This reminds me of a homebrew game called Weapons & Weilders that we jokingly designed as a response to early D&D. It seemed that characters in those days were often defined simply by the magic items they possessed. We thought, "Why not eliminate the middle man and just have the PCs be the magic items?" This could lead to some interesting gameplay, such as throwing fights against more powerful opponents so that, when our weilders were killed, we would be picked up and have new, more powerful weilders.
