Forged in Darkness

The best part about magical artifacts is that they don’t have a list of powers. Narratively they usually do one or two things. Most of the time they just loom with menace. They spark the imagination because the mystery surrounding their capabilities.

Excalibur is awesome because the Lady of the Lake handed it to Arthur. Not because it provides a +5 against evil kids you had with your sister.

Of course, this is because artifacts are a literary device used to push the plot along. The One Ring is a MacGuffin. It only needs as much detail as is required to tell the story of Frodo and Sam. It would be a waste of ink to list out all it can do.

Which brings me to Forged in Darkness, a supplement for Ravenloft published near the end of TSR’s independence in 1996. A book of cursed artifacts of the highest order. Sixty-four pages of MacGuffins to center a macabre game on. A book filled with promises it just doesn’t fulfill.

The Good

The best part of this books is the crazy amount of variety to the artifacts included. Sure, some of them are themed, like the hands of power and the time lord stuff. However, it isn’t just swords and rings and the usual fantasy clap trap.

My personal favorite is all the horrible toys. They come from the evil puppet's domain. I need a second here to appreciate this...

One of the Ravenloft domains that never got enough love was evil Pinocchio. I suspect it was avoided because evil old men making demon toys for kids probably gives people the ick, but still...

Some brilliant horror work.

Which is probably why I love the series of artifacts from that domain. Tin soldiers, tops, and death-in-the-box, despite its dumb name, are all very clever MacGuffins. A lot of messed up stuff could be explored with those artifacts at the center of a game.

The Bad

I will never understand the impetus to explain everything to an audience. It is like watching a movie and getting an exposition dump. Or reading a long winded fantasy novel where the one character suddenly explains in detail why the 1,000 year history is important.

And yet, each of these entries has deep details on how the thing was made and legends. Some of the legends aren’t even really all that legendary or more than a few sentences. It is a waste of ink.

They should have just written up robust legends for each and called it a day.

The Crime

In the beginning of the book, under the how to use it section there is this nice call out for adventure hooks. One would assume after reading that in the introduction, each artifact would have an entry with one or three.

One would be very wrong.

Now, I am not expecting a Rod of the Seven Parts adventure, but come the fuck on. Nothing? Not one word in any of these entries on how to use the damn things as the center of an adventure?

They spent so much time working on how many charges a thing should have and no time on how the thing might be relevant. It is straight up criminal. Even by late stage TSR standards.

In a way though, it is perfect, as the book ends with two pages on creating your own artifact. They read like someone’s notes used to fill the space because they needed to get the number of signatures right to go to press. They are barely useful, but perfectly reflect the nature of the supplement.

So much wasted potential fill these pages. It reads like a first draft of an idea. Who knows, maybe it was and they rushed it out the door. TSR was a weird place in the mid 90s. Lots of strange publishing and editorial decisions were made at the expense of the writers.