PrinceCon III Handbook, Part IV

Magic Items II: Magic Harder

Being The Hopefully Final Part Of This Digression

At long last, we come to what is (probably) the end of the line for this, and then, back to Arduin. We continue with the magic items. For those who somehow wandered here because of a terrible Google accident, here’s a link to all the related articles.

Books And Decks

Back in the day, raising attributes was nearly impossible, and if you were playing straight-up 3d6 in order, odds were, you had pretty crappy scores. So the various tomes and librams that gave you a +1 to a given attribute were among the most sought-after treasures, especially as the game evolved to give attribute scores progressively more formal influence on various aspects of play. It is worth noting that, per AD&D, a wish could only raise an ability score one point at a time, and then only to 16; to raise it beyond 16, ten wishes were needed! It is probable, looking back with the perspective of age, that EGG intended that “rule” to be a “subtle” hint that it was impossible to raise a score over 16, but at the time, we took it as a subtle hint that having 10 wishes to use was not an unreasonable thing… look, there’s a rule for it!

Anyway, this section of the PrinceCon III handbook covers books and decks… and I don’t mean “+3 Redwood Stained Planks Of Suntanning”, because what gamer worthy of the name would ever wish to expose themselves, even in their imagination, to the hateful light of the accursed daystar? It’s called Dungeons & Dragons, not Sunny Open Spaces & Dragons! No, I mean decks of magical cards, and not the kind where you tap two swamps to scare a wall to death.

• Manual of Recognizing Opportunities: Adds 1 point to Luck. The fact there is no “Luck” attribute should be considered a trivial inconvenience. Ada Lovelace wrote computer code without a computer, after all! (It notes that, as with all books, it only works for the first person who reads it. We always interpreted that rule to mean “first one in the party”, but, taken literally, it would mean every such book was either somehow abandoned unread, or was useless to the finder. I think later editions had the books vanish after reading, to re-appear somewhere else “refreshed”. Sounds like buggy DRM to me.)
• Manual of Golems: “as per Greyhawk”, but includes a notation that the various types of books cannot be told from one another without using two full wishes! Remember what I said about how rapidly the “wish” became a sort of unit of power? “This is a three-wish job!” “We’ll need two full and one limited wish for this!” Yeah, it’s time for me to beat my favorite dead horse once more, and point out that the idea that old-school gaming was all “kobolds&copper pieces” is utter and complete bullshit. The phrase “Monty Haul Campaign” did not originate with 3e or Pathfinder or 4e. It was part of the lexicon within a year or two of D&D first appearing. And if you’ve never heard the term “Monty Haul” (not “Hall”), get off my lawn, you damn punk kid.
• Book of Purile Nonsense: Clearly, a copy of Twilight. Nah. Magic-users and clerics who read it lose a point of Int and Wis respectively, but fighters and thieves find it “rather entertaining”. (Oooo, a “dumb jock” joke from the gamers! Who would have imagined it? Not the dumb jocks, they have no imagination, amirite?)
• Deck of a Few Things: Like a Deck of Many Things, but only 8 cards. Ditto the Deck of Several Things, with 14 cards.

Cubes

Oddly, most of the other platonic solids are not represented.

• Wondrous Enhancer of Jewels: Multiplies jewels’ value by 10. Does not say it can’t be used twice on the same jewels. And trust me, if I thought of it now, some player tried it then. Not to be confused with the Wondrous Pulverizer of Jewels (yes, really) which multiplies jewels’ value by zero.
• 

’nuff said. Kind of speaks for itself.

Horseshoes

• Horseshoes of Polymorphism: Appears to be some other type of magical horseshoes, but there’s a 40% chance the horse will transform into a random monster and attempt to kill its rider. And people wonder why old-school gamers are so paranoid. Just about every good thing had its goatee-wearing evil twin lurking somewhere.

Flail/Morning Star/Maces

• Level Blasting: When wielded by a demonic being, drains “one, two, or three levels, appropriately”. Level draining at the time was very, very, bad, because short of those wishes I mention, it was damn hard to get a level back, except the old-fashioned way: Pouring boiling water on an anthill.
• Mace Of Return: Also known as “Casey’s Bat” (seriously, it says that), this allows you to bat a fireball or iceball back toward the thrower. Very nasty. I love it.

Warhammers

• Warhammer Of Wealth Reduction: This warhammer compels you to spend money on… waIt, I did that bit already. Never mind.
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  Can never be released?

  So, this “can not be released”. That could be difficult… you’d have trouble getting armor off, for one thing. Or doing a whole bunch of stuff, for that matter. Generally, cursed weapons couldn’t be “left behind”… if you tried, they’d come back, teleporting themselves into your hand or something. This implies that it basically fuses itself to your flesh.

Spears

• De-were spear: A triumph of ‘cool idea, dumb name’, this spear transforms shapeshifters into their original form for 10 rounds. Instantly, I realized its main use is not fighting werewolves, but ferreting out shape-shifting spies, such as were-ferrets. You know who they are because the conversation always goes like this:

“So, my loyal Grand Vizier, we have tested all of the palace staff, but none are the shape-shifting spy.”

“Indeed, my lord. We must have been mistaken.”

“Except… you were not tested, were you?”

“Muh… me, my lord? I think I ought to be above suspicion!”

“Hmm. Did you not always advise me to trust no one?”

“Erm, yes, but surely you don’t…”

“Come here and let me stick you with my spear, loyal vizier.”

(At this point, a certain subset of the readers go ‘squee’ and start writing fanfic/posting gifs to Tumblr)

(Also, vizier turns into were-ferret, leaps, and is impaled on his master’s spear. NTTAWWT.)

 Arrows/Quarrels

• Arrow/Quarrel Of Many Shots: This splits into multiple pieces, each piece attacking independently, then you put the pieces together again and repeat. Very nice item, and I’m a little surprised it’s not a common trope now… maybe the plethora of feats and class powers that let you fire multiple arrows made it redundant.
• Arrow/Quarrel of Doom: When hit, you roll up a random curse, using the West curse system. (See earlier installment.) Again, I love the personalness of this. The West Curse System. The Mahler poisons. The Howard wound system, not that we care what Howard says.
• Arrow/Quarrel of the Forest: Flies around trees, ala that bit in “The Gamers”.

Daggers

“We here care not for the rites of k’hopee!’

I’m surprised it isn’t +4 vs. Hobbits, or something.

Bows/Crossbows

• Crossbow of the Fifth Dimension: Wielded during the R&B wars of the late 60s, this fearsome weapon… wait, wrong one. This one just shoots phase spiders and other ethereal/astral things. Pretty cool, actually.
• Crossbow of Many Shots: Fires three bolts at once. Load it up with an Arrow of Many Shots and you’ve invented the “Fully Automatic Rifle Of Hosedown”.

Gems

OK, this is a mostly-new category. While there were various jewels around before, the Princecon III handbook takes them to a new level. The actual booklet breaks them down by type, but I’ll just include them in one section.

• Diamond of Egotism: Causes the wielder to begin every sentence with “I’m gonna let you finish, but…” Also gives him a +6 to Ego… actually, it says, “increases the ego of bear by +6”, which means, the best character on Person of Interest will “go Hollywood” and become… erm… unbearable. Yeah. Well, if the ego goes over 15, the character will be contemptuous of all foes and will attack directly, using normal weapons in preference to any special abilities. If you’re going to ask when the “Ego” stat was added to the game, don’t. Just… don’t.
• 
• Another entry in the “What does it mean?” category. It explodes “with the force of its hit points”? It does that much damage to creatures nearby? What? What’s a “relatively small or light” object? And a 1-in-6 chance of going “kaboom” yourself? No, thanks.
• Ruby Of Fireballs: Lets an M-U cast fireball if they can’t, or do double damage (!) if they can. Not sure how often it works.
• Ruby Of Cooking Fire: Lets a Fighter or Cleric start a normal fire on a bundle of twigs in 5 melee rounds. Erm, wouldn’t it be assumed most people who chose “going into dank caves to commit robbery and murder” as a career would be able to do this? It’s hard to conceive of a situation where a PC might have been stripped of their flint and tinder, but not their ruby. Well, maybe it lets you start a fire on wet logs, or something.
• Ruby Of Infravision: Once a day (whee!) allows a fighter, cleric, or thief to have infravision as per the spell. Yippee.
• Ruby of Fiery Death: Does character level+3 dice of damage to the character holding it — presumably, immediately upon picking it up. Which means, the pile of ash and charred bone surrounding the ruby ought to be a clue to the adventurers… but it never is. Trust me.
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  Naturally, Any Random Gem Can Put You In A Divine Arena. Why Not?

  Yeah, another item (or group of items) that sort of speak for themselves. This is the heart of real old school gaming right here, folks. First, a fairly cool item that comes with a bundle of micro-mechanics attached, then, a cursed item that looks just like the cool item, then, a totally whackdoodle and yet utterly brilliant idea — cramming, it seems, a dueling arena into some sort of extradimensional bubble created by the gem. Wow. I mean, why the hell not?

• Emerald Of Commanding Lawful Demons: It’s hard to tell, given the timeframe, if this means “Devils”, i.e., lawful evil, or if this was a throwback to earlier issues of if “lawful” always meant “good” and “chaotic” meant “evil”. While the five-point alignment system was published in The Dragon by 1977, the rate of adoption of such rules was variable, and other elements of the PrinceCon book hearken strongly back to the LBBs and don’t seem influenced by the proto-steps towards AD&D which were coming out at the time.
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  His Wife Makes Good Salad Dressing

  Yeah, I have a lot of these “I’m just posting it, I don’t understand” items in this section. As I noted earlier, these item types are mostly original to the PrinceCon crowd… which means they have many idiosyncratic touches based on their local games. And, please remember, other than a brief skim-through, I am writing these articles as I am reading the book, jotting down my thoughts as they come. A proper reviewer would read it several times, maybe track down some original sources, ask some questions, and otherwise do more than just babble endlessly, spewing out whatever thoughts enter his mind as they come to him. But a proper reviewer gets paid, too. (Paypal: lizard@mrlizard.com)

• Sapphire Of Commanding Neutral Demons: Well, that just makes the whole demonic alignment issue more confusing. Moving on.
• Sapphire (Not ruby? Why?) Of Flaming Weapons: Allows the user to flame any weapon he holds for one half day (72 rounds) per level of user. Erm… that’s probably long enough for most fights. Unless that’s a fixed number, total, for the lifetime of the character, and even so… a mid level user will get hundreds of rounds of use out of this. Seems like a pretty odd limitation to me.
• Sapphire Of Seeming Innocence: Allows a thief to convince the party he is not guilty as if he had a Charisma of 19. Note: The party. This tells you a lot about how thieves were generally run at Princeton, doesn’t it?
• Sapphire Of Obvious Guilt: Just the opposite, causes the wielder to seem guilty of “whatever seems most relevant at the time”. I see a lot of fun happening with this one.
• Sapphire Of Electrocution: Like the Ruby Of Fiery Death, but with lightning.
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  Note What? Damn it!

  This is where the book ends… with a “Note also that” that never completes, and an out-of-sequence item that belongs a few pages back. There’s something profoundly right about ending here. Missing and broken rules, combined with ideas so prolific they overflow their assigned spot and end up randomly scattered about. Old School like a boss.

I hope the imaginary people reading this enjoyed it. Next time, back to Arduin.