Magic Items Revisited

My evolving views on magic items explored

Last time I spoke at length about magic items and how they should be utilized in games, it was almost a year ago on a Twitter thread. I got a lot of flack from that thread at the time from people who I now call friends. Needless to say, I’ve changed my mind a bit on the frequency and power of magic items in your campaign. Today I will be talking about some of the ways my mind has changed and where I now stand on magic items. To offer a thesis, magic items represent artifacts of lost civilizations, items of legendary heroes of yore, and treasures hidden in times past. They are not commonly found among the average person, but are plentiful when you plumb the depths of dungeons, explore hidden catacombs and caves, and engage with powerful adversaries. Magic items are the currency of power in a fantasy world and players should be encountering them on a regular basis as they explore. As a game mechanic, they represent a reward for adventuring alongside gold, XP and lore. Their presence fundamentally alters the mechanics of gameplay by granting new options to allow players to overcome challenges.

In the past, I thought that rare magic items made for a better campaign because scarcity made each item more valuable and contributed to a more gritty and grounded fantasy world where heroes had to rely on guile over magic. Likewise, I believed that magic items should have some kind of narrative significance as they often do in heroic literature. Both of these notions are rather misguided or, as my friend James Streisand says, “Wrong and stupid.” James was the one who got me thinking about how magic items work from a design perspective. You can see this in almost any major video game with a loot system. Magic items are found in dangerous areas and they offer some kind of quantifiable bonus to gameplay. It is a reward system that directly alters gameplay and they are plentiful to entice players to keep exploring. In other words, you go into dungeons because that’s where all the loot is and that loot makes your character better at doing things. That is the core loop of magic items. The items that you find are also, for the most part, randomly generated by rolling on tables. Using something like Appendix A, you not only flesh out a dungeon but fill it with items. As such, it may be possible for a level 1 character to discover a sentient magic sword or some other extremely powerful item. This is a feature, not a bug. Powerful items at low levels create tension within the game and allow for a variety of in-game reactions to players carrying around these coveted items. It also encourages players to keep exploring in spite of their relative weakness at early levels. Right now, you’re getting slapped around by Orcs and Goblins, but you just got a +2 Flaming Sword for your trouble! Not only are you now dishing out hurt yourself, but you could find something even cooler elsewhere.

What many people fail to understand when they examine the economy of magic items is the reward aspect. I think many people who withhold magic items do so believing that playing the game is its own reward. Why should you keep exploring? Because that’s what we’re all here to do, dammit! Do you want to play D&D? While that question can get people to the table once, it’s not a sticky reward. Dungeon crawling shouldn’t feel like a slog and the easiest way to make it feel less like a slog is to give regular rewards that have some kind of immediate impact on the game. It’s easier to convince a player that there’s cool stuff at the bottom of this hole if there’s cool stuff near the top of the hole too. Then, once the party has reached the bottom of this hole and found the cool stuff there, there’s more incentive to risk their character’s life exploring the next hole. Playing the game cannot be its own reward because there are seemingly endless alternatives available to your game. Your players could play a different RPG with a different GM, play a board game, play a video game, watch a movie or do almost anything else. Even when there were fewer options for entertainment on a Saturday night existed, like in the glory days of AD&D 1E, designers knew that this reward mechanism needed to be present. Players who actively play the game and engage with the game world should be rewarded tangibly for their effort.

The mistake that I made in my initial views was that I thought you could treat RPGs like fantasy novels. The reward of reading a novel or watching a movie is the unfolding of the narrative. RPGs don’t work that way at all. Players aren’t characters in a novel whose every action is authored to build a specific narrative. Rather, the narrative is what unfolds around the actions of the players. These two things aren’t the same. It’s the difference between a drive and a roller coaster. You’re on the roller coaster to experience the ride but you’re driving to get somewhere for some reason. An RPG isn’t a roller coaster and the reason why you’re continuing to pursue these treasures is that they make your character stronger and raise their status in the world. The story that unfolds from that concept will be far more satisfying to your players than putting them in a mine cart and pushing them past story scenes you created as the GM simply because it was their choices that created the narrative rather than yours. Magic items play a key roll in helping them author that narrative and this cannot be overstated.

A game that rewards players actively for the work they do is a game that players want to play over and over again. Magic items are part of that reward system and a part that should not be ignored. Magic items are not tied to a specific narrative set out by the GM, but rather a tool that allows the players to author the narrative. A magic item is an incentive to continue pushing through the most difficult stretches of the campaign on their path to power. There’s no reason to withhold them and every reason to give them generously as players proactively pursue the goals of power and influence for their characters.