Best of the Web: Artifacts, Toilets, & Festivals

Artifacts

Coins and Scrolls has some thoughts on refiguring artifacts. He makes a good point or two but in my mind doesn't go far enough. Magical Items should be redone so they feel more crafted and less assembly-line and the artifact rules are a great place to start.

• Each magic item is unique, that is there is only one "Boots of Elvenkind"
• Each magic item has an alignment (Chaos/Neutral/Law)
• Each item should have a personality and the ability to communicate with the possessor
• If the item is Law or Chaos it was created as part of the great war raging across the multiverse and it will try to recruit the possessor at every opportunity (through role playing and pestering, no game effects).
• The standard power of the item works for everyone no matter what alignment
• In addition to the standard power each item has a minor benign power and a minor malevolent effect
• Benign powers only work for those of the same alignment as the magic item.
• Malevolent effects work against everyone who is not the same alignment as the item.
• If an item has a corresponding 'cursed' version that is the malevolent effect. The GM will have to work out the conflict if any

So in effect every item is a cursed item if the wrong person tries to use it and nobody is wasting their time creating cursed items simply because. Also each item becomes an NPC, possibly a very annoying NPC, that only the possessor can hear.

If a gameworld doesn't use alignment the characters can be assumed to be neutral alignment as far as the magic item is concerned. You can not care about alignment but that doesn't mean alignments don't care about you.

The same rules can be done for 'artifacts' except they have major benign powers and major malevolent powers and they get a Side Effect. Attempts to convert should probably require a weekly saving throw or something I'm not prepared to think deeply about right now.

The GM should also consider giving Law and Chaos aligned magical item the ability to contact Priests of the same alignment so that it can draw them upon the possessor of thw wrong alignment as it tries to get back into the great war raging across the multiverse. Of course the item will avoid telling the possessor that it's calling in allies to take it away.

Privvys

Elf Maids & Octopi - Has an interesting post about dungeon privys. As one devoted to increasing realism within the fantasy in order to give the players a consistant background in order to make rational decisions I applaud this sort of thing.

Of course they need bathrooms in the dungeon, and the type of bathroom says a lot about the inhabitants so I've made a little table.

Table 1: Privvy table

1d10	Items
01	Locals have surprisingly little waste or the waste has minimal smell
02	Locals live in their waste as the nasty monsters they are
03	Locals live in their waste but allow animals such as dung beatles (or worse) free access to deal with it.
04	Locals use chamberpots and dump said pots into a deep pit somewhere
05	They use chamberpots and toss the results out at the faction borders, or make raids into enemy areas to discard the stuff
06	Locals dry their waste and use it as fuel for fires. Their area has a particularly bad stench but not as bad as an open guardrobe would be
07	Locals dry their waste and form bricks out of it. The walls and floors of some areas of the dungeon are flaky and nasty if you scrap them with your finger, but a nice coating of mud or plaster seals in the smell nicely
08	Locals use chamberpots and use the waste as fertilizer on their crops (mushrooms most likely but who knows)
09	Locals have built their gardrobes over deep pits or open water to take the waste away
10	Locals use Zap Crap teleportation guardrobes guaranteed to teleport the waste cleanly and silently to a distant and unknown location without muss or fuss (the privvy possibly serving as a nasty escape hatch as well) from Drow Industries, of course

Festivals

Blog of Holding - Has a useful article on city festivals including a list of 20 unique festivals to add to your game. I don't think we see enough of this type of stuff. What folks celebrate is a good way to define them. This applies to culture but mostly I'm thinking cults and religions. The old Deities & Demigods would have been petter served if they'd scrapped the stat blocks and included a lot of info on each pantheons religious festivals.

While polking around Blog of Holding I also found a fun Fantasy Map of the Bronx. I wish there was more of this sort of thing out there.