Scaling Up Player Tools

I often see a variation of this piece of advice in OSR circles:

Give players fun tools without specific applications and encourage them to use those tools in creative ways.

For example, many old-school spells exemplify this adage. They don't simply deal xd6 damage. Instead, they provide you with a tool in your toolbox - the power to warp wood or heat metal - and the spell descriptions lack the hyper-specific limitations included in the name of balance that you see in modern editions.

The principle behind the advice is that giving your players powerful tools without obvious uses enhances your game because it fosters creativity and lets players feel like they outsmarted the game. Use this advice, it's good. Don't try to balance your tools. Let your players "break" the game.

And, importantly, don't forget to employ this adage when your campaign transitions into the wilderness and domain tiers. Your tools don't have to necessarily be more powerful. You can scale them up in other ways: size, distance, duration, etc.

Some examples from my ongoing Age of Discovery campaign include:

• A talking mountain who will let you hide inside its cavernous mouth to avoid magical or mundane detection
• A lighthouse that, when lit, either enhances or repels magic
• A well the purifies anything that passes through its opening
• An entrance to a parallel realm with shortcuts to various places across the continent

A fantastic discovery waiting to break the world

All of these are tools in a party's toolbox. Need to lay low after making off with some hot treasure? Go hide in the talking mountain's mouth for a while. Need to sneak out a besieged army? Brave the freaky parallel realm's shortcut.

Open your mind to radical possibilities that the players suggest. Sure, the magic well purifies water. Is that water considered holy water if the blessing is maintained or enhanced? What happens if an undead creature crosses the threshold?

Too often I see referees saddle tools of all shapes and sizes with strange caveats to avoid making them "game-breaking" (whatever than means); lame restrictions like "you can only send fewer than 10 people into the parallel realm" or "you can only pass inanimate objects through the threshold of the magic well."

Restrain yourself from doing this with magic items and show the same restraint when your party starts discovering magic locations as well. Just like you let them unbalance an encounter with their magic dungeon loot, also let them change the world with their fantastic discoveries in the wilderness.