The Original 7 - Dungeons & Dragons "White Box" - Uh Oh It's Magic!

Yep, I'm still digging my way through Volume 2 - Monsters & Treasure.  Specifically, I'm looking at the magic goodies in this book.

Some things to note - fully 20% of magic items are magic swords.  Yep, 1 in 5 magic items is a sword.  I can see where fighters (and thieves to some extent) have a head start in magic items.  It should also be noted that maces only come in a +2 variety ;)

Hmm - 17% of magic swords are cursed.  Ouch!  That being said, there is no cursed armor or cursed miscellaneous weapons.  Go figure.

Clerics get 25% of the spell scrolls, which means magic-users gets 75% of the spell scrolls.  Ain't that a case for discrimination?  And what is this?  "The referee must take extreme care in handling Scrolls with an eye towards duping the players when a Curse Scroll is found.  The curse takes effect immediately upon reading the Scroll; therefore having non-Curse Scrolls disappear on occasion if not identified will help force reading of Curse Scrolls."  Holy shit!  You basically are being told to take away legitimate non-cursed items to force players to activate cursed items!

The Curse isn't some lame shit either:

Range 3" (30 feet)

1 or 2   Any monster of the referee's choice

3 or 4   Disease.  Fatal in 3 turns unless healed (this is a party killer.  no indication if party members get a chance to save)

5 or 6   Polymorph into insect of referee's choice (another party killer)

7          Transportation 1,000 miles, random direction (the ref better have a new setting in mind)

8          Transportation to another planet (campaign reboot here we come)

Did I mention that 1 in 10 scrolls are cursed?

You have a 1% chance that the ring you find is a Ring of Many Wishes.  Roll 4d6 and the sum is the number of wishes you just gave the party.  May as well end the campaign right now, because either they are going to achieve some major unbalancing power with the wishes (average 14) or the referee is going to so screw them over by using the "literal translation of the wish in order to fuck over the party" method, at which point it's going to be campaign over.

All swords (no other weapons) are intelligent and have an alignment.  Most swords are lawful.  Fully half of all swords are intelligent enough to have one or more powers and be able to communicate with their owners.  I thing EGG was greatly influenced by Elric's Stormbringer  and such, especially when 10% of swords have a purpose (slay clerics or defeat law and such).

Wands are assumed to have 100 charges and staves are assumed to have 200 charges.  I'm damn sure staves were cut down in later editions.

Holy crap but they fit a lot into 40 pages - monsters and magical treasures.  Well done!

Next - Tiptoe through the Underworld and the Wilderness.