There Is Only One That Matters

Creating worlds and campaigns for tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons is hard. A quick look at the Dungeon Master’s Guide and we’re overwhelmed with more than 400 magic items. The Monster Manual dumps over 500 monsters on us. How do these things fit into our campaign? Where do we start? We start with the only one that matters.

The formula for this trick is simple:

1. Find the cool thing.
2. Make it the only one.

When a magic sword is the only magic sword, it instantly becomes interesting. The same goes for a dragon or beholder. Players are hooked, disbelief is suspended, and the fantasy is set. Focusing our energy into a single sword or dragon makes our job as game masters easier. The limitation drives creativity and gives us direction.

The same trick works for player characters. The party’s wizard isn’t just a wizard. She’s the wizard. The party’s dwarf isn’t just a dwarf. He’s the dwarf. Instantly, the characters are at the center of the story. They stand out. But why aren’t there other wizards or dwarves? There’s our first question to answer (or ignore). It could even be a mystery until the party figures it out.

This method might seem limiting on the surface but it’s not. It’s flexible. We might choose to only have one magic item in the campaign (or one per player). We might choose one magic item per type (one sword, one piece of armor, etc). We might say there’s only one dragon. Or we might say there’s only one red dragon. The choice for where to draw the line is ours.

The secret is that these artifacts don’t need to be the only one. They just need to be the only one that matters. If we’re encountering a green hag at level 3, we shouldn’t save the cool stuff for a night hag at level 5. The green hag is the hag. Other hags, dragons, and magical swords can be tales for another campaign.

This trick works for nearly everything we come across in our games. We can use it for magic items, monsters, NPCs, species, classes, backgrounds, and more. When we make each artifact the only one (that matters), we hook the players and simplify our jobs.

Game on.