Artifacts That Do Stuff
Why Magic Items
Now that the Trove is starting to grow, it’s time I ramble a bit about why I choose to focus on Magic Items for these articles. Afterall, there are many parts of the game we can tweak, adapt and play with. Monsters, NPCs, Adventures, Classes, Sub-Classes or even Ancestries are all very common supplements to the game that people in the hobby seem to seek. While I don’t want to shine from them (apart from Ancentries maybe, not my thing), all of these tools are mostly read by DMs and rarely used at the table. Why items? I want to inject cool design ideas into your games.
Are you a Player? Wouldn’t you like something to make your character cooler? Don’t you feel the tight grip of what the manuals tell you you can and can’t do?
Are you a DM? Here’s some cool, wild things you can throw in your game and watch them take a new, amazing direction, it simply being the smile on your player’s face when they use a new cool ability, or the amazing story YOU came up with to fit this idea into your unique world.
Magic Items are small pebbles that you can throw on top of your gaming table, easily ignoring them if awful, or placing them near your character’s sheet if you fall in love with them. They can carry a small or titanic weight, give you a simple idea or altering your entire campaign. They are the most versatile tools we have, let’s make more.
The Lack
I don’t think magic items are used to their full extent in many games. According to ‘the Boring Tomes we turn to for fun’, Magic Items are mostly passive bonuses to our already strong and high numbers. Want to create a cool story around them? Sure, make one or buy one. Of Course it’s not Just a +1 sword, you can make up whatever you want!
This approach to game design is already very much criticized online, and I don’t want to beat this dead horse too much, but it is to be expected from the Main Game.
The other kind of item you’ll find is the one that you knew was in the game before reading about it. These are the items you’ll see in tangential products, there to keep an identity, not to actually be fun at the table. A certain Deck of No Consequences Whatsoever comes to mind.
Don’t mistake my fury for a devotion to balanced and proper design: I love mayhem and giving my players complete tools of destruction. I just enjoy not being bound by old concepts and having some sort of idea of what a magic item means when put in the character’s hands.
A Key to Motivation
Magic Swords, Shields, Orbs and Familiars may have very different impacts to one’s game. They all share a common hidden purpose that I don’t usually talk about in these weekly posts: They start a fire in your players’ gut.
Finding a cool homebrewed arrow or potion will not only make your player’s character stronger (or weirder), it will open up a world of possibilities. If the loot at the bottom of the dungeon, or in the king’s safe, is not standard boring stuff, each adventure we partake in could open up endless possibilities. I’m a firm believer in that the best reward is not the one the characters currently wield, but the ones your players will only imagine and seek in your game world.
When motivation is stripped away from leveling up to reach those cool Class Abilities, the player’s look will be redirected from the printed paper to the happenings of the narrative. This is not an easy thing to achieve, and I’m in constant pursuit of better ways to obtain this experience at my table.
I think Cool Items are the best way to plant the seed in all the people sitting at the table that this game can be so much more that what is being told to us.
Let’s Have Fun Together
I don’t present Magic Items to you, yes you, because I want you to anxiously wait for next week’s post and have five imaginative minutes reading it. I mean, that would be enough, but my higher goal with this blog is to plant something in your mind, roll a small pebble from the top of the mountain and cause an avalanche. Let’s have fun together, let’s have ideas, talk about them and (most importantly) bring them to life in the stories we tell.
No magical spear or flying shield is ever gonna be useful described in weird paragraphs, bring them to life with stories shared with friends old and new, that’s all that counts. If this blog is gonna help you do that, then I’ll have accomplished my quest.
My Oath
Leaving behind my evident emotion, I want to share some of the things I believe to be key to a good Magic Item.
No item should just increment some numbers, it should DO something, it should reshape who the character who wields it is, maybe literally. I want to make and share items that become part of your stories, pivotal moments in your adventures. No one will remember the mandatory spell that saved the party that one time, not as epically as Star-Blessed, the Divine Sword that Beatrice wielded against the darkness, or the Black Candle that broke the limits where the Crew could go.
My items should be exciting for the players who use them and be an important piece of the world they are in. That’s why Hooks and Variations are important to me: don’t just simply grab this, make your own and tell a new story I couldn’t possibly have imagined.
Here is my Oath, or better ‘Design Guides’ I want to adhere to when coming up with items for my games and blog:
The Item must be Active, no passive buffs, but options for the characters.
The Item must be Memorable, not just a generic object lost in the loot pile.
The Item must Break the Game, giving players something that makes them feel unique and reshape the image the DM had for their world.
The Item must be New, with mechanics that stretch the box of the game, making you look at new horizons.
The Item must be Yours, easy to implement in your game, a blueprint to shape your own dreams into.
I’m sure of only one thing: I’m gonna learn a lot from this journey, I’m glad I’m with you on this ride. Let’s Tell Stories Together.
Skull Azure
