Through 2024, I'm writing an encounter / event prompt every day. I like 365 projects, last year I took part in #Dungeon23 and created Langwick, which I'm mentioned here before.
As well as creating a prompt per day for each of seven terrains; forest, grassland, hills, mountains, swamp, urban and water, I've entirely failed to stay with the scope I set and I've also been making dungeon prompts, magic items and wizards, one of each per week.
Art by Roque Romero, get more of it here: https://roque-romero.itch.io/old-school-revisited
I have found creating magic items to be the best fun. It's worth sharing a little background to the process so you can see how it works:
There are thirteen categories (because I'm using a deck of cards) such as armour, boots, cloak, etc. which gives some direction to the what the item might do.
I made the assumption (based on the world Treasured Possessions / Langwick, etc. are set in) that all magic items are created with and powered by spirits bound within them. I could go on for far too long about why this is the case or the implications for spirits, wizards and so, but I'll resist the urge for now.
The process for creating spirits in the game generates two abilities, and I can use these to give more of a clue for what the item might do. The table below shows the types of item and the two lists of powers. The misc. category is for odd things, maybe a boat or a magical oven?
To generate the object then, we draw three cards and figure out what it might do. The easiest way to illustrate it is with an example:
The first card is the eight of hearts, so the item is headwear. That could be a hat, a helmet, a circlet, a wig, a flower, whatever. I often find that the power of the item can help to define what it is (and what it looks like).
The second and third cards are the six of hearts and the two of hearts (it's all hearts!), so the two powers the spirit (let's call them Robal) has are to alter heat / cold and to instil thoughts.
Now we need to put all of that together, let's think, headwear, heat/cold and creating thoughts. Here are three options...
#1 The Circlet of Amour can cause a target being to feel positive, loving thoughts towards the wearer while experiencing a flush of heat.
#2 The cursed Cap of Dehydration heats the air around the wearer so they sweat profusely while causing them to feel as though they have had enough to drink, are fine and don't need or want any more liquids.
#3 The Helm of Freezing Fear chills a target being while creating the idea that they are terrified of the wearer.
I like the first one because it fits with all the cards being hearts, but any of them could be fun to discover and figure out. The second one would be particularly dangerous in a solo game because there's no-one to reason with you or try to take the cap off (if they even realise it's the cause).
From here, you can write a physical description if you'd like and maybe think about whether it has a number of uses and how you might recharge it if that's possible. For example, the Helm of Freezing Fear is recharged by wearing it while telling a truly new joke to a stranger that makes them laugh heartily.
Because magic items are powered by spirits trapped in them, wizards can be found trying to locate and capture spirits to create objects of power. In Treasured Possessions, the characters are spirits possessing living beings, so wizards can be troublesome. No-one wants to spend forever trapped inside a knife. One source of adventure for players is to release a sprit from an item, but first they'll need to figure out how to do that...