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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9239745" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The colorful description was my attempt to display what it looks like to make an item connect to a specific PC's fictional position. In this case, Karthedaas was meant to be understood as an ambitious dragonborn who might see this sword as a powerful symbol for others to rally to his cause. Perhaps he is of royal blood; perhaps he is simply ambitious, strong, and possessed of valuable allies. Either way, even if the sword itself were literally just a well-made sword that can do some fire damage, I have no doubt it would be meaningful.Incidentally, the leather duster that acts like armor? That's actually an example from my own game. Or another, the Risha al-Ghurab, "Quills of the Raven." It doesn't really do much more damage, though it does have piercing (DW uses armor as DR, so piercing is bonus damage against things with armor). Instead, it has three key properties, all of which the player who got the item finds very useful:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It has three feather-bladed knives bonded to the hilt, which can be thrown with the Volley move. If an enemy has been struck by one of these blades, they take more damage until the blade is removed. Any missing blades reappear on the sword after a few minutes, if they aren't collected directly.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">So long as it remains at your side and you are not standing in direct sunlight, unless someone is very specifically looking for a rapier, the weapon will go unnoticed by anyone the wielder does not consider an ally. If drawn, this effect is suppressed.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Because it was wrought with air-genie magic, which interacts with the character's Rawuna (Bard) skills, wielding it permits Defy Danger with Charisma if the incoming danger could be deflected with a magical flourish (meaning, something like a boulder trap a la Raiders of the Lost Ark would not qualify, but an enemy's arrow in flight would, because how badass is that!)</li> </ol>All three of these effects have been quite useful to the player, who eagerly remembers their existence even after long stretches of not needing them (particularly the second). Of course, I also used colorful description, and the sword is strongly associated with (and originally taken from) the Zil al-Ghurab, the Raven-Shadows, an assassin-cult which this player has, over time, gone from "we gotta take these guys down" to "we gotta understand what messed these guys up so much" to "I can, and will, save them from the corruption afflicting them!" to being the extremely reluctant prophesied savior who will destroy them and make them stronger than ever. (Yes, I stole this straight-up from the Star Wars "Sith'ari" prophecies, and I legit don't care <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />)I guess I just don't understand how the adventures can be constitutive of the system. A really good writer can do almost anything with almost any system. Heck, Zeitgeist was made for 4e, but ported to PF1e and (AIUI) now 5e--yet it's still fundamentally the same adventure. How can that square with the idea that the adventures themselves are constitutive of the system? If official conversions to many different systems are not only possible but effective, what does that say? It tells me that a quality adventure will, in general, be quality at least somewhat independently of what system it was written for.I legit have no idea what you're talking about. I presume you wanted to offer those things as a counter-example, but I literally used them in the very post you quoted as an example where a system openly recognized to be heavily flawed had excellent, widely-praised adventures written for it. How can that then be a rebuttal to the claim that adventure quality proves system quality?Sometimes, a very well-crafted system will have excellent adventures written for it. For all its faults, AD&D1e was in fact pretty well-crafted, it's just absolutely terrible at explaining WHY it does what it does--and it, obviously, has numerous beloved adventures written for it. Sometimes, a terribly broken, flawed, exploitable mess of a system, like PF1e, has excellent APs written for it. Likewise, a terrible system can have terrible adventures, and a great system can have terrible adventures. There is no pattern here; system quality neither predicts, nor is predicted by, adventure quality. The two are mostly separate concerns.</blockquote>

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