I have decided to begin a blog on Gaming that will be hosted on EN World. The blog will be called Tome and Tomb and will detail my thoughts, and the thoughts of others, on all aspects of gaming, wargaming, simulations, design, Transferable Skill Simulations, coding, and any other related subject that I consider relevant to these issues.
Over time I will post entries on Game Design, Role Playing Games, Alternative and Parallel Role Playing Games, Wargaming, Video and Computer Games, Virtual Reality Games and Virtual Reality Environments, Technology, Vadding, and popular culture. I will also include posts and articles on theory and design, as well as some of my other related writings. In time I also intend to post on the development of my own games, and game milieus.
I may also post on other subject matters, as the fancy strikes me, such as history, politics, religion, science, writing, music, and art.
Over time I will post entries on Game Design, Role Playing Games, Alternative and Parallel Role Playing Games, Wargaming, Video and Computer Games, Virtual Reality Games and Virtual Reality Environments, Technology, Vadding, and popular culture. I will also include posts and articles on theory and design, as well as some of my other related writings. In time I also intend to post on the development of my own games, and game milieus.
I may also post on other subject matters, as the fancy strikes me, such as history, politics, religion, science, writing, music, and art.
Where Has All The Magic Gone?
Why don't they make Magic Items like they used to?
I was looking through my AD&D books tonight and noticed how versatile and multi-functional so many of the magic items were.
They were powerful, and they were odd, and fascinating, and most important of all a lot of them could do all kinds of things.
By comparison so many of the magic items of more recent editions are bland, plain, uninspired, and uninspiring. It's like suing a piece of technology from the eighties or something. The items are overly specialized, technical, usually limited to one specific function, top-heavy in design and capabilities. A drag to own and use and usually good only for specific encounter types.
Older magic items were magical. They had so many functions they seemed like a modern mini-computer/cell phone/PDA/wristwatch/GPS/tricorder all in one. Impressive and extremely useful. Versatile. Fluid. A joy to own and use, employable in a wide range of circumstances. They were the Renaissance Men of Miracles, the Polymaths of Magic. And in addition most were mysterious. You had to figure em out as you went along. They could always have extra, hidden potential that you'd never know about til you screwed around with just the right thing and accidentally tripped some concealed latch. And you had Artifacts, and Incredible Devices, and Relics, with strange legends and ancient lore surrounding them. They weren't just treasure types, they were items of real magic.
We need to get back to that in modern fantasy games.
It made fantasy gaming fun instead of a technical exercise in weaponry calibres and target types.
Magic should have some, "Boy, now you're really gonna see something!" to it, instead of "how many rounds ya got in that wand and what is the total count of damage points inflicted by it? I'm trying to calculate exactly how long this combat will last."
Where has all the magic gone?
It's gone to hell with the idea that magic is about power shots and ammo counts rather than about mystery and wonder.
Somebody needs to dig some real magic up out of the grave and see if they can put a resurrection spell on it.
I was looking through my AD&D books tonight and noticed how versatile and multi-functional so many of the magic items were.
They were powerful, and they were odd, and fascinating, and most important of all a lot of them could do all kinds of things.
By comparison so many of the magic items of more recent editions are bland, plain, uninspired, and uninspiring. It's like suing a piece of technology from the eighties or something. The items are overly specialized, technical, usually limited to one specific function, top-heavy in design and capabilities. A drag to own and use and usually good only for specific encounter types.
Older magic items were magical. They had so many functions they seemed like a modern mini-computer/cell phone/PDA/wristwatch/GPS/tricorder all in one. Impressive and extremely useful. Versatile. Fluid. A joy to own and use, employable in a wide range of circumstances. They were the Renaissance Men of Miracles, the Polymaths of Magic. And in addition most were mysterious. You had to figure em out as you went along. They could always have extra, hidden potential that you'd never know about til you screwed around with just the right thing and accidentally tripped some concealed latch. And you had Artifacts, and Incredible Devices, and Relics, with strange legends and ancient lore surrounding them. They weren't just treasure types, they were items of real magic.
We need to get back to that in modern fantasy games.
It made fantasy gaming fun instead of a technical exercise in weaponry calibres and target types.
Magic should have some, "Boy, now you're really gonna see something!" to it, instead of "how many rounds ya got in that wand and what is the total count of damage points inflicted by it? I'm trying to calculate exactly how long this combat will last."
Where has all the magic gone?
It's gone to hell with the idea that magic is about power shots and ammo counts rather than about mystery and wonder.
Somebody needs to dig some real magic up out of the grave and see if they can put a resurrection spell on it.
Total Comments 9
Comments
-
Obviously you are referring to 3E and 4E magic item design, where items hold numerical mechanical benefits to abilities that characters have in-game. The changeover was of course obvious... once D&D turned away from a wide-open free-form game that it was in OD&D, 1E, 2E era... an era where the characters themselves had many less numerical mechanical abilities and much more "descriptive" abilities... there was a desire for magical items to match their character counterparts. After all, if your character is a series of numbers and when you advance, those numbers get bigger... your magical items should help in that regard (since magic items are a part of advancement after all).
To go back to a much more free-form handling of items of magic... you really need to go back to a much more free-form character design... one where not every single aspect of a character's abilities have numbers and die rolls attached. Otherwise, the two functions of the game are running at cross-purposes.
The answer of course is one that for whatever reason folks can't get their head around or are just unwilling to do... and that is-- play OD&D/1E/2E instead of 3E/4E. After all, they are all different games.Posted 12th December 2008 at 05:29 PM by DEFCON 1
- Official rules are just suggestions, don't look at them as laws. How many magic items do you really need for your campaign? Design just the items you need. You will be happy, yours players will be happy and you don't even need to buy those AV books, saving money as well.Posted 12th December 2008 at 05:38 PM by Goemoe
-
Is there anything preventing one from designing such items for current-edition campaigns? I've made a few myself for campaigns, and I've seen no character in a giddier state than when the gnome was testing the doodads on her Hammer of Widgets. A good balance of these kinds of items, and the protection items the game assumes players have for balance purposes, could leave players in a state of wonder about what they'll finding next.Posted 12th December 2008 at 06:29 PM by RukiTanuki -
I'm hoping that some of the folks on this site will convert magic items from 1/2/3.x for use in 4e.Posted 12th December 2008 at 08:00 PM by jsepeta -
The solution is simple: play AD&D. It's still a great game.Posted 12th December 2008 at 10:18 PM by airwalkrr - I think what you are talking about in 4e are Intelligent Artifacts. There are a few articles on intelligent magical items and artifacts, those would work. To get that flavor in a 4e game, I would have the magic items be like that (say, one per character), and have the characters not use ANY other magic items, and just get relevant flat bonuses as they level.Posted 13th December 2008 at 09:51 AM by Gavinfoxx
-
The first campaign I ever DMed I had the party find a crystal ball w/telepathy. The villain they were fighting was using it nefariously and my friend, a necromancer, decided to keep and used it. That kind of crystal ball is powerful and expensive, few players would ever buy one. Both me and the party had fun with it though, because the ability to communicate telepathically is fun to play with.
In another campaign with a different set of players, the party found an orb of storms. They kept it, but they wanted to use it to make money. This wasn't as much fun. I didn't want to run a lot of economic models, I've found that these players use modern economic principals to justify using the rules to make money in a way that doesn't seem to include a lot of adventuring. Needles to say, this wasn't as much fun for me or the party. It ended-up being an object to satisfy one player's need to have a "one ring" Smeelbo like attachment. Which got boring after a while.
I think the reason magic items have become more defined in recent editions is because an open description can lead to problems where the players want to do something with the item that isn't fun for the DM. The more defined a magic item is, the easier it is to use without argument.
Interesting side note, one of the players from the second group told me that he had never played in a group that included a Deck of Many Things because it was considered unacceptable with all the other groups he had ever played with over the years. Ambiguity has to be something that the players accept. An element of trust is needed that the ambiguity isn't going to screw them.Posted 15th December 2008 at 01:04 AM by fanboy2000 - I think it would help to give some examples of the items you are talking about. Most of the magic items I received in 2nd edition had similar versions in 3rd edition.
It sounds like you are talking about what were essentially "MacGuffin" items. As a GM there is certainly nothing to stop you from introducing magical items that don't really require statting out. The GM is a storyteller, if the story requires more magic than tell the story with more magic in the narrative.Posted 15th December 2008 at 04:20 AM by portermj -
I wouldn't necessarily disagree with any of you on particular points you have made.
This is one of a series of small articles I'm gonna write that are, for lack of a better term, Critical Essays on Modern Game Design.
But there is also a thread where the details are being threshed out about many of the specific comments you guys are making.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...agic-gone.htmlPosted 15th December 2008 at 10:46 PM by Jack7
Total Trackbacks 0
And yet another word from our sponsors
