PTFOOO: Acquiring Arcana
Some behind-the-scenes thoughts about magic items and the PCs who want them
No new fiction this week for PTFO:Stonetop — I’m back east visiting my in-laws in a town midway between the burbs and the sticks. It’s very restful if a bit more humid than I am now used to: Spend a few years out in the desert, and you forget what it’s like to be slapped in the face with a hot, wet towel every time you leave the house.
But even on off weeks, I like to send a little something out about the Stonetop campaign — Substack is a beast that must be fed. On top of that, I’m always a bit afraid that I’ll break whatever weird magic spell that’s been cast to allow me to write consistently every week for the last ten months.
So, this week I wanted to share some thoughts about magic items in TTRPGs, and how they relate to Anwen and her journey as a character. I’ll avoid explicit plot spoilers — in part because I don’t know exactly how things are going to turn out, of course — but what follows is going to feel pretty spoiler-y, so if you want to experience what’s coming in PTFO:Stonetop primarily as a reader this is an installment worth skipping.
The Storm Markings
Let’s start by talking about the Storm Markings — they are a Major Arcana in the world of Stonetop, much like the Azure Hand that Vahid wields. As you might recall, Major Arcana have a “locked” state printed on the front of a card and an “unlocked” state with powerful abilities that a character can access by completing something of a mini-quest. Here are the Storm Markings in their locked state — you’ll find they bear some striking similarities to elements introduced in PTFO:Stonetop.
When I read over this Arcana while working on the PTFO:Stonetop PCs, it struck me how great a fit it is for the Would-Be Hero playbook — the trigger “when you roil with anger” dovetails nicely with the WBH’s Anger is a Gift move, making the character a force to be reckoned with when they are enraged, and gives them an interesting weakness to boot. After some consideration, I decided to incorporate the arcanum into our story. You may have spotted it in a few places, but if not, never fear — we’ll go over some of the key moments in this installment.
It’s tough, at least for me, to create a character in an RPG and not think about what the future might hold for them — what new abilities or bonuses you might unlock when leveling up, and how they might synergize to make the character especially interesting or powerful. It’s easier to think about the mechanical future of a character than it is the narrative future of them — anything could happen in the story, while the advancement options represent a finite consideration set.
In the case of things like Moves (or stuff like Feats and multiclass levels in D&D), there’s a lot of player agency, but in the case of magic items (like the Arcana in Stonetop), it’s a bit more of a negotiation with the gamemaster.
Acquiring Arcana
That doesn’t stop players from imagining what magic items their characters might get in the future — Paging through magic items, you think to yourself, “if I could just get my hands on a +1 Keen Scimitar, that would really be something for this character.”1
But how to get that shiny blade or those powerful Storm Markings? There’s the rub. TTRPGs and fantasy storytelling tropes generally have a few answers for us. Let’s talk about some of ‘em.
Option 1: Pop out to the shop
Full disclosure, I think this option is the silliest. Still, there are games in which it works quite nicely: There’s something very fun about murdering a terrifying monster, liquidating all its earthly possessions, and using the proceeds to assemble a glorious battle panoply at the local magic item emporium.
This option goes hard at player agency: If you want an item, just acquire the requisite amount of cash and go to a magic item emporium to purchase it — all your GM has to do is say, “Yes, it’s in stock.” D&D 3.5e, in the rules-as-written, was all about this approach: on page 137 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, you can find a table that lists the “GP Limit” for settlements of a given size. If you want to buy that +1 Keen Scimitar, you run the numbers and determine it costs 8,315 gold pieces, which means it’s only available in settlements with a population of at least 5,001. Easy!
The problem with this approach is that if you take it seriously from a worldbuilding standpoint, it is very hard to deal with. I won’t go into detail here, but there are a lot of old forum shitposts about the macroeconomic effects of the amount of cash running through magic item shops. That doesn’t even touch the fact that it undermines the wonder and fantasy of magic items. This is such a sore spot with a subset of players that D&D 5E did away with this approach to acquiring magic items entirely. Here’s the relevant bit from the 5E Dungeon Master’s Guide:
Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase. Common items, such as a potion of healing, can be procured from an alchemist, herbalist, or spellcaster. Doing so is rarely as simple as walking into a shop and selecting an item from a shelf. The seller might ask for a service, rather than coin.
In a large city with an academy of magic or a major temple, buying and selling magic items might be possible, at your discretion. If your world includes a large number of adventurers engaged in retrieving ancient magic items, trade in these items might be more common. Even so, it’s likely to remain similar to the market for fine art in the real world, with invitation-only auctions and a tendency to attract thieves.
Despite my various beefs with 5E, this description of the Magic Item Mart is much more compelling than what it became in 3.5. Buying a Vorpal Sword for 50,000gp is pretty weak tea. Planning a heist against an auction run by a crime boss who is secretly a rakshasa is a bit more evocative.
Option 2: Nice sword, I’ll take it
This is the base case in many TTRPGs. Killing monsters and taking their magic items is a fundamental part of the D&D experience, and it has percolated into other TTRPGs and video game genres like Action RPGs and Looter Shooters. I have personally spent hundreds of hours of my precious time on this Earth trying to extract the loot from various creatures in the World of Warcraft, for example.
It’s easy for this to feel rote when done poorly: You murder a pack of hobgoblins and their sub-captain leader has a +2 longsword. The fighter’s old +1 Longsword gets shoved in the Bag of Holding labeled “TO BE SOLD,” and you move on. I don’t mind this in a video game, but it doesn’t quite do it for me at the gaming table.
That said, it’s good to remember that finding magic items in lairs has a deep, rich foundation in fiction and myth.
When Gandalf and Thorin’s Company (with their trusty burglar Bilbo) overcame the three stone trolls in the Trollshaw Forest, they found in their lair two great elven blades: Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and Glamdring the Foe-Hammer. I don’t know if they’re +1 or +2, but I do know I’d much rather have something called “The Foe-Hammer” than a +2 longsword. On top of the names, they have a history (Like everything in Tolkien). Glamdring was wielded by Turgon, the elven King of Gondolin, during the First Age — a time in Tolkien’s world when everything was more badass, more magical, and shinier.
In terms of player agency, finding magic items in lairs or on the bodies of the vanquished is limited — you have to tell your GM: “Hey, I think my character would benefit from this specific magic item. Is it possible I could acquire one?” and if you’re lucky, the GM will make it happen at the appropriate moment. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of randomized loot tables.
The above two options have something in common to recommend them: They can be very quick and easy. If your story lies elsewhere, it can be a bit of a distraction to plan an elaborate heist or to learn about the 1,000-year history of a blade you found in a moldy troll lair. But taking the more detailed approach, while neither quick nor easy, can lead to dramatic and evocative stories where the heroes struggle and sacrifice to win great power, and are changed by that journey.
Option 3: It’s all part of the story
It’s hard to argue that the finding of Glamdring and Orcrist was pivotal to the story of the Hobbit, but there’s another example in the Tolkienverse that was a bit more central:
The reforging of the shards of Narsil into Andúril, the Flame of the West, is a big moment in the trilogy (though it comes to life quite differently in the books than in the films). In both versions, the reforging of The Blade That Was Broken was foreshadowed well before it happened and involved decisive action on the part of multiple characters. Aragorn, Arwen (in the films), and Elrond are the key players, but if you delve deeper into the Tolkien canon, there are characters like Ohtar, Isildur’s squire, who escaped with the shards after the king was killed by orcs, and took them to Rivendell where they could be reunited with the Isildur’s heir (not Aragorn, but his many, many-times great grandfather).
This is a much more involved process than the other two options, and at the gaming table, it requires collaboration between the GM and the player or players. In the case of solo roleplaying, that collaboration is a bit streamlined, but in the spirit of that collaboration, let’s talk about the role the Storm Markings arcanum has played in our story so far.
The Setup
To introduce the idea that Anwen, or another character in our story, might have a chance to receive the Storm Markings, we first need to introduce them and the place they occupy in the world — our equivalent of this moment in Lord of the Rings:
In the film timeline, showing the shards of Narsil in the first film (and highlighting Aragorn’s ambivalence towards them — something that’s only present in the film version) sets up the pivotal reforging of the blade in the final film and his acceptance of the kingship of Gondor.
So, what was that moment in PTFO:Stonetop? It came in Session 5.4: Beneath Stonetop, as Vahid and Padrig explored the ruins hidden within Stonetop’s cistern:
Vahid walks down the causeway with quiet reverence. The walls above the pools are adorned with ornate friezes, depicting scenes of terrible and valorous battle in sharp profile. Arrayed on one side are nine warriors, men and women geared for war with finely-wrought armaments, their bare arms tattooed with branching bolts of lightning, picked out in the white stone with shining inlays of aetherium.
If we were around the gaming table, this would be a moment that Anwen’s player would hopefully take note of — especially if the player had told the GM that they’d be interested in an opportunity to pursue the Storm Marking Arcana. I suspect that some readers — those who are especially conversant in Stonetop’s playtest materials and all the major Arcana, spotted this moment as foreshadowing, but even without prior knowledge of the rules text, this later passage from Session 5.5: Guardians is easy to interpret as instructions to acquire something special:
Beyond is a long, descending stairway, decorated with carved friezes. First, the sculpture depicts proud human warriors testing themselves in unarmed combat in the amphitheater’s arena under the approving eyes of their Maker rulers. Next, the pools are shown, with the victors in meditative poses, immersed in the water, and then the rune-carved chamber, where they are gifted ornate weapons of Makerglass. Last, they are shown entering a huge black chamber where arcs of lightning issue forth from a great orb. There, they are bestowed with a strange regalia — an aetherium crown that sheds blood from the wearer, which serves as a conduit for the vis that marks the victorious Thunders with their lightning-tattoos, inlaid in the stone with gleaming blue-grey aetherium.
The Promise of Power
So we’ve laid out a path to power for Vahid, Anwen, and Padrig, and made a promise: If they learn more and follow these steps, they can access this ancient Arcana. But what power are we promising them, exactly? Magic in Stonetop isn’t quite as simple as the old +1 Keen Scimitar — Arcana are strange, unpredictable, and often double-edged, so it’s worth foreshadowing things a bit.
The most straightforward way to foreshadow is to show the major Arcana card directly to the players (in a way, this article is me doing that with you folks). We referenced the front of that card above, and in a moment, I’ll show the back as well. But in the case of this story, I didn’t want to paste the cards and leave it at that — it’s much more fun to show the power on offer than just allowing the rules text to tell the players what they want to know.
That’s where the Stormcrow from Session 8.3: Only Glory comes in. Anwen had an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with an opponent empowered by similar magic, allowing us to foreshadow the power of the Storm Markings. Let’s take a look at the unlocked version of the Arcana:
The moves associated with this Arcana are very similar to Anwen’s Anger is a Gift. When the bearer roils with anger, they hold 3 Fury (just like holding Resolve for Anger is a Gift) and can spend it to gain extraordinary abilities. It was those extraordinary abilities that I used to envision the Stormcrow from Episode 8.3: Only Glory. The Stormcrow (and the hdour before him, in Vahid’s vision) have a corrupted form of this arcana, so using its abilities to create the monster stats seemed appropriate. Here’s what I prepped for the encounter during the attack using the (typo-laden) Dungeon World Toolkit monster generator:
As you can see, I built his attack keywords, damage, and move list from the abilities granted by Storm’s Fury and Chosen of the Storm-Bringer. Suppose our heroes continue down this path and have the opportunity to acquire this Arcana (whether it’s for Anwen or something else). In that case, they’ll have a very visceral sense of what it means, and likewise, if there is the possibility of this power falling into a rival’s hands, they’ll know exactly how bad that will be.
It’s not a sure thing that Anwen, or any of the other PCs, will end up in possession of the Storm Markings — certainly, there will be pivotal decisions made through reader polls and decisive rolls that will inform that outcome. Hopefully, when the time comes to make big decisions about taking up the blessing — and curse — of the power of the Nine Thunders, it’ll feel like a weighty and well-established moment.
That’s all for this week! If you have a good story about acquiring a magic item in an RPG you’ve played, I’d love to hear about it, or any thoughts you have about the role of magic items in TTRPGs.
Housekeeping
Just a reminder — next week we’ll return to the fiction and jump into the aftermath of the attack on the Sun-Spear and Kirs’s death. I know a few readers were quite surprised by his death, and truth be told, I was also — I knew roughly what they’d be up against, but I thought Padrig might have been present, or Anwen’s prowess would carry them through. Alas, no. How will this affect Anwen? What will the Sun-Spear do to respond to this unforgivable attack? What is the hdour’s next move? We’ll play to find out!
Can you tell I spent a lot of time playing D&D 3.5e?
I'm a big proponent of squashing "wonder creep". Wonder creep is the mundaneizing of the magical that happens when everything feels not only possible, but blase. Dragon Ball Z is the og, but D&d is the big culprit in rpgs. Even without the magic item economy, the expectation that your character/party after 50 hours of play will have 5 or 6 magic items contributes heavily to the issue. The _idea_ of having a magical weapon at all - to me - should be rare and wonderful. When something magical happens in Stonetop, it still feels punchy because the setting isn't one where this stuff is routine (even if it's relatively routine for our heroes). That means a lot.
(Major) magic items with a story, obtained through blood and sacrifice, and scarce are always more compelling that a +1 Sword (which is a glorified master crafted weapon anyways).
I think its a good idea to have the (Major) arcana be scarce within a campaign thus there is less overlap if one plays in multiple ones. So the can shape the tone and theme of the respective campaign more.