Interior, Markinshom tavern: the Grizzly Adder. A central firepit poorly illuminates a small, smoke-blackened tavern. The hiss and pop of the flames mixes with the clinking of mugs, the low murmurings of conversation, and the occasional hog snort from out back. A mangy old cat sits by the fire, occassionally getting its fur singed.
The door opens, letting in a draft. A travelstained man dressed in a long cloak enters. The tavernmaster, a fat, greasy man, hastens to his side.
Welcome, weary traveller. Rest. Take y'r boots off, pull uppa chair. The fire's warm, the ale's strong, and the gleeman's expected to start playin' sometime soon. Sure, we's gots a bard here: d'ya think Markinshom's a backwater? We's prosperous, we are.
Outside, rain begins to pound against the inn's roof. Thunder shakes the building.
A searcher'f antiquities, eh? Well, I may have just the thing for you, I might. I've been a searcher'f antiquities all my life, but I's gettin' old, and just between you and me, the woman wants me to get rid of some of 'em, eh?
For example, thissere's the Magic Jar -- the talk of many a traveller through Markinshome for the rest of 'is days. 'Cuz in this here jar, there's a whole world waitin' to be discovered. See this clear patch here? Put'cher eye up against it there. That's it, it won't bite. Now look: I mean really look.
Nifty, eh? What'cha see? A city? A castle? A scary-lookin' bloke with a scar under'is eye? He scares me, that one does.
Nope, I cain't tell ya where them images are from: Ain't no-one's ever recognized none of it. Ya want to buy it? I'll make y'deal, my wife hates the thing, the silly wench.....
The Magic Jar is a magical item which gives glimpses of some other world. Where that world exists, or even if it is real, I cannot say, but it certainly seems real, and for some purposes, such as heroic fantasy role playing games, that's good enough.
In the pages to come, images glimpsed through the lens into the Magic Jar will be documented as well as possible, so that the content can be used in your own role playing games.
Magic Jar is a series of standalone pieces of content, with little or no world-specific information embedded in them. In some ways, this is restrictive, making the content less desirable, but in other ways its very freeing, as any piece of content may be used, largely unchanged, in anybody's role playing world. This should make the job of game mastering a little bit easier.
Magic Jar content is being developed for a series of one- or two-shot adventures I'm running for my local group, each of which will feature a piece of content: a town, a castle, an NPC, etc. The adventures run sporadically, to give me time to fully develop the content before running the adventure. After the adventure is complete, I will add notes on how the adventure went, and place the content online. Hopefully, over time, this will result in a large base of content which will be freely available for use.
All the content on this site is distributed using the GNU Free Documentation License (GDL)