Foreign here on the creative thinker podcast we discuss all theories philosophy and thought behind the creative process and we hope that you find some inspiration along the way today on the podcast we’re going to be talking about magical items and when to use them which is a play on Fantastic Beasts and Where
To Find Them anyway so we’re going to be diving into the minutia everything you need to know about magic items and how to use them it’s going to be fantastic my name is Henry Moon and I’m joined by Michael Vasquez who is our resident expert on magical items and all things
Dungeons and Dragons so my goal when talking about magical items what do we mean exactly um so what are the good ones the good ones um let’s get a little bit of background on what what are magical items when we think of magical items I personally tend
To think of the famous magical weapons or items that we see in Games movies fairy tales or mythologies uh the Leviathan acts from the newest God of War Games is a good example though one ring or is still yours Bane from Lord of the Rings Excalibur the mythical sword
Of King Arthur or Thor’s Mighty Hammer of mjolnir are all examples of famous magical weapons but what makes these items so famous is the history that’s accompanied with each one so when you walk up to a sword an ax something like that in the story um you’re not just gonna assume that
This is the greatest ax Sword whatever it happens to be of this story um the way that they get her introduced is special it always comes with dead history um throughout the story of the God of War Ragnarok we hear about the great battle between Thor and a mysterious
Woman who used a weapon that was equal to his mjolnir hammer the ulnar is mjolnar Hammer after playing through the events of the game we get to learn even more the history of the ax and kratos’s last wife last wife he has so many he does have two I think throughout the the
Stories that man has a lot of complicated relationships yeah um blessing uh the history of the Leviathan acts through the whole Lord of the Rings novels and movies it’s about the Journey of destroying the one ring right this artifact the McGuffin of the entire story people have heard wondering
To rule them all one ring to find them one ring to bring them all to Darkness and by or bring them all and in darkness bind them we begin to learn about the Ring’s history through the moment from the very first moment you start watching The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of
The Ring it starts with the history of the Rings and the rings that were are given to around the elves the men and the dwarves um moving on next uh to the examples said before Excalibur right the the sword of King Arthur has many different stories already in and of itself
Um the one I’m most familiar with is Excalibur being The Sword and the Stone from the tales of Merlin well the person who pulls out this Sword in the Stone will be divinely appointed king or the true heir of the British throne and lastly to get you in the right Vibe mental
Space uh we have Thor’s hammer mjolnir getting even more specific we’re leaving God of War Ragnarok behind we’re getting to the the nitty-gritty the most fancy weapon of them all lastly Thor’s hammer mjolnir in Old North North North North Norse mythologies mjolnir was the Hammer
Of the Thunder God Thor and a symbol of his power it was forged by dwarves and was a weapon used to crash down on the heads of giants in the more recent Marvel era of course creationist still of Dwarven make but has an enchantment upon it whosoever holds the hammer if he
Be worthy shall possess the power of Thor so it’s uh it’s a little bit more juicy in the uh the new Marvel movies it’s got a few more powers and it’s uh it’s almost like donning the Cape of uh Superman or the glasses I should say of Clark Kent
Yeah so these are all examples of uh Magic weapons in mythology and History Literature stuff that we’ve probably heard of already so when we go into this um in today’s topic of creating magical items and what the purpose is and how you make them here are some examples of
People who have done this very well already most people already know of those four uh great mythical items um if you’re a gamer recently you’ve heard of the the the Leviathan acts um and of course if you’re into any type of Norse mythology or into Marvel at all
You’ve heard of mjolner or Jonathan um and uh of course Lord of the Rings right King Arthur also another big story that we’ve heard time and time again especially uh growing up in school I I listen to that story a lot so um these items have a lot of history in it so
When we’re talking about magical items Henry what is one of the items that comes up to your mind oh aside from these four right here that I just listed in many there are so many um I think one of my favorites is um that uh the cape from Harry Potter that
Oh the big like cloak that they put on yeah um it’s just a big blanket of invisibility and the rules always sort of change a little bit and that’s always like um that in the Marauders map are probably my favorites just because it’s like anytime I think of those magical
Items it’s like okay Mischief it’s like low-key stuff it’s not gonna be crazy it’ll be intense but and a little bit scary but it’s not gonna be like world breaking and that’s like a happy space for me that’s like okay Adventure awaits let’s do this yeah yeah I like those
Magical items and uh and I like how they um attach history to those things it’s like uh you know anybody who is up to no good is gonna be right who’s gonna be using these items that um there is some attachment to like his familial history
Like this is sent to him from a family member and stuff like that like it’s a good it’s a good story beat it’s a good segue into his history yeah yeah I was just fun I love little magic items like that and I think that’s
Something I strive to do in my own uh campaigns and my own writing is to have a small magical item um or or something that’s like kind of weird and quirky because I feel like those are like the Marauders map is like very specific to Hogwarts I I try to
Stay away from Harry Potter stuff I haven’t read in a long time and we’ve got a lot of flack from the last time we talked about Harry Potter so I’m I don’t I don’t know much about Harry Potter anymore but from what I remember uh the Marauders map was very much just
Towards Hogwarts I thought so it’s a very like single-use item for a single spot I think it’s very uh like you said up to some Mischief you know um low-key Mischief yeah one of my favorite uh magical items that I’ve created recently is uh gauntlets of nifelheim and I took an inspiration from
God of War to make these gauntlets but then I added them to a uh bbag in my campaign and then one person decided to try to single-handedly fight them and they did not know they were not aware of these gauntlets but I was able to create um lore with these gauntlets maybe made
Them a little bit too op but ah it is what it is um but I created a lot of history behind that and that Adventure or that that BBG had its own history because he had to go and grab these gauntlets from a certain location and that was uh interesting to
Me and now I have like a special place in my heart for the gauntlets because I create hated some lore to go with it and I think that’s something that I’ve started seeing a little bit more in my reading is the lore behind magical items as I’m reading Aragon or The Inheritance
Trilogy or cycle it is uh interesting to see magic items appear and then hearing about the history and even Aragon approaches some places with a sword and people uh react to him a certain way because the sword has meaning and history already has a dark past so
People interact with him in a negative light just from the beginning and that’s all basically the history of one magical item well one of the items you use to great effect in your campaign you had this pair of swords that was like these brother dragons that got turned in
Magically into swords yeah and uh and that was a really cool story beat because we learned a lot about the world we learned a lot about there was there was a moment there where our characters got to choose between being good and evil because uh the swords themselves
Were evil and so or the dragons that they were put into them were evil and so we had this tug of war between being good and bad and we also had this like let’s learn what happened to these these dragons and let’s try to it ended up
Being let’s we found out a way to free them which was by stuff with which uh was you know not a great memory of the campaign for our characters but yeah maybe not a good uh Legacy to leave behind but it was good fun yeah and like that but well it was
Fun to create too and just so like you can see a little peek behind the curtain for those swords the two dragons got magically Enchanted into Swords by a dragon horde and the dragon horde had magic and that was their punishment for uh not being good enough
Um with our punishment was to get turned into swords and be wielded by the people of the Dragon Clan so you had to kill a certain amount of dragons to unleash the swords but they were uh given to people who or are dragons that could turn into
People so the thought process was like you’re not going to be able to kill enough dragons because you’re being used in um defensive dragons yeah in the defense of dragon so it’s never gonna happen so you get to hit this number of dragon kills and then of course you guys got the
Blades and uh released them from their bonds and so that was interesting to create that lore that history um that Brotherhood between the swords and that there’s only two of these swords and they have these special abilities and do you give up the the op kind of abilities that they
Had to have these Dragon allies now so and the the expanded I mean we had got more attached to the dragons that were our swords because it was like as we’re fighting we always had these moments of conversation with the sword it’s like okay well I just I attacked
This enemy and it was a hit and now I’m gonna talk to my sword for a little while yeah which was like an interesting Exposition and it was uh always like fun dialogue and then we became attached to the swords which then because they were trapped by the bbeg then now we have
Another reason to not like the BBB yeah and we have more allies in the cause which makes it um story wise it’s like you’re building up to something um which I think everybody wants in terms of magical items if we you know talking about like the the sword of Kings for Aragon
Um in The Lord of the Rings is He is building up to be the king of men but if there’s no man left on planet Earth then who’s he going to be the king of it doesn’t matter so it’s like because he is he is taking on this magic item and
That’s gonna help him in fighting the Big Bad Evil which is the eye of Sauron right and so really good magical eye items are going to help you move towards your plot goals they’re going to help you add honor and Prestige to your characters they’re just going to keep interesting keep adding interesting
Elements to your characters and what’s going on and as we start kind of talking about like the purpose of it when we start looking at our own world where do we start um I’m pulling just so if anyone wants to take a look at our source that I’m
Using for this next portion of the podcast um I was looking at an article a website that was posted in 2013. um crafting fabulous fiction arcs of artifacts and they use the example of a gun through all this we’re not going to use that example because we tend to talk
About a little bit more fantasy elements here um so we’re going to talk about that but it has a lot of good questions in here and good points that we can definitely expand upon um it’s on writingworld.com and again creating fabulous fiction Arts arcs of artifacts by Victoria brossack
So when we look at our magic items or artifacts we should be looking at a few different perspectives we’re going to look at uh four perspectives here the perspective of the character that we’re writing the perspective of the plot the perspective of the reader and of course the perspective of you the author
So first we’re going to be starting off with the perspective of our character what items do our characters care about and why that’s such a good question I mean that’s that is where a lot of people stop and it’s not necessarily a problem um but you’re not gonna round out an
Item as well as you can if you cover all these perspectives um and that’s what we’re all about is making things as good as we can so what your characters want um is to be as op as possible as to you know as soon as you have
Something on the board or on the map whatever you want to say as soon as you have an item that is out there that is known by your characters to be the most powerful weapon in the world um you want it especially when we’re talking about DND your characters want the most powerful
Items they want the most prestige they want to be the end-all be-all murder hobos in the world and so you want to make sure you want to make sure you give them the opportunity to do that um that’s what the game is all about that’s what where where the fun is and
That’s that’s why it’s lasted so long um so anytime your character wants something and and we always talk about utility especially in these last few weeks where we’ve been doing a lot of more writing heavy episodes um we’ve been talking about utility and how that drives a lot of really good
Content for your story the same thing applies when you’re talking about what your character needs if your character needs a way to make spells like we had in your campaign not so long ago um your wife’s character need to make a whole bunch of potions um so potions not spells anyway don’t
Add me I’m a barbarian I barely know the rules um so yeah anyway so we had this whole Forge of like building or making potions and inputting different ingredients and and so that was something that she had wanted for a long time as a character and she finally was
Able to aggregate the necessary resources to be able to build this into a business now so she can she can fund herself for a while too yeah um super super cool it fills a lot of needs for that character yeah exactly and of course I’m going to be using a
Lot of examples from Aragon because that’s what I’m reading right now and as I’m reading that book I’m starting to or listening to that book rather I’m starting to pick apart the elements that we’re talking about and seeing how good storytelling and World building has made so when we’re talking about magic items
And why do they care about Aragon is in this fantasy setting and he becomes a drag or he is the new newest Dragon Rider and as a dragon rider they want to defend and defeat the tyranny of the bbeg and they have a they need a sword
So his magic item is his big magic item is a sword called zarok and I think it’s very interesting when magic items have a name instead of just especially in D right we have magic items plus one you know magical sword plus two magical sword plus three but like having a name
Even creates more history it creates a little bit more uh lore and to your setting so when you can have a sword and not that you have to do that if you’re a new uh game master or dungeon master um but having that name of the sword
Like your ax I created a name for it but there was a reason he needed it because he needs to defend himself he needs to attack he needs to defend uh himself and his mentor um there might be some slight spoilers in this for Aragon if you
Haven’t read it yet but uh you can start now forever deal with it you can start seeing the elements of it um the perspective of plot um what does that mean um because that can feel a lot like perspective of plot versus the perspective of the author isn’t that the same thing
Um I you you will eventually say yes because right you’re the author but doesn’t that doesn’t necessarily mean everything that you want needs to be there right away let’s say you’re creating a character again we’re using Aragon as as an example here Aragon is a new Dragon
Rider he is being trained by someone but he is not a full student let’s look at it as a Jedi Jedi Knight kind of um title he’s still a Padawan like in his Jedi Knight trials so he’s a potawon but he’s fighting people who are the equivalent of Jedi Knights so
The perspective of the plot we need to have our character not die right away right because we’re continuing to write about this character he needs something that will give him a little help in the fight perspective of the plot he has a sword that won’t break
Okay now we don’t have to worry about his sword breaking as the reader the audience we don’t even we don’t even think about it but it is something that happens in the world perspective of the plot is he gets a belt called again the names are so cool belt of bailoff the wise
So that he can stay in these fights um it’s given to him because his training is incomplete his power has not grown sufficiently I love that part of the story because it’s like he immediately um it was a good Exposition element because he immediately was like ooh
Power nice and then he just goes nuts and then immediately like Taps it out yeah he uses it past its fullest extent as soon as he gets it and it’s like you know his his uh I forget the name of the teacher but it like warns him against it
Over and over saying like this is Way Beyond you this is just to tap in once you get a little bit tired just use it a little bit past you and he’s like I used all of it one time and so um again for the perspective of the plot
It’s almost like plot armor but you’re giving your character something to still strive for it afterwards when he’s given this he does have more power he can fight people at a different level now but he’s still once once he’s done with that energy he’s done with it he’s not at that level
Anymore so we need for him to strive to become stronger and better at that another good example that I found of this is from the perspective of the plot was critical role they had in their first campaign Vox Machina there is a moment in the campaign spoilers uh where
Dragons come and attack the city that they’re in four ancient dragons I think so it’s a white a black a green and a red ancient dragon they come in attacking and they have their own followings themselves they come in and attack this city and the characters are
Like level 13 or 14. so you know like that’s really tough right and and DND you know y’all had in our DND session you all guys had to gather like armies to go and fight the Ancient Ancient uh dragon or had to have like groups of like 12 to
15 people fighting off these dragons because of the abilities that they had and in critical role like they don’t succeed they they this is their first really really tough Challenge and so the point the plot device that the dungeon master made was for them to go and find
These vestiges of Divergence and in the quest they grew stronger they leveled up in these quests to find these messages that will increase their power level and increase their ability to fight and survive against these dragons so that’s a very good example of your characters if they were to fight this person they
Would die if Aragon were to fight the bbeg with the belt he would die but he needs to grow stronger there still needs to be uh something for them to go forward with in these vestages of Divergence are magical items that they really have a lot of cool different
Abilities they have passive abilities that a passive ability for for the the sword that we’ve been talking about is it doesn’t break right that’s a passive ability you’re not actively doing anything with it but it’s a passive ability that your character now has um zarok had a gemstone that would give
Him some energy as well I believe so that’s an active ability that you know he got to use and we’ll say it’s like a plus one or plus two sword or whatever um if you’re talking about D and D terms and so each of these vestiges had some
Type of uh magical ability that they could do it they increased their spell DC they gave him a plus to hit or um a little extra movement or could hit a little bit harder so those are some magical items that you want to go out in
From the perspective of of the plot it moves the plot forward they continue to grow in power they continue to do this from the author the DM you put cool items in there because you want it but it might not always fit just because you made up this cool gun doesn’t mean you
Need to put it in your fantasy game you know yeah yeah yeah I feel like I mean that’s a really interesting perspective in that um what works in your story or what you need to work um especially when it comes to d d but also in terms of a lot of stories you
Know we have like I’m thinking about Pineapple Express for some reason I haven’t seen that movie in years um but they have this moment at the end where it’s like our characters are not strong enough to fight who they need to fight and then suddenly
Um there is this Armory that one of the characters has and they all just get all these ridiculous amount of guns and it’s like okay well your characters need to be able to fight this level of bad guy especially in d d right like your quest has led you to
Something that is far beyond your level here’s an item there’s a plot Point here’s yeah here’s something that we can we can give you to give you a fighting chance if you really want to take this route then we need to research and see if we can we can have a Fighting Chance
Um and I think that’s a really cool perspective and that’s something that’s going to get you further than um well what are the what are the characters want because in that situation of like well the characters from Pineapple Express are gonna take on this entire weed farm
Um well we’ll get him a helicopter and a rocket launcher or something you know just to give him a tank they’ll just roll in and kill everybody yeah and it’s like well that’s what the characters would want if it was a d d campaign yeah for sure for sure they’re like give me
Everything and uh instead of that we we take on this other perspective of the plot which I think is just a really cool change of perspective I love those um so what about the perspective of the reader you mentioned um when when is that an appropriate
Question to ask like so if if plot and character isn’t doing it for you and you still need a magic item when would you take into account the reader because that one that one makes the least amount of sense to me reading through these so it’s not necessarily when
The these don’t go in order right they doesn’t go in order of okay now I need to create from the perspective of my character he has this meant or they have this magic item from the perspective of plot now they gain this magic item not for the perspective of the reader they
Then gain this magic item this is all happening simultaneously right it’s it’s in the flow right so the perspective of the reader is is your magical item going to make sense for the world that you’re in right what what magic items are you going to expect to have in your setting
If you’re running a Sci-Fi setting you’re probably not going to have swords and shields or like you might have like helmets or something that will do uh be like the magic item we know what Star Wars is don’t add us yes that’s possible well yeah so so that’s possible but like
When you’re talking about like laser swords okay but typically like the the games that I run in that Star Wars setting the weapons that you’re looking for aren’t swords typically they’re typically looking for what’s a gun that can do some damage that it has a little
Unique ability to it one of the things that I was thinking about for sci-fi is for the perspective of the reader if you’re if you’re in a ship right a ship you need face to space or planet to planet travel that would be considered a magical item right if you own a ship
What do you need to do to repair your ship while you’re in space you probably need some type of like mag boots or um gear to put on while you’re in space and that can become a quest as you foreign get your ship and then you got
To get all the equipment that goes with it that equipment are our magic items if you’re in a fantasy settings uh a typical fantasy setting You’re Gonna Want swords that have Legends with it you’re gonna want uh Helms or boots or gauntlets that have these magical abilities or rings that have these
Magical abilities that make sense to your audience because if you put something in there that doesn’t like a gun in a fantasy setting like how serious is your setting going to be is this really the story that you want will it take it out again remember your audience what you’re writing so that’s
What that really means if in Aragon there is no sword I would be like what’s happening if you just fought with sticks I’m like okay I mean you can I guess but like there’s something really interesting about the sword element or and even magic items when you’re writing
They don’t have to be like this crazy magical thing it can be like like I said for sci-fi the mag boots that can be like a magic item for your crew does that make sense yeah that answers my question um I I got lost thinking like that the
Audience has some sort of say like when you get to a certain part of the story you’re going to be like man I wish they had a flashlight and it’s like well how are you going to be able to predict what the audience wants at this point in time
Um but the way you explain it makes a lot more sense where it’s just like does this make sense in your world so hot take um the dark saber from the Mandalorian stupid weapon I hated that so much um I just like that to me took me
Completely out of the world it’s like we have lightsabers and we know how they work they’ve been around since the beginning of this this story that’s been told and uh the dark saber is like a knife-shaped one and and it’s been this huge weapon that we haven’t heard about
Until now like I get how stories work like they’re building off of it and it’s such a big universe right but yeah at the same time me as an audience member I saw that and I was like I don’t believe anything that happens from here on I got
Over it I kept watching the show I enjoy Star Wars but that dark saber I still don’t watch the the episodes that are mainly about that if I go back and re-watch I just skip through um maybe I’ll get through my wounds eventually but uh but yeah that was that
Was one item that I was like this this is too much yeah I think again it’s talking about you want to know your audience and unfortunately for some of the newer Star Wars that’s coming out uh there’s a lot of lore to get through before you can
Get to understand like what is the purpose of the dark saber and understanding like there is a lot of lore I obviously like mandalorians I got the Mando tattoo on my arm let’s switch to your camera uh I don’t know there’s a good angle to see it okay there we go
Anyways so um there’s a lot of history on lore behind that dark saber that when it gets in when it’s introduced I didn’t really expect it I didn’t necessarily like the story beats that were there I felt like especially in this last season they didn’t I don’t think they handled it
Well they kind of like hand waved it but um anyways I think it is a cool artifact it’s an interesting magical weapon but I think they could have built it up a little bit more and I believe even in that in that source that we talk about the beginning it talks about the
Satisfaction of the artifact so if you are telling your story and all of a sudden your character picks up the sword that has magic powers that blast the power of the sun into your enemies and you’re like where’s this sword been the whole time and they just pull it out at
The end and that’s how they win you’re like okay cool I guess but I don’t know like if you don’t have that if you don’t have that build up to this crazy magic weapon or this crazy sword then it kind of Falls flat and I think that’s where when
You’re looking at you have to kind of look at all of those three like perspective the uh perspective of the plot perspective of the reader and perspective of the character do all these three things kind of make sense and then of course the author because you’re putting stuff in
Because you want to put stuff in because you know it’s cool yeah try not to force it I think is the takeaway from the author one it’s like uh there are things that are like there’s always going to be the badass factor of of magical items like
Star Wars the first movie first time they turned on our lightsaber and you got the sound effects and you got to see it you’re like whoa you know like everybody had that reaction and that’s how you know that that was a great artifact you know um so yeah that’s enough said there yeah
And again again for the author like that that perspective of you the author is what’s something cool you want to put in right I put in magical weapons in my world because I like weapons I’ll that’s what I’m drawn to and I’ve started to add more armor into the world because I
Like magical armor and I’m really enjoying the benefits that like a magical ring will have or a magical spear or a magical boot right these things can help um change the course of how your character interacts with it and change the course of battle can change the course of
Um their whole character Arc and their trajectory um is because I wanted to put something cool and then they found it and hopefully your audience your readers your your people also find that cool that you’re creating this world for because you can’t forget that you can
Put stuff in that is for your characters and the plot in the reader but if you’re not fully invested into putting those those weapons in or those magical items in then what’s the point if you’re not enjoying it because at the end of the day we have to have our passion in this
We have to have our love and our interests in here because that’s what typically brings people to either your table or your stories or reading your articles or your reading um your novels because they enjoy what you’ve put out so far and so you put put
Your stuff in there put your [ __ ] in there it’s cool you like it through everyone else they’ll come along yeah they’ll come along um all right well we have definitely given a good overview to start magical weapons there’s so much more I feel like we could definitely do a part two of
This episode but what what I want to do for the rest of this episode with your permission is uh Hey I want to go into um our inspiration but after that I want to brainstorm some ideas for a win because um first of all because it’s really fun
Brainstorming stuff and I know we both like it yeah um but also I’ve got a lot of good feedback over the last few weeks over our creating portions seems like people are having a good time and uh pardon me coming up with things that they really like for their own worlds
Just kicked off of one idea that you or I have so I want to make sure that we keep that as a part of the podcast but let’s do our inspiration first because that it always gets my mind going for the uh for the creation portion gotcha
Gotcha uh I’ve been talking a lot you want to hit your inspiration first for sure for sure um so mine this week uh barrier-free creation is is what’s inspiring me and I know that that sounds really heady and I tend to be a little bit more philosophical
And off in space than maybe I should be but for the first time I I feel like I have nearly no pushback when I start a project and uh and when I am in a project so like I just keep pushing ahead and whenever I hit
Um a snag whenever I hit something that would normally stop me for a few days you know if I’m in the middle of a drawing and I I misplace a line or something when I put the ink down doesn’t quite have the same personality it did when I was using pencil
Um then I would just stop for days and I just you know I’m sure a lot of people relate to that just crippling anxiety and fear and and just being upset and I’ve put a lot of effort into moving that anxiety moving that pain out of the way
Um sometime you know in the 2015-16 somewhere in there is when I when I noticed it and I started trying to find strategies um and shortly after uh this this podcast sprung up but um anyway I feel like I’ve made meaningful progress I’m looking around and I’ve realized that I’ve made
Meaningful progress and that I’ve been able to push through a bunch of really cool projects in the last couple of weeks that make me really happy and and I’ve literally for the first time in my life created things that are just for me and that’s really exciting where it’s
Like okay I can tuck that in my pocket and I don’t even care if I show anybody yeah yeah and it just feels really good I don’t know how many times I’ve done that in my life but um but honestly just just the uh the
Work that I’ve done to get here and the fact that I feel like is there’s almost no barrier has been really inspiring me and I think um I also sort of kicked off this episode that I think we’ve been talking about doing for next week which is uh five
Mistakes to uh avoid as a creative person um that has come about from that so definitely stay tuned for that I think that’s gonna be a really really helpful and I think it sums up just about everything I’ve done over the last you know however long it’s been since 2015
Eight years now my goodness um so my my plan of attack that have led me to a place where I feel like I’m creating barrier-free so um stay tuned for that that’s gonna be really good um so that’s what’s inspiring me this week um what about you Michael
Um man what’s been inspiring me again is uh music so when I we went up to uh North Carolina recently and um uh my friend Evan was showing us some John Williams music and the speakers that he had were just epic oh you could really hear everything going on
Um but I just really enjoyed listening because last night as I was prepping for for today’s podcast I was listening to John Williams music and it just it’s so amazing to hear like even the Jurassic Park theme song if you listen to it in its entirety you hear just like a single
Note just like boom and then it slowly starts building a little bit to where eventually you get the what what is it right but like that build to it is like we were listening to it and it was like it’s just like it’s the creation like he hits
He hits the song so well that it’s like the creation of the world you hear that single note and then you start adding a little bit more and then it gets a little split like fluttery like life is moving and figuring its itself out and
Then you get into the trend of the da da da da and it’s it the the whole thing is moving and it’s like the evolution of life as as we know it and it’s moving it’s growing it’s uh changing and so it just really hit me like music
Is just so instrumental to a lot of stories and if you’re not using music like how how could you use that music and how can it really change the tone of your DND session if you have one song that um and Evan’s really good at this at
Having a song play every time this character comes on so that they kind of have their own theme song like you would in a TV show um and I was always listening to that I just hear uh it was in a playlist with Jurassic Park and then you hear hedwig’s music And you’re like oh man I’m in the Clouds of Harry Potter like I can see and feel as much as I don’t remember about Harry Potter I’m there like I feel like I’m there like the music brings me back to it and just how important music is at
Least to to me in my life and how much passion I feel that music is everywhere in the world and can bring life to your world and can bring life to your story that’s why like plays and musicals and stuff like that are so uh can be so impactful
Because of of the story that it tells in the music and in the words and of the characters it’s been really inspired inspiring me obviously I’ve been listening to a lot more music trying to figure out points to put that in my DND session if not I’m I’m playing music
When I’m working out I’m playing music when I’m at work when I when I can and I’m playing music a lot of times in my life and I’m wondering how can I incorporate that in my DND sessions because I’m sure those characters would love to hear you know a theme song or
Have some type of theme or whatever well hopefully I mean also it’s it’s cool the last few weeks hearing how many different perspectives you’ve gleaned from the music you listen to um because there is sort of this there’s almost Limitless art that we have access to because of the internet
And it’s almost like Limitless inspiration we can glean from it too um so any art that you’re you’re out there pursuing um it’s great getting to hear these perspectives on art that you wouldn’t normally think of because that allows you to see through somebody else’s eyes into something that you maybe not value
Super much like if um if you go back and listen to a lot of the really early podcasts it’s like I don’t have didn’t have a lot of value in other types of art there was what I was looking looking at which was photography
At the time and I valued it a lot and then there was everything else in the world that I didn’t really care about and over the years I’ve widened my perspective because I’ve heard a lot of people’s inspiration that they’ve found in other walks of life and I think
That’s such a great thing and that’s why we’re going to continue to do the inspiration moment because uh um because it’s it’s also inspiring people to let us know what their Inspirations are which is super cool and uh and it turns out to be a really great conversation to have with
People you meet so um anyway that’s sort of an aside let’s move on back to the town of rowine a little Jungle Town at the foothills of a mountain full of furballs and rock-like folk there is all types of vegetation around even the homes are built into the trees and the
Rocks and there is very specific work going on such as Gathering rocks Gathering food children running around but also in an orderly fashion this is a very elder-centric type of society and uh and this is where we’re going to be diving in um this this rudimentary technology
We’re going to be diving in here to add our own magical weapons um so I’m gonna do a little bit of brainstorming um we also just as an aside we we dropped a reel both on our Instagram and on our YouTube to describe what our exponential creation method is and just
Give you a little bit of a definition anytime you want to reference that we use that term a lot and um just because we do use that term a lot we don’t Define it we don’t Define it every time we bring it up and it can
Be confusing to newer listeners so we we dropped that reel out there just so you have access to it but we’re gonna do some quick creating um to and so since we dropped it we’re talking about it exponential creation is just when we create we have two minds coming together
And we’re creating something that would take us um it would take us a lot longer to do on our own but the exponential part if you’re looking at a graph right we’re going back to school right we have our graph here how my creation process I’ll
Do it I’ll do it this way it makes more sense on the camera I’ll do it this way so my process is going to slowly come up this way typically that’s how my creation process goes but something that will take me like two or three hours this way if we
Have time coming this way in creation coming up this way is it’s going to exponentially go up just like an exponent if you’re looking at a graph you know it goes up right here with multiple Minds coming together we’re going to exponentially create that’s how we’ve been able to create things that
Happen in two that would take myself or or Henry two or three four hours to create we end up creating a plethora of ideas items worlds quests NPCs in about 20 to 30 minutes that exponential creation process is just a gathering of brainstorming session if you want to
Call it that of creation and really just Limitless um under Limitless questions we’re going to continue to ask questions and there’s no right or wrong answer we can say yes and a lot more to the exponential creation or wrap it and and go on and feelings aren’t hurt because we’re just
Trying to create the best thing that we can create so the reason for also giving it a different title than brainstorming or improv is with brainstorming um it’s it’s about and improv really it’s about presenting your best ideas and then like in all the groups I’ve ever been in
Doing that it’s like you present your best ideas and then the group evaluates whether they’re good enough or not and for how we do the exponential brainstorming method because the exponential method is is that we we don’t say no to any of the ideas it’s always yes and and it’s always good
Enough and we’re always moving it towards a place of more refinement if it is something that we don’t like then it’s like well I don’t quite feel like that fits you know it’s it’s always that yes and which is a big part of improv but what happens with improv
Is that you build into this scene and there is so much tension I feel like with improv I’ve done improv classes and that’s what I’m basing this on so I haven’t been around people that are like exceptional at it so I’m sure they’re out there and and they’re probably doing
A lot like what we’re doing but um there’s always this pressure that comes out to where it’s like well we have to stick within the scene and we have to um build within a pre-established world like the first person says we’re in a supermarket the rest of the story takes
Takes place there and so for us we’re building whatever we can as fast as we can um so it’s sort of like spaceship in The Lego Movie you just as soon as whatever is around he’s gonna build into a spaceship but instead of that it’s like
We don’t have the end goal being the spaceship but we are going to add as many pieces onto our story as fast as we can and so that just lets your brain go wherever it’s gonna go and it allows it to add on as fast as possible so that’s that’s
Enough on that probably so in ruin as we prepped it already what is uh what is the first magical item that you think of when we talk about rowing what what is something that they would need there or what’s something that maybe life there would would prompt
Um man the first thing so we take creation from so many different places right so what I was listening to stuff on the way here to work and I was listening to um six nightly orders you could add into your campaign from a YouTuber like I can’t Church of Doom I think I’ve
Referenced him before um and so I was listening to it and I just thought something was so cool that we could add into rowing because there’s this order of knights what’s to say they’re the hunters right they have um some armor that they grab from some of the animals around the jungle and
Like it’s maybe the the animals are like a magical item or or they have like magical abilities I think of like a displacer cloak or displacer beast has this magical ability and can be created into a cloak for DND but what if we add some more Pizzazz to it what if it’s
This armor of displacement and on the armor it makes them harder to hit technically so they’re safer in the wild when they’re going out and protecting the village or going out on hunts but the the breastplate is very much the legacy of the family that it comes with
Or or that create or that was able to get this magical item or create this magical item and they let’s say they have like hand prints or paw prints of the kills along their their chest plate or um even on the back and stuff like claw
Marks or something that is like they dip the hand in Blood and they imprint it on their chest and it becomes this more more than just oh you got this displacer glow it is you got this breastplate that has you know seven kills of you know the the Jaguars around
Here or the displacer Beast around here or and you you’ve won in five like to the death fights or whatever um that was an idea that just came to my mind as I was listening to it um very much from the idea from from that guy’s order
Um but I just thought it was it’s almost like a like a family crest and and your status printed on your on your armor and it’s also something that shows that you’re a part of a fraternal organization almost like this is the elite group of hunters yeah it’s very
Much like a rite of passage and I think that’s something that in DND games I feel like I’ve seen to people tend to forget like there are Rites of Passage and even Even in our world today like there there’s a lot of Rights um for The Next Step Up in adulthood or
The next step up in your your job I guess you would look as a promotion but sometimes I get stagnant um so this is like that that next level of you’ve gone out with them but now this is your kill you’ve created it you spent the time doing whatever you needed
To do to turn it into armor and now you have the prince and you’re starting to gather um clout for your family I guess yeah that’s awesome oh that’s easy you do all this I love it I love it and that that’s where I I’m really taking like magic
Items to mean something more because really what you could do if if you’re having a hard time with magic items and you’re like man how did Michael just like come up with something like that I repurposed something that I heard from someone else and I added it to our world
It’s all about repurposing because there are so many ideas there are so many magical items that can be used um in books like I’ve referenced Aragon a lot I was gonna reference more of Aragon’s magical items that he gets along the way but you know I only only reference two he has more
Um in DND you can look up magical items and there is a boatload of them and a lot of them don’t get the love that they should because there are other things like cloak of invisibility plus three sword Helm of telepathy or Helm of teleportation just to name a few and that already
Changes your world just having those items in your world or how can you create something that’s a little bit less powerful a little bit more powerful um and create some lore behind it what makes sense for your world to have we we just now created this these Hunters now
That are part of our world and there’s now there’s an elite class now we have our special forces Hunters you know yeah that are harder to hit and if anything goes wrong you know we talked about adventurers coming into the city maybe this is one of the groups that comes up
To them and talks to them now and they that’s the thing that stands out is there’s all these blood handprints or paw prints along the markings and everyone else is like oh we Revere these guys we respect these guys because they are our protectors and it’s intimidating to come up with these
Black cloaks a black uh armor pieces with blood all over you like your first impression is barbarism right like yeah where am I right now this is this is scary um I think since we’re talking about like legendary magical items and really building that up and we and we talked
About the the history and all that stuff um let’s dive into this this breastplate um and let’s try to add some history let’s try to add some um I mean I know we talked about like this is their family crest but is this something that they do pass down is this
A practice like you said it it’s something that um is a rite of passage but maybe that rite of passage is something that repeats like what happens when they run out of space on the on the on the crest you know things like that yeah um let’s
Add some some history some like who is the the guy that started this or like who is the guy that has the most clout from these chess pieces and why um that’s a lot of questions yeah that is a lot of questions I’m just trying to
Get the get your brain rolling and maybe I overwhelmed it with too many questions there yeah as far as like I think again it really depends on the world that you’re trying to create right so what if you don’t pass this down this is very much a rite of passage this is your
Breastplate forever until you die you get buried with it like that is so is the ritual something where okay you you become like ready for the right okay um so you go hunt by yourself um and then is so let’s say you do hunt by yourself so you go out
Um alone for the first time ever you’re young um you’re in the jungle you know it’s a formidable place this is some place you’ve grown up around but never really delved into other than with a group and you’re going out looking for specifically we talked about jaguars a
Lot when we’ve talked about the jungle it’s it’s a it’s a staple of of real jungles but it’s also something that is uh it’s just a cool element in in DND where they they sort of morph cats into a lot of different animals and sort of
Like the base was a cat probably or at least how they feel and so you can get some really interesting sort of feline features into a monster um but for now let’s just say it’s a Jaguar so you’re you’re going out there and they’re like super-sized Jungle Cats
Um that are probably bigger than furballs because that’s our that’s our Base Class they’re pretty small um humanoids and so uh you’ve got a furvog out there in The Jungle by themselves looking for this massive of predator and uh so it’s it’s gonna be a really intimidating solo West and they
Also have this armor that is untested right yeah yeah and so it’s the first time let’s say maybe that the the family puts this armor together or or is it something that comes from their first kill like maybe they don’t even have the armor yet so what I’m
Thinking now as we as we talk about it like it’s still armor and um again taking inspiration from someone else I’m watching Finland Saga there’s a character who it stands out he has like a almost like a vest kind of armor piece that is something that is created we’ll
Say in rowing that is created and you go out it with that armor in hopes that this is the armor that will be your armor for the rest of your life you know it should be able to like you know grow with you um but whenever you get that kill you
Add like the Pelt to it you know like around it so it’s almost like that fur that’s along the armor yeah it’s kind of decorated with it but with leaving enough space for you to put those handprints those paw prints and and everything else on it so the armor
That the family creates that’s something that is created because I was like how do you make armor out of a pelt doesn’t really work but I think that solves our issue is it’s like imbued with the kill that you get like almost the the right
Of the family is is how nice your armor is or like how how prestigious the family is and then you have like say three people are are performing the right at the same time or if there’s one particular Beast that has been plaguing this Village
Um then you send one out at a time to try to kill this specific animal but um you know I just have this very specific mental image of you know these three young looking Warriors um surrounded by you know their Village all their families and everything that are
Cheering them on as they leave the village but also the other Warriors that have this very um they matured armor where it already has the prints on it already has the different Furs on it and so there’s being so blank as a is a very Stark image saying like Okay well they don’t
Know what they’re doing yeah exactly almost immediately um so they go out they kill this Beast um there’s got to be some sort of like harvesting process and and maybe they they sew on the Pelt themselves um and that that is almost something like they’ve been taking classes that
Lead up to this for months because they have to learn how to sew they have to learn how to harvest an animal right now that’s that’s just a part of the culture is that everyone has to learn how to do it because you never know like when
You’re gonna be called up to defend the city and or go out on a hunt or let’s say a family member gets taken by a rogue Jaguar it’s like oh no like someone’s got to throw on the armor and just go and then if you get the kill
It’s like oh you just you elevated your Precision maybe maybe this is how like people who are like lower class here or R looks down upon they this is their chance like to elevate their status as a family to become one of the legendary Warriors and get included into this uh I
Don’t want to say fraternity but this kind of uh Brotherhood or or select group um so like I like that because it adds that extra layer of a honor which is a big thing of nights and uh and it’d be it gives people trying to say it gives them something to
Look forward to and it also adds this level of maybe they’re not prepared like that adds so many other stories of like okay well I’m gonna take up my family’s armor and it’s not just my family but it’s also a visual element that denotes My Tribe like I’m putting on
Everything to do with my people everything to do with my family and so that’s a lot of pressure which is what a great magical item does it’s like like the sword of Aragorn has I mean how much of those movies was him saying he didn’t want it yeah yeah you know
Um it it is a burden and it is a difficulty that you have to take on in order to progress the story and so that’s that’s a beautiful thing I think we’ve we’ve rounded out the history enough I won’t say that it’s that it’s a lot of details that we added
Um in terms of like could we write down five paragraphs on exactly how this began maybe not in super specific specific terms but I think we added enough that says that this magical item would be an honor say if we had young people playing through you know like if
Your character was a young person in this Village and they were playing through and then they had the opportunity to put on the armor I think it would be enough at this point to say okay that’s an honor and a privilege and and you better not mess it up right yeah
For sure for sure all right so that was my suggestion um what do you got Henry uh I’m gonna try to make make mine quick I feel like we’re getting close to an hour here yeah and uh so I’m gonna I’m gonna choose my favorite one um which is the Wayfarers blade
Um so I tried to give it a name just to uh to zest it up when when I was thinking about this this episode ahead of time so um basically the first thing I thought of was my favorite character has been this this little kid yeah we did the
Quest with uh is Emeritus um yeah the little kid you you meet as soon as you walk into the village so if you want to check out that Quest episode it’s a great one you’ll enjoy it Meritus is one of the people we meet and um the Wayfarer is blade I just really
Love this kids culture that we have brewing in this Village and uh so in my mind it’s it’s a stone uh pocket knife basically just this little hunting knife that maybe there’s I don’t know you know some I’m really dogging on cats right now uh pun intended um maybe there’s some small uh
Rodent-like creature that the kids kill as their own like mini rite of passage and uh and there is this knife that’s been passed down to the leader of the children’s Council um for lack of a better name um and in their in their culture they have this big moment of passing down the
Knife like one kid ages out into the world of adulthood and jobs and they pass down this knife and um they have a whole ceremony around it and they also say that it is imbued with bravery yeah or or some like you know this this uh the heart of a warrior maybe
Um is has been imbued in this like um maybe they killed some um you know some rodent that they built up to this mythical status and uh and they said well it’s got the heart of that that beast in it and so it doesn’t really in my mind this is not a magical
Item it’s just like a kid’s magic once again where it’s like they have once they pass it down then the kid’s like I’m brave now and I think like it doesn’t have magic but I think you could really like spin it in a DND setting or a tabletop role-playing game setting
Like maybe it has like a plus one or plus two to Charisma and that’s it like it’s not a magical weapon as far as like attacks do it doesn’t give you any bonuses to attack but it gives your your young character a bonus to their Charisma or bravery or whatever it is so
Whenever they’re making you know checks and stuff with it they have this they look down at their their stone or maybe it maybe it has like charges and like once per day it can give you like an additional bonus to your your bravery or Charisma checks or something like that
Like it almost immediately calls to mind like this idea of like your character is leading this group of kids and then you get to increasingly scary places in town and then you have to like roll to make sure you have enough Charisma to encourage them on you
Know what I mean like exactly these fun little moments anyway yeah so that was my idea for that and I I felt like the the history in it or like the the gravitas behind it is is just that this is something that is probably is really old you know it’s probably like
You know some some old whittler or something ages ago uh made this and gave it to one of the kids and they’re the ones that started the kids Council like it’s almost like nobody knows because it’s been around forever yeah um but it’s like this fraternal um item that every Everybody in the
Village knows exactly what that is and it’s like you know they can’t help but smile anytime somebody brings it up it’s like oh you have you have the the Wayfarers blade oh yeah that’s great and like everybody knows too like all the adults are like oh you have the
Wayfarers blade okay so they know who like is the one in charge of all the other kids I think it’s just that’s that’s really cool and they have like things to bring to that kid saying okay well this is something I need you guys
To take care of like I know it’s a kids task so I’m gonna delegate to him and he’s gonna be the one that passed it down you know it’s like uh yeah I think that’s that’s that was what popped in my head for doing this um I think there’s there’s oh know how
Many more you wanted to do I at least want to do one more we’re we’re rocking pretty close to an hour so I say let’s do one more and then we’ll we’ll wrap it out all right sounds good so uh this last one I was thinking of I I put down
A bracelet that bonds two people together and I threw this idea out to uh Molly Anne last night and she was like oh what if it’s like some type of like cursed item like in the dragon Prince if you’ve ever seen Dragon Prince um the the shadow elves have this
Bracelet around them and they have to complete a task or else the bracelet it continues to close and will cut their hand off eventually um if they do not complete the task or if they refuse to do the test so once they’ve been ordered to do this they go
And do the task so that’s not necessarily what I want this item to be but what if we have an item that is created that accidentally has this root right we’ve talked about this rowing there’s this Vine that kind of goes through it and it’s a bracelet that maybe these two characters created
Um or carved out and they have like this Vine that kind of goes around their wrist and they don’t know it’s curse but they can feel maybe the pain of each other so whenever one’s in danger like maybe a little maybe it glows like hot or feels
Hot uh maybe it feels cold if they’re scared if they’re in pain maybe it shoots pain through their body like this kind of cursed item that is like this fun like oh we have matching bracelets because you know in middle school and stuff like you want to match with people
Like you want to have the same hats or the same shirt or whatever you want to be twinsies with somebody this is an example of them being twinsies and it’s like oh but there was a dark cost that they didn’t know about whenever they created it but because they’re like oh
Nothing will happen it’s it’s from the vine and the vine treats us well and of course we know now in our in our mythology of rowing right now the dead God is waking up um and so the the energy that emanates from it is not necessarily a good energy
And we’ve seen some examples of the the vine is taking kids right and sucking the essence from them maybe this is also doing the same thing now that they’ve rated from the same piece their Essence like it’s traveling back and forth to each other I don’t know like there’s
There’s definitely ways that you can go about it but I think it’s an interesting different random magical item right not a ring not a sword not a shield um I think there’s a really cool component to that of like you know that they talk about now that they found
Fungus that are like almost 10 miles wide and like the networks and actual jungles and forests of like electrical networks between roots and other plants is like miles and miles and miles sometimes you know they think maybe up to the whole Forest uh is connected in
Some way and I like the idea that it’s almost like the plants sort of grow in towards that person as they’re walking through and it’s like they’re calling the vine back into their circulation but at the same time um these people like you said are transferring their their Consciousness
Back and forth which is cool but there’s almost this element that is like as the deity awakes you know if those two characters separate far enough then they’re going to try to pit them against each other and say like this one over here is in danger come back into the cave oh yeah
Yeah you know and it’s like we’re starting to send wrong signals back and forth this is something that they’ve trusted because it’s brought them safety and it’s a it’s a it’s a uh item that they have and so they think it serves them but it doesn’t right yeah so
There’s like things like that that you can you can build into this item too and I like the idea that you sell like the the forest and the plants kind of like grow into it almost like Whispers and kind of like helps them so what if you know adding the magical magical items
Should add something to your character so what if they have like a plus something to their survival or they have you know advantage on their survival checks or something like that if we’re again we’re talking with plants you know yeah exactly like can I or maybe it’s
Like a commune with the plants but you still have to like roll a percentage die to see how the plants are going to react to you based off the percentage die would be how is how active is the dead God right now and how willing are the
Plants going to be able to answer your question so again a lot of just like creative things that you can come up with right there and so we came up with three right there right increase movement even in the jungle yeah it’s difficult difficult terrain doesn’t stop
You and the plants move around but maybe maybe it’s like this kind of uh idea that you can control the plant so maybe you can create difficult terrain to other people so if you’re running you’re getting attacked by the Jaguar you create difficult terrain for it and
You’re still like running and maybe a tree can open up and hide you in it you know like there’s so many cool different ways that you can make it work um so yeah so there there it is like we created a little long-winded on some of
Them but I mean that that’s our creation process for three dope magic items in rowing we have the I call it the rowanian breastplate uh the the bracelet and uh wayfarer’s blade you know three not game breaking items and I think that’s also important when we talk about
Magical items which maybe we’ll have another podcast about this is how to balance your magical items throughout the entirety of like a DND campaign specific but we’re talking about kids right here for two of our magic items and those just give you like little bonuses little this maybe maybe the uh
The bracelet does a little much we but that’s where you uh can cut and edit and really refine that to where it does one thing and that’s it’s really good at that it creates difficult terrain which is could be op um I I recently discovered that that is op yeah
And a recent d d game but I mean that’s something that you know maybe it’s only like a 10 foot sphere that’s uh or 10 foot plot of land that’s difficult to rain and that can either like upgrade with how the the kids are getting older the Wayfarers light is just a kid’s
Blade you know and that’s it and that’s the difficulty level that we’re set at is you know a level one child or whatever and then the rowanian breastplate like it has has the ability of a to play displacer cloak so that can be helpful in any type of situation when you’re talking about
DND um and again like I said maybe we can go into that a little bit more in a later episode but magic items can grow they’re they’re obviously at different levels for where your story is at again read fantasy books because those are going to be able to see
You’re going to be able to see how they do magic items especially in series to where it’s not uh I can say game breaking but world breaking and you can see looking through that lens that magic items are slowly placed into like again Aragon they’re slowly placed and
They slowly give him more power but it’s meets him at the level that he’s at you know yeah no I think those are all good tips and I think uh this is a good uh lesson one on magic items and like I said we can get more into the weeds of of
Details and how they scale and things like that um what their stats are and things like that uh in a later episode um and we also made like eight weapons each um just as like a catchphrase line uh if you’re really jazzed about our magical items there’s five we didn’t even talk
About if you want the rest of those just for your own reference check us out on Instagram or YouTube uh creative thinker podcast crtv space ehn KR thank you guys so much for hanging out wherever you are in the globe we hope you have a great rest of your day here bye
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