JE Sawyer, a discussion from 15 years ago

[Gatt9]

Hoping JE Sawyer will respond!

 

About 15 years ago on the BI boards, there was a discussion on the topic of magic items like The Deck of Many Things from D&D. The discussion was around how to implement such a thing, specifically around reloaders. (IIRC it was triggered by a Wand of Wonder being included in one of the games)

 

It was an interesting discussion and JE Sawyer had very interesting observations.

 

So here we are, 15 years later. Sadly, the RPG market has not included any magic items beyond Sword + 7. Magic Items with interesting and potentially unpredictable effects remain missing from the RPG genre (Just using D&D as an example): Deck of Many Things, Mirror of Lifetrapping, Divination spells, that kind of thing. I think it's a area where alot of innvoation could occur that would change the genre for the better, by moving beyond the "Flaming Sword" only type of Magic Items and pull in more of the mystery of them.

 

I'm wondering what JE's thoughts are on this subject today? For reference, my original stance was to generate the "Rolls" on game creation so the Player couldn't "Reload" his way out of bad "Rolls". The counter-arguement many put forth was that people just wouldn't use them once they hit the bad roll, so over the years my thinking has become that arguement is correct, and my view today is that it should be an option like "Iron man" mode.

 

Of course, I'm also interested in the community's thoughts too.

 

So I pose the question: Unpredictable magic items, some not even combat related, "Yea or Nay" and if "Yea", should abuse be prevented?

Edited September 15, 2012 by Gatt9

[J.E. Sawyer]

If the range of unpredictability is relatively mild, it shouldn't degenerate into reload fodder. I think it was somewhere around Dragon Mag 148 that introduced a baby Deck of Many Things with lesser effects. I've also seen a number of player attempts to make "lesser" or "minor" DoMTs, even for tabletop play. A Wand of Wonder is (IMO) arguably better than a DoMT because a WoW has mostly combat applications, so players are less likely to reload based on the outcome of that single element.

[Mamoulian War]

Random effect items are nice to have, the reloading cannot be prevented, people who wants max benefit will just reload for 5 hours just to get something mega-awesome... Every gamer would play out his game as he would like, lot of without even thinking about reloading after bad effect from the item. My sister for example liked to play BG2 with WIld Mage, the random effects added fun to her gameplay...

[Odarbi]

If the range of unpredictability is relatively mild, it shouldn't degenerate into reload fodder.

 

This is basically it.

 

People are much more likely to roll with the punches if your unpredicability is only something minor, like "what type of elemental damage does it do?", much like a player isn't likely to reload if an enemy makes a save against a spell. However, not very many people are going to accept a character outright dying, and especially not when they have a chance of permanently increasing all their stats by a certain amount, no matter how small the option is. The only real way to avoid reload fodder on an item like that would be to force a save after the item has been used and the effect finalized, which would create all kinds of logistical problems on it's own anyway (What happens if you used it on the Main PC, and he died? Does the player have to start over from the beginning of the game?); and even if you were to force a save, a lot of people will find a way to backup their save files and re-do things anyway.

[Giantevilhead]

The simple solution is to create effects that are not immediately implemented or immediately obvious. For example, with the Deck of Many things, if you draw the card that causes you to become the enemy of a demon, that demon doesn't immediately teleport in to attack you. Instead, that demon creates some elaborate plan to sabotage or destroy you that gets carried out over a long period of time.

[Gorth]

The simple solution is to create effects that are not immediately implemented or immediately obvious. For example, with the Deck of Many things, if you draw the card that causes you to become the enemy of a demon, that demon doesn't immediately teleport in to attack you. Instead, that demon creates some elaborate plan to sabotage or destroy you that gets carried out over a long period of time.

Slightly off topic, but Master of Orion 2 pulls a similar trick on you with its "pseudo" random bad luck events. The "seed" (for lack of better word) is planted several turns in advance, so if you reload a recent save, you still get the event.

 

I like the idea of mystery items, where you have to deduce the less obvious effect yourself.

 

[Giantevilhead]

There are also magical items that give temporary penalties that later turns into long term bonuses. For example, a sword could have a penalty to attack but once you've killed a certain number of enemies with it, the penalty becomes a bonus.

[Playgu]

Yeah I think mystery items are cool. They are awesome in The Binding of Isaac

[Tigranes]

I think even if you do have something like the Throne of Bhaal Deck of Many Things, or something even more extreme, it is worth having in there for the novelty value. You might not end up actually using it often because you don't want it to suck your attributes away or something, or some people might reload 50 times, but the idea of stumbling upon and laerning about such an item is its own reward.

 

What you could do is make the random roll run twice or three times to yield a single result - as if it was a Vegas slot machine - in a single process, so that it's not really worthwhile to reload and reload.