Mad Gaming Madness

This item is one I've used in games for almost twenty years. I remember an illustration of a magic-worker surrounded by streamers of incense, gazing intently into a mirror that was part of a box; I think I saw it in one of those 80s encyclopedias of the Occult which used to clutter the shelves of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton back in the day. In any case, the image stayed with me and I used it as inspiration for a fortune-teller my players visited in a marketplace. Since I portrayed a lot of fortune-tellers as shifty con-artists, a couple of players decided it was the box itself that was magical. I came up with the details of the potential magic item, but never needed it as more profitable larcenies occupied the group.

I was sick last week, so there were no updates. That gave me time to do a little work on some conversions I'd planned of classic characters from previous editions of D&D. Part of the fun of a new edition is converting favorite characters and seeing how they turn out. With the new edition's focus on simplicity, for a lot of characters I find the proper way to do a conversion that captures the spirit of the character is to start from scratch. That seemed to work pretty well with the classic characters I've converted: Aleena (from the Mentzer Basic Dungeons & Dragons book of 1983), Morgan Ironwolf (from the Moldvay Basic Dungeons & Dragons book of 1981), and Gutboy Barrelhouse (from the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide of 1979).