Introduction
The book's 8-page introduction on pages 3–10 provides an overview of the contents and the significance of artifacts within the game. One page is spent in an attempt to clear up some misconceptions regarding artifacts, including "Artifacts are too powerful for a campaign," "All artifacts have horrible curses that keep them from being useful," "Artifacts are just collections of random powers," "Artifacts are all created by gods that shouldn't be involved in the campaign," "Artifacts are found only in the Greyhawk campaign," "If the characters stumble across an artifact, it could ruin the campaign," "A character with an artifact will ruin the adventure," and "Artifacts are nothing but a headache." The next four pages of the introduction provide an explanation of the book's contents by chapter, defines what makes an artifact different from other magic items (an artifact is unique, has a special history, and provides an impetus for a story to be centered around it) and includes a set of guidelines on how a Dungeon Master can create a new artifact for the campaign.
The remaining three pages of the introduction serve to explain how the specific artifacts described within the book operate. It explains the common elements of how all artifacts function within a game, and details two common types of special curses an artifact might cause: artifact possession, where an artifact's will can possess a character using the item, and artifact transformation, where the artifact literally transforms a character physically and mentally over time into something else entirely. The format for the artifact descriptions found in the next section is also explained. Each artifact is given a detailed in-game history consisting of one or more paragraphs, and each one provides a section of advice on how the Dungeon Master may use the item within a campaign. Each artifact has its most significant powers detailed, each of which falls into one of five categories: constant (always in effect), invoked (activated intentionally by the character), random (determined by the Dungeon Master or by random roll), resonating (only functioning when two or more pieces of a matched set are joined), and curse (such as artifact possession, artifact transformation, or something else). Lastly, the introduction describes how each artifact has a suggested means of destruction, none of which should be easy for a character to accomplish.
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