Remembering back to my days of playing and DMing AD&D as a young lad, intelligent magic weapons tended to float more towards detect things like enemies (e.g. Sting) and less full blown intelligent weapons (e.g. Mournblade). One DM in our extended group, loved to toy with them and you learned the hard way not to touch any intelligent magic items in his campaign unless you were not very attached to your character. So, pretty much a thing that depended on your DM.
While White Plume Mountain is most well for it's named (and kind of over powered) magic items, I think Ed Greenwood and his column in Dragon magazine is where named magical items blossomed. He was terrific about writing about unique magical items that had these interesting back stories and abilities that were not stupidly overpowered.
While White Plume Mountain is most well for it's named (and kind of over powered) magic items, I think Ed Greenwood and his column in Dragon magazine is where named magical items blossomed. He was terrific about writing about unique magical items that had these interesting back stories and abilities that were not stupidly overpowered.