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Here's a fun house rule I came up with a few years back that I'd like to share. It's upside is an increased sense of campaign depth for players at a low cost to DMs, while it's downside comes in the form of longer prep time before games.
You will need to buy some lined notecards and cheap folders, if you don't already have them.
1. Pre-roll all the treasure your players can possibly find during the next game session. Take your time, be descriptive, and don't overlook opportunities to be sneaky (such as cursed items or items disguised to look like more common magic items).
2. Each loot item gets it's own notecard which describes it in 1-3 sentences or bullet points. If an item is magical, proceed to step 3. For nonmagical items (art objects, quest-related items, etc.), continue to step 4.
3. Magic items should have their magical qualities/enchantment bonuses written on the opposite side of the card, which is then folded in half and scotch-taped shut. It is to be opened by your players after they manage to appraise/identify it.
3.5. Magic items requiring a more powerful identification (Analyze Dweomer, for instance) will say something to the effect of "Further qualities of this item are evident, but continue to allude you".
4. Make yourself a "master sheet" detailing the cards, if you'll need to remember better which item is which (later in the campaign) and enact the rule that "if you lose your card, your character lost his sword" (if you're a jerk DM, like me). Hand out cheap folders for your players to store their character sheets and treasure cards in.
That seems complicated, but it really isn't. It may get tedious though, especially at higher levels. Here's an example:
Folded:
Potion/Oil (Aura strength/school)
• Yellow-brown colored liquid in a stoppered glass vial, found wrapped in a dark red handkerchief
• An unbroken red wax seal over half the cork reveals it has not been tampered with
• Tastes awful and smells like sulfur (Appraise DC)
• (Weight)
Unfolded:
Potion of Fire Resistance
• (Cost)
By keeping a "master sheet" (mentioned above the example) you can later avoid writing new cards for duplicate treasures located by your players.
It's a fun rule, so I hope I wrote it concisely enough. Feel free to comment, or better yet take the rule for a test drive and share your experience using it.
This can be fun for players in a place where things can be planned for more, especially college games, but very often there can be problems with players being able to get to games with all their character sheets, books and whatnot, and an extra pile of papers to misplace? Not as good. I've often had a player come in after a family dinner or some other social calendar conflict, and this would cause extra headache, especially since a number of them keep everything on their laptops.
These tend to work better as prop cards for LARPS.
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This can be fun for players in a place where things can be planned for more, especially college games, but very often there can be problems with players being able to get to games with all their character sheets, books and whatnot, and an extra pile of papers to misplace? Not as good. I've often had a player come in after a family dinner or some other social calendar conflict, and this would cause extra headache, especially since a number of them keep everything on their laptops.
These tend to work better as prop cards for LARPS.
Most games I've played or run, the DM keeps all character sheets. This can help if a character sheet needs to be referenced by the DM during game downtime as well. Further, it prevents stuff from getting lost.
My players come with dice and a mini, if they're picky. That's all really.
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Maybe I am just lucky, but never had a game where someone shows up and doesn't have their character sheets and stuff with them. It sort of makes it hard to play the game at all if you don't bring the basics. In fact why bother showing up?
In the last three years I have played with four different groups and this would have worked fantastically for all of my groups.
So any chance you could share your master list of items? If so, my email is oclrk86@gmail.com :) please.... :)
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In the last three years I have played with four different groups and this would have worked fantastically for all of my groups.
So any chance you could share your master list of items?
I actually don't have a master list. It was an afterthought once the game had ended. (If I did it all over, what would make the process easier?)
To explain what I meant though (because I think you're under the impression it would contain descriptions, when it is intended to be more of a bookkeeping tool). It's format could look something like this:
(date of game) (notecard number) (item) (location found) ...and any other info you want to include.
Perhaps a better variation of this method would be handing out notecards containing only descriptions on them, and having the master list include the identify/appraise/analyze info.
You'll find that when items are well described, players are more likely to question them and less reluctant to part with them. The lines between quest-related items and art objects start to blur. Would you keep or sell a handful of coins? ...what about a set of ancient, foreign coins stored in a carved wooden box? ...or a set of seemingly worthless wooden coins stored in an ornate, jeweled box?
I use the GameMastery item cards, but this is roughtly what I try to do with them. You know, the players find loot, I put a bunch of unlabeled cards out. As they manage to identify the items (if they manage to identify the items), I tell them what the item is from a master list I maintain.
As it stands now, my party have a half dozen potions they haven't identified yet.
Once I note who has each card (and therefore who has each item), I take the cards back and put them in a binder for cards possessed by the party. (I don't have enough cards yet to trust my players to hold onto cards between games.)
I have a couple players in my game that keep their character sheets and one recently lost his. I would prefer that they all left their sheets with me but only about 2/3 of them do.