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Shinn
2016-09-25, 08:17 PM
Hi everyone,
I'm currently playing two DM sessions for two games : D&D, and Scion.

Both of them had, in extensions, the rules to create Relics, Artifacts, or very powerful magic objects : you can craft them if you have anough exotic, tale-like components.
The example I'll take is for an ocarina : let's say you'll need clay from the deepest shard of the Plane of Earth, worked under a Wyrm Red Dragon's breath, and the last music note of a Soprano boy before it voice starts to shift.

While I can give a quest for getting the clay and the dragon... How can reasonably a player take a music note and add it to a crafting procedure ? And what about other kinds of untakable components ?
The D&D rules I'm using suggests things like "The shadow of the tear of a demon". It sounds great and all, but essentially ephemeric, so you can't really get it.

So, how would you allow a player to get some intangible exotic component like that ?

Xuc Xac
2016-09-25, 10:33 PM
That's the player's problem. Let them figure it out. When they present a solution to you, it's up to you to say whether or not it works.

OldTrees1
2016-09-26, 12:19 AM
Come up with an answer yourself and then accept any and all reasonable answers the players come up with (especially if they are not the same as yours).

Ex: The shadow of a tear of a Demon
1)Collect a tear of a Demon in a transparent container made of an appropriate material(glass is fine unless it is not)
2)Position the tear between a light source and the brew in question

Fri
2016-09-26, 12:32 AM
Or it could be as exotic and weird and abstract or fairytale-ish as well.

For example, the material is "dying gasp of a betrayed maiden."

and you can gather it by putting a vellum that's been dipped in moonlit lake for three days in front of the maiden's mouth as she dies.

Why is that related? how cab a wet vellum record it? It's fairy tale magic that is. You can make as poetic explanation as you want, like "the goddess of the moon like betrayal" or whatever.

Slipperychicken
2016-09-26, 01:03 AM
If my players wanted to craft stuff, I'd try to make special components match the item, appropriately difficult to get, but at the same time possible. They'd usually be monster parts. If my players wanted to make a wand of fireballs, they'd probably need the fangs of 20 hellhounds or a few red dragon's teeth. If they wanted a music-themed thing like a magic flute, I'd make them harvest a bunch of banshee-ectoplasm or siren tongues. If they want to make a sword +3, then they need to get the skulls of 300 ogres. And so on and so forth. There might be a relationship between the XP of the monster and the base cost of the item.

To get them on a particular quest, maybe one of the components they want (some kind of fancy orchid once thought extinct?) happens to be growing in the cave of a nasty monster. Or it could be a place known to have properties conducive to making the item. It'd probably be optional: They could choose to throw down lots of gold and time (perhaps compensating for a lack of something important, or commissioning other adventurers to fetch ogre skulls for them), OR they could cut costs by doing the quest. The difficulty of the quest would naturally relate to how much the PCs could save by doing it, as in that case the component is basically their quest reward.



the last music note of a Soprano boy before it voice starts to shift.
The shadow of the tear of a demon"

Whenever I hear about components like that, I can only assume the GM is either intoxicated, trying in vain to say something profound, using it as a long-winded way of refusing his players attempts to craft the item in question, or some combination of the above. I have no idea how they are meant to be used in any kind of real game, except as vaguely pretentious-sounding flavor text or a rationalization for extremely convoluted villain plans.

Fri
2016-09-26, 03:52 AM
Whenever I hear about components like that, I can only assume the GM is either intoxicated, trying in vain to say something profound, using it as a long-winded way of refusing his players attempts to craft the item in question, or some combination of the above. I have no idea how they are meant to be used in any kind of real game, except as vaguely pretentious-sounding flavor text or a rationalization for extremely convoluted villain plans.

But those kind of esoteric ingredients are common in more esoteric, non hack and slash style fantasy though. Those kind of things happen in fairy tales all the time, and in more fairy-taleish fantasy story like Neil Gaiman's Stardust.

But the thing is, they always have an actual, concrete way of getting it. You just have to have that in mind and either make the player work to get how it's actually meant to be get or let them make some way and make some sort of reasoning why it works. As my given example.

Really, using or stealing abstract or esoteric material is a prime of legends and fantasies. Like, a master thief saying he could steal the concept of time or whatever.

hifidelity2
2016-09-26, 09:03 AM
That's the player's problem. Let them figure it out. When they present a solution to you, it's up to you to say whether or not it works.

+1 to that

Joe the Rat
2016-09-26, 09:30 AM
Sometimes the means of acquiring is a quest in itself. Capturing light/sounds/breaths/emotions in a jar is a fairly common device. Whether this is a single-use affair, or you have a Jar of Stealing Laughter to be made or found.

Sometimes the nature of the thing changes or can be changed. The light of the evening star shining upon the first rose of spring may form into glowing, dust-like motes that can be brushed off of the flower. A demon's shadow can be lifted like a piece of black gossamer - but first you must detach it. It may be the nature of the thing, or there may be some act or spell that needs to be cast. This overlaps a bit with the first one.

Sometimes the thing is not what you think. The Tear of a Demon may be a dark jewel - the shadow is "unlight" cast by the gem when light is shined upon it. The betrayed maiden is a rare mountain flower that only grows over unmarked graves. The final pollen of a bloom - the last gasp - has magical properties. You are trading the esoteric for the poetic, but this may work better for some groups.

Research or Sage Advice may be required.



But if the players come up with something, go with that instead. It reinforces creativity.

Afgncaap5
2016-09-26, 12:40 PM
I love the idea of a this kind of thing, and it bugs me that no DMs ever include them. I say, put 'em in all you want. Have a way of figuring it out on your own in case your players can't come up with anything, but giving your players plenty of chances to figure it out.

You've also given me a great idea for a monstrous set piece (I think there was something like it in Castle Amber). Have a kind of highly powerful attack spell that requires such a soprano child's cracking voice to cast, have your evil magician turn some children to stone just as that's happening and fashion them into a pipe organ for a boss battle set piece.

Kami2awa
2016-09-27, 11:01 AM
I once had a fay king demand that the players give him the secrets of the stars. They brought him a copy of Heat magazine.

Beleriphon
2016-09-27, 02:38 PM
Weirdo-beardo components are bog standard in mythology. Fenrisúlfr is bound by Gleipnir which was made of the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. Dwarves turned that in a ribbon that can bind a wolf so big when it opens its mouth the lower jaw touches the ground, and the upper jaw touches the sky.

Psyren
2016-09-28, 09:44 AM
Rules for this kind of thing just lets people game the system. Make it story-based.

Also, you don't have to go all the way to Artifact - you can stop at something less disruptive like Mythic or even Epic items, still very powerful but can be limited or destroyed more easily.

TheCountAlucard
2016-09-29, 08:34 AM
Here's the "recipe" a powerful demon gave a PC in a game of mine, for making a sword that could incinerate masses with nuclear hellfire:

A two-handed starmetal sword
Flames from a green star (the demon handily provided this, luckily)
The bones of an ancient Dragon-Blooded, on which to stoke the flames
An entire tree from the Silver Forest (to be made into tools to work the blade)
The soul of a Solar sorcerer, to be hammered into the blade
Blood from the farthest western reaches of the Underworld, sufficient to quench the blade


Needless to say, it took a while (and a LOT of effort!), but the PC got all the ingredients eventually.

erikun
2016-09-29, 09:38 AM
I have three problems with including stuff like this in games.

One, the ideas behind shadows of tears or the note of a song tend themselves toward very fantastical, whimsical literature. That is perfectly fine, except that a lot of players I game with tend to be much more down-to-earth and less accepting of such ideas. The idea of capturing a note from a forgotten song in a spiderweb would begin prompting questions like "can I hear it?", "what happens if I shake it?", or "will it get squished if I put it into my backpack?" That is, of course, assuming that the players don't just immediately call the whole thing BS and say whatever, let's just continue on.

Two, there is a big concern with just turning the exotic component into just another strangely-colored mundane object. The idea of taking a shadow of a tear and "catching it inside a magic bottle" is pretty much the most disappointing way of doing it. Sure, you have the exceptionally exotic and contradictory element for your crafting, but really it was just picked up and used like you would a flagon of ale. You're not crafting with mystical components at that point; you are just using some +1 magical water for all the difference it makes.

Three, I find that it just doesn't fit very well in a RPG. Sure, you could suspend your disbelief long enough to get the right impression, but I find at least one person having difficulty with that at the table. In a book, when a protagonist needs to steal the rainbow from a prism, there is some mystery as to how they would be able to figure that out and how exactly they plan on taking it. In a RPG, there isn't that sort of mystery: either the players immediately start coming up with ideas of how to do it, or they will sit there while the GM hands out the plot hook which will inevitably lead them to it. For myself, I would much rather introduce a highly unusual situation or location when doing something like this in a RPG. If the crafting needs to be completed on the altar of a ruined temple of Artemis, in the light of the full moon, then this gives the players a concrete idea of what they need to do. They'll either be visiting a ruined temple they already know about, or hunting for rumors of ruined temples, or taking up quest hooks that seem like they'd lead in the correct direction. They aren't stuck with some sort of contradiction with no meaningful way to progress on their own.

Afgncaap5
2016-09-30, 11:37 AM
I have three problems with including stuff like this in games.

One, the ideas behind shadows of tears or the note of a song tend themselves toward very fantastical, whimsical literature. That is perfectly fine, except that a lot of players I game with tend to be much more down-to-earth and less accepting of such ideas. The idea of capturing a note from a forgotten song in a spiderweb would begin prompting questions like "can I hear it?", "what happens if I shake it?", or "will it get squished if I put it into my backpack?" That is, of course, assuming that the players don't just immediately call the whole thing BS and say whatever, let's just continue on.

Two, there is a big concern with just turning the exotic component into just another strangely-colored mundane object. The idea of taking a shadow of a tear and "catching it inside a magic bottle" is pretty much the most disappointing way of doing it. Sure, you have the exceptionally exotic and contradictory element for your crafting, but really it was just picked up and used like you would a flagon of ale. You're not crafting with mystical components at that point; you are just using some +1 magical water for all the difference it makes.

Three, I find that it just doesn't fit very well in a RPG. Sure, you could suspend your disbelief long enough to get the right impression, but I find at least one person having difficulty with that at the table. In a book, when a protagonist needs to steal the rainbow from a prism, there is some mystery as to how they would be able to figure that out and how exactly they plan on taking it. In a RPG, there isn't that sort of mystery: either the players immediately start coming up with ideas of how to do it, or they will sit there while the GM hands out the plot hook which will inevitably lead them to it. For myself, I would much rather introduce a highly unusual situation or location when doing something like this in a RPG. If the crafting needs to be completed on the altar of a ruined temple of Artemis, in the light of the full moon, then this gives the players a concrete idea of what they need to do. They'll either be visiting a ruined temple they already know about, or hunting for rumors of ruined temples, or taking up quest hooks that seem like they'd lead in the correct direction. They aren't stuck with some sort of contradiction with no meaningful way to progress on their own.

I think these are all valid concerns, and each of them is something with solutions that need to vary based on the given game table (and just choosing not to have this kind of thing in a story is a great solution sometimes). I think the primary solutions, though, can often be found by, as Psyren put it, making the results be story based. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of GMs don't really know how to use story elements to do this for some tables because it involves some of the "craft" of writing just as much as (or more than) the "art" of writing. TV Tropes and other websites have been helpful the past few years in making some people more aware of things like this, but I think that a lot of people forget that they have the option of applying that kind of methodology in their roleplaying games. I don't know if any of these would help a particular table, but with some work I think things like these can help GMs who want to start incorporating poetically exotic components like that.



-The Try-Fail Cycle: attempting to do something and failing builds a kind of energy in players and audiences alike. If the players gather their +1 water, bring it back, cast the 6th level spell slot, and succeed, then they've just played a game. If they do this and fail, though, it can cause confusion and a desire to get it right. This can be super frustrating if it happens to players in the wrong way, so know that this is playing with fire (and as you put it, your players might be the sort who don't want to put up with this kind of thing, at least not for long). Having said that: it's been pointed out by some that one of the reasons that Inigo Montoya's character arc is so memorable and satisfying is that while the other characters in the story tend to fail at their goal three-ish times over the course of the story, Inigo tries and fails to avenge his father closer to ten times (I wanna say seven, but most quick Googling is bringing the number ten up). If you've ever heard about or seen the "steal something from the players" trick, this kind of motivation is related: telling the players "this thing you think you should have is something you can't have" and repeatedly making it not be the case builds energy. Don't build too much energy for the group, though: figure out the capacity for that kind of energy you can work with.

-Inside you all along: this is a dumb trope, but when you play it well it's very satisfying. There's a part of movie scripts called "fun and games", it's the part where most movie trailers take their "funniest moments" from, and it often involves subplots that seemingly have nothing to do with the main plot. Often, though, the key to solving the movie's plot will come from the fun and games section, whether it be from an idea or new perspective, learning a hidden skill, or providing a seemingly mundane item for the circumstances that can be applied in big ways. If I wanted players to have to collect an echo on a spiderweb, I'd introduce an expert goblin-weaver who used to be a feared practitioner of the Goblin Loom, but then retired to a small village to live out the rest of his life in wealth and moderate obscurity, teaching the children of the village how to play the goblin game of "spindle-prick" (or whatever). In my setting, goblins are, according to goblin myths, the ones who taught spiders to weave, a fact I'd drop into conversations once or twice. The goblin-weaver's true identity would be a secret, of course, but learnable, and the players would, on going back through the village once or twice be challenged to play a particularly difficult game of spindle-prick, using a technique that the goblin-weaver is convinced that they can learn. The last time they go back to the village before going to wherever they need to capture the echo, the goblin weaver can have passed away from old age, making it impossible for the players to take the final test to see if they can learn the game (and get whatever prize it is they've been trying to get from him if they're the kind of players who need treasure instead of experience.) When it comes time to use a spider-web to catch an echo, if a player realizes that the technique for spindle-prick they'd been trying to master would be perfect, then suddenly they've had not one but two story arcs come to a point of potential resolution with a single roll. Bonus points if the ghost of the weaver whispers to the player in question not to use magic to enhance whatever they're rolling but to trust their own skill or something. Success at this point is telling the end of the spindle-prick story. Failure should have some sort of notable consequence, of course, but can then give the players a specific goal that can be built toward, perhaps having to find some other spinde-prick master or something like that.

-Relationship Character: this is a weird one, and it'd also be a good fit for the retired goblin-weaver I mentioned above, but it can work. The Relationship Character is the third "main character" in a typical Hollywood Formula story, as opposed to the Protagonist and Antagonist. The goal of the Relationship Character is to ask a question or frame a point of view for the main character, and the protagonist's victory over the antagonist generally comes shortly after the protagonist either accepts this new outlook or successfully rejects it. The Dark Knight follows the Hollywood Formula really carefully, and the results pay off well (even if it's far from my favorite Batman film.) Surprisingly to some, The Joker is the relationship character instead of the Antagonist because he's the one who raises a different line of thinking for Batman. Bruce Wayne's goal in the movie is being able to retire and leave Gotham in safer hands, but The Joker posits that there's always gonna be people like him and that he and Batman are gonna be playing this game forever. Harvey Dent is the antagonist because he's the one who keeps getting in the way of Bruce Wayne being able to retire, both as the district attorney and later as Two Face (Two Face himself being rock solid evidence that The Joker's assertion has merit.) Batman eventually accepts that he has to be the Dark Knight instead of letting Gotham have a White Knight, and this helps him to resolve the threat of anarchy left behind by Two Face. One solid problem with using this result is that it's *very* player dependent and requires extra work. Using a relationship character to posit a way of life or a question means that you need to prepare for a player to both reject the method and accept it, and have a valid solution after it all (a player who ultimately chooses to ignore the goblin-weaver's assertion that the spindle game is important might, for instance, just drape a sheet of webbing over the "place" the echo will be, roll it up later, and take it back to hope for the best results. This is fine; it's the player's story after all. It might be disappointing to not have your favorite story arc used, though (and exhausting to plan for twice as many possibilities.))

-Heart of Gold/Heart of Darkness/Cool Enough: Related to "the secret was within you all along", this one is tricky. Basically, you need to assert that you can go get the magical +1 water for the well of truths and cast the right spell from the spell slot, and manipulate all the right numbers on the character sheet, but it still doesn't *work* without the right outlook on life or strength of spirit or general goodness (or with the right characters, general badness). Basically, you need something intangible. The classic legend of the philosopher's stone is based on this idea; basically, you have a guy who buys all the secrets of alchemy he needs to make the philosopher's stone so that he can get gold (and maybe immortality). He gets all the equipment, sets it up, performs the ritual, but then doesn't get the stone. He checks his notes, wonders if he's gotten something wrong, makes adjustments, and tries again with no results. Then he tries again and again and again, altering his equipment, slightly changing the amounts of materials used in the mixtures, dedicating years of his life and all of his earthly riches to it. Eventually, however, he becomes more obsessed with the art of alchemy itself than the pursuit of the philosopher's stone. One day, he has a theory or experiment, but it requires the stone to perform; so then he goes back to the old experiments, and using his decades of alchemical expertise, he's able to craft the stone without any trouble. He chuckles, gets proud of himself for a moment, and then moves on to the REAL alchemical issues that he's been working on, leaving the secret of the stone as just a footnote to everything else he accomplishes. J. K. Rowling actually used this story as the blueprint for the location of the Philosopher's Stone in the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (or Sorcerer's Stone as it was said to American audiences, because we don't appreciate philosophy or something dumb like that.) The Mirror of Erised shows a person their desires, and it's the key to getting the stone; when Voldemort and Professor Quirrell look in the mirror, all it does is show them possessing the stone. When Harry looks in the mirror, though, he doesn't actually want to own the stone; he wants to FIND the stone. The mirror shows him how to find it, and so by virtue of his lack of greed Harry is able to locate it. In a sense, book 1 has Harry mimic one of the most difficult feats of magic in all of folklore which, while less impressive than actually creating a stone himself, is still a notable, and understated, way to kick off the franchise. Using this method would mean having some trick or "true nature" to a practice or event loved by the PCs that they can truly embody better than a villain who seemingly goes through the motions just right. You can also tie this to the try-fail cycle for players: if their heart isn't in the right place then it *doesn't* work. (As noted above, don't frustrate your players with this, please.)

Having said all that... sometimes players just wanna hack and smash through monsters, and they just want to *win* things. That's all great, and so for those tables I'd definitely tone things down to just "We need a Roc's egg" or "We can't get through this magic door unless we tell a dark secret" or "Hey, this impassable barrier will drop if we suffuse it with positive energy, Jerry we need you to roll a Turn Undead check." Players are imaginative folks, and while it may seem like it's trivializing I think they'll appreciate that there are little things they can do to find roc eggs or open magic doors even if they don't want to have to get through pretentious GM riddlespeak.

Segev
2016-09-30, 04:20 PM
In the "Kid Loki" arc of Journey Into Mystery, Loki bargains with Surtur for the shadow of his sword (called "Twilight"). When he gets given it, Surtur turns it on its side to minimize the size of the shadow it casts, and Loki simply picks it up. The Shadow of Twilight, it turns out, is a pen.

Sometimes, despite the esoteric nature, it really is "that simple." But really, ANYTHING becomes "disappointing" to those who want the impossible to remain impossible once it becomes doable.

I, myself, daily utilize energies captured from the sky to divine the rate of release of fundamental essences of creation from a material so deadly that it can destroy cities in concentrations smaller than my paired fists in order to give names to the eternal forward progress of time. By which I mean my watch is fancy enough to update itself off of a satellite which communicates the time as recorded by the atomic clock in Utah.

MrZJunior
2016-09-30, 06:54 PM
They'll either be visiting a ruined temple they already know about, or hunting for rumors of ruined temples, or taking up quest hooks that seem like they'd lead in the correct direction.

Or ruining a temple of Artemis.