It’s a quandary: players find a magic item.

It’s a quandary: players find a magic item.

It’s a quandary: players find a magic item. Unless it’s a sword that bursts into flame when drawn, chances are that it’s use isn’t obvious. Staying strictly in character about it, they may never really understand what it does.

How do you GM this? Make them bring it to an expert for examination? Roleplay discovery by accident? Just give them the full description when they find it? And if do, how do you work that into the fiction?

13 thoughts on “It’s a quandary: players find a magic item.”

  1. Option 1: The teleportation of the evil sorceror you just took down appears to be tied to his cloak, which (insert character name) has just pulled off of his quickly cooling corpse…

    Option 2: The (item) gleams with a strange light, or it feels warm when it should be cool, or you hear a faint whispering when you touch it. some subtle but obviously wrong tell should clue your players in to figure out what the thing is, or find someone to do so for them.

    If it happens often enough, and you don’t have a wizard in the group, maybe think about giving one of the players a special ‘Appraiser’ CC which is nothing but the Enchanter Wizard move so they can identify stuff.

  5. I love describing the things and letting the players try to figure out what they do. The smart ones figure out how to Spout Lore about details like runes or legends they’ve heard, but the best magic item experiences have involved trial and error. And hilarity.

  7. Story time : Our heroic party has helped reclaim a lost gold mine for the Dwarven Kingdom of Zollstock, and through initial intimidation and prolonged moral and material support have set themselves up as shadow governors.  They commissioned the steel-maker to craft the burnt remains of a murderous red dragon into iron weapons.  They’re clearly magic, but it’s unclear what they do (partially because I’m having to make it up on the fly and want to strike the balance between too powerful for anything to pose a threat anymore and too weak to ever use).   I tell them they’ll see what happens when they use them, probably in battle… unless the magic is something other than combat related. 

    The Fighter and Inquisitor each grabbed one of the weapons and started hacking at each other.

  10. Everyone has their own playing styles, and this variety is pleasing to the gods. I prefer to withhold from the players any information their characters do not have. When they encounter owlbears, I tell them about the three large, shaggy-feathered bipeds attacking them – I don’t refer to the monsters by their book name.

    Similarly, with magic items, if the players look at it, I tell them what it looks like. If they smell it, taste it, use it, etc. I describe exactly what that would be like, without granting any unearned knowledge. This keeps things exciting and mysterious, I think, because the players are full of doubt, wonder, fear, and hope; without knowing what’s going to happen, in the player’s mind anything could happen.

    This has gotten a little frustrating for my group – especially since there’s no wizard and no way to identify items – so I gave them a hireling (a rare primitive who can see magic and speak to spirits) who could identify their items. Getting him was a quest, and keeping him alive makes every adventure more challenging and interesting.

  13. Reading over some comments I thought of something:

    What if, when the players accidentally screw with/activate improperly/break the magic item in question, they have to fight an incarnation of its magic properties?

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