Quote from: RPGPundit;593346Seriously? That one fucking takes the cake. Was there even any justification for why such an item would exist? Who the fuck would wake up one day and say "I'm going to make a huge ungainly item that can detect mountains; and only has a range so tiny that obviously anyone with the item would see the fucking mountain right in front of them in almost any circumstance"!?

RPGPundit

Well, they wanted to MAKE mountains out of Molehills, and instead now they SEEK mountains out of Molehills.  It's very important to get your runes right.

I've always been fond of the frictionless tablecloth and the clown suit that's totally immune to crushing damage from GURPS Magic Items.

Quote from: mcbobbo;590795Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity

Who would make such an item, and why? Why does it only work once, and why does it inhibit changing back?

If you take the metagame factors into account it works, but as a real thing commonly encountered as a part of a treasure hoard, it's really damn weird.

Ancient decadent total fucking asshole warlords in a past age of depravity and patriarchal societies.

Conquer a rival and literally emasculate him.

Quote from: RPGPundit;593346Seriously? That one fucking takes the cake. Was there even any justification for why such an item would exist? Who the fuck would wake up one day and say "I'm going to make a huge ungainly item that can detect mountains; and only has a range so tiny that obviously anyone with the item would see the fucking mountain right in front of them in almost any circumstance"!?

RPGPundit

I can see it mechanically occurring if one was using a system that had rules for making magic items with the possibility of random results, especially if that was tied to failure on the attempt.

A boulder that detects mountains with a range of 10 meters sounds like something spat out of procedural use of random tables.

Quote from: The Were-Grognard;590882The ancients were a decadent lot.  In their boredom and debauchery, they created depraved magical items to inflict on slaves, or even themselves.  Such cavalier use of magic was an affront to the gods, and the so the ancients were cast down.

But seriously, it was probably made up just for a gag

I had a DM who loved to put fuckover items like this in the dungeon and would literally giggle like a schoolgirl when someone got one- and while still giggling, ask why the player was so bent out of shape. He plays with us now, but that is all he gets to do is play. Really, in retrospect, the fuckover items were the least of his problems as a DM.

Quote from: David Johansen;593500I've always been fond of the frictionless tablecloth and the clown suit that's totally immune to crushing damage from GURPS Magic Items.

I recall one guy had a magic item that made him immue to anything that started with the letter "D". Dragons, dwarves, death . . .

Quote from: Gib;593506I had a DM who loved to put fuckover items like this in the dungeon and would literally giggle like a schoolgirl when someone got one- and while still giggling, ask why the player was so bent out of shape. He plays with us now, but that is all he gets to do is play. Really, in retrospect, the fuckover items were the least of his problems as a DM.

Back in our days of D&D with nearly infinite magic, we had a gift for making good use of cursed magic items, or just finding them to be . . . not really cursed (one player got a girdle that turned the character gay - except she already was).

Best one was a be that a guy got at a convention. It supposedly had some powerful good effect, too, but the curse was that anyone who sat on it was sacrificed to an unknown god. That was as far as the explanation got. The guy who got it walked away, literally giggling to himself, leaving the gamemaster very confused ("Don't you want to know what its powers are?" "No, I'm happy.")

Why? Well, this was an extremely high powered magic game, where death wasn't even always an inconvenience. One character was cut in half by a molecular wire, and didn't even break stride. Killing someone might actually make them happier. It took a lot more than that to really get rid of someone (and there was a lot of in-game conflict between characters, many of whom were powerful lords). One way was to sacrifice them to a god, at which point, someone would have to negotiate with said god to get the soul back. If the god was defined as unknown . . .

There was also a character who got a throne that made him king of all he could survey - literally. Drove him insane, though, because it also gave anyone who worshipped him as a god up to third level clerical spells.

I custom-build just about every mystical item in my stories. As such, most have unusual features, functions and story elements. I also have a penchant for designing very odd 'cursed' (joke) items. One such is the Canoe of Blinking.

The most recent bizarre item is a dress of woven paper flowers. It is a Dress of Stupidity, reducing the wearer's Intellect by 2d6,Most are unusual, f and proving the superfluous abilities of 'Air-Breathing' and 'Walk on Solid Surfaces'.

That is not the end-all, as if one plant a flower from the dress, it actually grows, and will grow in just about anything. The flowers produce music, and will hum to any melody within 100 meters; if they develop, they will grow a face, and eventually limns, walking about and absorbing the intellect of other life-forms for food.

Most of the items in my system are quite intricate, and can be read about in the Zoria sourcebook. My goal is to provide a story for them all in the end.

Quote from: Planet Algol;593505I can see it mechanically occurring if one was using a system that had rules for making magic items with the possibility of random results, especially if that was tied to failure on the attempt.

A boulder that detects mountains with a range of 10 meters sounds like something spat out of procedural use of random tables.

Yeah, that's pretty much the only way I could imagine it: really bad random tables, and an intransigent-GM who would take the literal results without modifications.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;593346Seriously? That one fucking takes the cake. Was there even any justification for why such an item would exist? Who the fuck would wake up one day and say "I'm going to make a huge ungainly item that can detect mountains; and only has a range so tiny that obviously anyone with the item would see the fucking mountain right in front of them in almost any circumstance"!?

RPGPundit

Sounds like Glorantha to me.  The answer to that is a Gloranthan one - it appeared in a myth or a myth did it.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;593927Sounds like Glorantha to me.  The answer to that is a Gloranthan one - it appeared in a myth or a myth did it.

I guess that's slightly better than a "wizard did it" excuse, if only because the gods can be crazy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;594383I guess that's slightly better than a "wizard did it" excuse, if only because the gods can be crazy.

If a god is responsible, it isn't inconceivable that it was made in anticipation of exactly how it ended up being used, as one god's way of just pissing off another god in their eternal struggle.

It's still a stupid magic item, but what's gaming without a little fanwank justification?

I'm hesitant to call this an item because of the scale of it and its MacGuffiny nature, but Disneyland in my game of Unknown Armies was designed as a massive engine meant to force itself and Walt into the Invisible Clergy as Utopia, only to be stifled by its historically disastrous opening day and decades of meddling by outside forces.

Edit: More directly germane to this was a mask of John Ritter that allowed the bearer to see the true nature of Three's Company as representative of the modern holy trinity.  Madness and a tendency to whistle the opening bars of the theme song tended to follow shortly after.

Quote from: This Guy;594509I'm hesitant to call this an item because of the scale of it and its MacGuffiny nature, but Disneyland in my game of Unknown Armies was designed as a massive engine meant to force itself and Walt into the Invisible Clergy as Utopia, only to be stifled by its historically disastrous opening day and decades of meddling by outside forces.

Edit: More directly germane to this was a mask of John Ritter that allowed the bearer to see the true nature of Three's Company as representative of the modern holy trinity.  Madness and a tendency to whistle the opening bars of the theme song tended to follow shortly after.

And there, in two paragraphs, why I love, and why I hate, Unknown Armies.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;594893And there, in two paragraphs, why I love, and why I hate, Unknown Armies.

RPGPundit

It is definitely that kind of game.  I wish I could run it more but I'm a bit scared of what I'd do.