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?

 

[Kurotowa]

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

All true, but a bit trickier to navigate in a fantasy world. As my brother puts it, there's the Power of Kings to command workers and armies, and the Power of Dragons where you yourself are mighty. The reach of the King is farther and with the right minions they can accomplish great things, but a Dragon who stands alone and stripped of all its wealth is still a Dragon.

In a D&D setting, not every Dragon is literally a dragon, though some are. There are quite a few beings of such personal might that taking on an army isn't unreasonable, and a high level adventuring party is definitely on that list. That's why they often feel free to talk back to Kings and other nobles. A Dragon stands on equal footing with a King and all his armies.

 

[James Gasik]

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.

Mostly just how the nobility became indebted to wealthy merchants, since you wrote that "Outside of democracy-based states, the rich are the nobility. Or the nobility are the only ones who can be rich."

I guess you could argue that they did indeed use their wealth to basically become nobles, but they had to have the money in the first place.

 

[bloodtide]

I firmly use Magic Marts. Any place bigger then a village will have one. Though I break them down into three types: The Common One, The High Class one and the Dark One.

The Common One is found right on the street. Though they only sell a very limited selection of magic items: trinkets, protection items, utility items and every day items. But nearly never weapons, attack magic, or vile magic. In general, they have some adventure worthy items, but not too much.

The High Class One is where the real powerful magic is, but this is not a public shop. It's a invite only type of club. You have to know someone...or have enough gold...to get in. You can get mostly any item here, at least in theory.

The Dark One is where you buy dark, evil, illegal and such magic items. Also not public, and often not to safe.

I find the whole "adventure for magic Items" just does not work for D&D, in general. Trying to make magic items a rare and wondrous thing does not fit in with the game play. Though it can be done in a very dark, gritty world....where battered characters with one hit point fight on with a broken sword hilt and a couple of burned spellbook pages.

First, most players expect the reward of magic items almost every game session. Going for weeks with no magic items is not fun for a lot of players.

Second, each player really only wants a couple of items for their character out of the whole list. So when they find random magic items they won't even count that. This puts the DM on the spot to Alter Game Reality so that what ever magic items the players want...is just amazingly found. If a player wants an item...well, in the next treasure chest the Buddy DM will just say "oh, inside is that item!". And sure you can place the custom magic items in an adventure....but then you must Railroad to make sure the player gets their custom item. And you can't make it too hard...like a dragon is too hard...it will need to be like goofy kobolds guarding that custom item.

Third, you have to do it for each player. You can't just give your Best Buddy player "oh you find the exact custom magic item you wanted, Best Buddy", and ignore the other players. So you have to have custom magic items for each player in each adventure and railroad..or just give...the magic items to each player. Oh, and they need to all be of equal power.

Fourth is that power problem. Most of the By-The-Rules magic items are junk. Even if the DM tries to put a shinny bow on them. "Wow...it's the Hot Flaming Sword of Flaming Fire! And it can burn foes...and.....um....light a pile of leaves on fire!". so your going to need more powerful magic items to be "special".

Fifth, you get the problem of the players just doing the adventure for the magic item...but not caring about the adventure.

 

[James Gasik]

Re-reading The Magister to get ideas for my upcoming game, I really have to admire how Ed Greenwood makes magic items feel special by giving them a half page of lore.

 

[Starfox]

Some of the things I feel are important to the discussion.

Worldbuilding: Does it make sense that the world features magic traders. in 3E I felt it very much did so. An international network can exists with Lantern Archons that safely transport magic items weighing up to 25 lbs to any spot in the world, most magic item orders can be completed in a few days. This meshed well with my idea that the World of Greyhak IMC was moving out of the middle ages and into the renaissance.

Character Integrity: In a game like DnD, magic items quickly become very important to characters, to the point where they define you. I had a character that wielded a sword of ice in one hand and a sword of fire in the other. Those were random treasures, but even if the loot you want doesn't drop, it makes sense that you can equip your character to live up to your image of that character. If only GM-given items are accessible, that lessens the player's control of the character.

Balance: DnD is very much balanced around magic items, but is evaluating their effect. The worst example is for the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide, under the section of trading with an NPC wizard to copy a spell out of their spellbook, where "a minor item, like a girdle of giant strength" is suggested as a gift. The problem is that girdle of giant strength is basically the nest item in that game. This example is extreme, but there are many others that are still bad, if not as comical. In 3E, you wanted to spread your budget evenly over the magic item slots, its much cheaper to have a +1 shield, armor, and ring of protection, than to have a +3 armor. This is a major argument against magic emporiums. They encourage all sorts of game-isms.

Time: Having magic item shops and actually playing out what happens in these shops feels like a waste of time to me. If you have no item shops, this is not a problem. If you have items shops and you give the player's a list to pick from, this takes a short amount of time. If you have to bargain and debate with the GM for each magic item, it eats up lots and lots of time.

 

[Celebrim]

Worldbuilding: Does it make sense that the world features magic traders. in 3E I felt it very much did so.

3.0e is my favorite version of D&D and my favorite fantasy system and I protest that this is still a matter of setting and not a matter of edition. Fundamentally, I felt that 3e D&D better explained the world as observed in Gygaxian 1e AD&D than 1e AD&D's rules did, and I changed nothing about how I conceived of the setting in terms of availability of magic items.

Character Integrity: In a game like DnD, magic items quickly become very important to characters, to the point where they define you. I had a character that wielded a sword of ice in one hand and a sword of fire in the other. Those were random treasures, but even if the loot you want doesn't drop, it makes sense that you can equip your character to live up to your image of that character. If only GM-given items are accessible, that lessens the player's control of the character.

We have very different ideas of what constitutes "character" and what parts of character are under the player's control. Your point is undermined by the fact that your cool character was created by random loot drops. Players have much better things to worry about than exactly how their character will look and play at 12th level. Moreover, I'm not opposed to a player commissioning an item that they greatly desire, just opposed to the idea that there is a magic mart where they can go find whatever they desire.

This is a major argument against magic emporiums. They encourage all sorts of game-isms.

Agreed. It also encourages very high levels of optimization that generally increase effective character level beyond the expectations of the system. The system isn't designed to handle that level of optimization. The appropriate response to it is to up encounter difficulty and decrease XP awards, otherwise you'll just have players stream rolling otherwise level appropriate challenges.

Having magic item shops and actually playing out what happens in these shops feels like a waste of time to me.

This very much depends on group aesthetics. Matt Mercer loves shopkeepers and downtime as opportunities for character building and establishing dialogue and comedy. You might say he has magic marts precisely to encourage PC's to interact with shopkeepers.

But despite the thoughfulness of your list, you fail to mention what for me is the biggest problem with a magic mart to me and that's they undermine the aesthetic of the game. D&D is always about exploring the netherworld where "netherworld" has a pretty broad definition. You don't want what is in the shop to be better than what you can get through loot drops. That cycle of acquiring the loot drops that cRPGs capitalize on and make almost the sole game play is still core D&D game play. You want magic items to feel sort of priceless because what it took to get them. You don't (normally) want to find The One Ring in a gift shop (unless it is a very special gift shop that is itself part of the netherworld).

There are also problems with player entitlement. I have talked to 3e players that thought it was unfair of a DM to hide treasure because they were owed treasure as part of their character concept. They viewed wealth by level not as a guideline but as a contract the GM was obligated to fulfill and that the player might not find the treasure he was owed poor DMing. They wanted treasure to just fall at the player's feet itemized and identified like a cRPG, and the idea that you might have to search offended them. This again undermines the game's core aesthetic. I don't have a lot of interest in the minigame that developed in 3e where you try to optimize the build for 1-20 right down to the gear you have at each level.

Moreover, it also undermines player crafting. If you have everything available in the gift shop, what value is there really in being able to craft your own gear? This is a valid player aspiration that ought to carry with it a sense of satisfaction. Whether the crafting rules are fair and balanced is another point to address, but the whole point is that you want PCs invested in aspirations for things that they truly can control, not in aspirations for things that are really beyond their control (whether the exact weapon they want exists in a particular shop). And really, Magic Mart is a terrible Fantasy.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Some of the things I feel are important to the discussion.

Worldbuilding: Does it make sense that the world features magic traders.

Character Integrity: In a game like DnD, magic items quickly become very important to characters, to the point where they define you.

I agree, broadly.

Balance: DnD is very much balanced around magic items, but is evaluating their effect. The worst example is for the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide, under the section of trading with an NPC wizard to copy a spell out of their spellbook, where "a minor item, like a girdle of giant strength" is suggested as a gift. The problem is that girdle of giant strength is basically the nest item in that game

Valid point, but a poor example, I think. However that's tangential to a magic shop thread and more applicable to class design discussions.

Time: Having magic item shops and actually playing out what happens in these shops feels like a waste of time to me.

It's not a waste if the players are enjoying themselves. However, for me, this also assumes that the PCs are interacting with colorful characters and, at least in part, bartering old or undesired items. I would say it is definitely a table-centered preference and undesirable to several.

The approach that's has come to work for me is easy access to minor items; 1st level scrolls, healing potions, 7c. Access to custom fabricators that work with the wealthy, powerful, or acquisitors of the rare and interesting (PCs). And some useful to robust rules for PCs making their own.

 

[Staffan]

Some of the things I feel are important to the discussion.

Worldbuilding: Does it make sense that the world features magic traders. in 3E I felt it very much did so.

3.0e is my favorite version of D&D and my favorite fantasy system and I protest that this is still a matter of setting and not a matter of edition. Fundamentally, I felt that 3e D&D better explained the world as observed in Gygaxian 1e AD&D than 1e AD&D's rules did, and I changed nothing about how I conceived of the setting in terms of availability of magic items.

Trading of magic items makes more sense in 3e than in 2e. I don't know if 1e did things differently, but in 2e creating magic items was a mid-to-high level endeavor. You needed to have a lab and/or a forge, plus a library to research methods, and that necessitated a fairly settled life. You needed to be fairly high level – I think it was level 7 for priestly scrolls/potions, level 9 for wizardly ones, and level 11 for permanent stuff (though the game was rather silent on how you'd actually make those items without permanency), but I could be wrong on the specifics. After the ground work was laid, you needed to figure out how to make each individual item type, which would require long and expensive research and/or the use of dangerous magic like contact other plane. And once you had that figured out, you needed to acquire various more or less exotic ingredients, ranging from something relatively mundane like troll's blood to something esoteric like the dreams of an illithid. In other words, creating a magic item in 2e was likely to be the focus of not just one but several adventures all by itself. Would you go to all that trouble to make an item, and then sell it? You might still sell crap you found, but even that's going to be pretty rare.

In contrast, item creation in 3e is far more transactional. First off, it starts much, much earlier: scrolls at level 1, potions and wondrous items at level 3, wands and weapons/armor at level 5. Sure, you need the appropriate feat as well, but that's just making a particular choice when leveling up. That means it's much easier to find someone who can make a particular item. Nor do you need any particular facilities – "a fairly quiet, comfortable, and well-lit place in which to work" suffices. Once you have the feat, you can make pretty much any item as long as you can fulfill the casting prerequisites, spend the right money, and have enough downtime. Some items require more, but they are few and far between. You could argue that you're still using troll's blood and illithid dreams, it's just that you're paying someone to get them for you – but that's a big level of abstraction.

So it makes perfect sense that 3e casters would sell moderate magic items, or at least have them available for commission, while AD&D casters would do no such thing.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm an old man. Back in my day 7th level was high level and if you saw a +2 anything in a campaign 3 PCs probably gave their lives in getting it.
The greatest magic items we saw in 30 years of playing was a ring that could polymorph you into a white mouse at will, and a sword that forced you to go first in the initiative line up.

The idea of selling magic items just simply would never have occurred to us. If i mentioned crafting to some of the old timers they would laugh me out of the room.

I've been playing over 40 years, and I dare say I've been much more stingy with magic items than most DMs I know. I really dislike magic shops in general (beyond the occasional alchemy shop and the like).

I could hand you a college-lined sheet of paper from our 2E campaign (14th level characters) with a double-columned list of treasure and magic items on it, about 90% of which came from official modules. The party had so much gold that to get it down to a reasonable level, I came up with a wandering magic shop (using the DMG pricing from 1E) - the only time I can recall using it. They bought a couple items (I recall a girdle of frost giant strength being one), but to my dismay they ended up selling most of the extra magic items they had to the shop. (I still have the paper with all the original stuff on it, I kept it as a record for nostalgia's sake).

Then they used the money to buy a title (Baron) from the local king, as well as a plot land. They used the remaining funds to build a castle for the paladin, and with some creative uses of move earth and the like created a secret base underneath.

The magic shop didn't kill the game, so its still part of the lore (and I managed to resist using it in 3E). With 5E, I haven't even had to think about using it.

 

[Celebrim]

So it makes perfect sense that 3e casters would sell moderate magic items, or at least have them available for commission, while AD&D casters would do no such thing.

Actually, no. Especially when it comes to potions and scrolls, there is no particular reason to think that they are more transactional in 3e than in 1e/2e. And indeed, there is good reason to think they are less transactional. That's because unlike 1e/2e, minor items like potions and scrolls required the investment of a non-commodity item, namely "experience points". That items in 3e require experience points to create means that making them is a serious endeavor and there is an inherit limit on their production because each one is trading a bit of your life away.

Things that you mention like "you needed to figure out how to make each individual item type, which would require long and expensive research and/or the use of dangerous magic like contact other plane. And once you had that figured out, you needed to acquire various more or less exotic ingredients, ranging from something relatively mundane like troll's blood to something esoteric like the dreams of an illithid. In other words, creating a magic item in 2e was likely to be the focus of not just one but several adventures all by itself" is actually implicitly built into the 3e system as well. The gold required to acquire those exotic ingredients like troll's blood or displacer beast hide is what the 3e system is modelling in the abstract. Third edition assumes there exists a trade in exotic ingredients and crafting recipes for magical ink and potions and that the cost to make an item is abstractly representing obtaining those ingredients like blue dragon's bile or tiger hearts on the open market.

You absolutely in 3e can as a GM insist that a particular item is so exotic and powerful that it's not available for gold on the open market and therefore since you can't buy the "dreams of an illithid" locally that you must go on a quest to find it as part of standard 3e item construction. 3e never insists magic items are made of gold, only that it's likely that you can use gold to buy the ingredients that magic items are made of it. Likewise, you absolutely can assume in 1e that you can go to an alchemist and buy a vial of troll's blood.

That sort of "magic ingredient mart" existing in major cities to trade in plundered and brined and embalmed monster body parts, exotic plants, and other such ingredients I'm perfectly happy to have existing in major metropolitan areas in a way that I'm not happy with the "magic item mart". There are even particular places in my game world where you could go to buy dreams, memories, souls, bottled spirits, and other extremely exotic commodities. It makes perfect sense that the ingredients for crafting magic items would be traded, but that the magic items themselves would not normally be available on the open market because the manufacture of those items involves investing something precious - not gold but XP.

This is what I'm talking about when I say 3e better described the AD&D setting as observed than the rules of AD&D did, because there isn't anything in 1e AD&D to explain why magic swords are one of the most commonly observed items given that making any permanent magic item required not only a caster of a level that was supposed to be extraordinarily rare but also required sacrificing a non-commodity ingredient - CON points.