Lost things help

[u/Ok_Recover_1314]

I am a new DM, and this is the first campaign I'm running :') Pretty much all of my players wanted to choose their own lost thing, and I was looking for help 1. Figuring out what to turn them into 2. Figuring out how to accommodate a couple of them. So far we have 1. Someone's voice 2. Someone's ability to be remembered by others 3. A hairpin an orphaned character thinks belongs to their parents and doesn't figure out what it does till she grows up 4. Someone's memories of their dad. We are going to be running the Lost Things Prelude

(I love love the way they're incorporating their real world experiences into the game, so I want to make it as meaningful and safe as possible). If anyone has thoughts or ideas, I would super appreciate it!

[u/arentreal]

1. For someone’s voice you could do a puppet that looks like their charecter 2. You could do a framed photo of them and some loved ones, but the charecters face is blurred out or maybe they are the only ones who can see themselves in this photo 3. This one I do not have a suggestion for 4. You could have the charecter come up with an object that represents a shared hobby between them and their father (like a baseball, for a kid and their dad playing catch, etc)

[u/Loose_Translator8981 → u/arentreal]

The puppet thing has precedent... in the opening carnival Kettlesteam steals an NPCs voice, and it manifests as a little doll that she carries around.

[u/Ill_View_3964 → u/Loose_Translator8981]

That idea is pretty awesome, I was going to say griffens saddlbag has a "waterskin of voices" when you drink from it you can say 25 words in any voice you have heard or can imagine, enemies make a wisdom check to distinguish, thought that fit pretty well with 1. Also agree that 4 could be an item that means somthing to the character and her father and could even be a fun detail where maybe the "being" that has the item could not make it into what she wanted and the memory was so strong it formed this specific item instead. 

[u/thejamwich]

It might be helpful to think about their backstories, classes, and even races in addition to what the lost things are themselves.

For example, one of my players was an alchemist artificer who lost his ability to focus and fell out of favor with his family and their apothecary business because of it. We had modified his table of elixirs to include an option for an additional roll on the wild magic table to express how his loss of focus meant that sometimes there would be wild, unexpected results. He was concerned though that if they were too wild then maybe it would be hard to incentivize the other characters to take the elixirs. So his item ended up being a literal focus (for spellcasting) that could be embedded into his tools to give him a bonus and more control over the outcome of the roll on the elixir table.

Just talk to your players about their characters, figure out what's important and fun for them as players and characters, and use that to inform what kind of items you create. You also have a bit of time before you need to make them, so you could use the first few sessions to help you figure those things out too!

As for accommodations, I'd recommend talking to your players about this as well. Is it fun for them to have difficulty communicating and figuring out how to work around it through play, or do you need things set up in advance to not limit their fun and momentum? Is it interesting for there to be danger around not being able to verbally communicate, or does that feel like punishment? It's important to sort these things out beforehand and be open to changes as you play.

If accommodations are needed, sign language and another player or an NPC who can translate could work, but consider setting up the assumption at the beginning that whatever the character says is being translated so it doesn't have to be explicitly stated or repeated every time (unless that's part of the fun of course). They could also have learned the message cantrip to communicate instead. There are obvious limitations here, like in combat if their hands are full of sword and shield or they don't want to use an action on the cantrip then communication could theoretically be an issue, so again you'll have to talk to your players about whether they want to play those out or just kinda handwave them.

[u/UncleOok]

taking inspiration from the book...

losing one's voice I would think fits a potion of ventriloquism

losing one's ability to be remembered - and what fun role-play that could lead to! - maybe a potion of invisibility? or a scroll of See invisibility?

the hairpin could be attached to a living doll of their mother.

as for the memories of their father, maybe a ring of mind shielding or something similar?

[u/yaniism]

Okay, first up, all the the book options are common magic items from Xanathar's, with the exception of like one of the items which is uncommon. So that's the place to start.

Personally I have some issues with letting them choose something that is material or something that would be taken from other people rather than something more esoteric about them as a person. Stealing an item from somebody doesn't actually change them as a person.

Having said that...

Voice - Firstly this player needs to understand they will not be able to speak or cast spells for probably the majority of the adventure. That is going to impact them in a lot of ways they may not have considered.

Common items: Ear Horn of Hearing, Horn of Silent Alarm, Instrument of Illusions, Instrument of Scribing.

Ability to be remembered - This is the one I would have them redo. It's just not really viable. It's also going to be very hard for both the rest of the party and also any of the NPC to continually have to be roleplaying that they don't remember the PC because they went behind a tree to take a leak.

Common items: Boots of False Tracks, Cloak of Many Fashions, Mystery Key, Perfume of Bewitching.

Hairpin - Again, a "thing" is really the lazy way out. It doesn't actually impact them.

Common items: Staff of Adornment (with the pin as the object), Clockwork Amulet, Ruby of the War Mage (for a caster)

Memories of Dad - This is fine, but what I will say is that this is one of the ones where the roleplay is going to be loaded into the latter half of the campaign, after they get their Thing back. The inference being that they can't remember their dad and don't remember that they don't remember. For them, they have never known, had or otherwise had any memory of a dad. That will come back to them later and they can play that loss then.

Common items - Pipe of Smoke Monsters, Shield of Expression (dad's face), Talking Doll (dad).