I miss magic items

From: Todd Gardiner <todd.gardiner_at_W02xEgeWlAt3GKt8eJcRhK6K7uQ3nQHTrDvVcO2syY5X8njJ93ed3bqPhixkit>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:29:15 -0800

I always felt like I had brought back something wonderful for my clan when I did a Heroquest in King of Dragon Pass (PC game) and returned with a Bag of Winds or a Magic Cow. Long gone are the days in which you use Crystals to store temporary POW, or used Slave Bracelets on a captured rune priest foe so you could hold them long enough to claim a ransom. And using the RQ3 rules to make a matrix or other enchantment allowed personalization of magic items and created ways for GMs to define the horde in the Sun Dome's inner sanctum.

I'm half way through reading Sartar, but it seems that all of the magic is based on:
Common Magic (everyone starts with a few spells, charms or innate magic abilities)
Rune Affinity Magic (using your initiation to a god to express your magic) Feats (Heroforming your god, sub-cult or hero to gain a suite of abilities)

The creation rules allow you to define items that grant abilities, but there is little in the book to describe objects that have magic. Heroquesting no longer brings useful tools from the God Plane, as far as I have read, anyway. Ritual tools and clan treasures have switched to becoming implements for achieving the correct rituals, rather than being tools in their own right. It has become a great challenge to define the context in which plausibility tests can be made regarding magic items.

Is this because of the new Thing-You-Know, Thing-You-Have, Thing-You-Are structure for magic, the rough definition of the Three Worlds expressed in the Material world as magic?

--Todd

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