Thomas Shey
Legend
I dunno - it seems to me that I could just as equally make this diagnosis about treasure in classic D&D:
I think that's not an unsound argument, but the difference there is usually distribution is done in downtime, and inequalities are extremely obvious to everyone concerned. The cases where it tended to be a problem was mostly magic items, since they were chunky, of varying value, and came in small numbers (of course they were often also what really mattered to people). But if nothing else it would be pretty obvious even after the fact, and not done on the fly. But its absolutely the same kind of problem.
Its to be noted that outside of the D&D sphere, things like magic item distribution are pretty rare, so this is unlikely to be much of an issue. It either ends up being a very heavily group dependent decision, or its impact is pretty low (there's a discussion bearing on that regarding PF2e right now elsewhere on this board).
it is generally encountered/obtained as a group resource (the party defeats some NPCs, or explores a room, and finds some treasure), but then has to be divided up and used individually (I'm thinking especially of magic items here), and that can work out poorly at some tables (eg there is resentment at who gets what for their PC; or everyone agrees that the mage should get the wand, but then subsequently the mage player doesn't use the wand very cleverly, to the detriment of the whole party).
Well, that's liable to bear on a different set of problems, which is individual players who seem unable or unwilling to hold up their part of the game; the wand is just a reflection of that, since no one else could likely use it anyway. A better example is a magic sword; probably there are multiple characters who can use that, so someone getting it and then making poor use might have a not-dissimilar mechanic.
Of course the difference is, assuming older versions of D&D, a lot of magic swords and other items will come along, and its going to be pretty obvious if the same character gets all of them (and can't even really use a second magic sword as such). As I mentioned, its also not usually going to be an on-the-fly decision.
Any game with group dynamics, or that requires groups to make decisions that ramify out through individual decisions that then feed back into the group experience, could raise the issue you describe here.
As I've explained, I think some are more fraught than others, though.
It seesm to me that if the game makes clear that it is a group game - which really just about any RPG does by labelling itself a RPG - then it has given the relevant "warning".
Can't really agree. Because lots of games have relatively little that has this sort of "splitting up a limited pot" elements, especially on the fly.