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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3394124" data-attributes="member: 4937">Versimlitude.  The one of the many problems with 'Magic Item Wal-Marts' is that they encourage the player to think in ways that are anachronistic for the setting (or more precisely, I should say 'my setting', since for some settings - say Eberron - modernity is actually what you are going for to a certain extent).  By treating the RP universe as a model of the real world culture he is familiar with, he's limiting his emmersiveness from his perspective (and I'd hope that that is a loss) and from my perspective he's limiting the depth of his interactivness because he's unable to see a good portion of the game world as it exists (and for me thats a loss).  If I encouraged the player to think that he could just walk into a shop and buy anything (or even something) off the shelf, he'd be missing something.  It's not just with magic items.  You can't go in and buy platemail off the shelf.  For one thing, it takes a year to make.  For another thing, there may be laws prohibiting its sale in much the same way that people can't just go buy M1-A2 main battle tanks off the shelf.  I won't the player to think about the fact that going around with a sword, lance, mail, and a warhorse looks alot like what we'd think of as riding down main street with an M-1 tank.  I want the player to understand why he's conspicious and what social role and status he currently occupies, so that for example, when his social status improves as a result of these heroics he's engaged in he can experience the difference.So, he's losing something and its just going to confuse him if doesn't get started accepting the conventions of the setting if for example when he goes strolling up to the gates of the nearest town and the guy at the gate says something like, "Halt! Why is that you go about bearing in such fell arms?  What business have you in this city that you are arrayed in such ironmongery, for know now that no one may enter our peaceful city wearing such warlike gear without the consent of our Lord.  Now, speak your names strangers, or else prepare yourself for the taste of steel!" In other words, I'm drawing on things like Beowulf, and the Illiad, and medieval epics and all sorts of other things, and I expect the players to get into that.  I'm not drawing on Diablo, and if you want to play Diablo, I suggest we have a LAN party and not bother with pen, paper, and imagination.I guess that depends.  I love dungeon crawling.  I love wilderness adventures.  I love urban adventures, murder mysteries and epic campaigns to save the world.  But, I also think that slowing down and doing dialogue and letting the PC's and NPC's characterize themselves is a big part of role playing.  To give it an analogy, maybe someone thinks of that part of the 'feast' as 'broccolli', and they hate 'broccolli' and I can sympathize with that.  'Broccolli' isn't everyone's thing, and I certainly wouldn't waste alot of time on it if we were eating 'fast food' instead of a 'feast'.  I'd get right down to the entree, whatever it was.  But, if I'm going to take my time and enjoy the meal, I'd like some well prepared vegetables to go with everything else - whether I'm a DM or a player.To use a somewhat imperfect example, consider the campaign laid out in the popular web comic - 'The Order of the Stick'.  Is it your contention that all that interaction with NPC's are things were 'nothing is happening' and that those parts of the story are 'just boring'?  What would happen to the comic if we cut out every panel about character maintenance, equipment maintenance, character development, and non-combat NPC interaction?</blockquote>

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