Just wanted to get people's thoughts on this - something I have been tinkering about for awhile.
Items can lend qualities and Powers to owners. Based upon my reading of the rules I think an argument could be made that "Bad Stuff" is a quality and thus be transferable to an owner.
Imagine if you will - a PC "finds" a sword in shadow (either existing on its own or set up as a trap...) that does Deadly Damage and can Shadow Seek. The catch is that it Transfers a number of points of Bad Stuff to the wielder (who may or may not know that this has been done) as a curse of sorts.
Give the item Extraordinary Psychic Sense (4pts) so that it will always try to "Seek" out its owner [an extrapolation of the statement: "Items with Extraordinary Psychic Sense will, if lost, usually try to contact their owner."]
So here is what you have (for example) a sword that does great damage in the hands of a player character -that also backstabs in the form of unwanted Bad Stuff (more if he/she has some or just Bad Stuff in general) that if the PC tries to get rid of - whoever finds the sword will be compelled to find the PC and transverse through Shadow to "give it back" to the PC.
Just the amount of Bad Stuff is the question.
Thoughts?
My thoughts are - in a way, that already happens. I cannot remember if this is in the rules proper or not, so someone will have to correct me.
I make it clear to my Amber players that whatever they find out in shadow and intend to use as part of their character - they just paid for, which usually means it's coming out of their Stuff. Otherwise I'd have PCs running from shadow to shadow looting. So, that sword would come out of bad stuff anyway.
I don't make people pay for everything, questy-items and the like, but it let's players think seriously of if they want the burden of the power of whatever item they just found, which I feel emulates the source material better than inter-dimensional hoarders.
//Panjumanju
I concur with Panjumanju, what you describe is what already should be happening. Otherwise your players are going to spend lots of time running around gathering up weapons and armor on every Shadow they will be spending any time on. That will distract horribly from the main thrust of the game. Granted the PCs could still do that and if that is part of their style, so be it. But it will be embarrassing to explain why they dithered for three weeks arming themselves while an imprisoned princess languishes in a cell. There's Bad Stuff for ya.
Since I use Bad stuff different I could see that working for me. I play it like Panju above. I might be a little flexible by a few points not and let the player have a little debt to pay off but grab too much too fast and Bad stuff starts happening literally.
Quote from: tcabril;794880Just the amount of Bad Stuff is the question.
If you're looking for an *amount*, you shouldn't look any farther than the cost it would take to create the artifact according to the rules.
Anything else I think would be making a lot more work for yourself, needlessly.
//Panjumanju