Hi, I'm Jackson Dean Chase, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Mage Gate Games. The first thing my Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Baba Azizi Tucker, and I set out to do when we started the company was to tackle the problem of "magic item churn" in 5e...

How many times as a GM have you given your players generic magic items, only for them to sell or give them away when something better came along? And how many times as a player have you done this? I'm guessing a lot!

It's not a desirable situation because it cheapens magic in the game. It makes magic less special. Worse, it makes magic items disposable. Even in a high fantasy game, that's not a good thing. You don't see Elric giving away Stormbringer, or Frodo selling the One Ring to the highest bidder. But in RPGs, you see that all the time...

We solved this problem in our 250 Best Magic Items ™ books by creating magic items that scale with their owner. Whenever the character levels up, their attuned item(s) may level up too. This is done by tying the uses per day, damage, etc., to the character's proficiency bonus. That's the main mechanic, but depending on the class, we might tie the scaling to a barbarian's rage bonus, to a fighter's Action Surge or Second Wind, a rogue's Cunning Action, etc.

Get your FREE 5e HEIRLOOM MAGIC ITEMS rules to bring the magic back to your game!

The other big idea we had to make each 250 Magic Items book special was to make all the items in each book class-based. For example, in our first book, 250 Best Magic Items for Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers, all the items are wilderness-themed, which makes sense for these classes. That's where they live, so the majority of magic items that are created there should be designed to aid them in that setting, right? To make them bigger, badder, better barbarians, druids, and rangers. So many of the items are usable by all three classes, while some are only usable by one or two.

Next, we needed a gimmick. How else could we make each book special? In 250 Best Magic Items for Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers, we made a lot of the items grant beast traits straight out of the 5th Edition MM. It makes a ton of sense. It's easy, those rules have already been playtested, and so we just figured out a clever way to repurpose them for players and GMs. It's not always about reinventing the wheel in game design. It's about taking what works and applying new strategies and options with it.

We're also reintroducing some of our favorite weapons from older editions (like 2e and 3e) back into 5e, like bolas, scythes, and spiked gauntlets. We provide magical versions, of course, but also nonmagical rules for regular versions any character can own. And we're revising certain weapons we feel didn't get a fair shake in 5e, like the war pick and whip.

For example, take the war pick. It's a pick, sure, but the other end is a warhammer. So it should do your choice of bludgeoning or piercing damage, right? Except in the PHB, it doesn't. Why isn't that in the rules? Well, now it is. It's as easy as adding a new weapon property called "multipurpose."

Some problems are easy to solve, like that, while others require more complexity, like whips. I mean, if you can't use it like Indiana Jones, what's the point? But we don't want to overcomplicate the game. We just want more options, more reasons to pick one weapon over another beyond damage type and dice. That's why all of our rules are optional. Use what you like, and forget the rest. It's your game!

"MageGate's here to empower you by giving your 5th Edition (5e) game options." - Jackson Dean Chase

There are a lot of other reasons I love our books. They're smart, simple rules that are easily adopted into anyone's game. And they're gorgeous, full color productions that have that classic 3rd Edition (3e) look and feel while still very much being 5e products. That's important to us. There was so much to love about 3e (and 3.5e)...

I've played every edition, and out of all of them, 3e was my favorite. 5e's done a great job streamlining and improving what 3e got wrong (while preserving the few things 4e got right), but it's missing a bit of Third Edition's magic, like more widespread use of feats, and--let's face it--the overall art design. MageGate Games is bridging that nostalgia gap.

You're going to see a lot of great, innovative products coming from us. The first five books in our 250 Best Magic Items series start hitting shelves October 19, 2021 just in time for the holiday shopping season (they make great gifts!). As for 2022, we've got fifteen (count 'em) fifteen more Fifth Edition books planned. It's an ambitious physical and digital release schedule, on top of our YouTube channel and Patreon content, both of which we'll be building out over the next six months.

If you'd like to check out what we're doing, you can visit us at MageGate.com and download your FREE HEIRLOOM MAGIC ITEMS rules. This full color 12 page PDF teaches players and GMs how to start your 1st level characters with incredible magic items without breaking your game. It's a wonderful way to climb into our heads as game designers and see our philosophy in action. Or, you know, just to have a lot more fun in your game. ;-)

Either way, we'll see you there!

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Jackson Dean Chase is a USA TODAY bestselling author and Chief Content Officer for MageGate Games Inc. He is also the company's Co-Founder, Co-CEO, and Co-Lead Designer. Jackson brings a wealth of experience to his role at MageGate, having played and GMed dozens of roleplaying games for over four decades.

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