Devilish Devices
May. 17th, 2010 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe last of the gaming books I got out of the bins at I-Con was Fast Forward Entertainment's Devilish Devices. Though I very much enjoyed several of my other purchases, this one is winning for my spending the most time on it.
It's a collection of evil or easily-backfiring artifacts, mostly the sort that seem like really awesome magical items until you realize they were designed to be more useful for someone or something else, and still are. The kicker, though, is that each 1-4 page entry has a block of game stats for each item, followed by a vingette about the item's creation, notable history, or just a noteworthy instance of it being used. Some are lame, some are clever, and some have nothing much to do with the artifacts and are just amusing stories, like the tale of a rich noble who uses expensive magical equipment to fancy himself an adventurer and fights frogs in a swamp. ("I've killed the evil frogs terrorizing your village!" "Those are normal toads, they can't hurt people." "I've killed the evil fanged frogs terrorizing your village!" "Those are fanged toads, we kill those ourselves all the time." "I've killed the evil giant demonic extradimensional frogs terrorizing your village, and now I want to go home and not be an adventurer anymore!")
It's going to suck for the players the next time I run a campaign when magical items are common. Especially given that I recently acquired a Ravenloft book, too. Maybe I should just announce that I'm running Call of Cthulhu and be done with it...
It's a collection of evil or easily-backfiring artifacts, mostly the sort that seem like really awesome magical items until you realize they were designed to be more useful for someone or something else, and still are. The kicker, though, is that each 1-4 page entry has a block of game stats for each item, followed by a vingette about the item's creation, notable history, or just a noteworthy instance of it being used. Some are lame, some are clever, and some have nothing much to do with the artifacts and are just amusing stories, like the tale of a rich noble who uses expensive magical equipment to fancy himself an adventurer and fights frogs in a swamp. ("I've killed the evil frogs terrorizing your village!" "Those are normal toads, they can't hurt people." "I've killed the evil fanged frogs terrorizing your village!" "Those are fanged toads, we kill those ourselves all the time." "I've killed the evil giant demonic extradimensional frogs terrorizing your village, and now I want to go home and not be an adventurer anymore!")
It's going to suck for the players the next time I run a campaign when magical items are common. Especially given that I recently acquired a Ravenloft book, too. Maybe I should just announce that I'm running Call of Cthulhu and be done with it...
