each time you use this ability, tally one Coleoid Point.

Here’s a different drawback. The negative consequences of the item aren’t known until after considerable use. This one provides a nice bonus with a drawback of accumulating “points,” the effect of which is unknown… until the player accumulates too many. The player who found this item used it pretty judiciously, and never collected enough Coleoid Points for anything terrible to happen. If I recall correctly, it was either going to make them a were-octopus, or expose them to Aboleth influences. Possibly both!

Crown of the Dead (Magic, Necrotic, Attunement, Headgear). A creature attuned to the crown can assert control over a skeleton or zombie within 60 feet and issue commands to it as a bonus action. The wearer may control additional skeletons or zombies, but must make a concentration check at the end of each turn with DC = 12 + X, where X is the total number of undead controlled. The attuned creature takes on a semi-incorporeal appearance, is vulnerable to radiant damage, and has disadvantage on attack rolls, as well as Wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight, while in sunlight. If the creature is reduced to 0 hit points while attuned to the crown, it dies immediately, without making death saving throws.

I count this one as a miss. Controlling low-level undead is fun, but that’s a lot of drawbacks. I like the flavor that using it keeps the wearer closer to death, but most 5E players are not willing to play so fast and loose with their characters' fates.

Frogkind Frock (Magic, Cloak, Attunement). The wearer of this cloak can breathe both air and fresh water. They must spend at least one hour per day immersed in water or mud or suffer a level of exhaustion that is not removed until they spend a long rest in water or mud. The wearer cannot de-attune from the cloak as long as they are exhausted.

This one did see a little bit of use, and I like the flavor of conditional de-attunement, but it’s a lotta work for one payoff (breathing water – and freshwater only, at that). If I were to do another pass at this one, I would give it another frog-related power like BIG JUMPS or a stretchy tongue.

Brass Eyeball (Magic, Attunement). While attuned to this item, a character can see anything that the eye can see. The eye has hardness 5 and 20 HP. If destroyed, the attuned person's eye is also destroyed.

I think this one was also met with a resounding “nope!” from the PCs. While it is potentially quite useful, attunement in particular might have been too much of an ask; after the PCs found more unambiguously positive magic items, it was easy to discard stuff like this, and not have to worry about big conditional drawbacks. This would resonate a bit more in a high-lethality old-school game, where the risk of death and dismemberment is so much more up-front, and the risk inherent in a double-edged magic item like this would seem much more reasonable. 

Abyssal Chain Belt (Abyssal, Fire, Attunement). This belt is made of broken halos linked together to form a chain. While attuned to this item, your strength increases by 2, to a maximum of 22. You have resistance to fire damage and 60' telepathy for purposes of speaking to fiends, who can act as if they have cast the Detect Thoughts spell on you while within 30'. Once per day, you may use a bonus action to ignite your hands, dealing an additional 3d6 fire damage on the next successful unarmed strike, grapple, or shove in the ensuing minute.

This one was a hit; one of the more daring players wore it for a good chunk of an extended campaign. Characters will go through a lot of trouble for a standing stat bonus, and giving fiends the ability to mindread the wearer led to some interesting situations. This has some of the same energy as the Demon Armor from the last post, but in a way that creates more interesting choices. 

Ancient Hourglass (Magic, Expendable, Transmutation) When you break this small hourglass and inhale the air from the empty half, you stop the flow of time for as long as you can hold your breath. The effect ends early if one of your actions or any effect you create during this period affects a creature other than you or an object being worn or carried by someone other than you. A Timekeeper will hunt you down in 12 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes, and 12 seconds to punish you for your crime against chronality.

Cursed items are mostly associated with gear that the player is expected to hold onto for a long time, but the same principles can apply to expendable items as well. Stopping time is powerful (and I like the Dragonball Z idea of holding one’s breath to stop time). The eventual price of using this item is serious (the Timekeeper is a no-joke enemy).

Auditing the Cursed Items of 5E D&D

Last week: Discourses on Cursory Curses, and Better Ways to Tempt PCs with Terrible Power

Armor of Vulnerability

This armor grants resistance to one of bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing damage, but vulnerability to the other two types of damage. While it could come in handy in narrow situations, it’s a net loss for the average combatant. 

Tempting the PC: Tweak the armor to grant vulnerability to only one damage type instead of two. It becomes something like a lesser version of the Armor of Invulnerability, but is still quite powerful. This makes the armor a tempting tradeoff, and introduces an additional tactical dimension, where a PC might seek to avoid a monster dealing the damage in question.

Breaking the Curse: For some reason, this item’s description notes that the Identify spell will reveal the curse. That’s contrary to the general rules for curses, which indicate that Identify doesn’t reveal a curse. It’s fine for a specific rule to supersede a general one – that’s part of 5E’s basic design. But I have no idea why this particular distinction was made for this particular cursed item, as it doesn’t serve any particularly obvious purpose.

That aside, we need to make it much harder to get this accursed armor off. Say the armor can only be removed while the character is on the brink of death. This can be done slowly the conventional way, if the wearer can be kept alive long enough; or quickly, as a single action, with the Remove Curse spell. Treating Remove Curse as the spell to cast in the right conditions, rather than a general panacea, helps a lot.

Berserker Axe

The axe grants +1 to hit and damage, and an increase of 1 HP/level. But the drawback is enormous; a range of penalties, particularly a clause that forces the PC to attack at random on a saving throw, including nearby allies.

Tempting the PC: The advantage of the weapon should be much greater. The HP gain is legitimately tempting (in my experience, 5E players always want more HP). But players also hate losing agency over their character, so I think we would have to offer something more tempting. We don’t have to invent something out of whole cloth; weapons like the berserker axe are, of course, a familiar trope in fantasy media. Offer the PC effects like these, that greatly amplify their effectiveness in combat, and they will have to think long and hard about passing on the power.

Breaking the Curse: Let’s pick something that shows the character’s patience and control winning out. Passing the Wisdom saving throw three times in combat without attacking another creature breaks the axe’s hold on the wearer, allowing them to discard it.

Deck of Many Things (Euryale Card)

I am not sure if this one counts, as it’s not an attuned item, but I mention it for completeness. Euryale is one of the cards in the famous Deck of Many Things; most cards are beneficial, but a few are negative, and this one is pretty nasty, hitting the PC with a permanent -2 to all saving throws. Something a little spicier than a generic saving throw penalty might be more interesting, but it’s certainly a strong penalty, and the PC will feel cursed.

Tempting the PC: No change required. The risk/reward proposition of the Deck of Many Things is tempting enough already.

Breaking the Curse: No major change required here either, as the condition is suitably high (only the magic of a god or another specific card in the deck can fix it). That said, the DM should make solving it through a god’s magic suitably difficult; a cleric should not just be able to spam Divine Intervention until the curse goes away. 

Demon Armor 

This is actually pretty appealing to a low-level character capable of wearing heavy armor; plate +1 is nothing to sneeze at, even if the other abilities (fluency in Abyssal and some unarmed strike damage) don’t come in handy often. The drawbacks, while situational, are severe (disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws versus demons). 

Tempting the PC: 5E loves to give out unarmed attacks, particularly as features for various ancestries; but with rare exceptions, most classes want characters to use weapons or magic, not unarmed strikes. Replace this ability with something that grants fire damage or a similar benefit to the character’s weapon attacks would be a nice upgrade. As with the berserker axe, there are more tempting examples in other media; Berserker Armor is a more compelling example than the rather modest benefits here, or the cursed armor from Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine (see second paragraph under “Grim and Grotty” here for an idea).

Breaking the Curse: Remove Curse appears again here, making the armor trivial to remove during rest, as long as the group has access to a cleric. Add a saving throw with an escalating DC based on how long the character has worn the armor, or how many times it has saved them from damage, to make it scarier to wear. For extra spice, perhaps a devil (as the sworn enemy of demons) could help a character remove the armor. Of course, dealing with devils brings its own complications…

Shield of Missile Attraction 

OK, this one is weird.

The shield offers resistance to damage from ranged attacks (that’s good!), but it’s also cursed (that’s bad). But it can draw fire away from your allies (that’s good!)... and it sends those attacks at you (that’s bad).

Many shield-carrying characters are tanks who want to take hits meant for squishier party members anyway. And the resistance means they’ll take less damage when those attacks do get past their superior AC. Moreso than the other cursed 5E items, this one is pretty close to being more obviously upside than downside. The biggest drawback is probably that the shield wearer will sometimes interfere with allied fire. My longest-running 5E group included an archer who was constantly sniping at enemies in melee with their allies, so this certainly would have come up as a problem.

Tempting the PC: Expand the range so that the shield covers a bigger area; 10’ is arbitrarily small. If you want to make it really spicy, change it from “ranged weapon attacks” to “ranged attacks” generally. At higher levels, ranged weapon attacks come up a lot less as most enemies are either melee heavies or employing magic (if you’ve ever played (or DM’d for) a 5E monk, think about how the Deflect Missiles ability came up less and less as they reached higher levels).

And please change the name. The coldly clinical and overtly descriptive name of “Shield of Missile Attraction” is a weirdly literal holdover from early D&D (it may even go back to Gygax himself, as he oscillated between evocative names loyal to Appendix N fiction, and names that sound like they belong on the cover of a user manual).

Call it the Shield of the Bloodied Defender of Grix or something fancy like that, and give it a backstory about a martyred paladin who died pierced by 999 arrows while holding off an army so his allies could escape.

Breaking the Curse: Find the remains of that paladin who first bore the shield and remove the Arrow of Hero Slaying still embedded in his remains to free his soul. Rather than just allowing the PC to drop the shield, give it an added ability to choose whether to attract or pass on any given attack.

Sword of Vengeance

This one is a boring +1 sword that piles on a bunch of restrictions, principally forcing the PC to repeatedly attack someone who damaged them. Restricting a character’s choices isn’t as fun as the designer’s think it is. In an authored narrative work, this can be a powerful tool for telling a story. In a game, this is frustrating and boring for many players, especially when their character is forced to do the same thing round after round. RPGs are about making choices. Be very wary of things that give players few or no choices.

Tempting the PC: This one is a close cousin to the berserker’s axe, and the same kinds of improvements apply. Give the sword some additional powers, like adding a Vampiric Touch on a finishing blow, or a movement bonus that kicks in when the sword’s wielder is pursuing an enemy that damaged them.

Breaking the Curse: This one actually says “You can break the curse in the usual ways.” Yaaawn. We’re beating a dead zebra at this point, but there should not be “usual ways” of dealing with curses, like something on your to-do list between picking up dry cleaning and mailing some letters. The ways should always be unique. 

The Sword of Vengeance offers a slightly more interesting alternative in that PCs can use the Banishment spell to expel the vengeful spirit. It’s cool that the players get a “clean” +1 sword out of the deal, but a one-time casting of a fourth-level spell isn’t that high of a bar to clear, and a +1 sword gets discarded pretty early in 5E’s high-powered adventuring world. To break the curse, a PC should have to investigate who the spirit was in life, learn why it sought vengeance, and do something to right its wrongs (or perform a compensatory action elsewhere in the world). Much more interesting. 

Axe of the Dwarvish Lords

Finally, we have an artifact. It’s suitably impressive, encompassing the effects of several lesser magic items that are quite good on their own.

Tempting the PC: No problem here. This is an artifact, a +3 weapon, with a whole suite of useful abilities. It’s suitable as a final gear upgrade for a tier 4 PC finishing a 1-20 campaign.

Breaking the Curse: The curse here is more interesting than some of the previous entries; it transforms non-dwarves to make them gradually more dwarf-like in appearance. This certainly tells a more interesting story than a -1 to some rolls, but is a non-factor for a PC who doesn’t care about character aesthetics. A more interesting curse might involve playing into the folklore aspects of mythological dwarves; an insatiable lust for gold, or a desire to carve great works on the sides of mountains, or tunnel into the depths of the earth. 

Despite the epic magic involved, Remove Curse still does the job just as well. Artifacts like the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords include instructions for their destruction, so consider simply saying that the only way to break the curse is to destroy the axe (or something similarly difficult). That will make a PC pause before running wild with this epic weapon.

Next Week: “Cursed” Magic Items From My Home Game

Discourses on Cursory Curses, and Better Ways to Tempt PCs with Terrible Power

When a player new to modern D&D finds something confusing – vestigial rules, or weirdly specific mechanics – they may wonder why the writers put them in the game. A veteran player will just shake their head knowingly, and cite – chapter and verse – the edition or supplement that set the precedent that later designers felt compelled to follow, even if the game’s fundamental playstyle had since moved on.

D&D 5E.14 is the ultimate compromise edition. This is both its strength and its weakness. In contrast to D&D 4E, which was a stark break from previous editions, 5E sought to embrace and preserve room for any and every concept, playstyle, and idea from the game's history. So while cursed items don’t fit within 5E’s typical play culture – here they are anyway, conspicuous, purposeless, staring up at their ashamed creators. “Why, Wizards of the Coast? Why do we exist?” The cursed magic items receive no satisfactory answer.

The 5E.14 DMG contains a mere half-dozen cursed items. It’s not hard to imagine why 5E’s writers didn’t make more. To begin with, they are no fun. “A curse should be a surprise to the item's user when the curse's effects are revealed,” the DMG advises. This does not comport with modern play styles at most tables. "Gotcha" cursed items feel like a holdover from an adversarial style of play that worked in the tournament environment of early D&D, but made less and less sense as the play culture moved further and further away from that early model.

Sure, we could just leave the cursed items out of the game. I’m sure that’s what many (most?) 5E groups do. But how would we change them if we wanted to fix them instead? 

The Lure of Power

Cursed items in folklore and fantasy stories aren’t like 5E’s cursed items. They don’t masquerade as useful things until a character picks them up and the GM/storyteller shouts “it's cursed!” Instead, they offer legitimate power… at a price ultimately too dear to pay.

So the first part of the cursed item fix is “tempting the PC.” The cursed item must offer legitimate advantages. It must do things the PC normally couldn’t do. It should be a fast track to power.

Curse Removal Made (Too) Easy

Antagonist:

“Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!
Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!
More direful hap betide that hated wretch,
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives!”

PC:

“I cast Remove Curse.”

Antagonist:

“Oh. Crap. Well, carry on then.” 

Removing a cursed item is too easy in 5E. If a party member stumbles into attunement with a cursed item, they only need to cast Remove Curse, a third-level spell, to remove it again. Clerics typically have access to all spells each time they take a long rest, so there isn’t a “spells known” opportunity cost here, as there would be for a wizard. A fifth-level cleric can select the spell on a long rest and cast it without much trouble (no material components required). In practice, most of these cursed items won’t bedevil their victims for more than a night’s sleep. So the second part of the fix is brainstorming ways to “break the curse” that are more interesting than casting a relatively low-level, catch-all spell.

Let’s tour through the cursed magic items from the 5E.14 DMG and think up some potential fixes.

Next week: Auditing the Cursed Items of 5E D&D

Now I Am the Master

Last week: The Weirdest Idea in D&D 5E's DMG

Begin the game using whatever GM-less system you prefer. For example, start with something like Microscope, and play normally for as long as desired. Keep going until two players really disagree about some aspect of the fiction. Either one can “win” the argument by becoming the GM (if both disagreeing players are willing to become the GM to prevail, they can flip a coin; ask the table to vote; or otherwise resolve the impasse through a quick minigame of their choosing).

Once a GM has been chosen, the game switches from collaborative (with all players having an equal stake in creation) to Socratic (the more traditional question-and-answer between a GM with scenario control and players with character control). We zoom in from our high-level storytelling view and get into specifics. The players pick characters appropriate to the scenario, and the GM adjudicates the game. This might mean switching from Microscope or whatever GM-less system to another system with a GM structure; the new system should be low-prep or no-prep, given the fluidity of the game structure. Play continues in this way until everyone agrees that the present scenario is concluded, and it makes sense to move back to high-level collaborative play.

Death, Where Is Your Sting?  

Here’s a weirder spin on this idea. When you're playing a traditional GM-led game, and your character dies, you may choose to immediately take over as GM. If you do, the old GM grabs a character sheet (prepared for this eventuality) and moves to the other side of the screen, joining the action as soon as possible.

The new GM should pick up where the old one left off. They should honor the fiction that’s already been established, but otherwise may choose to steer the game in a very different direction. Like any GM-switching mechanic, this mechanism depends on a high level of flexibility among the players. It fits best in a high-lethality game (such that the opportunity to switch comes up somewhat often) and requires a high level of trust as well (so that no one is using the GM role punitively against the person who presided when their last character died).

I think this is more interesting in theory than execution. It gets so far form how the conventional game is played that I’m not sure anyone would enjoy it… but for just the right group, I would love to see it in action.