As I mentioned in my last roundup, I didn’t see nearly the traffic for this RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Creations that I did for Fantastic Locations.
This surprises me a little, since I would think it would be one of the easier ones to post for — if nothing else, throw in links to magic item posts, and I see a fair number of such posts go up every week.
I think one of the big differences this time around is that I wasn’t posting as much. For my first carnival I had a fairly solid run for a couple weeks, posting almost every day. This may have helped keep things fresh in peoples’ minds. This time around not only have I not had time to post much anyway, I have been posting on other topics entirely. The last five posts on my blog, as of May 27, were:
- Polyhedral NPC Relationships
- What is the Bare Minimum?
- Links of the Week: May 21, 2012
- ACK or Die! Session 3, Purging the Goblin Hall
- ACK or Die!
Good posts, I think, but nothing to do with the carnival.
So, for those who host in the future, I suggest lining up enough related content that you can post every day or two on the topic of the carnival and keep it fresh in peoples’ minds. I suspect that will make a significant difference to the participation rates.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone who came out this time.
Round-Up
As with the Fantastic Locations roundups, presented in order of blog title and (approximately) date.
Exchange of Realities
Simple Tips for Wondrous Items and Magic describes simple methods of making magic items more wondrous, just like it says in the title.
Why Create It Fantastic? asks an important question, what is the benefit to making things fantastic in an RPG? Then carries on to answer it in several pieces. I want to think about it a bit longer before I try to answer this one myself.
Impractical Applications (A Few Fantastic Creations) describes a few magic items that Ravyn has written up for games.
Keith Davies — In My Campaign
I haven’t had nearly the time I wanted to put into this Carnival, but I’ve gotten a few posts out.
Beobachten, the Dragon Watching describes a dragon bound into a magic sword. He will ally himself with those it thinks will help him achieve his goals, including accumulation of wealth and vengeance on the wizard that did this to him.
Palavirea, the Burning Green, is an alternate wand of fireball. I don’t really like D&D 3.x wands and staffs (and other editions really aren’t much better) so I try to make them a little more interesting.
Kaiho-sha, the Liberator was forged by a loyal vassal from the chains that had bound him in slavery, to be used to avenge his betrayed master.
Questions about Beobachten is a longer response to a couple of questions I was asked about Beobachten. I had originally answered them in a comment replying to the original, but felt I should expand on my response a little.
Devising Fantastic Creations is my most recent post on fantastic creations, and describes how I go about creating one for my campaign. There is actually nothing on the mechanical implementation of the creations (that may follow in another article), but it focuses on everything I want to know before that… which then gets used for the implementation. I find that magic items that focus too much on the mechanics tend to be pretty flavorless. The mechanics are still needed for use in play, but have very little to do with making the items fantastic. I try to get that part in first, and I think it works better for me that way.
The Good Gaming Blog
Loonook presents Preces Draco Fidelium: Prayerbooks of Bahamut, a set of four prayer books, spell books for clerics. This idea interests me strangely, because I’ve modified the cleric class (or at least its spell casting) so they have ‘spell books’ in much the same fashion wizards do.
The Journeyman GM
Journeyman GM describes A Truly Magic Item taken from the King’s Quest series of computer games: the Mirror of Truth. This is a device with ‘a sense of mystery and the ability to aid the heroes in truly epic tales’.
Sounds fantastic to me.
Wampus Country
d100 Arcane Books might just as accurately be called ‘1,000,000 Arcane Books’. Combinatorials are like that, three columns of 100 entries adds up fast.
d100 Potions is even bigger — four content colums, for 100^4 = 100,000,000 possibilities (1,000,000 potions, 100 miscibility options). I just realized, I may have been the only 10 year old in my school who could spell and understand the meaning of ‘miscibility’ (‘bad things happen’, I’m pretty sure that’s what miscibility means…).
I am inclined to include Treasure Maps, though Erik didn’t mark it specifically as an entry for this Carnival. They are a sometime discovery in a treasure trove, so having a quick way to create one, even just as a springboard, is a useful tool.
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