Equipment Design

Guildelines

Every single item should:

• Contribute to the game's lore (via name, flavor, effect, icon, or combination of those)
• Have a distinct name that makes it memorable
• Be awesome. Like something the hero would feel lucky to own.

Example bad old item:

"Shortsword of Minor Undead Slaying"
+10% damage vs. Undead

Why is this bad? The name's generic, it makes the world feel generic. The bonus seems low, hard to tell if it's even worth it.

And here's how to fix it:

"Last Rites"
Deals double damage to Undead
Flavor: When the Warpriests of Sceleris began their
  mercy killings, they used these morning stars
  on the most faithful parishioners first.

Give it a rad name that fits with the bonus. Make up some flavor text that grounds the game into the story. Make the numbers huge and probably imbalanced. Now this is an item I want to keep around!

Some notes:

Flavor text should be edited for brevity. There's an art to reducing a sentence down to the interesting minimum.

When making flavor text, be cautious of adding new proper nouns. Try reusing existing ones. Like "Sceleris" above, if more items refer to that city then it creates a rough history. That implies the game world is rich and deep. But too many nonsense proper nouns becomes overwhelming gibberish and hard to translate.

Item design is more than matching every bonus with every slot (which is what I did in previous flare-game alpha). We want to distribute bonuses and item slots in a more interesting way than that. Example of how a good design affects the game. Magic boosting items could appear more on light armor than heavy armor, and might mostly appear in the Head slot. A warrior character might give up a plate helmet to wear a rare runed hood if he needed the extra magic boost or to try being a battle-mage. Now this warrior has plate armor with a cloth hood, which is an awesome look. Alternatively, imagine strong healing magic that comes on a cloth skirt or a white tunic. A warrior splashing healing magic could actually look like a heavy paladin or cleric with this piece and full plate.

For this game's Act I, I'm going to prefer items that have an understated look/description. This isn't a well-supplied adventure location. It's full of hand-made, forgotten, ancient, broken items. I like a tone where good items are rare and coveted, and magic is mild and superstitious. Also keep in mind that this is one hero's journey and not a world-saving story, so items that are flavored too grand will be toned down.

One way to think about basic equipment coverage is to make a list of unique character build someone would want to play. Start them off with beginner gear. Now, for each slot, come up with 2+ awesome upgrades that would be a tough choice between. Upgrade every slot 2-5 times to cover this entire act. Repeat for every character build.

You may be great at item numbers and bad at names/flavors, or vice versa. That's ok! Please help where you can.

Having said all that: post your item ideas below!

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Eternal Deck

There are many Tarot cards scattered throughout the world available as random drops. Each of them behaves as a one-time use scroll. Each individual card has a specific spell associated with it. Example:

"IX - The Hermit"
Consumable
Power: Shield

When the user has collected (at least) one of each card, they can give the set to an NPC in exchange for:

"Eternal Deck"
When activated, this deck draws a random card, adding it to your inventory. The deck is never exhausted.
Cooldown: ???
Flavor: Though the cards in this deck are smudged, frayed and torn, it was meticulously assembled by its wielder.