Solving the "Let's Rob the Magic Shop" Problem

[Thomas Bowman]

One Idea I had is what if you had a game where one player wanted to play the villain, you give him a character sheet, the rest of the players play the heroes, the villain attempts some scheme and the other players try to foil him and a neutral DM adjudicates between them using the rules of the game. One of the players will have to accept that the encounter will likely result in the death of his character or his otherwise coming to a bad end. A PC villain on the other hand doesn't have to hold back, as he is not the DM, he is under no obligation to be neutral or to fight fair, while the DM might be tempted to pull some punches, a PC villain is not! You ever try this? One time I played a PC villain with a separate DM and a group of other player characters who were my target. My PC villain got defeated in short order, I guess I wasn't so good. The only actions a PC villain controls are his characters. My villain was a high level wizard, he had a crystal ball, and was scrying the characters as they were shopping in a town, so using a wish spell, he wished that a Tyrannosaurus Rex would suddenly appear and attack the group of town players in the town square. The DM has a lot of fun with this, the encounter didn't make any sense from the other PCs perspective, but it didn't have to.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

You know what, to each his own. I believe in freedom and consequences. Maybe if I had a bunch of players that like to do a bunch of bad stuff, the problem isn't with my DMing but with the players I chose to play with. I like to experiment every now and then. My PC villain experiment produced only one encounter for the balance of the players, after they dealt with the T-Rex I sent them in the middle of the town square, they used divination spells to figure out who sent it, and it ended up with a spell dual and some melee between my character and theirs, with my character losing. The sides were evenly matched, but being able to experiment and try things out is a learning experience.

 

[delericho]

Lord Foul's Bane is an extreme example...

Yep. And it's only because it's such an extreme example that it's on my 'banned' list.

(I should also probably note: I have no problem with stories featuring that material, and I have no issue with DMs or groups that want to include it. I'm just choosing to opt out, not passing any sort of judgement. )

Admittedly I would get tired of DMing players who wanted to play evil characters, but I figure it is the DMs job to be neutral

The notion that the DM has to let the PCs do (or at least try) anything they want was one it took me a very long time to get rid of. But I've found that I get much better results if I simply discuss campaign expectations with the players ahead of time. That may mean some people don't play together, or may mean that some players don't play in some campaigns (indeed, sometimes it has meant that a campaign I wanted to run didn't get played, since people weren't interested).

But it also means that the at-table experience for the people who do play tends to be better - you don't have players constantly butting up against a DM saying "no", and you don't have the DM running a campaign he's really not enjoying.

Incidentally, as regards "evil campaigns": I don't have a problem with those, if that's what the group wants. It's about setting expectations and then working accordingly - the shining-knight Paladin is as out-of-place in an evil campaign as is the murderous Assassin in the Big Damn Heroes game.

(That said, with only a very few exceptional cases, agreed well in advance, the "Lord Foul's Bane" scenario remains banned even in an "evil campaign" I'm running. That's because of the potential for it to have a real-life impact on people around the table, which I'm not going to risk without very clear agreement up-front.)

But, as you say in a later post, to each their own. I'm not preaching any one-true-way here... just explaining what I do and something of why.

 

[Sunseeker]

The World includes all sorts of people including he jerks and the bad guys, the DM gets to play all of them. If the DM represents the World realistically including jerks running magic shops, that makes the adventure seem more real. Players have to decide what kind of characters they want to be. Not everyone is going to want to be a noble paladin, there is something called "low fantasy" this is where players play characters who aren't exactly heroes, I believe Conan the Barbarian was one of those.

If you want to play around in reality, go outside. I'm playing D&D because I don't want to simulate real life.

Nor was Conan a thug.

Then its between you and the player who wants to rob the magic shop, a good DM should be neutral, anyway its only an imaginary magic shop. A good DM would make robbing the magic shop as difficult or more so than stealing a similar item from a monster's treasure. Bad decisions have consequences though. A player character that gets himself into trouble with the authorities sort of creates his own adventures. One time I DMed such a player, he liked to steal stuff, he really got into his role as a thief.

This is DOUBLY why I HATE this sort of approach. I'm not at a table so I can fight with another player over if I get to have fun today. Fun should be every day. Players who revel in playing GTA: D&D can kindly use the door.

And this is my final post to you on the subject. You clearly have your ideas and I clearly have mine. That doesn't make either of us more right than the other and we are both entitled to determine how we wish to play, whom we wish to play with and what we find fun.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Its more interesting to watch the players argue amongst themselves about what is the right thing to do and what is wrong, makes it more dramatic. If I'm going to be a DM, my role is not that of a parental authority. the players should have some common sense, if I need to tell them what's right and wrong, they shouldn't be at my table. Role playing is a good opportunity to explore what happens if people do things that they otherwise wouldn't do in real life. if they rob the magic shop they get in trouble, with game consequences, after a certain point, it doesn't make sense to continue to the play the game, but there are no hard and fast rules. if they rob somebody, they the authorities get after them. Robin hood was basically a thug, he may have robbed the rich to give to the poor, but he was still a thug, being an armed robber makes him a thug by definition. robbery is still wrong, regardless of what one does with the loot afterwards. What were Robin Hood and his Merry Men? basically armed brigands, they weren't pick pockets, they weren't burglars, they were bandits, not saying they weren't heroic, but holding people up at sword point is the definition of banditry. Now if someone steals a magic item from a magic item store, there may be a good reason for that as well. Does the good outweigh the crime? hard to say, depends on the circumstances I guess. one might save a whole village with stolen magic items that slay the dragon for instance. As a DM, I'd let the players argue it among themselves, my role isn't as a party member but to adjudicate whatever that group decides to do, and if some players don't want to go along with the rest, I adjudicate that as well.

 

[RealAlHazred]

In my games, Magic Shops (where they exist) don't just sell magic items. They're the places wizards go for spell components, alchemists go for rare ingredients, clerics go for ceremonial appurtenances, and so on. Most of them are chock full of completely-useless-but-interesting items: a broken marble frieze of a devil, which pronounces baleful prophecies when the Moon is full; a series of monstrous terracotta figurines, said to imprison evil spirits that were in the Army of Darkness during the Dawn War; sticks said to be cut from magical trees; jars of glittering powders and unguents of purportedly occult significance; and so on. The magic items that players actually care about, the ones of proven and reliable use, will be hidden away and protected with the most powerful magic the owner can manage; perhaps the aforementioned customers have a deal where they get discounts for providing protective spells/horrible poisons/dire curses.

Mind you, my players still want to try to rip off the magic store owner, but at least they'll have an idea how potent he is...

 

[Eltab]

When I have had somebody suggest the idea to the group...
my usual response as DM is "Do you want me to prep the City Police for next week? Or the next chapter of the adventure?"
my usual response as player is "I don't want to get into a big fight with everybody else in town. Should I leave the store, or are YOU going to leave the store?"

 

[MichaelSomething]

How about not having the actual items in the shops? There's a shopkeeper, some meeting rooms, and some nice catalogs to look through. Once the PCs decide to buy the item, they have to schedule a meeting to actually exchange the items/money. Then the shopkeeper will bring in that item (with some powerful escorts of course) on the day of the meeting.

The place the magic items are actually stored in could be filled with things like traps and monsters to protect it. It could be even be some type of dungeon!

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Sounds to modern if you ask me. If you keep the magic items somewhere else other than at the shop, they can be stolen two additional places besides the shop, either at the storage facility or in route while being delivered. It I much easier to keep them in the shop rather than at a separate storage facility. the shop owner can't be in two places at once, he can't be guarding his magic items while running his store at the same time. Also you have the problem of the customer trusting the shop owner, if he shows them a catalog, how does the buyer know that what he is buying is real? Also another problem is that a good number of people are illiterate in a medieval setting, they can't read! Some powerful people hire scribes because they can't read themselves, reading and writing is a specialized skill, and not developed enough for modern strategies such as catalogs and "magic item Amazons" and the like.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

You know, my solution is to make use of the metallic dragons that are in the monster manual, they have treasure types, most metallic dragons have a human form for instance, they live a long time, and like their chromatic cousins, they have accumulated a treasure horde, the main difference between Chromatics and metallic is how they accumulated their treasure hordes, a red dragon steals it from his victims, usually after killing and eating them, a silver dragon might accumulate a treasure horde by running a magic shop profitably, over time the gold pieces and the magic items pile up. Someone might try to rob the silver dragon, but she is still a dragon! If the dragon's magic shop is in town, the town will be in quite a mess if the silver dragon has to fight the adventurers trying to steal her wares!