ToME WikiSirrocco: Got intrigued by the 3.00 Artfacts discussion on the developer's page. Fortunately, I did the location check before I posted. This might also be helpful for Norseband.
One of the things I see is that Tolkien, like the Norse, had a habit of naming his weapons. Any weapon that would qualify as an ego in TOME would get a shot at a name in a story by Tolkien. A simple fire brand +1 light radius sword would have a name, and if it also gave fire resist and was immune to elements it'd have a history worth repeating. On the other hand, these are clearly not worth considering as Artifacts Of Great Power. I'd say, if you could do it well enough, have egos roll randomly for names. Better still, start them out weak, and give them the chance to grow, and once they get powerful enough, have them *sprout* names. Start out by having "a worthy blade" or some such. give it a description like "this weapon looks like quality steel. It has some potential." Then you take it into the orc caves for some slaughter. "The blade that slew a thousand orcs" is pretty impressive, from a Tolkien standpoint, even if all of the slaying was done by the player, and could well merit a "slay orc" flag. Better, if the player can grow his own set of reasonable ego equipment, you can cut back significantly on the number of egos found, and you could give other, partially pregrown egos rather than artifacts for early quest rewards and significant unique drops. Those could be rare enough to have randart-style names, and semirandom, somewhat bland histories based on one or two of the more significant flags. That would make *those* cool and useful, not because "they're artifacts", but because they give you an opportunity to take your equipment in a different direction, if the stuff you'd been growing yourself wasn't getting what you'd wanted.
In the end, significant egos become rarer, but no less available. You can still get some at about the same point, but you won't be deluged with the same numbers. That makes each of them more valuable as a chance to consider options, and lets us, like Tolkien, have names even on weapons that "glow in the presence of orcs, kill them well, and cause them to be afraid." - weapons that otherwise would compare poorly to even early midgame egos. Of course, each of these growth weapons would cap out at about three or four ego flags, no matter what you did with them, which would mean that the true artifacts, forged and wielded by legendary heroes and legendary forces, really *would* be end-game material.
IngeborgNorden: Sirrocco...considering that Tolkien did draw heavily on Norse and Saxon heroic stories in his books, that system could indeed work well for Norseband as well as ToME. Still, I like the idea of artifacts whose powers aren't 100% predictable for anyone with a spoilers list. If high-quality weapons can gain powers based on the owner's actions--then who's to say that a randart didn't start out as some winning character's lucky find, gaining abilities based on that hero's exploits? (Random-but-appropriate histories would certainly make a new item more than another collection of flags and stats...)
Sirrocco: Well, that rather depends on scale. In Tolkeinish worlds, the Great Artifacts were pretty much either created by beings who were Powers themselves, or wielded by the greatest of heroes in the greatest of deeds - frequently in direct assault on said Powers. As I read it, the main character doesn't really hit that point at least until he kills Sauron. Perhaps permakilling the Ringwraiths would count, or something like that, but even throwing the Ring into Mount Doom feels a little diffuse to me - the Ring legend is a major part of the Sauron legend, and the hero, in destroying the ring, becomes a major part of the ring legend, and then, say, his sword was the sword that slew 500 demons as he fought his way to the peak of Mount Doom (or some such). That's impressive, sure, and it certainly counts for something, but I don't think it really compares with Ringil, which was the blade that gave seven wounds to *Morgoth*, from which he would never fully recover.
In Norse myth, in parallel, it seems that Gods Get All The Best Stuff. If you somehow manage to get your hands on Mjolnir, or the spear by which Odin was pinned to the Tree, or whatnot, there's not a weapon borne by man that should be anything like as powerful - at least, not as I see it.
On the other side, this is an ideas thread. If you feel that you want to take it off in a different direction, then hey - excellent. I approve. Actually, I think it might be cool if you wanted to make *every* weapon in the game trainable. Have using your starter blade for nigh on the entire game be a viable choice. Why not? Even for cultures that don't have the same ideas... well, having mage staves that become more powerful from having magic cast through them over and over is certainly not implausible. Mostly, I'm here to toss thoughts out and hope that some of them are useful.
Actually, if the character were the one that brought fame to the weapon (and part of it *would* be the fame - Norseband really ought to have a structure that would encourage you to get bards to sing your praises and such) it would make sense for you to have the character name the thing - and have the naming itself carry some in-game practical effect that would encourage players to do it when the time was right, and a bit of tactics as to which equipment to name and when. You could have counters on various pieces of equipment that would record what deeds it had participated in, and show the most significant (read: well-known) ones in the *identify* description. You would, of course, start the game with your starter gear *identified*, and any item that you commissioned from a craftsman would be automatically *identified* as well. Boots could record "impressive things crossed", weapons could record "number of meaningful things killed", and so on. Before the naming, the thing might have a power or two, assuming you'd done something *really* impressive with it, but it might fluctuate. After you name it, and it officially becomes part of your saga, the current "most significant things" start being what people remember it for, and become the core of its powers. The mighty blade Faebane, which carries the blood of three hundred of the sidhe is going to be primarily about doing bad things to the fair folk, even if you later start using it to wipe out trolls. Now, if it becomes the blade that brought about the true ending of the Fenris-wolf, and so stole Heimdall's fated battle-death, well, people are going to *remember* that one. They're also going to snicker a little at the memory of that mangy cur, brought down in the end by a blade forged for killing pixies. Still, the bit about the fae has a leg up in the fame department, because, you know, it's *in* the *name*, and the more impressive it was (and you were) before you named it, the more impressive a name you can get away with.
Just a few thoughts.
Incidentally, if you combine the "personal story" bit with the bit about different religions having different degrees of power based on their influence int eh world, it lets you get the Ultimate Atheist Ending. Don't swear to any pantheon at all, get your story grand enough all by yourself (likely partially by killing Gods, and in so doing stealing from theirs) and become a God in your own right.
shoob: I am assuming that the stuff between me and the just the few thoughts was omni... Ok, so Sirrocco, I like the idea, I think that certain objects might have a greater tendency to get flags though, depending on where it was made, say for example a hobbit trowel versus an elven blade. One is just an ordinary object (not in the game by the way :)), and the other has had magic spells spoken around it, to be a bane of certain things, SO I could see it happening, like a blade evolving from slay foo to kill foo, and the attack modifier increasing as well, but about about the becoming a slay foo, should be much harder, and maybe only possible if you can reforge it/add runes to it (hence I would prefer the runecrafter be revamped to inscribe runes on object with high levels of runecrafting, so it would replace the alchemist, but the runes could not be removed, but a high level runecrafer could remember them.)