#treasure

Mark S. Cookman

Aug 10, 2017
4 min

20 Treasures to Find in a Shipwreck

This week's list continues the nautical theme of shipwrecks that began last week. A shipwreck of your own vessel can be compared to the death of a close friend or family member. The captain and crew experience, albeit in a hurried manner, the five stages of grief. For those of you who are not familiar with these, they are: 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression, and finally 5) Acceptance. In the case of a shipwreck or a sinking vessel, the first three stages repres

8,188 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Jan 12, 2017
4 min

20 Ways to Work Boats into Your Game

First things first, happy 2017 to everyone. I'm sorry that it has been so long between posts, but a couple of bouts of bad health, plus the stress of the holidays, pretty much put me out of action for the last quarter of 2016. I'm hoping 2017 will be a better year and to that end, here's a new list. Today's list is a collection of sneaky ways that DM's can use to introduce a nautical section to their game, even when the game is set far from any coastline. A couple of the item

643 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Jul 22, 2016
3 min

20 Pieces of Orc Jewelry

This is the eighth post in our orc series. In this post we will talking about treasure of an interesting sort, stuff that your PC's might actually WANT to loot from a dead orc. Orcs have a reputation of being dirty and nasty, so their fashion does NOT really appeal to everyone. Also, besides coins, gems, and the odd magic item, orc bands usually don't often have cool treasures unless they stole them from someone else. At least this is the most commonly held perception. If you

455 views0 comments

20 Rumored Shipwrecks for Treasure Hunters

Mark S. Cookman

Jul 5, 2016
6 min

20 Rumored Shipwrecks for Treasure Hunters

Today's post will conclude our recent nautical series. Here you will find adventure fodder galore or perhaps nothing but nasty bilge water. That's left for the GM to decide. What is certain is that below you'll find 20 different ships with 20 different captains and crews that all suffered the same sad fate. You'll also find rumors of fantastic cargoes lost to depths the sea. Cargoes so fantastic that they'd lure brave treasure hunters to sail deep into unexplored and/or dang

479 views0 comments

20 Magical Weapons That Aren't Swords At All

Mark S. Cookman

Jun 9, 2016
4 min

20 Magical Weapons That Aren't Swords At All

Today's post follows the same basic theme as Tuesday's with the exception that the list will contain no swords at all. Just like last time, I am trying to encourage DM's to expand their minds when it comes to giving out magical weapons. The point of this blog entry is not to hand you 20 "perfect" magic weapons ready to drop into your campaign, the point is to get you thinking about different kinds of magical weapons in your campaign and how they came to be. If you manage to p

9,381 views0 comments

20 Magical Swords That Aren't Just Longswords

Mark S. Cookman

Jun 7, 2016
4 min

20 Magical Swords That Aren't Just Longswords

One of my pet peeves about D&D is that the magical swords are nearly always European longswords. It seems as if Excalibur was the perfect model for ALL magical swords ever to be created. Personally, I like to mix things up. I like to use many different types of swords in my campaign worlds, just as there are many different types of swords among all the cultures of the Earth. Diversity is the spice of life and RPG's should NEVER be bland. As with all of my lists, I'm not just

9,757 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

May 26, 2016
1 min

20 Moves of the Master Monk

Monk week is over already and we hardly had any time to enjoy it. ;^) We're going to end our study of monks (begun nearly a month ago, sorry) with a collection of special martial arts moves. As with all of the lists that I write, this list is FAR from the perfection sought by monks. You should study and improve it for use in your own campaign. Perhaps one or more of these strikes is the key to defeating a certain bad guy or perhaps performing one of these master moves is wh

40 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Apr 7, 2016
4 min

20 Purses Waiting to be Cut

Pickpocket by Felicia Cano - Check out all her artwork here This is another post on the thief theme. Today, we're going to examine picking pockets, or rather cutting purses. In most fantasy RPG campaigns, the setting is reminiscent of the middle ages in terms of both clothing and attitudes. Few pieces of clothing in the medieval period had pockets sewn into them at all and most people chose to carry their valuables in a bag, pouch, or purse tied to their belt. Thus, most "pic

189 views0 comments

20 Things to Find in the River Pirate's Hideout

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 18, 2016
4 min

20 Things to Find in the River Pirate's Hideout

Well, against all odds we've made it once again to Friday. Before finishing off this week's river theme, I'd like to take a moment to discuss today's pictures. This place is named Cave-In-Rock and it is located on the northern side of the Ohio River at Cave-In-Rock, Illonois. It has a fascinating history and if you ever get the chance to visit there, I highly recommend it. Cave-In-Rock was once the temporary home to a number of river pirates and stories say that the Harpe Bro

278 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 8, 2016
1 min

20 Things to Find Inside a Gypsy Wagon

Keeping with yesterday's fortune teller theme, today's list is an odd collection of items that your PC's might find in a gypsy wagon. The items detailed below come from traditional human gypsy wagons, but there's no reason that other races couldn't have gypsies as well. I'm not really sure what would be on orcish gypsy wagons, but I will leave that for you to consider. For now, here are 20 Things to Find Inside a Gypsy Wagons. Happy Gaming! A hand-crafted violin 2 sets of b

343 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 17, 2016
2 min

20 Treasures Better Than Gold

On Wednesday, I am often thinking about the rewards of the coming weekend and those thoughts led me to treasure. Treasure is often the motivation for RPG adventures and I have talked about treasure twice before, once in Treasures That Aren't and again in Troublesome Treasures. Neither of those pieces contains a list of 20 items however, so I wrote this one to add to the set. I hope that you enjoy it. At low levels, most old school PC's crave gold, gems, and magic for treasure

120 views0 comments

Mark S. Cookman

Aug 19, 2015
4 min

Troublesome Treasures

In a previous post we examined some ways to add different kinds of treasures to the adventuring party's hoard. In this post we are going to look at some real treasures that are troublesome to the party in some way or another. As stated in the previous post, these suggestions are meant to be used infrequently to spice up and expand the description of treasures obtained by your RPG party. Treasure is supposed to be fun, so don't over-use these tricks. Even though treasure is su

64 views0 comments

Treasures That Aren't -- 5 Different Kinds of Treacherous Treasure

Mark S. Cookman

Aug 12, 2015
6 min

Treasures That Aren't -- 5 Different Kinds of Treacherous Treasure

Nearly every adventurer loves treasure. So much so that "kill the monster and take its loot" is the most common adventuring trope. Treasure is an expected part of almost every role-playing game. In games with more modern settings, treasure might be information or special equipment, but in old school fantasy rpg's, treasure meant coins, gems, jewelry, and magic items. After a while though, even the treasure can become boring if it always the same. . . . "The party finds X silv

93 views0 comments

BLACK SHARK ENTERPRISES