You aren't really making your case here. Like...you're now telling me "oh, it could happen in a flash, but it's much more likely to take even longer than you're describing." That's not better for your argument. It's worse. It's literally conceding that your allegedly reasonable position has a very high likelihood of being even worse than I described!
In the session just finished an hour ago, the party got back to a town we haven't visited in several in-game months; those in-game months took probably two real-world years to play through (this game sails every second week; I'm a player).
Last time here, the party's lead character commissioned a magic item. This time through, she asked if it was done yet and was told it'll still be another three weeks or so; so we headed to a nearby resort founded by two PCs about 40 real-world years ago (and one of those PCs is in our party right now!), where my guess is we'll stay for some downtime until the item's done.
Okay. You need to know that people will respond not just negatively, but very negatively, to a design predicated on this happening frequently. People will simply choose not to play D&D, rather than put up with something like this. It's a non-starter from the jump.
1983-era 1e would beg to differ. That was the design, and the game did pretty well.
All I can say is, I don't think that would fly either. As noted, I've never once had a GM I would consider notably generous with magic items, whereas those who were extremely stingy with them have been commonplace--and that is reflected in, prior to this thread, essentially every self-report I've ever heard from anyone else.
Well, you ain't ever played in my game, have you.
I tend to do it the 1e way when it comes to treasure; and if you check the 1e and 1e-adjacent modules from that era you'll see many of them are pretty rich in both coins and magic, sometimes to the point where the PCs' biggest challenge is how to carry it all out.
I also, however, do it the 1e way when it comes to AoE item destruction; never mind the occasional Rust Monster or Disenchanter wandering by for a chat. Even getting it with Dispel Magic has a low but not-zero chance of knocking out your items either temporarily or permanently.
So you'd be actively trying to change both player psychology AND that of GMs, at the same time. Even doing one of those things would be a profoundly difficult thing to achieve. Doing both? You're going to be having GMs actively fighting you the whole way even if you do in fact make the rules do this. Because those GMs will simply ignore the item generosity, but include the item destruction. So it becomes "extremely rarely find, extremely frequently lose", rather than easy-come, easy-go. Players will hate that, and GMs won't see any motivation to change--you'll have made the situation the worst of both worlds.
WotC have succeeded in changing those psychologies to what they are, I'm merely trying to change them back to what they once were.
