Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts

I dislike magic item stores. Here's why.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Magic items are a part of every fantasy role-playing game, and wherever player characters meet, someone will want to buy or sell such items. What the players do among themselves is their business, in most cases; but when non-player characters (NPC) are involved the GM must know where magic items come from, how rare they are, and how hard it is to produce them. [Quoting myself from 40+ years ago]

Magimart: Still a Bad Idea​

I don't like the idea of "Magimarts" -- something like a bookstore or small department store, often with a public storefront, where adventurers can come and purchase (or sell) magic items. I said as much over 40 years ago in an article titled “Magimart: Buying and Selling Magic Items” in White Dwarf magazine. My point then still stands: at least for me and in my games, magic-selling stores don’t make sense.

They don’t make sense from a design point of view, as they may unbalance a campaign or cause power-creep. From an adventure point of view such stores partly eliminates the need to quest for specific powerful magic items. From a realistic point of view they would only provide targets for those who are happy to steal.

The Design Point of View​

From a game design point of view, how experience points, gold, and magic fit together makes a big difference. For example, if you get experience points for selling a magic item (even to NPCs), as well as for the gold you get, adventurers will sell magic items more often. If adventurers acquire scads of treasure and have nothing (such as taxes or “training”) to significantly reduce their fortunes, then big-time magic items are going to cost an awful lot of money, but some will be bought. If gold is in short supply (as you’d expect in anything approaching a real world) then anyone with a whole lot of gold might be able to buy big-time magic items.

Long campaigns need a way for magic items to change ownership, other than theft. As an RPG player I like to trade magic items to other characters in return for other magic items. But there are no “magic stores.” Usability is a big part of it: if my magic user has a magic sword that a fighter wants, he might trade me an item that I could use as a magic user. (Some campaigns allocate found magic items only to characters who can use them. We just dice for selecting the things (a sort of draft) and let trading sort it out, much simpler and less likely to lead to argument about who can use/who needs what.)

The Adventure Point of Views​

Will magic stores promote enjoyable adventuring? It depends on the style of play, but for players primarily interested in challenging adventures, they may not want to be able to go into a somehow-invulnerable magic store and buy or trade for what they want.

Magic-selling stores remind me of the question “why do dungeons exist”. A common excuse (not reason) is “some mad (and very powerful) wizard made it.” Yeah, sure. Excuses for magic-selling stores need to be even wilder than that!

I think of magic-item trading and selling amongst characters as a kind of secretive black market. Yes, it may happen, but each transaction is fraught with opportunities for deceit. Perhaps like a black market for stolen diamonds? This is not something you’re likely to do out in the open, nor on a regular mass basis.

The Realistic Point of View​

“Why do you rob banks?” the thief is asked. “’Cause that’s where the money is.”

Realistically, what do you think will happen if someone maintains a location containing magic items on a regular basis? Magimarts are a major flashpoint in the the dichotomy between believability (given initial assumptions of magic and spell-casting) and "Rule of Cool" ("if it's cool, it's OK").

In most campaigns, magic items will be quite rare. Or magic items that do commonplace things (such as a magic self-heating cast iron pan) may be common but the items that are useful in conflict will be rare. After all, if combat-useful magic items are commonplace, why would anyone take the risk of going into a “dungeon” full of dangers to find some? (Would dungeon-delving become purely a non-magical treasure-hunting activity if magic items are commonplace?)

And for the villains, magimarts seem like an easy score. If someone is kind enough to gather a lot of magic items in a convenient, known place, why not steal those rather than go to a lot of time and effort, risk and chance, to explore dungeons and ruins for items? There may be lots of money there as well!

When Magimarts Make Sense​

If your campaign is one where magic is very common, then magic shops may make sense - though only for common stuff, not for rare/powerful items. And magic-selling stores can provide reasons for adventures:

• Find the kidnapped proprietor who is the only one who can access all that magic.
• Be the guards for a magic store.
• Chase down the crooks who stole some or all of the magic from the store.

Maybe a clever proprietor has figured out a way to make the items accessible only to him or her. But some spells let a caster take over the mind of the victim, and can use the victim to access the items. And if someone is so powerful that he or she can protect a magic store against those who want to raid it, won't they likely have better/more interesting things to do with their time? (As an aside, my wife points out that a powerful character might gather a collection of magic items in the same way that a rich person might gather a collection of artworks. But these won’t be available to “the public” in most cases. Still just as some people rob art museums, some might rob magic collections.)

Of course, any kind of magic trading offers lots of opportunities for deception. You might find out that the sword you bought has a curse, or that the potion isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Many GMs ignore this kind of opportunity and let players buy and sell items at standard prices without possibility of being bilked. Fair enough, it’s not part of the core adventure/story purposes of RPGs. And magic stores are a cheap way for a GM to allow trade in magic items.

Your Turn: What part do magic-selling stores play in your games?

 

[LesserThan]

This is exactly what they are. There isn’t a monster round every corner, that makes no sense. Most people in the world will never see a monster, probably don’t believe monsters exist.

Tell me of your homeworld, Usul.

 

[James Gasik]

We know that too much or too powerful magic can destroy games. Gary wrote about "Monty Haul" campaigns way back in 1e. I remember an article in Dragon talking about fair distribution of magic; if a 1st-level Fighter slays an Orc and finds a +5 sword in a chest with all the abilities of a Staff of the Magi, and an 11th level Fighter goes through a grueling gauntlet of foes to find a +1 dagger, something is very wrong with the game, lol.

But if you use treasure tables or pre-made content, you're going to end up with a lot of low-powered magic items you don't need, and you might need high powered ones (or just want them, because it's nice to have an upgrade).

How much of this is necessary depends on the system, but DM's have been handling it in a variety of ways since the very beginning. Some campaigns are generous and let players find the things they want, but I think it's just as common that the GM seeds the game with items and what you find is what you find- and if your AD&D Fighter is double-specialized in a Bohemian Ear-Spoon, well, tough luck, kid, better learn the magic tables (or the DM's preference in weaponry) next time! So having a way to purchase an odd weapon might be useful to one's game.

As I noted upthread, many D&D settings are lousy with adventurers, or even whole adventuring companies. If you assume that they're all finding magic items at the same rate, there could be thousands of +1 long swords laying about.

It would be strange if they all "lacked value" and could not be traded. In fact, if they are that ubiquitous, they can't be all that valuable, now can they? So the idea of a magic item pawn shop isn't unrealistic in these circumstances, but supply and demand (and caveat emptor) are going to be the watchwords here.

If you want to offload a +1 sword, we got dozens in stock, so they won't sell for much. If you want a +3 Scimitar of Speed, you might be out of luck.

Once you start examining your game worlds this way, you quickly realize that magic items may not be as rare and special as you thought they were; but powerful items still can be. So by all means, have magic shops, but they're mostly full of low rarity junk most adventurers won't want or need for very long.

Valuable items will be traded only by select, exclusive groups of billionaires who spend most of their time buying and selling the same objects from each other, much like real world art.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Valuable items will be traded only by select, exclusive groups of billionaires royalty & nobles who spend most of their time buying and selling fighting over and stealing the same objects from each other, much like real world art weapons and technology.

FTFY

Outside of democracy-based states, the rich are the nobility. Or the nobility are the only ones who can be rich. Whichever. The exceptionally wealthy plebian will marry into nobility and a noble with enough troops can enrich themselves.

Which, now that I see what I wrote, opens up the "medieval shadowrun" scenarios, where adventurers are hired to steal an artifact from a some noble or maybe they swap the real one out for a fake, knowing it may be years until the theft is noticed. or maybe just the copy the notes of the Royal Artificer of Blastvania to recreate his Staff of Mountain Dropping.

 

[tetrasodium]

FTFY

Outside of democracy-based states, the rich are the nobility. Or the nobility are the only ones who can be rich. Whichever. The exceptionally wealthy plebian will marry into nobility and a noble with enough troops can enrich themselves.

Which, now that I see what I wrote, opens up the "medieval shadowrun" scenarios, where adventurers are hired to steal an artifact from a some noble or maybe they swap the real one out for a fake, knowing it may be years until the theft is noticed. or maybe just the copy the notes of the Royal Artificer of Blastvania to recreate his Staff of Mountain Dropping.

Eberron ties the line in some areas of the lore &it's Ravenloft fork (dread metrol) really hits the right dystopian notes by the time the cure plays out...

 

[James Gasik]

FTFY

Outside of democracy-based states, the rich are the nobility. Or the nobility are the only ones who can be rich. Whichever. The exceptionally wealthy plebian will marry into nobility and a noble with enough troops can enrich themselves.

Which, now that I see what I wrote, opens up the "medieval shadowrun" scenarios, where adventurers are hired to steal an artifact from a some noble or maybe they swap the real one out for a fake, knowing it may be years until the theft is noticed. or maybe just the copy the notes of the Royal Artificer of Blastvania to recreate his Staff of Mountain Dropping.

One can be wealthy without being a noble- not only do wealthy merchants exist, adventurers are the homeless vagabonds with the wealth of nations in their backpacks!

 

[Kurotowa]

One can be wealthy without being a noble- not only do wealthy merchants exist, adventurers are the homeless vagabonds with the wealth of nations in their backpacks!

And in non-capitalist societies, the nobility work very hard to retain their privileges. That's "privilege" in the original sense, private law, where all are not equal under the law and nobles have rights that others don't. That's why rich families were always trying to buy or marry their way into nobility. Money is good, but the privileges of nobility are better.

The problem with being rich is it also made you a target. There are a lot of cases of nobles finding an excuse to accuse a rich family of a crime and seize their assets. Or taking a bunch of loans and then running the moneylenders out of town without paying. The courts and the military answer to the nobles, and if you're not part of their club than you've only got as much protection as the local lord feels like giving you.

It's part of D&D's anachronism heavy pseudo-medieval settings that there's usually a flourishing mercantile class that doesn't have to constantly worry about this sort of thing.

 

[James Gasik]

And in non-capitalist societies, the nobility work very hard to retain their privileges. That's "privilege" in the original sense, private law, where all are not equal under the law and nobles have rights that others don't. That's why rich families were always trying to buy or marry their way into nobility. Money is good, but the privileges of nobility are better.

The problem with being rich is it also made you a target. There are a lot of cases of nobles finding an excuse to accuse a rich family of a crime and seize their assets. Or taking a bunch of loans and then running the moneylenders out of town without paying. The courts and the military answer to the nobles, and if you're not part of their club than you've only got as much protection as the local lord feels like giving you.

It's part of D&D's anachronism heavy pseudo-medieval settings that there's usually a flourishing mercantile class that doesn't have to constantly worry about this sort of thing.

Tell that to the Hapsburgs and the Fuggers.

 

[Echohawk]

I have a dohwar merchant who sells magic items in my Spelljammer campaign because (a) the style of the campaign leans heavily away from realistic and more importantly (b) my players love shopping. However, it isn't the sort of shop where just anything is available. Instead, each time they visit, the merchant has a specific selection of available items: a score or so common magic items, and a small number of hand-picked rarer items. This allows me to seed some appropriate items for PCs who may be lagging slightly behind their companions in power levels for whatever reason, while parting the PCs from the excessive quantities of cash that build up over time in 5e games.

It also means that the compulsive shoppers in the group have a reasonable collection of common magic items. My experience of 5e is that the common items are not-at-all unbalancing even if you have a lot of them. Most of the time they are forgotten about, but every now and again, one of them ends up adding a lot of flavor to the campaign. During one visit, a character impulse-bought a pot of awakening[1]. The player promptly forgot all about it, only to have it hatch into an awakened shrub mid-voyage a few games later. That little shrub is now the ship's mascot and has played a pivotal role during at least one encounter with raiders when it was tossed an explosive device that needed to urgently be thrown overboard.

Also, whenever they visit the merchant, each character gets a single opportunity to request one specific magic item and make a percentage roll to see if the merchant happens to have it in stock. The odds are quite low, and scale based on rarity. However, if someone asks about boots of elvenkind during one visit, and the shop doesn't have those, then the odds will increase slightly that the merchant will have them the next time they visit, because the merchant knows they are looking for them. This means that the PCs stand a good chance to eventually get something they really, really want, provided they are patient. They are now sixth level and so far, a requested item has only twice been available.

I have not generally had magic shops in previous campaigns that I've run, but for our current campaign this approach has definitely added to everyone's enjoyment.

[1] From Xanathar's Guide to Everything: "If you plant an ordinary shrub in this 10-pound clay pot and let it grow for 30 days, the shrub magically transforms into an awakened shrub at the end of that time. When the shrub awakens, its roots break the pot, destroying it."​

 

[kigmatzomat]

The problem with being rich is it also made you a target. There are a lot of cases of nobles finding an excuse to accuse a rich family of a crime and seize their assets. Or taking a bunch of loans and then running the moneylenders out of town without paying. The courts and the military answer to the nobles, and if you're not part of their club than you've only got as much protection as the local lord feels like giving you.

Marcus Crassus is a great example. After Sulla defeated Marius, many Roman elite were put on prescription lists, where the families were killed/exiled/enslaved/imprisoned and lands confiscated. Crassus is notable in 82BC for adding a wealthy person to the list, just so he could claim their lands.

Crassus' final wealth was valued at 229 TONS of silver.

Let's see an adventurer walk around with that in their backpack.

Although that's more due to the common misunderstanding of how vast and extensive economies and civilizations were in antiquity.

It's part of D&D's anachronism heavy pseudo-medieval settings that there's usually a flourishing mercantile class that doesn't have to constantly worry about this sort of thing.

Let's see how the merchant classes fare when every so often all debts are forgiven...when the largest debts are almost always held by nobles from military campaigns or public works.

Or when soldiers, who report to nobles, look the other way when "bandits" attack caravans run by a plebian merchant who rubbed the nobility wrong.

Or during a conflict soldiers just confiscate goods from merchants under martial law. Or a straight up legally sanctioned dictatorship.

I think Crassue' fellow Triumvire, Pompey the Great explained the sentiment as "Don't quote laws to those with swords"

 

[kigmatzomat]

Tell that to the Hapsburgs and the Fuggers.

Which part are you disputing? The "nobles guard their privilege" or "rich became targets"? Because both appear true in your example.

Despite two generations of Fuggers working for the royalty of the HRE, it wasn't until the 3rd generation of royal involvement that Jackob became a noble. Sounds like preserving privilege

And on the "being targets", the Fuggers had been making loans to nobles for decades. Ultimately they gave Charles 2 TONS of gold so the he could secure his bid for emperor. Also sounds like they were squeezed more than a bit.