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Ten Ways to Make Treasure Cool
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<blockquote data-quote="GhostBear" data-source="post: 7649080" data-attributes="member: 6667527"><p>I'd rather have strange / unusual / useless in combat magic items instead of Generic Sword +1. You can always scale combat situations up and down to fit the party anyway; that's not hard to do. Party has a bunch of cool pew pew toys? Add more bad guys or make them tougher. The game hasn't really changed at all, you're just looking at bigger numbers against other bigger numbers.</p><p></p><p>What a Generic Sword +1 has a problem doing is help to tell a good story.</p><p></p><p>There's a recent thread that asked people for their weird magic items. Nearly all of them have no direct combat benefit, but they could be used to trick someone, find out information, or maybe they're just good for a laugh or too - and that's okay.</p><p></p><p>And, you never know when Tucker Blackfeather's Bottomless Bag of Birdseed might actually be useful. Or a sunflower that tells you "Good Morning!" whenever the sun peeks over the horizon. What about a mug that heats its contents to a nice, hot-tea temperature?</p><p></p><p>When players are in a difficult situation you WILL be surprised at how a magic item can be "creatively applied" in ways you and the players themselves never expected. That's fun. Fun you can't get with Generic Sword +1.</p><p></p><p>YMMV, in general you want to give stuff out that makes your players happy, but tossing in something off the wall from time to time can't hurt.</p><p></p><p>I agree with some of the thoughts above that, for many players, history isn't all that important to magic items. I like to run low-magic games where every permanent magical item has some kind of history, and I find that a few sentences is more than ample. If the players want to embellish further, that's great!</p><p></p><p>it can be fun to have the players find an item but its history is lost or unknown - and then they later learn, perhaps, that it was used by some nasty big bad of old. Then they might not want to use it anymore... </p><p></p><p>You know you have a cool group when someone says, "I know that this would help me in a fight, but I don't know if I feel comfortable using this sword. It was owned by Gut Ripper, the legendary orcish barbarian that marched his army through the empire, murdering and torturing all that stood against him... He even kicked puppies and gave mean looks to kittens. Maybe a museum would be interested..." And they give it to someone for safe keeping (without expectation of compensation), or they try to destroy it, or (unwisely) just leave it where it is.</p><p></p><p>Something I enjoyed about the 2e D&D rules is that it assumed a certain percentage of magical items were intelligent. Not specifically because of the intelligence portion, but because it helped evoke the idea that a Generic Sword +1 is something more than a Generic Sword +1.</p><p></p><p>Something else that I picked up from (I think) the Fear The Boot podcast (might have been HappyJacks) are magic items that are given to the players, but even the DM doesn't really know what they're for.</p><p></p><p>"What's this do?"</p><p>"I don't know actually, but when it seems appropriate we can figure it out."</p><p></p><p>So at some time later in the campaign, the vial of water given to the players was used to purify a spring or something like that, or maybe cure poison. I forget exactly, but an ambiguous item can be helpful sometimes too.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GhostBear, post: 7649080, member: 6667527"] I'd rather have strange / unusual / useless in combat magic items instead of Generic Sword +1. You can always scale combat situations up and down to fit the party anyway; that's not hard to do. Party has a bunch of cool pew pew toys? Add more bad guys or make them tougher. The game hasn't really changed at all, you're just looking at bigger numbers against other bigger numbers. What a Generic Sword +1 has a problem doing is help to tell a good story. There's a recent thread that asked people for their weird magic items. Nearly all of them have no direct combat benefit, but they could be used to trick someone, find out information, or maybe they're just good for a laugh or too - and that's okay. And, you never know when Tucker Blackfeather's Bottomless Bag of Birdseed might actually be useful. Or a sunflower that tells you "Good Morning!" whenever the sun peeks over the horizon. What about a mug that heats its contents to a nice, hot-tea temperature? When players are in a difficult situation you WILL be surprised at how a magic item can be "creatively applied" in ways you and the players themselves never expected. That's fun. Fun you can't get with Generic Sword +1. YMMV, in general you want to give stuff out that makes your players happy, but tossing in something off the wall from time to time can't hurt. I agree with some of the thoughts above that, for many players, history isn't all that important to magic items. I like to run low-magic games where every permanent magical item has some kind of history, and I find that a few sentences is more than ample. If the players want to embellish further, that's great! it can be fun to have the players find an item but its history is lost or unknown - and then they later learn, perhaps, that it was used by some nasty big bad of old. Then they might not want to use it anymore... You know you have a cool group when someone says, "I know that this would help me in a fight, but I don't know if I feel comfortable using this sword. It was owned by Gut Ripper, the legendary orcish barbarian that marched his army through the empire, murdering and torturing all that stood against him... He even kicked puppies and gave mean looks to kittens. Maybe a museum would be interested..." And they give it to someone for safe keeping (without expectation of compensation), or they try to destroy it, or (unwisely) just leave it where it is. Something I enjoyed about the 2e D&D rules is that it assumed a certain percentage of magical items were intelligent. Not specifically because of the intelligence portion, but because it helped evoke the idea that a Generic Sword +1 is something more than a Generic Sword +1. Something else that I picked up from (I think) the Fear The Boot podcast (might have been HappyJacks) are magic items that are given to the players, but even the DM doesn't really know what they're for. "What's this do?" "I don't know actually, but when it seems appropriate we can figure it out." So at some time later in the campaign, the vial of water given to the players was used to purify a spring or something like that, or maybe cure poison. I forget exactly, but an ambiguous item can be helpful sometimes too. [/QUOTE]
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