Magic Items

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
And mundane treasures
+in the abbey
+spoors sad shroom
Only usable if you're evil
-cess pit bog mother
+hagswallow
+damn magazine
-wizard lord keraptis
+ruthless wizard
+nethwatch keep
+grave heartless
+white dragon run 2 – rward is rubbing shoulders with lord
+maze screaming silence

Better Treasure

“Each player receives a treasure parcel worth 250gp.”
“Place the treasure you wish in the adventure.”
“Treasure worth 2,500gp is present.”
“6 gems forth 50gp each.”
“Jewelry worth 1,000gp.”
“a +1 sword.”
“a broach of shielding.”
“a potion of flying.”


The above, in similar or one form, Is the usual part and parcel of the published adventure. Those treasures suck. No one is excited about finding one of those. “Ohhhhh! A +1 sword! I’m a bad ass now!” That’s not D&D. That’s some generic nonsense masquerading as D&D. Let’s not forget: the job of the designer is to communicate imagination and wonder to the DM. That’s what we’re paying for, the designers imagination. Those treasures don’t do it. There’s nothing in those. Let’s compare those items to an excellent example, from the 1E DMG:

“Seldom is the name of Vecna spoken except in hushed voice, and never within hearing of strangers, for legends say that the phantom of the once supreme lick still roamed the Material Plane. It is certain that when Vecna finally met his doom, one eye and one hand survived. The Eye of Vecna is said to glow in the same manner as that of a feral creature. It appears to be an agate until it is placed in an empty eye socket of a living creature. Once pressed in, it instantly and irrevocably grafts itself in to the head, and it cannot be removed or harmed without slaying the character. The alignment of the character immediately becomes neutral evil and may never change. The Eye bestows both infra vision and ultra vision to its host, and give the following additional powers/effects. The minor or major powers may be used without fear of harm, but the use of the primary power causes a malevolent effect upon the host character.”

Now THAT’S a magic item! If I found an agate I’d immediately pluck out my own eye and shove it in the socket. “DM: You find an agate. ME: I rip out my eye and shove the agate in the socket! Do I have infravision?!?! DM: No you moron, you do not. ME: Crap! Are there any other agates around in the hoard?” That’s the kind of behavior you are looking for. You want your PLAYERS excited about what they find.

You don’t have to go all super-backstory on things either. It’s pretty easy to reskin something. A bag of holding? Lame. How about … A Maggot! It's actually a Maggot of Opening. A couple of inches long, squirmy, pale .. ie: looks like a maggot. Except it can open it's mouth REALLY wide, let's say the size of a fist. It has an extra dimensional stomach so it otherwise acts like a bag of holding and it never digests anything. Ya gotta reach in to pull stuff out. Who knows what else it's swallowed? It tries to digest, so reaching in is a bit slimy & gross. A horn of blasting? The horn is either a tuba or a stork like bird that you squeeze like bagpipes. A potion of flying? How about the potion is full of flies? And the user grows fly wings? Or a scroll of flying that is actually magical window cling film that is used like a tattoo? If you use it on a pig you have a pig balloon … and then what happens when you eat the pig? All sort of weird and wonderful things happen when effort is added to a magic item. None of that shit happens with “sword, +1”.

A +1 sword? Nope. How about AIDRU - SLAYER OF MEN. A longsword engraved the full length with arcane runes. The hilt is bare and will need to be recovered. Created by the death-priests of Ghoekra and wielded during their bloody crusade to rid the earth of all life. Moderately well know; feared and coveted. Drips blood, not because of the creation but through the sympathetic magic caused by all of the bodies it has been soaked in while killing them. Disturbing dreams while possessing; slaughter, etc. +1 hit, causes immediate morale check for any creature/group that recognizes it. (Who then inevitably yell "Aidru – Slayer of Men!!!") Glows with a pale red light and gives the wielder a +1 CHR bump when wielded BECAUE OF FEAR! Aidru is a kick ass magic item. If I was playing I would use Aidru long after I found a +2 sword, or even a +3 sword. Fuck those things; they don’t cause monsters to yell “AIDRU! Slayer of men?!?!!” A broach of shielding? How about a snake circlet that comes alive and eats magic missiles? See, it’s not hard at all! So why the fuck are you putting a +1 sword in your adventure? I’m paying for your imagination … so IMAGINE!
You can see an excellent example of this in Fight On! Magazine, issue #3, in the Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men, by Dave Bowman. In one of the rooms you meet a crazy crab-man who has picked up something he shouldn’t have ...
"Grog the Gladius is a finely crafted short bronze stabbing sword. Grog glows a dim violet when held by a living being. Grog is a Lawful Sword +1, +3 vs. Dragons. Intellect 7, Egoism 12, with the power to See Invisible. Grog will communicate the presence of such things via Empathy.” It’s going to be hard to argue that this represents a wall of text, and yet the magic item is flavorful and is found in an environment (wielded by the crab-man, accidentally) that heightens its interest. Similarly, I just reviewed They Came from the Stars from the … and the sky full of dust blog. The aliens have death ray guns and force field belts. These are nothing more than the same effects of a wand of magic missiles and a broach of shielding. Flavor. Reskin. Repeat. Ambiguity is ok, and even in some sense desired. Boring is not ok.

Further, don’t focus on the mechanics. Focus instead on the effects. Too often items gets bogged down in game mechanics. The designer attempts to divine all the ways the item can be misused by the players, or attempts to make the item “make sense.” You don’t need to do that. Over explaining kills mystery and the DM is present to arbitrate rules. Again, the role of the designer is to inspire, not explain. Kas and Vecna are much more interesting when left as throw-ft references in a magic item description. Your magic item is much more interesting when it turns something to concord jam once a day. No volume reference. No details like “save for apricot”, no boring shit to weigh the world down. If you are taking a paragraph to describe the game mechanics behind the device then you have failed. Magic, Mystery, Wonder, Whimsy, and THE FANTASTIC are the enemies of Aristotle. If you tell me the bumble helmet lets me shoot poison bumblebees from its mouth once a day then I’m cool.

Mundane treasure is similar. Your PLAYERS should want to keep it for their characters, not melt it down in to slag. The treasure in room 46, level 1 of Dwimmermount is boring. A jeweled pin. A gold necklace. A comb. Lame. The jeweled pin (800gp) will be adjusted to a jeweled CLOAK pin worth 800gp that is in the shape of scantily clad female elf beheading an orc. The splattering blood is shown in small rubies. [Someone is gonna keep that one and wear it, for sure!] The gold necklace is a locket and shows the face of a loved one back and a family name that still exists in Marburg today. They would love to have it back (sentimental value) but they are also poor and selling it would make a world of difference in their lifestyle. The comb is part of a 3-piece set. Finding the other two (mentioned previously) brings the value of the set to 200gp. Taking any of the coin treasure will result in wandering monsters being checked for every turn, and they will always be Lab Rats, as long as the coins are carried in the dungeon. That is all SO much more interesting. The PLAYERS are now interested in the treasure. Those items have some backstory, but you don’t even need that. A jar of saffron, or ANYTHING with an adjective attached is going to be much better than “gold necklace."
 
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bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
I fucking hate this. As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.

But, save it for the rewrite Colorado, and work on something not written yet.
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
The sword example: "Created by the death-priests of Ghoekra and wielded during their bloody crusade to rid the earth of all life." And it goes on and on---its all good stuff, but being devil's advocate--how does this help the DM run the adventure now? How would the players find out about the death-priests of Ghoekra?

What I'm getting at is you have a pretty strong stance of having adventures that are easily scanned DURING play, and yet now you are saying to have descriptive treasure which could potentially clog up the adventure. I agree with you that scannability and interesting treasures are important...but tell the reader HOW to make both those concepts work during the design process would be beneficial. Is it putting it in an appendix? Is it white space and bolding? Side bars? Grey boxes? If you discuss it in a different chapter, then refer the reader to that section.

Edit:
Also, in my opinion, I think there is this hidden designer "responsibility" to make things make sense or go with the rules. A 'responsibility' not to break one's campaign or setting. A fear that people 'won't get it?' or understand. I know I started out that way and still revert back to it...you need to explain that its ok to "break the rules" or leave things up to the imagination...to 'trust the DM'. That the 'imagination fuel' is more important than following every rule--because if the DM doesn't like it, they can revert back to the "rules"...
Everyone has a book of rules....you increase a product's value by NOT reverting to the book's rules but something new and if the DM doesn't like it, they can always fall back to the book. I can't type clearly today, hopefully makes sense.
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Malrex makes a good point.

It's hard to walk that line of "Trust the DM" and still provide something of value (original)---but failing to trust leads to the worst kind of excesses, whereas trusting "too much" only results in the lesser evil of a lean product.
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
For consideration, not refutation of what has been written above, which I agree with: EOTB mentioned this first somewhere. I think its acceptable to have some or even most treasure be relatively mundane. A roll of silk, a wolf pelt, a golden ring in the shape of a human fist, so as to make the truly significant treasure stand out. The same, probably, holds true for magic items and monsters. While some cosmetic details can serve the dual purpose of bringing a magic item to life and fleshing out the setting for potential future hooks, the old addage of "if everything is special, then nothing is" probably applies. The Lotfp approach of making every magic item unique only works if the frequency of magic items is very low, so that each item essentially becomes an artifact. Consider what would happen if every mundane piece of equipment would need to be evocative also, and the problem becomes obvious. In B/X I solve this by giving each magic item what is essentially a little backstory, but it will be proportional to the frequency of its occurence and its power.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
For consideration, not refutation of what has been written above, which I agree with: EOTB mentioned this first somewhere. I think its acceptable to have some or even most treasure be relatively mundane.
I agree. Although I think you can have a reasonably high percentage of treasure that is interactive (in terms of figuring out what it does), and you can indulge your creativity there. If every "potion" in the mind flayer's lair is a leech-like grub that you need to shove up your nose to make it work, that is interactive. But it doesn't really bog down the game much because it only needs to be described once in an appendix (referred to as "leech potion" or something like that elsewhere), and once the players understand the mechanic they will just treat them like potions going forward.

Also, to expend on what @Malrex said, you can justify the ink you spend on backstory if the backstory is also a hook of some sort. In 1e a high proportion of magic times from the tables were actually "Maps and Magic", and IIRC about 10% of those were treasure maps - a rudimentary hook. I figure that is a decent ratio of "ordinary" treasure to crazy interesting treasure that doubles as a hook.

Although now that I think of it, most non-potion treasure in 1e was interactive, in that figuring out what it did was a puzzle, and often required using it or at putting it on (and thereby triggering a curse if there was one), or spending resources on spells or sages. Even then you had to figure out command words or other ways of activating it.

EDIT: I would like to point out to @squeen that the last two paragraphs are elements from the 1e DMG (by Gary Gygax, fyi) that I expressly like and think are too often glossed over. I would add to that the fact that the DMG suggests both the acquisition of specific spells and the creation of magic items are best accomplished by questing for them - another use of game elements as hooks.
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
EDIT: I would like to point out to @squeen that the last two paragraphs are elements from the 1e DMG (by Gary Gygax, fyi) that I expressly like and think are too often glossed over. I would add to that the fact that the DMG suggests both the acquisition of specific spells and the creation of magic items are best accomplished by questing for them - another use of game elements as hooks.
Good man! I knew there was hope for you!
Consider your sheet balanced for me---and carry on as you see fit. :p
 

Beek Gwenders

*eyeroll*
I agree with everyone’s comments on the need for a balance between mundane book items and special unique items. When playing a long campaign, it is a pain for the DM to keep track of how a plethora of special and unique items work, and this contributes significantly to bookkeeping and slowing down play.

Malrex made a good point, that in Bryce’s description of the sword there is a ton of information that has nothing to do with player interaction; it’s just background fluff. You may be able to use this to create hooks and build out your world, but when scanning an adventure, if not ordered well, this stuff impedes the DM.

Balance is important. I categorically reject the OSR’s obsession with every magic item being unique, bring back the humble +1 dagger.
 
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