Do Magic Item "Shops" wreck the spirit of D&D?

[Raven Crowking]

But don't act like the present incarnation of the game has somehow shamed some grand overarching tradition of characters dancing around like Ewoks after the battle singing, "Yub nub! We found a +1 dagger!"

Hmmmm....Did I say this was the fault of the game rules? I can recall threads in which I argued, quite vehemently, that the 3.X rules do not logically lead to the idea of "magic shops". For my game, I altered the Item Creation feats slightly as well.

I certainly do think that there is more than a little marketing behind the proliferation of the idea, however, and I do think that the quotes Merric made from the MIC are more marketing than good game mastering.

YMMV, of course.


RC

 

[Storm Raven]

Hmmmm....Did I say this was the fault of the game rules? I can recall threads in which I argued, quite vehemently, that the 3.X rules do not logically lead to the idea of "magic shops". For my game, I altered the Item Creation feats slightly as well.

Well, if you don't see the connection between treating magic as a predicatable technology and treating magic items as a tradeable commodity, then it is difficult to find a basis for discussion. The D&D rules have always pointed to magic shops. 3e is just the first edition to actually recognize this and incorporate it into the rhetoric.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You are misinterpreting cause and effect. The ring of protection was little more important than the pint of lamp oil to begin with. You see, once you make magic items a predictable technology (a decision made in the earliest days of the development of D&D), then they become little more than well-made tools. And players (correctly) treat them as such.

You missed my earlier point, then, because magic items were not always a predictable technology, within the RAW. In 1e, you explicitly could never be certain what any item did. There was always a chance that the item was cursed, or had some unknown property. Items did things other than reproduce spell effects as well. Crom knows what might happen if you drank two potions.

With less codified rules, even spells were not necessarily predictable.

Actually, I am sure that I've read threads about this very subject before, and I am sure that someone else made exactly that point about spell effects being unpredictable in earlier editions (although it was intended to be a disparagement of those editions).

RC

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Some of us think that equating your magic items with a pint of lamp oil perforce reduces their importance to that of a pint of lamp oil.

For some of us it is just a pint of oil.

In my current campaign our boat is more important to me (at least) than the +2 shortbow I have. Why? Because the boat has a more interesting history to me than the bow does. I could go on about the adventure of how we got the boat, what the boat has allowed us to do and some really cool fights we had on the boat. My +2 shortbow is... well... a +2 shortbow. I don't remember where I got it. I'm sure I've killed some critters with it but i can't recount what they were.

If my DM gave me a four page history for this +2 shortbow it wouldn't help me think the bow was cool. When I first played the first Bauldur's Gate game I read the insanely long hostory of the first magic item I found. I found it kind of cool that they went into that much detail. Ithem realised later that the four or five screen length history had nothing to do with the rest of game and switched that item (likely a +1 sword of some type) for the better item when it came along. It also had a four screen history that I didn't care about.

I don't care about an item's history before I got it (if it doesn't relate to the game somehow). I care about MY history with the item. Diaglo's story about his player and his "weaker" sword makes perfect sense. Since there were others that could pick up the slack (and apparently didn't mind) he could keep using the sword that was cool to him.

I don't care if some sword killed some powerful priest 1325 years ago (if we aren't facing said priest ourselves). I care if I used said sword to kill said priest. Otherwise it's just a +1 sword. I don't care about a +1 sword - I care about MY +1 sword.

 

[Ealli]

Yes, but free choice in any meaningful context includes the idea that the choice can be followed through. In other words, when I "look for the remedies" and "want my character to acquire certain items", free choice requires that, perforce, those remedies and those items can actually be acquired. Otherwise it isn't "free choice"; it's wishing.

You can deny the possibility of free choice in magic items, but you have to remember to look at why you are doing so. The original quote is that some DMs don't like players having free choice. Either players get free choice or they don't. If they don't, is it because the DM doesn't like the idea of free choice? Is the DM not liking the idea of free choice a problem?

If the abstraction "doesn't worry about interacting" then, by definition, the place where the items are being bought/sold is a Wal-Magic. Wal-Magic is any place where any magic item can be bought or sold without hassle or effort, whether that place is a hut, a city, or a wizard's tower.

The first thing that happens when the items are spread out through many shops within a city is that there is no longer a single location where all the items are gathered and ready to be stolen. If thieves, especially players, are robbing the entire city, then dealing with the plague of thievery (or conquering the city) becomes a very good plot of its own.

For the purposes of shopping, black boxing the city works very well for expiditing the time taken to shop while still leaving the versimilitude of no one shop having a warehouse worth of items.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think that the main difference is whether or not you want your fantasy world to feel that it has an industrialized economy. I, for one, do not.

Industrialisation means factories, mass production, cheap one-size-fits-all consumer goods. Expensive magic items crafted to a PC's specifications are bespoke tailoring, the polar opposite of industrialisation.

 

[molonel]

Hmmmm....Did I say this was the fault of the game rules? I can recall threads in which I argued, quite vehemently, that the 3.X rules do not logically lead to the idea of "magic shops". For my game, I altered the Item Creation feats slightly as well. I certainly do think that there is more than a little marketing behind the proliferation of the idea, however, and I do think that the quotes Merric made from the MIC are more marketing than good game mastering. YMMV, of course.

Yes, I do think you are arguing that that it is at least partly the fault of the game rules, and you say so quite deliberately when commenting on the MIC.

You missed my earlier point, then, because magic items were not always a predictable technology, within the RAW. In 1e, you explicitly could never be certain what any item did. There was always a chance that the item was cursed, or had some unknown property. Items did things other than reproduce spell effects as well.

So are you blaming the rules for not being quite so ..... fuzzy?

Because I played 1st Edition, and although it's fun to jerk the rug out from under players's feet once in a while, the whole "We don't know what it does!" thing gets old, after a while. Telling the DM what armor class you hit, and having them tell you if that's good enough - because you don't know what plus the weapon is - or not knowing how strong your girdle of giant strength made you, or whatever, got very very old after a while.

Most times, because tracking these things was a pain in the butt, the DM just had some wizard look at it, and tell you what it did. Cursed items or unpredictable items were the exception, not the rule.

Crom knows what might happen if you drank two potions.

Ah, yes. The delightful potion-mixing rules. These added about as much to the game as the wandering prostitute encounter charts in the 1e DMG.

With less codified rules, even spells were not necessarily predictable.

Not really. The expansion rules for fireball were a little fun, but after a while you just got a feeling for how and when to place a fireball, and then you generally never got enveloped in one.

 

[darkseraphim]

So if the cities have all the items (much more selection than the dungeons, and easier to get), then why go adventuring at all? Just money, right? But wouldn't it be easier to treat the city as the dungeon, a type of Thieves World or evil campaign? (You plunder the city, get out and move on. If gear is all-important, then alignment is changeable to serve the higher cause, I suppose?) And why have monsters spit out anything but gold pieces in such a scenario?

It seems that players smart and calculating enough to min/max everything are going to reach the logical conclusion that dungeoneering is a waste of time, and "cut out the middle man."

From there it's a natural progression to settle down and take up shopkeeping, selling and buying magic items (Papers & Paychecks). The game is now about shopping. The circle is now complete ...

OK, I'm being slightly facetious. But really, this is a slippery slope and any smart player allowed this free reign is going to figure out very quickly where things are heading, once taken to their logical conclusion.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The terms 'magic item shop' and 'Wal-magic' are extremely problematic. The former should be used with caution as it conjures up images of a single store with a decent stock when in fact it's often used as a shorthand for 'magic items can be bought and sold'.

'Wal-magic' shouldn't be used at all imo. It's only purpose is to set up a straw man. No one is claiming there should be vast warehouses selling every item in the DMG. But that is the image the phrase suggests.

 

[Rolzup]

This whole thing is inspiring a bunch of ideas for the Next Campaign. Start things out in the sticks, fringes of the Empire or whatever, where the Village of Hommet would fit in perfectly. Magic's rare, and mysterious, something that the wise man doesn't entirely trust.

Meanwhile, we have the Imperial Capital. Which looks more like Sharn.... Airships, semi-industrialized magic, regular trade with other planes, firearms, the whole nine yards. Better suited to high level play, and the concerns of high-level characters.

In Hicksville, you can't buy magic items...not for love or money. In the Capital, anything and everything is for sale.

Amorphous as of yet, but plenty of room for me to work with.