Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6117862" data-attributes="member: 42582">Wish lists in 4e are a consequence of the relationship between the ingame/story role of magic items - they're things that the PCs discover or are given - and their metagame role - they are elements of PC build. The player conceives of the PC build, and then hands the GM the wish list because the GM has control of the relevant fiction (ie it is the GM, not the player, who in 4e has the authority to establish, within the fiction, what gear it is that NPCs/monsters possess).That's not a defence of wish lists, just an explanation. Obviously there are other ways to approach the metagame role of magic items - eg as reward rather than build element - which is where D&Dnext seems to be heading. And you could change the story role, too, by making them primarily things that the PCs build. (I gather some approaches to 3E play go further in this direction than 4e does.)This is just a different way of bridging the same issue that wish lists address: "loot bags" are an expected player resource; the unlocking of that resource is mediated via the GM's role in establishing the relevant elements of the fiction (namely, what do the NPCs have to give away/sell/have taken from them); and the GM is expected to provide a town where the loot can be exchanged for better gear. (Whether that gear is magic or non-magic may be important as a matter of flavour, but seems pretty peripheral to the basic questions of game design.)In the wish list model, the NPCs yield up desired gear direct to the PCs without mediation; in your model one set of NPCs yields up gold to the PCs, who then go to another set of NPCs who yield up the desired gear in exchange for that gold. Which structure is preferable seems to me to depend mostly on how important you think it is to have that transition between the two sets of NPCs. In some games, that sort of mediation/transition fits well (it's downtime, healing, research etc); in other games it's just a pain that mucks up pacing (eg in a high-paced race-against-the-clock type game, it just prevents the PCs getting the gear upgrades they need). I think it's interesting that in the classic fantasy quest adventure - LotR - items are acquired either as part of backstory (mithral coat, Sting, etc) or via a "wish list" process (ie on their adventures the characters find or are given exactly what they need: the barrow daggers, Anduril, the gifts from Galadriel, the Palantir, the orcish disguises, etc).Either model is very easily broken by appeals to verisimilitude. The "spend gold in town" model will break down as soon as a GM decides that it's "unrealistic" that the town should have a shop stocked with such a good range of gear; much the same as the wish list model will break down as soon as a GM decides that it's "unrealistic" that a PC's enemies often have items that are useful for that PC. In the first case, the players get stuck with gold on their PC sheets that is useless as a resource because they have no character abilities that take gold directly as an input; in the second case, the players get stuck with items on their PC sheets that are useless as resources because those items don't contribute in any meaningful way to the PCs' builds.</blockquote>

Verification