Design

Placing Wishes

David Gay

27 Oct 2025 — 2 min read

It's fun to place wishes other than those found "naturally" in magic items. It's classic adventure gaming! Here are some ways to sprinkle wishes into your game:

Whenever you create a new scenario or dungeon level, throw percentile dice once. If you roll the Dungeon Level (DL) or less, place a wish.
Gemstones of at least 25,000 gp value have a 5% chance to contain 1-4 wishes, a power that is detectable only with true sight. +5% per step above 25,000 gp.
Magic statues can rarely be those which dispense a wish when interacted with in some way, e.g. a missing piece is restored. In the JG Ready Ref Sheets, magic statues had a small chance to be wish-granting (though those rare statues could also be quite nasty instead).
Add an interdimensional merchant that can be discovered through adventure. Perhaps once a year on average, the merchant will grant a wish in exchange for some quest.

Wishes can be found in objects, granted by beings, and bestowed by the environment (e.g. magic pools). These wishes should usually be in challenging-to-reach places, as they're high-class treasure.

You can affect the scenario by causing the wish to expire in a short period if not used. Say, 24 hours, or as short as 1 segment! (Telegraph some warning of the expiration, at least. Wishes are rare.) This prevent the players from saving the wish for future trouble, thereby reducing the number of choices the players have. So, an expiring wish makes the scenario both more and less interesting: players have to ruminate faster, but there's fewer options to ruminate about, since saving the wish isn't an option. It certainly reduces the wish's value.

EPT has a wish spell, but I've not seen much more regarding wishing. It seems in EPT, the rarest and oldest devices of the ancients may serve the role of D&D's found wishes. That would line up with my understanding of magic on Tékumel. If a wish can be performed with a spell, it certainly can be performed by a device. If that's the case, sprinkling rare "wishes" around the secret places of your Tékumel probably can't hurt either.

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