Magical Items not Mundane Items

Make Items Special¶

Each mag­ic item gets a 3x5 note card which is giv­en to the lucky new own­er (keep a sep­a­rate card or note­book for se­crets about the item the play­er is not yet privy to) Hope­ful­ly this is a bit of a psy­cho­log­i­cal trick. It’s some­thing tan­gi­ble that the play­er re­ceives, can hold, point to, wave in the air, throw across the room when it fail­s, and most im­por­tant­ly that can be tak­en away. It al­so gives plen­ty of space for de­scrip­tion­s, pic­tures, known his­to­ry and so forth. Oc­ca­sion­al ad­di­tions to or out­right re­place­ment of the card can be made as the play­er learns more of the abil­i­ties or his­to­ry of this item. The back of the card is re­served for play­er notes (where she keeps it, thoughts on how it work­s, great ac­tions she has ac­com­plished with it.) Even very com­mon items such as cross­bow bolts of light­ing (many of which are is­sued to Al­no­ri­an cal­vary troop­s) get a card out­lin­ing the ‘class of item’ if not each and ev­ery in­di­vid­u­al in­stance. Po­tions might be treat­ed the same way.

Nev­er tell the play­er what the mag­ic item does. Even if you want them to know don’t just blurt out “Y­ou hit the gong and walls come tum­bling down.” Re­lay that in­for­ma­tion in a mu­ral on the wall of the tem­ple in which the gong was found. Or in a song or sto­ry the play­ers heard sev­er­al ses­sions ago. Or leave them clue­less and in the dark. One ex­am­ple I’m anx­ious to use is pre­sent­ing the play­ers with a trea­sure of 5-10 bot­tles of po­tion­s, elixirs and rare al­chem­i­cal com­po­nents. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the care­ful­ly scribed la­bels have fall­en off in­to a pile at the base of the po­tion rack. So, the play­ers know what they got, but not which one is which. In de­scrib­ing and cre­at­ing mag­ic items it’s best to be vague, so that you can ad­d/change things lat­er. But, if you do change some­thing, don’t get caugh­t. Make the play­ers think that it was that way all along and they just had­n’t fig­ured it out yet. Be­ing too se­cre­tive can back­fire. In one cam­paign I ran druids were be­stowed mag­i­cal torcs up­on leav­ing the grove for the greater world. This torc would al­low the char­ac­ter to change in­to var­i­ous an­i­mal forms based on lev­el. Even though he spon­ta­neous­ly trans­formed in­to an an­i­mal sev­er­al times, it was nev­er linked to his tor­c. The druid missed out on an ad­van­tage and nev­er even re­al­ized he had a pow­er­ful mag­ic item around his neck. The play­er lat­er told me he had com­plete­ly for­got­ten about the torc and thought the trans­for­ma­tions were gifts from na­ture.

Make Items Unique¶

When de­scrib­ing an item the play­ers have found de­scribe that par­tic­u­lar item, “This staff is a 5’ long smooth met­al rod capped on one end by a large translu­cent bluish-white crys­tal.” Not, “S­taves of light­ing are from 5-6 feet long and of­ten have crys­tals in­cor­po­rat­ed in their con­struc­tion.” De­scribe in specific­s, not gen­er­al terms. Look for key de­tails to call at­ten­tion to. Not “a crys­tal” but “a large translu­cent bluish-white crys­tal.” If the char­ac­ter asks a ques­tion, latch on­to it and make the item per­son­al. If she asks “What’s in the crys­tal?” Nev­er say, “O­h, noth­ing just a translu­cent bluish-white crys­tal.” Do this “The crys­tal, a many faceted ovid, cap­tures your gaze. The fee­ble torch­light seems to be re­flect­ed and am­pli­fied with­in its depth­s. It’s dim orangish hue trans­formed in­to pure white. The re­flec­tions re­mind you of moon­light sparkling off the frost white snows of your long missed home­land. Star­tled from these pleas­ing vi­sions by Jo­han’s firm hand on your shoul­der. He claims that you’ve been en­tranced for sev­er­al min­utes” Maybe that’s too schlock rid­den for you and I could­n’t pull that out of thin air (maybe I would take a mo­ment to write the play­er a note) but, you get the idea. Don’t for­get about sound­s, tastes and smells the item might poss­es or gen­er­ate. De­pend­ing on how mag­ic & moral­i­ty work in your world the item might be keyed to a cer­tain school of mag­ic, ra­di­ate ‘evil’, or al­low crea­tures of pow­er­ful mag­i­cal ap­ti­tude to sense it from afar. If your play­ers be­come ac­cus­tomed to cer­tain sens­es be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with cer­tain mag­ic items you can cap­i­tal­ize on it to cre­ate great at­mos­phere and im­mer­sion. For in­stance, from fre­quent past us­age the par­ty’s scout knows that in­vis­i­bil­i­ty po­tions smell strong­ly of lemon. While in the dark dun­geon of de­spair he makes his de­tect hid­den rol­l. In­stead of say­ing “Uh, dude, you de­tect some­thing sneak­ing up in­vis­i­bly” you blurt out “Y­ou smell some­thing, you can’t quite place. It gets stronger, you *know this smell. It’s lemon! And now its quite strong in­deed.”* Hope­ful­ly he won’t say “Huh?” and force the as­sas­sin to gar­rote him in­to si­lence.

Use prop­s. En­cour­age artis­tic play­ers to draw, sculp­t, or craft their item­s. Bring a gong for the play­er to bang on. Use a tarot deck for the Deck of Many Things. Play some thun­der­ous sound ef­fects when the wiz­ard hurls a bolt of light­ing from his staff. Change the light lev­el/­col­or as the dag­ger that glows when orcs are near ac­ti­vates. Get a cow’s horn or bu­gle for the Trum­pet of Courage. Try food col­or­ing, juices, and oth­er liq­uid fla­vor­ings for po­tion­s. Be sure to let your play­ers know be­fore hand that they may “Dump your icky con­coc­tion in­to the plan­t” and pre­tend they drank it. I know a GM that us­es flash pow­der with minia­tures for fire based ef­fect­s. You’ll have to de­cide your­self and gauge what lev­el of this your play­ers en­joy. Some might think its hokey and dis­tract­ing, but oth­ers will love it.

Keep Items Important¶

Once a play­er has a mag­ic item, don’t for­get about it. De­fi­ant­ly don’t let the play­er take it for grant­ed. Peas­ants will ask to see it. Col­lec­tors will try to steal it. Have the play­ers hear songs or sto­ries that men­tion it. Per­haps an heir of the orig­i­nal own­er thinks it be­longs to them and takes her claim to the king. Ask them where they keep it. If on their per­son put it in dan­ger; of be­ing bro­ken, get­ting rained on, or pick­pock­et­ed. If at ‘home’ the place should be bro­ken in­to and ran­sacked but the item for­tu­nate­ly was not stolen, this time. How do they store it? Does it need main­te­nance? Per­haps some fun­gus(­mag­i­cal) starts grow­ing on it. “Brave sir Hadley what *is that fuzzy brown stuff on your Holy Avenger?”. If it fits the char­ac­ter, en­cour­age them mis­place it for a few days *”O­h, here it is in my oth­er robes.” Don’t make ev­ery event neg­a­tive. It should­n’t be a con­stant bur­den just to own a mag­ic item (un­less you want it that way). An artist or schol­ar might want to see it, even pay for the priv­i­lege. Per­haps a great wiz­ard asks to copy it. Hav­ing a wiz­ard owe you a fa­vor should be worth some­thing. Events in­volv­ing the play­er­s’ mag­ic items should­n’t come up ev­ery 5 min­utes ei­ther. Say, once ev­ery third ses­sion some­thing about one item oc­curs or when­ev­er the play­ers com­plain about there not be­ing enough phat lootz.

Design of Magic Items¶

When de­sign­ing mag­ic items leave most ev­ery­thing un­de­cid­ed and flex­i­ble. Just get the ba­sics or germ of an idea and de­cide the par­tic­u­lars as they are need­ed. Al­though, this makes it hard to write down items for gam­ing mag­a­zines it pro­vides many tools to the GM. They can be used to de­ny play­ers try­ing to abuse the me­chan­ics or re­ward those be­ing cre­ative. Great for plot hook­s, mov­ing the cur­rent sto­ry for­ward, any­thing re­al­ly. Play­ers come up with great ideas, you should al­ways be pre­pared to steal them as your own. For ex­am­ple, I start­ed one cam­paign (not Fudge) by giv­ing each char­ac­ter some mi­nor mag­ic item. One play­er had de­cid­ed her elf was a black sheep and ran away from home. I de­cid­ed that she had bor­rowed her fam­i­ly’s sword on the way out of the for­est. Lat­er I screwed up and let ghoul­s, which were too tough, tan­gle with the par­ty. They had ren­dered un­con­scious or par­a­lyzed ev­ery valiant hero save the elf(im­mune to par­a­lyza­tion). It was go­ing bad­ly, three ghouls vs. the poor elfy when she rolled a ‘20’. At that mo­ment I knew what her fam­i­ly’s sword was, a vor­pal blade of ghoul slay­ing. Off went the first ghoul’s head and the last two were dis­patched soon there­after. I played it as if I had made the sword that way from the be­gin­ning and the elf play­er had fi­nal­ly ac­ti­vat­ed it with the nat­u­ral ‘20’ vs. ghoul­s. I’m sure the crafti­er play­ers sus­pect­ed some tom­fool­ery but they were hap­py not to be rolling up new char­ac­ters and kept qui­et. A sad day in my GMing ca­reer but not the dis­as­ter it could have been.

Try some ran­dom and/or flaky item­s. They com­bine be­ing unique, vague, and flex­i­ble. Best of al­l, play­ers tend to come up with great ways to (mis)use these item­s. (See Notes to Mim­i’s Wand of Ar­mor be­low) Bags in which ran­dom things are found, robes with sim­i­lar pock­et­s. Items that am­pli­fy or are keyed to what the char­ac­ter is think­ing, a ring of weath­er con­trol which cre­ates weath­er based on the wear­er’s mood. Items that change ef­fects based on phase of moon or how close they are to some ob­jec­t. In­stead of fudg­ing dice roll­s, well I still fudge roll­s, I try to equip the par­ty with some item like this that I can make do things when the par­ty or plot needs it.

Sample Items¶