Personal Artifacts: Fight Leukemia! Edition

This review is for Personal Artifacts, a D20 supplement published by The Le Games and available through RPGnow. While obviously created solely with a fantasy milieu in mind there are at least 48 pages of material to work with. For a mere $3.00, with a promise that a dollar for each unit sold will go to “the cause”, what‘s not to like?

The supplement comes as a ZIP of four files: 2 PDFs formatted for landscape and portrait display and 2 RTF files. The RTF files include the entirety of the supplement, handy to have if you like to edit, and a file containing sneak previews of a few dozen items from another supplement entitled Synergy Artifacts.

Setting: None. This is a treasure trove supplement of magic items.

Game: Intended for use with the D20 line of products.

System: Primarily suited to fantasy. May not mesh well with modern settings.

It’s really hard to assess something like this, especially since there have been net projects in the past that put together vast tomes of artifacts. For free. Though, to be fair, this product looks well put together. Released under the D20 license Personal Artifacts is, well, what can I say; it’s a PDF treasure trove of magical artifacts. The sort of thing my younger self would have salivated over back in the day when D&D was the only RPG being played and Roleaids were the only real alternative a DM had for decent game supplements. How far we have come! With the exception of the Ship in a Bottle, a item which I have a dim recollection of something similar having been done before (I just can’t remember where or for what system) the items are typical fare and shouldn‘t woefully unbalance a campaign. The flavor text in the entries is a nice touch. Then again, while it is nice to see interesting artifacts with names like Sword of Bleeding and Candle of Darkness, where are the truly cursed items? DMs love to share wicked good cursed items!

Appraisal

I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse published in the pages of Dragon magazine, which says a lot. There are some nice items here. However, I would have liked to see a bit more diversity. As presented this is best suited for use as a treasure supplement to your standard D&D high fantasy campaign.

Negatives: It’s D20. So if the D20 logo turns your stomach you may want to avoid this supplement like a vampire running away from garlands of garlic. The second sentence begins: “In this book you will find many handy artifacts that you will be able to plop down into any campaign.” But that should be amended to read “any fantasy campaign” as there are no technological artifacts nor any gonzo fun alchemical widgets, much less gadgets, provided for diabolical DMs to play with. (And, no, the Belt of Elven Kind is not a proper alchemical widget!) Where‘s the clockwork aberrations, the golems, instant powdered imps in a bottle, mechanical oracles that drain magic/ spells to work, or even an animated clockwork puppet show that mesmerizes its audience?

Positives: It’s D20. If you play anything remotely within the xD&D or D20 family of games then this may be a nice source of supplementary magic items to add into your campaigns. If you’ve been scouring the web for a gaggle of magical artifacts this may be what you‘ve been looking for. Just be wary of who gets the Bauble of Hardening because you know that some player- and you DMs know precisely who I mean- will try to put it to an use other than the designer intended.

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