The Coup Workbook Partials (CWP) are a series of small e-pamphlets written by Eero Tuovinen. They are BX-aligned subsystems designed from an ongoing and in-play campaign from Eero. You can get one by dropping Eero a message or email with whatever # you want, and then have to trade them with other people. More information on his website here.
It made me feel like I might’ve accidentally joined a cult or a really unorthodox Masonic Lodge.
The Partial I got was #36: Magic Items.
This didn’t help my feeling of becoming an unplanned Satanist.
The writing is esoteric and opaque, and it took me a few tries until I finally understood what it said. As an example:
Each magic item has a blazon, a summary description of its magical identity. While items have magical powers that are concrete, those concrete powers arise from and occur at the interpretation of the blazon, so in that sense the blazon comes first and the magical power comes second. The blazon is metaphysically comparable to a person’s identity; like two people are different because of an itness of their particulars, so are two magic items.
I too felt like I’d opened the fucking Necronomicon when I read that paragraph.
The system presented in CWP #36 has these components:
Rank: How strong an item is, and how obvious it’s blazon will be.
Blazon: The physical and metaphysical representation of the item’s power.
Wondrous Powers: The magical powers generated from the blazon.
Harmonisation: How closely linked a character and an item are.
Quenching: Character discovers their item has power beyond what they knew.
Knowledge: How knowledge of an item affects how characters can power it up.
Item Crafting: A system for crafting magical items by characters .
Everything except item crafting is exceptional.
The goal of CWP #36 is to make a system where magical items feel magical, and it manages it.
This system is something I have seen a lot of people attempt, but they either massively overmechanise it or leave it completely up to the gamemaster to sort out.
CWP #36 dances along the knife edge, and it is a beauty for doing so.
I can imagine a campaign using these rules having a lot of flavour and fun with it, and I am definitely using them in the future.
Harmonisation could have a few extra bits grafted on. I’d like to see something of competing magical harmonisation in there, or characters being completely unable to harmonise because of their class type. This would bring the classic gameplay of it being “a magic item only usable by fighters” into focus.
It would also be nice to see activation words and similar brought into this, although I’m not sure how it could be done. They are probably overly mechanical for this system.
The main area I have a problem with is the Item Crafting section, and that is down to the numbers involved. I think that weak magic items are both going to be overly cheap and mass producible at low levels, and a waste of time at the high.
I talked to Eero about this, but this is a developing campaign document. He has not had players try to create enough magical items for developing this section to be worthwhile.
Is this really a review? I don’t have a fucking clue. To me, a review is a question of money versus value. This is a product that is part of Eero’s own living campaign documents, given for free and available in trade for any other pieces of his documentation. He did ask for an honest review in exchange for the pdf.
And that’s close enough, so I give this a 4/5.
Anyway, I look forward to getting my Master Trader Ring and becoming initiated into the ways of Muster. If you want to trade any of your CWPs for #36, drop me a message on Discord.