The Forgotten Magic Items

I realized I should go back and edit a bit of my dungeon creation advice to new DMs or those trying old school style play from newer school style games in TS&R. I should make it clear that there are a whole bunch of magic items, and a few spells, that exist in old school games but not in newer games. Why were they dropped? Because they're really made for helping to explore dungeons, especially megadungeons. And while Gary and Dave knew that they were useful for that, younger designers seem to have not realized their importance. 

I don't blame these younger game designers. When I was a kid, we all thought these powers were lame. We wanted intelligent swords that could heal or teleport you, or wands that cast fireballs and illusions. We didn't realize just how useful these items are! 

If you haven't already guessed, I'm talking about items like the wands of enemy/metal/trap detection, or intelligent sword powers like the above, mineral detection, shifting wall or sloping passage detection, etc. As kids, these seemed like the lamest things. I don't know why, exactly, we never considered that "mineral" detection meant gems*. We'd make jokes about swords that could help you point out the location of the nearest gypsum or limestone. Of course, there could be times when having some non-gem minerals could be handy, too. But as kids, that just seemed lame to us. 

And a potion of treasure finding? Well, the treasure was down there, you just had to keep looking around! Of course, starting with Mentzer and not 1E AD&D, we didn't often hide the treasure in our dungeons. If you beat the monsters, the treasure was there, waiting, like in a video game. Well, not really, it was there all along, just sitting in piles on the floor or in chests, but not hidden behind loose bricks of the fireplace or under twenty barrels of rotten apples. There were some examples of this sort of hidden treasure in Mentzer's sample dungeon Castle Mistamere, but the advice on dungeon creation in the back of the Basic DM Guide didn't really go into that. 

When treasure is hidden or concealed, powers like detect metal or detect minerals or a potion of treasure finding can help find it. Obviously, the powers to detect secret doors or traps help you get to the treasure. But the DM needs to be taught to hide some of that treasure. 

Another reason that my friends and I scoffed at these powers, I think, was that we didn't make megadungeons often. A lot of our dungeons were fairly small. Mentzer's dungeon creation advice, which I just re-read recently, does talk about making dungeons with many levels, but most of the advice seems to be about what I'm terming scenario dungeons. Frank starts you off with a premise for the dungeon, such as "exploring the unknown" or "rescuing prisoners" which for me got me thinking dungeons were sites for a specific adventure or two, and then done.

And even when we did from time to time make a bigger dungeon with multiple levels or a sprawling layout, they weren't campaign tentpole affairs. A lot of the typical powers of intelligent swords are designed to make megadungeon exploration easier (and save on magic-user and cleric spell slots), and repeat trips to the dungeon can make best use of these abilities, by careful mapping, triangulation, and trial-and-error use. 

So, I'm going to edit my advice for GMs new to old school play and make all this explicit...but not as wordy as this blog post. This is to help me get my ideas sorted out before I edit the GM Guidebook draft. I'll explain the purpose of these powers, and that they're only really useful if the GM designs the dungeon in a way that makes them useful, similar to thief skills. 

*In TS&R, I changed the name of this to "Detect Gems" to make it clear.