D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Minigiant]

Arthurian stories have this too - knights ride away from Camelot and find random castles in random forests inhabited by random ogres or enchantresses.

But Arthurian stores are not tales of city-states.

Camelot is the city-state.

D&D is like a bunch of Camelots and Evil Camelots with wilderness filled with ogres, orcs, fairie, and evil casters in between them. And every once in awhile one of the Camelot fall and becomes a dungeon where all the monsters hold all the magic item that of all the dead knights and nobles until some adventurous steal them or they eventually antagonize one of the Camelot into war and they destroy it.

Kind of like Westeros with more monsters. Magic Rivierruns and Harernhals everywhere surrounded by orcs, fey, and dragons.

 

[Ancalagon]

It seems to me that the model for that assumption is German conquest of Central and Eastern Europe, English conquest of Ireland, etc. Or rather a romanticised version of that - quelling the local "tribes" and monsters, making "waste lands" productive, etc.

And see, this does bother me a bit because "the land is free for the taking" is the central lie behind colonialism...

I'm starting a campaign soon in Yoon Suin and there will be none of that. History has shown us that any inhabitable land will be inhabited.

 

[Minigiant]

And see, this does bother me a bit because "the land is free for the taking" is the central lie behind colonialism...

I'm starting a campaign soon in Yoon Suin and there will be none of that. History has shown us that any inhabitable land will be inhabited.

I don't think this is the case.

Many dungeons are ruined settlements or makeshift settlements. Ruined castles, conquered forts, sacked strongholds, temples to dead religions, abandoned caves, depleted mines, wizards towers and laboratories sans wizard.

The lands aren't free from the taking. The people who own it are dead or too weak to defend it.

The wilderness isn't settled. The tribes who live in a place cannot control it and are fighting each other over that control and thus aren't able to create a settlement long enough to hold the area.

The mayor send you new off to do a quest in the woods Is the mayor of a town on the edge teetering before ruin. Because the mayor doesn't have to power to deal with the problem and the Lord above them, if they exist, aren't able or aren't willing to do with it either.

I think that's the difference between a RPG setting and a Wargame setting. In a war game settings, the nobles have armies ready to conquer weaker nobles or "barbarians" weaker than them and claim their lands. The humans dwarfs and elves send hundreds or thousands of soldiers at a problem and at a weaker foe if there is no immediate problem. RPG settings have something occupying the time of the powerful so colonization only happens if the powerful have peace.

Either way the nobles and wealthy have the sweetest gear they can buy.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The design of the early edition high level fighter and ranger assumed that there was always unclaimed land outside of civilization that rich nobles with armies and magic items would not challenge high level adventurers for if they build strongholds and castles there.

The return of bastions bring this back to 5th edition

Funny. I always assumed that most of that land was granted to the adventurers by the nobles, (specifically the monarch) unless the adventurers really went way out.

Since the bastion rules don't assume any actual governance beyond the building so far as I know, I don't see how it changes that narrative.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is where the necessary "shortcut" of using a gold value of component instead of an amount shows it flaws, and it's necessity.

Can you imagine a cookie recipe saying "use 75 cents worth of flour, 2 dollars' worth of chocolate chip cookies"... no, it's insanity, no one cooks like this!

But a rule system that says "use a quarter carat (or 50 mg, if you prefer a metric value) of ruby dust to make a continual flame" is equally silly as a gaming rule. How much worth of ruby dust is that?!? 50 gold, perhaps?

So faced with that, we are left with a few options. Perhaps constant mining by dwarves (which are WAY better at mining than pre-industrial humans ever were) keeps the supply of rubies constant. Perhaps the value is meant as a sacrifice to some god or other entity, so "it's the thought that counts" and thus the physical amount doesn't matter, just the value. Perhaps the prices are kept fixed by powerful guilds (this happened a lot in some portions of the world).

Or maybe, the prices in the PHB are the prices now, now conveniently being the time your campaign is happening.

I never liked the "x amount worth of y" thing. Just use actual weights! I'd it be more fiddly but also more logical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

More like Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate, and Icewinddale.


A lot of old school D&D was designed around a safe hub towns and cities surrounded by random wilderness with iffy trade routes and HYPERMEGADEATH dungeons far away to not affect daily life but close enough to make in back when besten down.

Not just old school D&D. As has been noted that was 4e's default as well.

 

[pemerton]

And see, this does bother me a bit because "the land is free for the taking" is the central lie behind colonialism...

I think it's pretty hard to keep the idea of "civilising the wilderness" while avoiding some of these connotations.

Not impossible, maybe. But hard.

I'm starting a campaign soon in Yoon Suin and there will be none of that.

Sounds reasonable!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Interesting take, but some things (in glancing) you might not consider:

The material cost isn't just 50 gp... it is 50 gp of RUBY DUST. Unless your world as an abudance of rubies... and the means to crush them into dust easily, that seems a larger obstacle than just the 50 gp would suggest.

By RAW, it's a value of ruby dust, not an amount. One can rationalize it by considering it not an industrial process, where the ruby dust is a part of the continual flame. The ruby dust is just what you sacrifice to the Elemental Lord of Flame you contacted with the spell to loan him a minor spirit forever. So if ruby dust are so rare that very few carat fetch 50 gp, then it is still valuable to the Elemental Lord of Flame. Wisely, the archwizard who designed the spell and bargained the terms forever didn't specify an amount but a market value when designing this ritual!

Or, as D&D doesn't represent an economy, the prices are set. Either because they represent the equilibrium at the exact moment of the adventure and the PCs action are usually too small scale to unbalance the economy -- and objectively, few players would be thrilled by an adventure whose goal would be to corner the ruby market in Waterdeep. I'd buy this module, though. But you can make it more surreal. The prices are the price. A skilled laborer charges 2 gp a day. If he is the only skilled laborer able to reforge your sword in a 100 km radius and knows you need your sword fixed at all price and your purse is overflowing with rubies? 2 gp a day. Inversely, he's about to starve and you offer to pay him a meal for his family instead and he has no other choice? 2 gp a day, no less. The town is about to be destroyed by a dragon and the hero have a dragon-slaying sword to reforge? That's 2 gp for you, sir. Because the price were set in Mechanus, where Wilzygir the Economically-Obsessed wizard Wished for the price to be set after a bout of inflation that made him angry, using a non-standard application of the spell. Ever since, an inevitable will materialize and behead anyone who price goods and services at another value than what the law says. Nobody has ever seen an inevitable, but do you want to risk losing your head over this? That's 2 gp, then.

Or 50 gp worth of ruby dust isn't just an amount of ruby, crushed with a mortar. You need a specific dust-creating process from the rubies, and the wizard guild is selling the result in a pouch, certified for use in the Continual Light spell, in convenient 50 gp package.

Also, the torchmakers' guild might have issue with this, as would anyone who makes their living with oil for lamps, etc.

The world would quickly evolve into something that is quite removed from the classical D&D setting.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Well, in D&D there often seems to be a lot of unsettled "wilderness." 4e had the "points of light" concept. I don't think these really resemble medieval Europe that much, even though that's the trappings D&D goes for. However, I think these make quite a bit sense if the nations are city states instead of realms that span large areas.

Honestly? It reminds me of no period of the European Middle Ages, not in demography, social organization (how can centralized power can organize over a large distance in a PoL setting?) and mindset of the PCs -- which is decidedly not feudal in the default D&D assumption. It reminds me of the US expanding from the 13 colonies into mainland America. The distant king is the central government, points of civilization exist around a sheriff/baron or a fort, outlying farms owned by very modern citizens, not serfs, that could be threatened by outlaws and native hostile life forms everyone considers a threat to be removed without any moral quandary. Also, lot of religious freedom with a presentation of polytheism that is more a collection of monotheism or henotheism and no inquisition nor even concepts like cujus regio, ejus religio (contrast to the Albigensian Crusade in the European Middle Ages...). Sure, it doesn't reflect the current mindset, especially with regard to the inhabitants, but it's always the impression that PoL gave me, with the resettling of the land thanks to entreprising adventurers sounding very much like the manifest destiny. And a few roman/ren faire trappings on top.

The other source of inspiration could be an exaggerated, dystopic view of the 500-800 AD period. A civilization crashed hard in the past, population collapsed big way, trade route that were needed to maintain higher living conditions disappeared, and right now, there are only a few remaining cities, half-empty, separated by wild areas that are about to be reconquered. Devoid of life, in need of clearing and reclamation because trees overgrew on the ruin of ancient cities. Like a tenfold Black Plague (which was not sufficent to cause that, despite a 30% reduction in population) or a seismic collapse of the Roman Empire (though the idea that Gaul lost most of its inhabitants after the collapse of the Roman Empire is seriously watered down nowaydays). Something that would make people consider abandon farming to become hunter-gatherers again, with only a few places from where civilization could regrow.

 

[ezo]

This is where the necessary "shortcut" of using a gold value of component instead of an amount shows it flaws, and it's necessity.

Can you imagine a cookie recipe saying "use 75 cents worth of flour, 2 dollars' worth of chocolate chip cookies"... no, it's insanity, no one cooks like this!

But a rule system that says "use a quarter carat (or 50 mg, if you prefer a metric value) of ruby dust to make a continual flame" is equally silly as a gaming rule. How much worth of ruby dust is that?!? 50 gold, perhaps?

So faced with that, we are left with a few options. Perhaps constant mining by dwarves (which are WAY better at mining than pre-industrial humans ever were) keeps the supply of rubies constant. Perhaps the value is meant as a sacrifice to some god or other entity, so "it's the thought that counts" and thus the physical amount doesn't matter, just the value. Perhaps the prices are kept fixed by powerful guilds (this happened a lot in some portions of the world).

Or maybe, the prices in the PHB are the prices now, now conveniently being the time your campaign is happening.

Ruby dust ground from low quality rubies would be a commodity among spellcasters, just like other spell components (100gp pearls for Identify; 50gp diamonds for Chromatic Orb, and others).

This is about the rarity of rubies in your game world, not about the price then or now or whatever. In our world, rubies are one of the rarest gemstones. Even low quality ones which might be "usable" for spellcasters certainly might not abound in your game world. How would you even crush them as they are one of the hardest substances as well? They are harder than steel easily. Grinding them down would be an incredible burden. But IMO the entire issue is silly since if you had such things in a magical world you would have spells like Drawmij's Grinding Gyro or something which would be used to grind rubies and diamonds into dust for spell use... But we don't have spells like that.

Finally, casters in my games are very rare. I will never run a D&D game rampant with casters and such convenient "commonplace" magical items which just replace mundane tasks and objects, such as continual light flashlights (yeah, the old continual light spell in the bottom of a scrollcase tube with an adjustable mirror back on a screw so you can make the "beam" wide or narrow...).

Having too much magic ruins a game for me as quickly as too much gold. It gets to a point quickly where such things lose value and the game becomes boring--it ceases, in fact, to be magical.

The world would quickly evolve into something that is quite removed from the classical D&D setting.

Correct, which is why I will never allow it in my games, or play in games with it. It just isn't fun for me.