Today's edition of #WestMarchesWednesday is about Discovering Ancient Secrets!
One of the "three pillars of D&D" is exploration. And one of the most interesting bits of exploration is getting to discover stuff- secrets that have been hidden away, lore lost for centuries, particular rituals or secrets that give an edge. If you're building a world (or a sandbox), having things to discover scattered through world is a great way to build investment by players. Finding a broken piece of a staff that can act like a wand is kinda interesting, but forgettable. It can come off just like it's interesting flavour for a magic item. But when you find a second piece that joins the first, and enhances both of their powers, people start getting excited for the third section! Similarly, finding pieces of a secret journal or spellbook, fragments of a forbidden spell, or pieces of meteoric metal to forge weapons from make people see possibilities, not just everyday treasure. You can even build in actual puzzles or physical props to these hidden secrets, to give people with good physical/mechanical intuition a thing to fiddle with. You just need to be careful not to overload them, make them too simple (or too hard!), or have ways of having the puzzles be repeatable. Think of Skyrim's puzzle doors- something that triggers the "I know how to use these, we just need to find the mural that gives it away over here somewhere". Ideas I have that I'm planning on using in my sandbox are:
If you can think of anything else to add, or some fun ways these could be developed, feel free to let me know in the comments! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 15 January 2019. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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