RE: (TFT) First Magic Items Purchased

[paleryder1@verizon.net]

  I've been toying with a Hyborian-styled adventure as chronicled by
Robert E. Howard. Magic, and magic items, are much different- rare,
extremely powerful and dangerous. I have the TSR Conan Role-Playing
game. TSR made some Conan modules for AD&D but this is different. It was
presented as a beginning role-playing game but it's pretty ingenous.
There's a mechanism in combat to take into consideration the skill of
both combatants. I like it.

The magic system, however, is the reason for the game's failure as well
as its potential for greatness. It follows the Acheronian/Hyborean magic
culture in that magic is dangerous and essentially evil. PC's are
discouraged from being magic users because of the time required for
study, which requires the players removal from the gameplay. You devote
yourself to a magic school and, after a long time, you get some
unspecified abilities and a "disadvantage" like insomnia, insanity,
disfigurement, premature ejaculation, something.... You then have to
acquire a spell. There are no spells in this system. The player and the
DM have to make them up. There's a rough framework, categories if you
will, to guide you. When you acquire a spell, you increase the
disadvantage or take a new one. The more powerful the magic/spell, the
greater the disadvantage. There's a reason that wizards in Conan novels
are crazy and/or evil. They're playing with stuff of which they know
very little. It's potentially very cool and would require some good
role-playing. Very few wizards or magic items in the game.

I looked at some of the material in the Mongoose publication game and it
was just what I was looking for- some really dark stuff. You want to
drain energy? Sure, go ahead... just after you sacrifice a human being
to get the power!!! Now that's Acheronian magic at its finest.

If I've already written about this, forgive me. I think I'm getting
dementia...and I'm way too young for that. I think.

Aidan

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at  2:48 PM, raito@raito.com wrote:

> Quoting Christopher Brandon <brandon@pokemon-seattle.com
> <mailto:brandon@pokemon-seattle.com> B 
> <mailto:brandon@pokemon-seattle.com> >:

> Maybe it is just the way we played, but magical items beyond potions
> or a blessed holy symbol or something like that were not available for
> purchase.B  We did not have Mary's Magical Mystery Mall available by
> any means.B  This stemmed form our own thoughts that magical items were
> rare and precious.
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