Magic Items & Magic Archives - Roleplaying Tips

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Three New Layers for My Shadowdark World Building

Hello Game Master and happy Super Wolf Moon! In these parts, it’s the first full moon of the year (wolf) and Luna is at perigee (super). Snowing here in the morning darkness, so I can’t see it. But the clouds sure are bright. It’s great getting mooned on a Friday. This week I started prepping […]

First Aid, Troll Blood, and Magic Rocks – d6 Healing Alternatives

Big news from the Johnn Four household. Everyone is officially cancer free! My wife’s final radiation blast was yesterday. My mom also completed her radiation in January. To celebrate, I thought I’d offer three ideas for giving brittle parties extra healing options. Having played a few new RPGs in the last while, I’ve noticed some […]

Legacy Gems

Legacy Gems is a set of homebrew rules created by Wizard of Adventure Auke. In his world of Tem, certain gems can be incorporated into magic items to enhance their power. The strength of these Legacy Gems grows alongside the wielder, reflecting their mastery and dedication. Download Auke’s gem homebrew rules here (3 page PDF, […]

When the Magic Rules Fail

What do you do when certain magic stuff isn’t in your core rules? Wizard of Adventure Arvindh posed this question on Discord (note that Arvindh runs D&D 5E): Let’s say your PCs wanna build a magic airship or craft a magic light bulb – both of which exist in the world. There are magical processes […]

GM Toolkit: A Magic Item Template For You

Here’s a template to help you design great items. In response to my Treasure First: A Quick Hack For Creating Adventure Hooks tips from last week RPT GM Jeremy Brown sent me this fantastic D&D 3.5 stat block for magic items. It’s my hope you might adapt it for your campaigns and game system to […]

Treasure First: A Quick Hack For Creating Adventure Hooks

Treasure First: A Quick Hack For Creating Adventure Hooks When players fail to trigger an encounter or adventure, our prep becomes moot and the game goes sideways. But how do you craft hooks so appealing that players bite on them harder than an orc at an all-you-can-eat troll BBQ? Earlier this week, I gave a […]

Plot Your Sandbox in Under a Minute with Player Magnets

Here’s how I plot out an old school sandbox in pretty much under a minute. In the Wizard of Adventure members area, we got to chatting about how to use Campaign Logger in conjunction with the The Plot Compass technique. The Plot Compass technique is something I shared with Wizards of Adventure recently. It boils […]

Beyond Gold Pieces: Amp Up Player Engagement With These Rewards

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1225 Amp Up Player Engagement With These Rewards Looking for different ways to reward players and their characters? Gold and gems are great, but you can’t dance to them. The best rewards engage characters and players, keep the Infinite Game going via story progression, open up choices and action possibilities, and create […]

Simple Ways to Enhance Your Magic Items

From Jonathan Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1184 Siema Johnn! In todays’ Roleplaying Tips Newsletter, I’ve got the following GM tips for you: 3 Simple Ways to Enhance Your Magic Items How can we spruce up magic items so they aren’t boring +1 shields? Jonathan Hardin (sojournersawake.com) shows us how via three quick changes we can make […]

Would You Allow This In Your Game?

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1171 RPT GM JS asked me this question about allowing a certain player action: Hey Johnn, If you have a player cast charm monster and then speak with animals. Would you let them communicate with a Worg? I know by the letter of the rules it is a NO. But I wanted […]

A Quick Way To Make Awesome Rewards

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0922 Saw a great tip on Twitter from Mike Shea the other day: Adding a daily spell to a magic itemis a great way to make it boththematic and mechanically useful. This is an awesome method to customize and enhance treasure. You could also surprise players with cool boons like this. The […]

New Mad Lib: Instant Magic Items

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0894 Got another Mad Lib for you today. This one is for special item creation and is inspired by the Perilous Deeps book for Dungeon World. Just fill in the blanks to make an interesting item: This item [DOES ACTION] [TO A THING] and the wielder [CAN CONTROL IT] which [CAN BE USED SOMETIMES]. For example: This item allows […]

How To Make Skill Items As Treasured As Magic

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0854 How To Make Skill Items As Treasured As Magic Reward players with treasure that enhances their skills. Sometimes we get focused just on just combat-related rewards, or treasures that grant cool powers like invisibility. Mix things up by offering skill items. Here’s how. Step 1: Make A List Run through the […]

D13 Magic Item Concepts from My Demonplague Campaign

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0747 I needed some minor mundane and magical treasures for my next DemonPlague game. So I made some and am sharing a few with you today. The party has a wizard, warrior, cleric, druid, and rogue in it. The first thing I did was make a table and a column for each […]

Idea: Living Spell

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0769 Here’s a cool Wednesday idea for your game sent to me by Aramax over at Strolen’s Citadel. What happens when a spell goes awry? Perhaps it’s a miscasting? Maybe a foe warps three simultaneous effects cast upon him. Maybe it’s a research mishap. Of the many ways spells could change and […]

The Phantasmal Pessimist and Other Living Spell Examples

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0777 A couple weeks ago I offered a tip on creating Living Spells using a three step recipe. At the end was a challenge to use the recipe and create your own Living Spells. In today’s Musing I share with you four Living Spells, crafted by your fellow readers, that caught my […]

Master Your Cursed Items

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0721 Cursed items aren’t working for me. They feel punitive. “When you put the helm on, your eyes go blank, your mouth hangs open, and you start to drool. Your INT is 3 sucka! And try as you might, the helm can’t be taken off. Hahaha.” That’s a whole lot of suck […]

A Trick For Low-Level Magic Items

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0829 Here are some cool ideas from long-time Roleplaying Tips reader Roger Barr: What kind of excitement can this place offer to my players? Even a common market can provide distractions. Ever been shopping at a thrift store or a flea market? You can find the most interesting items, odd clothing, and […]

Make Magic Items More Marvelous With Magic Item Sets

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1059 As a world builder, I love having lots of cool magic items. Weapons, wondrous items, and artefacts of legend. These provide instant hooks for quests, dungeons, and missions. As a game designer, I can’t wreck campaign balance. Too many magic items in the PCs’ hands means they can arm wrestle tarrasques, […]

What If A PC Was A Living Spell?

RPT GM Josh J. shared this cool idea.

How To Create Great Magic Items In Just Three Minutes

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0531 A Brief Word From Johnn Only Hours Left On Assassin’s Amulet Deal The special price for Roleplaying Tips subscribers expires October 27 – just a few hours from now. To get the code that gives you 33% off the cover price, before the special expires, visit this link: http://www.roleplayingtips.com/url/discounttut GMing Two […]

How to Make Magic Items Awesome

From Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0620 How to Make Magic Items Awesome Today I have a mega-long issue for you. It started out with a simple reader tip request. I wrote my tip, and then remembered an old article at the website with more ideas on the topic. I decided to merge the two […]