Game Master Guidance: Adding to Your Armory

There’s a temptation to start adding your own weapons to a roleplaying game system, regardless of which side of the table you’re sitting on. In a well-crafted system, this might throw off its carefully implemented balance. In a poorly-made system, such additions might be necessary just to enjoy it. Alternatively, someone might be trying to exploit the system through their creation, at the expense of everyone else. That sort of behavior needs to be stamped out early on, as soon enough only that player will be enjoying the game. On the game master end of the spectrum, adding weaponry might be more understandable. There’s only so much an RPG book can contain, so it could very easily be lacking the weapons of war you envisioned your adversaries wielding. Alternatively, you might decide to distinguish an encounter or a whole session with a new element, something that even seasoned players won’t expect. Regardless of how complex your preferred system’s gear might be, I’d advise keeping your additions limited.

Before going on, it’s important to establish the role equipment plays in most popular RPGs. As the majority of Roleplaying Games are combat driven, weapons, armor, and similar items are unsurprisingly a huge component of the medium. For many people, how good the gear the system provides will make or break it for them. Science fiction and fantasy games have a particular obligation to provide exciting toys for the GM and players to mess around with.
That’s especially true for adaptations, as if the rules fail to capture the iconic weapons and gadgets of a setting, then there’s no hope of immersion. However, it’s important to remember that a good armory is not necessarily a big armory. Plenty of systems will get so caught up in the varieties of gear that they overload the player and maybe even the GM. Even worse, there might not even be a real distinction between individual items. Personally, I set the qualification for “good” gear as being if it fits the rules and tone of the game.

This gets a little more complicated with systems that encourage customizing weapons and provide the tools to do so. But even that’s notably different from your own additions. The core issue here is straying from what’s established in the actual system. A custom weapon built from what the writers have provided is still different from your own creation. For a start, competent authors will have ensured all of their mechanics are somewhat balanced. The testing that more daring creations would require is often beyond a GM's ability or simply not worth the effort. It might initially be fun to throw the players a device of your own making but less so if it ends up breaking the game. Trying to make the addition work after the fact will likely make it more of a burden than a welcome arrival. If you are going to add weapons, at least try to keep them reasonable.

The more you resist additions to a system’s armory, the more special your few exceptions will feel. If you’ve filled your games with all sorts of custom gear, your “relics” and “prototypes” will just feel like more powerful versions of what the players have already encountered. If you’ve restrained yourself, then a custom weapon will feel genuinely unique, as they only have a few things to compare it to. To maximize this effect, make particularly powerful rewards a risk to use. Then the item is more than just a power up but an active part of a story. A great example in fiction is Elric of Melniboné’s sentient magic sword, Stormbringer, which drives the already dangerous figure down an even darker path. As said in Michael Moorcock’s first story featuring the anti-hero, The Dreaming City, “the sword would guide him into a doom-racked future. He would savour power—but never peace.” A player character’s willingness to use such objects won’t just provide a new conflict but actively flesh them out, offering a context for their personality and motivations. Through this approach, the weapon becomes an active part of the story, rather than just a purely mechanical element. You can add to your game’s armory but always make sure to think it through.