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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 2583940" data-attributes="member: 5143">Actually, this is a really good point.  I had a friends who DMed a game I was never in, but he kept coming to work (we worked together) and telling me what he had planed and what was going on in his game.  I kept thinking "poor them".This DM had pages after pages written about his homebrew setting.  He had been planning it for years.  Everytime he had free time, he'd write more about his homebrew world.  He knew almost everything about his world, including a timeline backwards and forwards.  He gave one of the characters in his game a weapon that grew in power as it killed certain types of creatures.  He knew what powers it would get when the character became level 20.  He gave this to a character who was 2nd level.  He also knew the weapon would have to do with his plot later in the campaign.  I warned him it was a bad idea as he had no idea if the player would ever discover its powers and even if he did, how was he to discover what triggers the increase in power?  Even at that, who says the chracter won't pawn it the first chance he gets because he doesn't want it or the character dies?He was convinced though.  He knew what city they'd be in at each level because he was going to steer them there.  He had planned to turn them all into goblins at level 6 no matter what they did or what race they were originally.  He HAD to because his plot demanded that it happen.It smacked too much to me of walking through a novel without being able to change anything.  It might have been interesting, it certainly had a lot more story and plot than most of my games because he spent a lot more time thinking about it.  However, the game seemed to exist to allow the DM to tell a story to a bunch of players.  The players didn't matter to the story in the slightest.This is the reason I see most DMs changing the rules for:  "If I use the rules as written in the book, they might kill my bad guy too early and ruin the plot" or "If I allow this power as written, he can easily save this town without having to go through my plot".I can tell you that the above mentioned DM used a LOT of DM fiat to change things so that it fit the way he wanted his game to work.Well, I use the RAW for demographics as well.  Basically, I handwave exactly how it happens, maybe they search town endlessly asking everyone if they know someone who has a magic item or they walk into Magic Items R Us and buy something, however if the GP limit of a town is high enough to support buying a magic item, they can find it.  Since I run a game in Greyhawk, the demographics of Greyhawk city allow nearly any item of magic you want to be found there.  After all, it is the dumping ground for items that Mordenkainen and Rary want to get rid of.Still, even if they go to some "smaller" cities, basic magic items are available.  Also, I rule they can't find a buyer for any magic items that are worth more than the GP value of the city.  It's nice, it's simple and it gets up back to what the fun part of the game is: exploring dungeons and killing enemies.</blockquote>

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