I love Artefacts/Artifacts, so when I was 11 I made sure players got access to them as quickly as possible in my naïve D&D games. Players actually complained about being given lots of magical items, explaining how I was undermining the value of everything.
The psychological impact that rarity has on us is a curious thing, like many things it is not straightforward. Whilst I own a lot of RPGs, I don’t have the money required to be a collector of rare books, but due to many RPGs being purchasable via PDFs, some older works are easier to acquire. Of course, like many others, I still like to own the physical RPG books as well. One day I might get justify the cost of GURPS Prisoner.
Whilst pondering Rare & RPG, I was reminded of the forgery skill at Lorien Trust LARP. If memory serves it was only available via the Scouts or Bards Guild. The skill was rarely used, in part because it required a lot effort to use in game, including OOC referee involvement, but also because if a forgery was detected, then the people would assume one of the Guild members with the skill must have done it. Pesky LARP logistics, maybe this issue has been resolved since I last played that game. This reminded me of an old TED speech about rarity, forgeries, value. Worth a quick watch if only for the explanation of Han van Meegeren duping Goering:
Street Fighter RPG
The impact rarity has on the power of characters is best exemplified by the “Inverse Ninja Law” taken from Dr McNinja:
“One ninja is an elite and powerful adversary. Multiple ninjas make a group of faceless and incompetent pawns.”
I love/hate parallel world ideas; I mentioned I am running a multiverse game, WoD: Sliders, for Day 21. Jet Li’s film The One explores this idea in a daft but fun way 😉
Having reread GURPS Infinite Worlds recently, I contemplated making a MultiVerse Authority version. Who are the Multi-World Warriors? 😉
After playing about with character stats for Jet Li’s two characters in The One: Gabriel Yulaw and Gabe Law, I felt I needed to rewatch the film to do a good enough job. Partly to see what maneuvers they specialise in, if any. But since characters rapidly become super powered, making normal character sheets seemed a bit daft. I might come back to the idea, plus I can use the Aberrant rules variant that is explored in Warrior’s Fist Issue 04 (English), Punho do Guerreiro 04 (Brazilian).
Other Peoples’ Answers
Anthony Boyd @Runeslinger
Charles Etheridge-Nunn @charlie_en
Craig Oxbrow @CraigOxbrow
Bob Freeman @OccultDetective
Kehaar @DissectingWrlds
Melestrua @Melestrua
Geek-Life Balance @cybogoblin
This is a non-exhaustive list; I still have many posts to read today, so I might be adding more links. I’d recommend searching the hashtag and judge those great answers for yourself: #RPGaDay2020, some people use #RPGaDay.
Batjutsu 