Magic Items are Campaign Defining

Continuing to work on my homegrown rules in my spare time. Currently I'm well into the magic item section.

Basically the intent is to give examples of how some things are done in the game system, and provide a spark for imagination. The latter isn't really all that important considering that the system isn't intended for beginners, but for my own groups.


The nature of a campaign defines what sort of magic items are suited to it. A historical dark ages game without magic would reject any items while a 'magic paves the city streets' setting would require them by the hundreds.

My campaigns tends to be rather magic poor. Most characters can expect to get a minor item or two if they live long enough. Only a few will obtain an item of true power. And to be honest the core rules are written more for this sort of campaign than any other.

Despite that, it's important to give enough examples to cover a good range of possibilities. It's interesting however that the list of example items will likely be longer than the entire list of magic items that players have actually earned in my campaigns.

What the Rules Leave Out is as Important as What is Written In

I've long consider that (i.e. the title above) one of the key insights in RPGs, and sadly a rare one to encounter. At least with any understanding.

The rules of a a game can be 100% concerned with combat and loot. And that tells you nothing about the campaign using those rules. The total time spent gaming might be 90% role-playing out political infighting with not a single die ever rolled or rulebook opened, with 10% of it spent actually in combat that results from someone losing politically.

All that a missing rule means is that the designer may will expect you to handle it on your own- not that it must be ignored. I attempted to cover this in my Layers of Design article back in 2002.

What brings it up today is that I get to look at the same subject from a slight different point of view.  That of a game designer trying to fit a set of core rules into a single 200 page book. Layers of Design looked at the sum total of all the rules, not just core rules or a single supplement.

Page limits impose a completely different reason for leaving stuff out. There's not room to put it in.

So instead of more than a dozen or so types of magic we use in our campaigns, there will only be five in the core rulebook. Just a handful of sample monsters instead of hundreds. Nothing about the campaigns we play. Nothing on mass combat. All those will have to wait for expansions, or just remain in the disjointed notes form they are now because I'm horrid at writing and really would rather just avoid it.

Some stuff isn't missing completely, but has been simplified. In place of pages of equipment lists and details is an abstract encumbrance and gear section taking up a couple of pages. It works, but leaves some gaps by its nature.

All of the man-to-man combat however is present. All the character generation except some missing classes.

After all this, I think in the end should someone unconnected to our campaigns read the resulting core rules (unlikely I know) in the end they'll end up not really know anything about our campaigns.

Verisimilitude is a Lie

It is quite the fashion in today's gaming world to dismiss realism in game design as an impossible and undesired goal. Rather common wisdom claims that the real goal is verisimilitude, as if that's something different.

Let us consult the online Merriam-Webster definitions.


Verisimilitude means: having the appearance of truth : probable as the first definition. The second definition is simple: depicting realism (as in art or literature).

That second definition is highly interesting. We're after all talking about game design. Not much of an art IMO, but like art a created image.


Let's look at realism. First definition references the mindset, we're talking game design so that doesn't work. The second a philosophy, again- doesn't apply. The third and last seems to apply: "the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization."


Ah, that one applies. And oddly enough it means exactly the same as Verisimilitude when applied to the same subject. Exactly enough that Merriam-Webster uses realism to define Verisimilitude.

Looks like we can lump the crowd screaming about "Verisimilitude Not Realism" into the same group as the discredit Forge Theorists. People who make up words and change common meanings of existing ones to suit their goals.

In short, people who can't make a good point and resort to two-bit words in order to give them the illusion of credibility.

Free Markets don't work in RPGs

As I was working a printable copy of my homegrown rules, I can across an old issue with the Artificer skill (i.e. the one that could under the right conditions make magic items).


In real life, I'm far more Hayek than I am Keynes (rather sneaky way of sharing two really cool videos that). I love free markets.

In the real world, I don't own a Seawolf Class submarine to cruise around the world for a simple reason. I can't afford it. Heck, I can't afford a simple sail boat. Well, I could but I have more important things to do with the money and I'd never get a good return on what a sail boat would cost.

Real limits those. And limits is what the free market is all about.

This doesn't work so well in RPGs. There reality is inversed, and players expect to to chase impossible pipe dreams. Destroy the dark lord, save the princess, and along the way gain a flaming sword and a mountain of loot. That sort of stuff.

Thus balancing a RPG based upon rarity is basically a fool's game. You're going to allow players to create magic items but control it by requiring rare materials? Won't work, you just made it more desirable and thus the players will bend all their will to getting it. Soon you're be drowning in magic items.

If you block them (i.e. keep rare stuff rare), nine times out of ten the reaction won't be to thank you for the game balance. It will be to find a better game that allows players a shot at reaching their goals.

I overstate that some of course.

Rarity works fine depending upon what we're talking about. One princess, one Excalibur, that sort of thing. It goes without saying that someone will get the princess and someone will get Excalibur (likely the same guy, success breeds success but one never knows. A jerk with Excaliber may still in the eyes of the princess be a jerk).

Good players will let you get away with that sort of thing.

But in general I'd suggest to avoid rarity as a method of game balance with anything that would have a 'market' price. That is, it just costs a bunch. Never works.

And with anything, if you don't want to the players to have something, don't put it in the game. If you do put it in the game, make it plain by what it is that it won't work for the players (Excalibur? Dude you're not the rightful King of all the Britons, it stays in the stone where it belongs).

It will save you trouble down the road.

I tell myself that gamers aren't worse than the common man...

...and from what I can tell, that's true. They're not. They just happen to be a group of people that I tend to have more contact with and so they seem worse.

Self-centered, entitled, thoughtless, clueless of their limits and immoral both in their fantasies and in their online actions. Children basically, in a modern world where Extended Adolescence defines the new common man. The impact is everywhere and is of course increasing.

• In the 70s gamers were a small crowd playing complex historical wargames
• By the 80s the wargames with their values of history and simulation had been replaced by complex table top fantasy RPGs
• By the 90s the assault on complex RPGs was well under way. Amber, FUDGE and the like.
• The 00 saw the rise of the Forge GNS movements, not only were the games mechanically simply in the extreme- they by design could only contain one campaign idea.

Same in video games. I played complex flight sims in the 80s and mystery games. Today we have Angry Birds.

Today the gamers say that the games of the early 80s are impossible to play. Too complex. No matter that people played them and did quite well. They remind me of people who claim mankind couldn't have built the Great Pyramids. Small minds thinking small thoughts. Of course they'd have to play small games.

The moral side of the hobby has decayed as well. It always had it's underbelly. But it was either by today's standards almost innocent (D&D's succubus artwork) or known to be a niche stupidity.

In the age of moral relativism, things can't be that simple. From Little Fears to FATAL to  poison'd  to LotFP we have the progress of fifth and increasing acceptance. Now days even the mainstream of online gaming is willing to accept artwork of women being torn apart from their sexual organs out as long as they think the game design displaying it is... what? A cool rewrite of original D&D?

That's how low we sell our morality. We don't even require a new game, just a fluffed up version of an old one.



What set off this, my latest rant on the subject? An experiment of a sort. I wanted to see if the OSR crowd was any different.

So I decided to respond to a recent post (together with this older one on the same site) that was something of a bugbear for me, the idea that a modern gamer can take history and remake it in their own image. Not a genre (like say Westerns), but history.

A timely concern, given today's efforts to rewrite history. Even Texas is considering removing the Alamo from being taught in school. Too offensive you know.

I wondered what response a call for respect of history, and the people who were part of it would receive from the OSR crowd. I got the same one I would have expected from the gaming world as a whole.

Self-centered, clueless, and lacking in any respect for others. They felt the dead were owed nothing.

I asked them if they were dead, would they feel that they would be owed something? What if what we considered horrid deeds today were accepted in the future? Would they then be accepting of future gamers labeling them with those deeds because it made them more acceptable to that future?

I got no answer, only claims that I was vile for asking the question. They hold their values dear, but they won't even accept the question asking if those standards should be applied to themselves.


In over 100 posts, there was not one person besides me willing to claim that people deserve the respect of truth after their death. Not one. We may as well get rid of the graveyards now, and let the vermin eat well. For that is now what we are.


Self-centered, entitled, thoughtless, clueless of their limits and immoral both in their fantasies and in their online actions.

Extended Adolescence indeed.

Home Grown Rules Update

Things are going well with my attempt to get Age of Heroes into a printable form. I've recover from LuLu format changes, the first 152 or so pages have been proof-read twice by different people (which will only reduce the errors by 80% or so, but perfection isn't the goal).

Another 20 pages need to be proof read but are otherwise complete.

Just need to take a deep breath and push through the last of it. Getting a bit weary and I've been distracted by visiting friends and family.