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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 5630609" data-attributes="member: 54364">I'll chime in and agree with KJSEvans: the magic items, especially the Artifacts and Relics,  in the old DMG were really imaginative and exciting. They were filled with weird and whacky and inspiration. Something the magic items in 3rd ed. lack. I put this down to the fact that every magic item comes with a recipe. Anything that takes the mystery out of magic items de-magifies* it a bit for me.  Also, I was just reading through the 3rd ed. list of artifacts and I get a sense of "meh, whatever." The writing lacks inspiration. Compare the 2 quotes below. Both are the fluff description from the Eye of Vecna. (Actually the 3rd ed. quote is from the Hand and Eye of Vecna. The 1st ed. quote comes from the Eye alone, there's more for the Hand.)    The second one is so much more interesting. It piques imagination. Yes, it is of a purplish colour. But that's a + in my book. Whereas the 3rd ed. version is all "May have that, may have this, apparently." Limp. Two more things in the favour of the 1st ed artifacts are: 1. GM chooses the powers. Players don't know what they're getting. 2. Side effects. (Also chosen by the GM.) The finding out what will happen is part of the fun. I want more mystery in my adventures, dammit!  And I, too, want to run a game with one of the old artifacts as a goal. Always wanted to use The Throne of the Gods. Or the Machine of Lum the Mad. Re-reading the Machine of Lum makes me think of an huge pipe organ. The pipes rise up and disappear into shadows cast by no visible thing. When it's played the Machine emanates eldritch radiations and otherworldly thredonies. These break down the walls between the worlds allowing the operator to summon terrible things and unleash storms of chaos.  Reading a little further: maybe this should be Heward's Mystical Organ. It being an organ and all. cheers. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />  *What an ugly neologism. I apologise.</blockquote>

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