Be charmed by Rustfoot's magic

Rustfoot by Jens Thuresson is a delightful blog filled with novel components that you can air drop into any fantasy campaign. Written from the point of view of a wizard who travelled your world documenting places, deities, magical items and so on into a single book. Beautifully written with a humorous (often dark) lilt, the posts will entrall and entertain you. It has become my default bed-time reading, relegating the tower of books to a passable alternative.

Do you believe in magic?

Magic items in games tend to follow a pretty typical methodology thus:

1. Take a real world item.
2. Put 'magical' in front of it.
3. Describe it using a few words.
4. Add a game bonus.

Although this is functional and facilitates the creation of a huge array of magical items, you tend to end up with a lot that look like:

Magical Sword, +2 damage, forged in the flames of mount Sliceanddice.

Which, in the mind of the reductivist turns into:

Sword +2 damage.

All the majesty and cool is bled away in the heat of the moment when you just have to consider the scale of damage you are inflicting on the Ork, Globin or hapless bystander. Further restrictions or rules do help the magical item to retain some of its intrigue but that is often sadly lost. It is, after all, just another +Something Magical Doohicky.

Although most obvious in magic items, I think this problem exists throughout the fantasy genre. A village on a stream becomes just another village. A fireball spell just another lobbed ball of burning death.

Enter Rustfoot

Jens has a talent for writing, crafting fresh never-seen-before ideas as well as turning existing tropes on their heads. Even the hardened roleplayer who has games printed on papyrus and who has been roleplaying since before Gygax's place of birth had geologically disconnected from mainland Europe, would be hard pushed to say they've seen this all before.

The presentation of each item is not a cold stat-block but a delicious description through the eyes of Rustfoot. You can't help but be drawn in. The sketches included are reminiscent of the naturalists who explored the expanse of the Pacific - they do not need to be beautifully rendered by a professional, it wouldn't look like Rustfoot had created them.

Blogging drawback

Update: has added a contents page now. Superb! Thanks, Jens.. Being a blog, there isn't an index so it is difficult to browse the content. I've defended the same constructive criticism levelled at me, which is why I created the RPG Directory. Rather than labour the point, I've made a quick one below of the items Rustfoot has scribed so far.

• Adventures
  • Tomb in Horsehead
  • Another Tomb in Horsehead
  • Old quarrels never rust
• Deities
  • Butlerhood of Jeeves
• Magic Items
  • Ring of Postponement
  • Gemstones of Absorbtion
  • Old nanna's yarn
  • Short rope
  • Bag of spending
  • Playful door handle
  • The Great Laughing Stones
  • Faithful cart
• Maps
  • The almost secret tower of Leasspell
  • Void Plateau
  • Cult of Leithris
• Monsters
  • Gullflower
  • Spellbook parasites
  • Sinker
• Spells
  • Cloud of hunger
  • Consume Key
  • Embrace
  • Lie
  • Chug

Conclusions

Unique, novel and bound in charm with every post. I wanted to outline a favourite but I really couldn't. The magic items and spells are the most delightful and perhaps most useful to the fantasy GM. They say familiarity breeds contempt. Wrong-foot your complacent players by breathing some of Rustfoots splendid discoveries into your game.

Jens, thank you for sharing and let me be the first to demand a PDF book if it!