Welcome to the next edition of “Game Fodder” here on Game Knight Reviews. Breaking the mold a bit I’m going to introduce a new concept for a series of articles that will start next week.
Ancient artifacts of immense power. Weapons of legend. Magic items. Whatever you call them, they appear in many different story contexts.
- Luke Skywalker has his lightsaber, passed down from his father.
- Thor’s Hammer, Mjolnir, came to the mighty hero through time but has a story all its own in the Prose Edda – constructed by dwarves when taunted by Loki.
- Sigurd‘s sword Gram wasn’t always his before he used it to kill Fafnir the dragon. It was forged by Wayland the Smith and embedded in the tree Barnstokkr by Odin, then later retrieved by Sigurd’s father Sigmund.
- Even Arthur’s Excalibur was either stuck in a stone or in the care of the Lady of the Lake depending on where you look… How did it get there?
Each of these items has a provenance or story before the story in which our heroes use them. Why don’t magic items in D&D and other games have that same rich history behind significant items from history, myth, or magic?
In “The Journey of the Magic Sword,” I will be dealing with some of the many steps that we never really see when an item comes into the picture:
- Mining
- Melting
- Forging
- Magicking
- Pre-adventuring
- Adventuring
Each step of the way we can explore some the different ways these various aspects of provenance might work their way into your campaigns. There’s more to this “magic item” stuff than simply picking it out of a book. Don’t be surprised if we get side-tracked along the way, but we will get back to the road eventually, I promise.
Next weekend we’ll start with some mining mishaps, ore origins, and ancient history!
One last note – if you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see in this series, please let me know. Drop me a note at the Contact page and I’d love to chat with you!
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I spent a summer interning at the British national coal mining museum a couple of summers ago for my history degree, and used a whole load of stuff I found out there in my games. Including something that I will be showcasing on Stuffer Shack, hopefully by the end of next week.
shortymonster recently posted..RPG Blog Carnival – What’s in your backpack.
@shortymonster – Please send me links (and I’ll keep an eye out) – would love to read them!!
[...] for visiting!]Pin ItThis is the first article in a series – for the full series, check out the introduction – Journey of the [...]
[...] Game Fodder: Journey of the Sword – Into the Fire (I’m Smelting!!) By Fitz, on August 26th, 2012 [If you're new to GKR, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or if you're on a post, pop over to the home page when you're done. Thanks for visiting!]Pin ItContinuing the journey of the sword, we follow the ore from the ground to… the furnace. It can’t be used in its current form, trapped within dirt, stone, and other impurities. So it must be converted into a form that the blacksmith can then melt into various designs to produce the tools and weapons we’re looking for. (For the article on mining check here. And to see how this series began, check here.) [...]