The Encyclopedia Magica was TSR’s grand archival project: a four-volume attempt to gather every magic item ever published for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and organize decades of material into a single, usable reference. Drawn from adventures, campaign settings, accessories, and magazines dating back to the earliest years of the hobby, the series aimed to put order to an ever-expanding magical tradition while preserving the original spirit of the game.

Volume Three advances that mission by continuing the alphabetical catalog, covering entries from P through S. Within those letters lies an incredible cross-section of AD&D history. You’ll find straightforward enchanted equipment sitting beside obscure relics, deeply setting-rooted treasures, cursed objects, intelligent items, and experimental designs that capture how different authors and eras approached magic. The book isn’t a reinterpretation—it’s preservation. Material is standardized for clarity and reference, but it remains fundamentally true to its sources.

For Dungeon Masters, this volume is both toolbox and inspiration engine. It supports quick lookups during play, settles long-running table debates about whether something “really existed,” and provides a near-endless well of treasure ideas. Open it at random and you’re likely to discover something you’ve never used before but immediately want to build an encounter around.

For collectors and historians, Volume Three represents TSR in curator mode. By the 1990s, the game’s back catalog had become vast, and projects like this acknowledged that AD&D had accumulated a legacy worth organizing and safeguarding. These books were built for heavy use, and many surviving copies show the honest wear of years spent within arm’s reach of a DM’s chair.

As part of the complete set, Volume Three is a substantial piece of that preservation effort—hundreds of pages that map a significant stretch of the alphabet and, with it, a significant slice of D&D’s creative evolution.

A reference. A record. A celebration of just how big the world of magical items had become.