There's a short but interesting section of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide entitled "Non-Standard Magic Items," which begins by noting that the "inclusion of them in your campaign is expected and encouraged." Further, Gygax suggests that even "standard items can be varied so as to make it more interesting when your players are familiar with the usual forms." This, along with the creation of wholly new magic items, is vital to maintaining "freshness," a word Gygax uses often in discussing the maintenance of a long-term campaign.
After that preamble, the section cautions:
All such creations, however, must be made with care. The items must be such as to not unbalance the game. They must not make one player character too strong, either with respect to opponents or his or her fellows or to the campaign or to the game system as a whole. Items which are expended after a single use, those with limited usages, and those with variable effects are the most desirable.
This is another topic to which Gygax returns again and again. He was very concerned with "balance" in play, but not balance as it is often understood today, based largely on game mechanics. Rather, he seems to have seen a need for balance between risk and reward, failure and success, boredom and engagement, lessons he no doubt learned as a result of refereeing the Greyhawk campaign over the course of many years. I think any referee who's had the privilege of playing with the same group of players in the same campaign over an extended period of time will understand his perspective and likely share it. In any case, there's much sense in these few sentences; they're good reminders that, even in the open-ended, anything goes world of old school gaming, balance, properly understood, is not necessarily a dirty word.
The section's second paragraph touches on a topic that might appear odd nowadays, namely the effects of new magic items on other campaigns. This concern is a consequence of the once common practice of taking one's character and "visiting" other campaigns. This was still a regular thing during my youth, so I understand Gygax's addressing it here. He explains that, because "other referees will not generally know what special powers or restrictions such items have … they will not be usable in campaigns other than that from which they came in most cases." He elaborates on this point:
You, as a referee, should simply cause any such items brought into your campaign to disappear. Never take a player's word for any item. Do not allow its use in your campaign unless you know his or her DM and get a full explanation in writing from that person which details the properties of the item. Do not allow a player to bulldoze you in any matter regarding this. Simply inform the person that he or she must have left the item in his or her former area, as it is not around in yours! This solves the problem of having a possible imbalance brought into your carefully designed campaign.
To some readers, Gygax might sound oddly strident, even paranoid in his concerns and I can appreciate why one might think that. It's vital to remember, though, that those concerns are valid make a great more sense in the environment of early gaming, which was a period of wild, chaotic invention and sharing of ideas but without a widely agreed upon understanding of balance, as Gygax uses it above. Each campaign was effectively a law unto itself, governed by each referee's own sense of what worked and what didn't. Consequently, it makes perfect sense that Gygax should be concerned about the potential ripple effects of importing a magic item from another campaign into his own.
At the same time, we should remember that Gygax is very supportive of each campaign's being unique and reflective of the tastes, preferences, and considered judgments of its referee, which are sovereign within that realm. He has no interest in dictating what goes on in anyone's campaign, even if he might disagree with or even dislike it. This section of the DMG is in fact a bulwark against attempts to undermine referee sovereignty in these matters.
What Gary says certainly has merit, but it depends greatly on both the player and the character he's brining into the game. A +1 sword is not going to unbalance a game, no matter were the PC obtain it from.
ReplyDeleteYou're almost certainly correct and I'm pretty sure Gygax's concern was mostly with original magic items rather than standard ones.
Delete...not going to unbalance the game, no matter where the PC obtains it from..."
Delete"Yeah, I just found it stuck in a boulder over there. Came right out when I tugged on it. Hey, why's everyone kneeling?" :)
Probably also has something to do with the standardization Gygax wanted for 1st ed so that PCs could be used consistently across conventions.
ReplyDelete''All such creations, however, must be made with care. The items must be such as to not unbalance the game. They must not make one player character too strong [...]''. This reminds me to one GM I used to play with. He was accostumed to play very softly (characters never died and monsters almost never hit our PCs when they were very injured... Needless to say he always rolled behind the screen) and my 2nd level dwarf found a magicall mace that was a +3 mace, +4 vs undead. I was so freaking strong it was not funny, it was not 'balanced' as you say in the post and the game broke for me.
ReplyDeleteWhile I certainly wouldn't call Gygax paranoid, this passage does suggest a rather unsettling distrust of players. He seems to assume that players habitually lie to gain an unfair advantage. Advice like " Never take a player's word for any item. Do not allow its use in your campaign unless you know his or her DM and get a full explanation in writing from that person which details the properties of the item" goes beyond what's necessary to prevent imbalance; after all, if the DM thinks an item is too powerful, he can simply disallow it. Gygax is saying that, no matter what the non-standard item is, you should assume the player is lying about it,and I find that insulting. The same attitude appears in the DMG section on monsters as player characters, where Gygax seems to assume that the only reason anyone would want to play a monster is to gain an unfair advantage.
ReplyDeleteI can see why you take it that way, and plenty of Gary's writings smack of distrust of players. However, I think it is more likely here that he considers it unlikely that the player knows all the details of the unique magic item. It may have charges, or a drawback, that the player is unaware of. So just accepting "well, I say the command word and it shoots a lightning bolt" would be unwise. Unless at-will lightning bolts fit your game. :)
DeleteI think you're probably right that Gygax is advocating getting all the info about the non-standard item, even things that the player might not know. I still think he's going overboard here, though, in stating that you should never trust a player's word about this kind of thing. In the example that you gave, the DM is free to disallow the lightning maker, but there's no need to assume the player is lying about what it does, and no need to ask the other DM for a written statement to prove that the player isn't lying. The advice "Don't allow an item into your game if it would unbalance things" is sufficient to address the issue; there is no need to counsel distrust as well.
DeleteWeirdly, I never once played a character that went from one campaign world to another, even when it was the same DM running them, nor did I ever play with anyone who did. It certainly happened pretty often back in the 70s and 80s, I saw it happen at other tables. Just never participated in it myself, I'd just make a new PC rather than drag an old one along.
ReplyDeleteI had a mix of both. Characters that where situated in someone else world, and others that I used to hop from one campaign to another( mostly in congames ). I kinda liked it a little more to have a character go from game-to-game just because the PC's would develop (for better or worse) in more unexpected ways.
DeleteHmm. I wonder what Gary would have thought of my recent efforts at custom magic items? I should maybe get back to doing those on my blog, kind of fell out of the habit.
ReplyDeletehttps://sanctumreconditesage.blogspot.com/
Opinions welcome if anyone else takes a look. :)
Gary's talk about non-standard games and rules was starting to gain momentum with the DMG and would continue in Dragon Magazine with him ultimately ripping on the APAs for all their variant rules and such and amateur game design.
ReplyDeleteMy high school gaming at MIT involved a fair bit of trade of PCs between campaigns. Once I got to college though, the practice stopped and each campaign was individual. Of course it also wasn't long before I wasn't running AD&D in college anyway, running RuneQuest or Cold Iron and other games.