D&D 5E (2014) Storied Weapons?

[jgsugden]

Nothing written, but I have always had the concept in my games. In my games, the Gods (and other powerful beings) infuse items with magic when a legendary event revolves around them. They serve as rewards for the participants or reminders so that the event will not be forgotten.

 

[Cyrinishad]

So, back to my question: are there rules for this sort of magic item creation? Should I just give out appropriate magic items when these sorts of stories happen? Or should I create my own magic item creation rules, focused on story? I feel like the latter option makes the most sense. Anyway, thoughts?

I have always liked a story based approach to Magic Items. I have found that it makes the Players make interesting story-driven choices for their characters, and rewarding the players by allowing the story they are creating to also create an interesting or unique magical item for their character is a win-win scenario. I have also experimented with having story-driven magical items that "level-up" alongside the PCs, sometimes the magical items are intelligent NPCs, and sometimes the magic items are an extension of character's destiny... This has caused my Players to very much move away from a "Kill & Loot" or "XP/GP" mentality, and adopt a much more "RP & Story" mentality... This, in turn has caused some of my Players to seriously consider trying their hand at DMing (which is awesome, since I'm the one behind the screen 95% of the time and I really enjoy being a Player)...

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I would go with the flow of the story for the creation of storied items. That has several advantages:
1) You don't have to think about inventing rules that saves a lot of time
2) No players that start to demand that their items become magical because they completed some action mentioned in the rules.
3) When you actually want to create such an item you don't feel bound by your own rules

Other replies already mentioned that their players had weapons they would have liked to use but found better magical ones and so had to replace them. I think it is awesome if you have a weapon especially if it is a heirloom or something similar and it can be used till the end because its power grows.
In a 3.5 game my character had somehow aquired the magical sword of his grand father, he took the Item Familiar (UA) feat which allows you to "burn" magical items to increase the magical power of the Item Familiar. That was awesome.