Creating RP Through Reps

One of the things that I am super big on is the use of "non-typical treasure" as a plot person.  They can be a wonderful tool and I have already extolled their virtues in another post done a few weeks ago.  Today, I would like to focus on how plot people can help encourage rp through the use of non-typical treasure.

One of the best ways to do this is to create items that require/encourage a number of people to work on together.  For example, a code or prophecy.  Encourages you to go and speak with other individuals, historians, etc. to figure it out.  Once at an event (Ashton) we received two prophecies and 11 of us spent the better part of the afternoon putting our combined knowledge of racial/cultural history and ingame events together trying to figure it out.  It was awesome.  And everyone wanted the prophecy, so there were a bunch of people copying it down.  Lot's of fun!

Another example, something that I put out, was a "Spirit Board" at Lumberton.  It is currently about 2, 000 miles away (the person moved), but she graciously sent me some pictures to use.

First, I put together a story behind where the board came from.  Ancient Gypsy Seers and all that.  It's a good story, but I don't want to give it away :-) 

There weren't any mods, no big epic battles.  Just an NPC and some really excellent rp over several events.  The NPC then brought the board to the PC as a gift.  The PC's were pretty excited.

The board itself? Well, the inner ring has a symbol representing each of the cultures/races of our area.  The next ring has a tree representing the Seelie Faeries and the UnSeelie Faeries.  The final ring represents each of the elements.  And then the Beyond. 

The board also game with a set of stones.  Different shapes and sizes, along with several "bells."  The "Reader" chose which stones to use based on what they were trying to find out and the person they were doing the readings for.

The idea behind it is that the PC could attempt to doing "readings." How much (or how little) information the PC's got was completely at the discretion of plot.  The more they used it for non-plot related Seeings the more useful it became for them to use to actually gain information.

They actually used it very rarely to gain plot information.  I think in the two years they had it they used it three or four times, but they used it fairly regularly to do Readings for other players, just in fun and to encourage roleplay.  It was a good time.  The PC made a bag for it and carried it with them when necessary.  It added to the ingame atmosphere.

And it was super easy to make.

It's just a cheap piece of wood (5 bucks) from Home Depot and they cut it for me for free.  The rest is free-hand acrylics and then a layer of mod podge.  Whole thing took just about 2 days of work.  I already had the stones, but you can buy an assorted mix on Amazon really cheaply.

And it added to the roleplay of this particular group.   It put the emphasis on roleplay, rather on what the item could provide for them.  They never really gained any truly important information.  We used it as a plot tool once at an event, which totally freaked some of them out, and that was about it.  Otherwise, it was used by the PC's as a tool to create roleplay.

I felt pretty could about this and it's something that I am a pretty big fan of - plot instigated tools that don't necessarily do a whole lot, but the PC's like it and it encourages rp.  Hours of it.  It brought in other PC's and help facilitate some cross-group rp.  Good times.  I hadn't thought of that aspect when I put it together, but since then I've used this type of non-typical treasure (that which doesn't do much but will specifically encourage rp) quite a bit.  Maps, puzzles, books, etc. can all accomplish this and it can be done very much on the cheap.

What items/non-typical treasure have you gotten that's encouraged rp ingame without having any big ingame benefit?