A tiny bit of my conversation on Dice Exploder this week with Moe Poplar had me thinking about cool swords.
So you want your game to be about cool swords. Neat! But that could mean a bunch of different things. What makes a sword cool?
It rolls with a big number
It’s got a neat special ability attached
It can talk
You worked your ass off to get it, and the memories of that work are inseparable from it
You chose it from a number of swords, each with potential benefits and drawbacks
It says “ow” every time it stabs someone
All of these are fine answers, but they all suggest really different games. That’s great. Diversity is beautiful. Just, you know, design your game with intention, and play games where your sword is the right kind of cool for you (or where cool swords don’t enter the picture in the first place).
Playbooks specifically are a framework that could highlight any of these, but they’re much more likely to be the right fit for the big number, special ability and “can talk” kinds of cool, and those are probably three different playbooks.
Anyhoo, as usual, my big advice is to make every decision with intention.