Greetings!

In my recent campaigns, as I have discussed in various threads, the campaigns I am running have a more tribal feel to them. This got me into all kinds of extra research and reading about tribal cultures, ancient history, mythology, ancient religions, as well as things like books on prehistoric animals, normal animal books, books on trees, and geography and geology.

Moving into particular game-mechanics stuff, I realized that there was a dissonance between official game-statted magic items and lists of gear and magical toys--and what historical, tribal people were often involved with.

It thus inspired me to work on a project where I created entire lists of magical feather headdresses, enchanted masks, beaded chokers, arm-torcs, eyebrow rings, nose-rings, nose-bones, different musical instruments, magical salves, creams, powders, enchanted alligator bags, weird enchanted deer-head helmets, different kinds of cloaks and clothing, fashioned from many different kinds of animal hides and furs. I also created many new magical items based on different animals, from giant ants and preying mantises, to steppe buffalo, pygmy hippos, Marmots and Capybaras. I then worked on a large variety of items and resources from the oceans and rivers, from Groupers and Sharks, Whales, anemones, eels, sturgeons, Gars, and Manta Rays, besides Jellyfish, Lobsters, Crabs, Catfish, and Pikes. Lots of new languages as well. Different skills and specializations, different crafting skills, new kinds of resources and products. It definitely opened up my eyes, as well as inspiring a whole host of new inspirations for items and things for the campaign.

Have you been swallowed up in projects making new magical items that are weird and fantastic?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Oddest item I used in a fantasy campaign was a carved magic staff that came apart into three parts. As a magic staff, it was OK, but that's because of its unique, non-magical feature. 

Turns out each bit was actually an ink roller.  If you coated the rods in ink, lined up the common symbol and rolled them across a sheet of paper, the three impressions combined to draw a map. 

I'm still proud of that gag to this day.

So magical items in my game are deeply tied to my setting.  Most magical things found floating around in my world are tools made by creatures that used them to manipulate magic itself.  My goal is to give the same kind of impression as if a cave man walked into a modern machine shop and tried to make the things he saw useful to him.  Almost always humans simply cannot ascertain the original purpose of the tool but some have been found to have useful effects.  Often these effects are not combat related, though I have had players use some of them in ways I could never have predicted.  I love it when players find an item and start trying to figure out what it is and what to do with it.  (I also enjoy it when they screw up experimenting with a new object.  )

Human magic in my setting is largely about seeing.  (In this context, seeing is getting information through magical means that would otherwise be hidden from you.)  There are spells of protection and strengthening but I don't really have much that would be considered a combat spell or would be greater than lvl 1 in traditional D&D.  Magic users in an adventure in my games are most useful as people that can help gather hidden clues or determine the nature of something.  In this way, most human magic items are instruments to aid in divination, influence luck or probability in favor of the tool holder, or to safely handle found magical artifacts.

Anyone (or anything) that would directly use offensive magic most likely would get killed as soon as it was known, mostly out of fear.  There are magic swords but it's limited to having a single, simple effect.  It wouldn't be a game changer but it might give you an edge.  ( I love a good pun.)  There are also weapons that are made by using magical artifacts, usually just attaching a handle to something found to be dangerous. 

I don't know if it can be considered "wierd", but in D&D I take a leaf from Tolkien and give to the players mostly artifacts - even if they are level 3. Of course from great powers come A LOT of people converging on those items.

One inspiration for my longest running campaign were the Jason Bourne movies (the campaign itself was inspired by the Iran-Contra scandal and "Clear and Present Danger" by Tom Clancy, so...)

Almost immediately the characters had access to five millions gold pieces and some truly powerful artifacts - while being chased by emissares of the whole Planescape pantheon of Gods. One of the themes was not "march in a straight line and obliterate encounter after encouner" but "DON'T GET CAUGHT!"

Overall, it worked quite well (except when the Wizard tried "this interesting elven wand exuding elegance!" and in three seconds he obliterated the ruins around them, an ancient and sacred elven wood, and, generally speaking, a whole chunk of the region they were in; the surviving elves didn't laugh...)

I mix in the weird stuff with the more typical magic.  I don't want the weird stuff to be automatically noted as such when it is first picked up.  Joe has a Dagger +1.  Jane has a Dagger +1 that turns red when she lies to someone while holding it.  And yes, I keep track of the latter parts separately, and make them harder to discover without experimenting.  If I'm going to make the basic form of the Dagger itself non-standard from what people are used to, then I'll do that at the start of the campaign, so as to camouflage the strange bits coming along later.

In general, I try to make the weird stuff cursed enough to be interesting, not so cursed that the players want to get rid of it immediately.  My ideal is the useful magic item that exactly half the party wants to keep and the other half wants to destroy/bury/hide as soon as possible.  Makes for ripe intra-party conflict.  I don't always hit that ideal, but the closer I get, the better the result. 

Beyond that, I'll pick a few ideas to riff off of, from setting to setting.  One I've used a lot is that potion making isn't standard among the different races/cultures.  Goblins potions are invariably vile, to the point of causing a mild nausea effect on most player races (except dwarves, who like the kick).  You drink a really potent goblin shaman potion, it might heal 2d6+2 and do 1d6 damage.  Roll both separately.  Sure, there are easier ways to get the final effect, but the effect on the player when he has to roll is worth the extra trouble.