gmsamuel
Squire
Got on after over six months away, feels like Dja vu.
Posts: 44 
Favorite D&D Class: Held at the RPG academy
Favorite D&D Race: The Marathon
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Post by gmsamuel on Mar 2, 2017 5:02:22 GMT
(contains spoilers for Rogue One (not sure if that is an issue anymore))
Hi all.
I have been thinking lately about items that carry feeling in movies and books. When I saw Star Wars I noticed that light sabers always had this feeling of power when they were activated. In the end of Rouge One there is a scene where you hear the sound of Darth Vader breathing, and then you see his light saber cut through the darkness as it is activated. I remember sitting in the theater and seeing this on the screen and hearing it through the surround sound and just going; Holy mackerel, its a LIGHT SABER!
Have any of you ever obtained an effect of comparable power with any thing in your D&D games? In RPGs things of power and mystique loose their effect due to the fact that magic is everywhere and everybody seems to have mounds of gold and enchanted blades.
Does anyone have any ideas of how this could be achieved?
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Post by randosaurus on Mar 3, 2017 5:59:05 GMT
Scarcity.
Light Sabers (in the wider Star Wars universe) are rare because not many people know how to craft or use them.
This breaks down somewhat in the films as a significant number of main characters are Jedi, making the sabers seem more common; they are not.
In your own campaign simply make magic items, or magic generally, scarce. This requires some dedicated attention when planning out your setting, but it has interesting in-game effects. If Wizards are very rare, how does your Wizard character find new spells? If the crown jewels imbue magical nobility, that would certain make them sought after by armies. If such powerful magical weaponry is only available by delving into dungeons, well, that's why there are so few successful PCs (since so many would need magic assistance to get to the magic). If nobody has ever encountered a Druid, maybe they think she's a witch.
Low- and No-magic are contrary to D&D by and large; most all the High-Fantasy settings I know are High-Magic. There are some good stand outs such as Ars Magica, Iron Heroes, (supposedly) Game of Thrones to inspire you. There are advantages, as low-magic really just resembles actual medieval fantasy-- there just aren't that many Merlins wandering around. Otherwise, no, there is no way other than over-powered magic items to narratively give that easy jolt to your players like professional cinematic light & sound can accomplish.
Aside-- light sabers in the old West End Star Wards d6 setting are just completely broken in the hands of a Jedi. There is literally no countermeasure against them besides other Jedi with light sabers or 20 stormtroopers all shooting at once. Light sabers are pictured in the dictionary under the entry "Cheating".
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gmsamuel
Squire
Got on after over six months away, feels like Dja vu.
Posts: 44
Favorite D&D Class: Held at the RPG academy
Favorite D&D Race: The Marathon
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Post by gmsamuel on Mar 3, 2017 22:24:44 GMT
Thanks for the reply.
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Post by dmcaleb on Mar 4, 2017 3:59:54 GMT
In addition to scarcity, another thing you could do is have the players make the item themself. My players get stoked when they actually complete an item, and they are much more willing to bite my plot hook if I dangle item requirements as bait.
Here is a rough material list for a light saber
X gold for crafting materials
A ruby crystal from the heart of an x
And a fancy living lava stone to trap a fire elemental
Then they must either find and defeats a fire elemental or have a caster summon one.
Just make sure the pieces can be picked up on their regular quest with only minor detours.
Example: if the bad guy has retreated into his volcano lair. The players will not only pursue the bad guy for the plot, but they will probably look for that living lava stone stuff to make their toy.
So in summary, scarcity is best, but if you have time to ice that cake give them a mini quest to make the iconic weapon. You could let them customize it even (light saber whips, rapier, 2 bladed swords are all a thing after all) which makes it feel even more special to the player.
Anyhoo, food for thought.
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Post by randosaurus on Mar 4, 2017 6:30:05 GMT
I thought about it some more today.
I think I was on a good track with the 'cinematic effects' in previous post.
As you mentioned the light and sound gave you a physical response when you were at the movie.
A particular magic item or power could have signature effects just as a lightsaber.
Think of the sensory descriptions you used-- the red glow of the blade, the laser 'FWOOOSH' sound of the blade extending.
Picture some arch-villain, an avatar of a corruption deity.
It wields a scythe the glows with a sickly green pallor.
The scythe hums with the breath of moans when swung through the air.
Ichor drips from the blade, melting stone and leaving a sickening acrid odor that lingers for hours.
Auras and halos and penumbras are pretty typical 'flavor' effects for many magic items.
These effects don't have much of a mechanic aside from casting light as a torch, but you can use them to evoke emotions you have in mind.
I do think that the effects should be characteristic to the wielder-- as your example demonstrates, the red light saber was stirring on its own but in the hand of Vader it takes on a new dimension of sinister potential.
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Post by dmgenisisect on Mar 4, 2017 9:12:18 GMT
I have to agree with randosaurus. I don't think this is an issue that can be resolved without 'cinematic effects'. Scarcity certainly isn't the solution; just think about Anduril (Aragon's mythic reforged sword), its from a setting where magic items are pretty rare, it's being wielded by a pretty cool character who only really uses it to do cool things, but it doesn't have that feeling of power whenever Aragon pulls it from the scabbard that a lightsaber has. The only real difference that I can come up with is because a lightsaber is just a full blown assault of things that will make an audience go wow, it has the cool lights, the cool sounds, and a whole tone of shots which are dedicated to the purpose of making you go "wow those things are awesome" like your Vadar example above.
To achieve the effect you don't need to fiddle around with the setting at all, you just need to add layers of awesome into every interaction with that item. Make an ominous angelic choir start singing whenever your paladin draws his holy avenger, describe the way that everything around him seems somewhat darker, as if he was being illuminated by a heavenly spot light. Make a sound when you describe him swinging that thing around (I mean literal go "You lunge at the undead monstrosity" *whoosh hiss as you swing your arms around in the mock action of swinging a sword* "driving it into the foes unholy flesh). etc...
You'll need to decide what gets this special treatment though, if every action gets these over the top descriptions it will either get annoying, loose it's desired effect of making individual items feel cool, or both.
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Post by randosaurus on Mar 5, 2017 5:13:58 GMT
...Scarcity certainly isn't the solution; Taking away all the magic toys is my catch-all solution to a lot of things. A major critique in 3.0/3.5 era was how overpowered spellcasters were; any capability of a rogue/fighter/meatshield could be duplicated by a magician, and often done better. My retort was that any DM that gives the wizard access to the full spell library to make spell copies at-will and for-free deserves a superpowered munchkin. It's subtle, but the cost of adding magic spells to a book is supposed to eat into the resources spell casters have for gear. Similarly, a lot of Cleric spells do actually have costly material components to use. Such a high-magic setting isn't really explored anywhere, to my knowledge-- any Harvest deity clergy should have long since solved famine when you can create Strega Nona's infinite pasta pot for ~27k GP. Why isn't magic used everywhere for all things, given that there is seemingly no scarcity? /end soapbox As I mentioned above though, the expectation in D&D is that your character will have a lot of magic gear. Further, additional gear is available at most towns and often can be custom ordered. Aside from really specific cinematics (used thoughtfully and sparingly for your sake as Gemisisect said), you have to make up new mechanics to surprise and intrigue your players to get additional mystique unavailable in a longsword+5. |
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Post by dmgenisisect on Mar 5, 2017 7:12:54 GMT
Don't take me out of context, I was just say scarcity isn't the solution to this problem. I always am restrictive with magic items, me 3.5 players winged about the fact they never ran away with the game because I starved them for magic loot. I'm a little closer to the hand out curve that 5e suggests, only because 5e doesn't require a huge amount of magic items.
My favourite way of starting my games is after a kind of magic went away event, normally the type that kills all the casters and makes old items increasingly rare and precious!
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Post by randosaurus on Mar 6, 2017 6:12:45 GMT
Don't take me out of context, I was just say scarcity isn't the solution to this problem. I always am restrictive with magic items, me 3.5 players winged about the fact they never ran away with the game because I starved them for magic loot. I'm a little closer to the hand out curve that 5e suggests, only because 5e doesn't require a huge amount of magic items. My favourite way of starting my games is after a kind of magic went away event, normally the type that kills all the casters and makes old items increasingly rare and precious! It wasn't intended as an affront. I realized between the 1st & 2nd post that my original advice of 'play an entirely different setting than D&D' was not.... useful. If your players aren't whingeing you aren't doing it right, I always say. The actual random treasure dungeon crawler model of D&D classic does actually balance out in 3.0/3.5, but almost nobody ever follows the Treasure tables because Monty Haul is so fun. I commend your approach to game origin, partly for flavor and partly because I'm personally too lazy to figure out all the magic gear that NPCs should be carrying & it's way easier to just kit them with MW items. |
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Post by dmsam on Mar 7, 2017 0:29:03 GMT
Of the three times I put a sun sword, or sun blade, or reflavored moon blade in my games, they ALWAYS had the desired effect from my players:
"It's a light saber???"
Granted, within each campaign, only one of these would show up. That way they don't lose their novelty.
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