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

[Vocenoctum]

The 'is magic mysterious' subthread is getting tiresome.

1) Magic was more mysterious in earlier editions than it is now.

Your example prove to randomness, not mystery. There was no "mystery" in random durations, just randomness. It was a mystery how long such a spell might last, but the spell was not mysterious in and of itself.

2) Magic can never be completely mysterious in any game where the players contol it. In fact, its difficult for magic to be completely mysterious in any game where the players know the rules, the setting, and the magic must be described in mechanical terms.

I sort of agree, but stretch that to basically mean nothing can be completely mysterious in a game. It's not a novel, so the limitations are there.

3) The rules of a game contribute to magic's flavor in the setting, but they don't define it.

I agree completely. The game rules provide a baseline for world effects and commonality of rules, not about "feel".

 

[howandwhy99]

And my point is that no matter what, these gloves are still just gloves. The player will wear them and forget about them. In no edition has there been some mystique to "gauntlets of ogre power" as anything more than a buff item. It's all well and fine that a player might attach to certain items as "his" and storied, but in any edition there are plenty of items that the player has which are simply items. They are unimportant and inconsequential except in their capacity to increase effectiveness. That does not diminish ALL magic items. You can still have the Gauntlets of Ogre Power that you wrested from the Goblin King and tell folks about them, but not every item will be so unique.

In our game Gauntlets of Ogre Power are made from ogres, the actual hands of 'em. Guess what you need, if you want to craft them? Putting them on is a bit icky, but they make you as strong as an ogre (static STR score), as big as one, as stinky and hairy as one, and with certain personality preferences as well.

That's not core, so I guess it doesn't count. When the DMG simply lists +2 to Str, it's offering nothing other than numerical bonuses. This is a detriment across the items list in 3E, but if you look carefully you'll notice lots of the old idiosyncrasies are still existent, just in watered down form. Why do wizards need spellbooks? Why do scrolls need to be deciphered with Read Magic? Why are so many of the these magic items pieces of clothing?

I suppose someday they'll remove all those little quirks and shave the game down to transparent arithmetic and the all the original flavor of the game will be lost. Just bland numbers with no apparent reason whatsoever for their existence. Making people into slotted statistical bonus carriers is hardly a game that stirs the imagination.

In earlier editions you basically just made stuff up and guessed.

Nor were we timid about making up whatever our imaginations could offer. Balancing rules for MI are nice, but they can become just as quickly a straitjacket to creativity when viewed as "build rules".

 

[PallidPatience]

One shouldn't need the game to supply the imagination.

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't see what that has to do with your argument. "Put on a cloak of poisonousness and die" is hardly mysterious. Indeed, likely, given a few Killer DMs...

This is not exactly obvious as mysterious. It goes back to the whole "pull a lever and it kills you" thread from a few months ago. Random, inexplicable death isn't mysterious and actually quite unfun IMO.

The key to a "poisoned treasure hoard, save vs. death" is there are subtle hints to its nature all throughout the dungeon it's within. High level games with these truly nasty traps test highly skilled players studiously looking out for such. The fact these challenges require clues makes them mysteries. Well, more appropriately puzzles, but they're in the same vein.

 

[Celebrim]

Voc: We are talking past each other. Or at least, I know I'm talking past you and in my experience that's usually a two way street. One last try, and then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

And my point is that no matter what, these gloves are still just gloves.

And my point is that you don't need that word 'just'. It's a qualifier, and its a subjective qualifier. It implies that they have an inferior quality. I agree that no matter what, these gloves are still gloves. I don't agree with the 'just'. Once you get rid of the 'just', the whole way of looking at things changes.

The player will wear them and forget about them.

Sure. Or rather, I think you make your point more strongly to say, that he'll forget about how he got them which rather more directly attacks the point. But still, how a character treats all of his items, the lesser and the greater, will depend greatly on how he anticipates getting future items.

In no edition has there been some mystique to "gauntlets of ogre power" as anything more than a buff item.

They are freaking gauntlets of ogre power!!! Gauntlets of ogre power!!! No mystique to gauntlets of ogre power!?!?! I do not want to play in your games.

I don't see why, the rules as written present certain items and ways of doing things.

I just don't see alot of rules in the DMG. Take page 18. On it I see written, "Do not tell players what they need to roll to succeed." That sounds like good advice. It's written in the imperative voice. Should I treat it as a rule? No, its just advice, written from an experienced player to one which may be less experienced. I know its not a rule because its not a part of a section on resolving in game space actions. It's part of a section telling me, in the opinion of the writer one DM to another, what I should do to maximize the enjoyment of the players in the long run. It's telling me how to resolve out of game propositions, meta game requests and so forth.

If you want to invent a system whereby the items gain uniqueness over time, that's fine.

I don't have to invent one. It's called story-telling.

It doesn't mean that the Gaunlets were ever anything more than Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

Right. But do things really have to be anything more than Gauntlets of Ogre Power!?!?!?

It's mostly about older editions though, since 3.5 actually HAS rules for customizing. In earlier editions you basically just made stuff up and guessed...3.5 has made magic items more customizable than any previous edition, yet because that power is also by default accessible to players, it's deemed to be bad by some.

You do know that a rule is a restriction? Without rules you can do anything. Customizing things is actually harder in 3.X than in earlier editions. It takes more work, and there are restrictions in what you can do if you want to maintain the structure. That isn't to say that the results might not be more satisfying 3.X, but don't imagine that the DM has more options to customize items, monsters, and the like than he had before. 3.5 has certainly not made magic items more customizable than any previous edition, and I am most certainly not complaining that about the power to create items being available to the PC's. If you think that, you aren't hearing me.

The rules are a baseline to which the DM adds or subtracts, mutates and mutilates, in order to build a compelling setting and story for himself and the players amusement.

Two completely different settings and stories can be built with the same set of rules. A DM tweaks the rules to help carry the flavor, but the rules don't build setting and story. If I change the story, I don't change the rules because the story and the setting elements aren't rules. The rules are like a hardware emulation layer down at the bottom on top of which all these setting elements ride, hopefully smoothly. Those rules may help fire the imagination, but they don't build anything for you.

If I create a new magic item, it in no ways alters the rules. If I create a new monster it in no way alters the rules. I can do all sorts of customization without touching the rules.

You do mention customizing your games in different ways, so obviously you're not using just the D&D rules.

Are you sure about that? I mean, yes, as a matter of fact I'm not using the rules as written, but if I was, it wouldn't preclude me customizing my game in different ways.

 

[MerricB]

This is not exactly obvious as mysterious. It goes back to the whole "pull a lever and it kills you" thread from a few months ago. Random, inexplicable death isn't mysterious and actually quite unfun IMO.

The key to a "poisoned treasure hoard, save vs. death" is there are subtle hints to its nature all throughout the dungeon it's within. High level games with these truly nasty traps test highly skilled players studiously looking out for such. The fact these challenges require clues makes them mysteries. Well, more appropriately puzzles, but they're in the same vein.

If I may rephrase that...

"The key to making a "poisoned treasure hoard, save vs. death" fun is when there are subtle hints to its nature all throughout the dungeon it's within."

The cloak itself is not mysterious in effect. It's as mysterious as any item is when you haven't cast identify on it and you don't know what it does. (In 1e, to cast identify, you have to first put the cloak on. Oops!) However, you can make it the focal point of a mystery, as you have clues as to what it is, for it can't be identified save by deciphering the clues.

(IIRC, Gygax has one or two cloaks of poisonousness in his adventures. Can anyone remember where?)

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

They are freaking gauntlets of ogre power!!! Gauntlets of ogre power!!! No mystique to gauntlets of ogre power!?!?! I do not want to play in your games.

Mystique, as opposed to mystery, requires something to be known, but rare.

The Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdle of Giant Strength and Hammer of Thunderbolts (also known as Thor's Things ) have real mystique in the 1e game: they were known, but the combination was rare except in Monty Haul games.

It is quite fair to say the mystique of certain items in 3e has been reduced. I definitely think the stat-boosting items fall in that category. Being able to buy and sell any magic item in a rulebook does reduce the mystique of those items, although more so with the cheap items than the expensive ones - the Staff of Power remains a rarity in most campaigns.

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

Just looking at your examples, I think we need to distinguish between:
* Magic was more mysterious, and
* Magic was more random.

Random doesn't mean mysterious.

Nice try. I think we need to go ahead and define 'mystery'. What is a 'mystery'? What gives things the quality of being 'mysterious'?

The dictionary defines mystery as:

1) anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown
2) any affair, thing, or person that presents features or qualities so obscure as to arouse curiosity or speculation
4) obscure, puzzling, or mysterious quality or character

There are alot of other ones, but I think we can see and agree that the quality of mystery is the quality of being 'unknown'.

Now, it is true that randomness is not in and of itself a synonym for mystery. We roll a dice. The result is something between 1 and 6. There is nothing mysterious about that. We roll two dice. The number is between 2 and 12. There is nothing mysterious about that. We make a bet on a seven. The dice are thrown. They are tumbling in the air. We don't know how things are going to turn out. Because the outcome of the dice throw is random, we don't know if we are going to win the bet or not. The future is unknown to us. So, after the dice are thrown, if we know the rules there is no mystery. But before the dice are thrown it is a totally different story whether we know the rules or not. And in general, humans love things where the outcome is not known in advance. We watch (and bet) on sporting games because of the intriguing, mysterious, random factor that lets little teams upset the bigger teams and underdogs become champions.

So, no, mystery is not the same as randomness. But randomness does contribute to a things mysteriousness because it contributes to a things unknowability.

To a large extent, I think the 'the game has never been mysterious' crowd are moving the goal posts. In earlier arguments, it was advanced that random tables were not mysterious because they had a finite range of 'predictable' results. I think that stretches the notion of what the word 'predictable' beyond recognition, but never mind. It's isn't necessary to prove that random tables are unpredictable to make the argument, although it would be nice if it went without saying. The implication of this supposed counter argument is that if the table were infinitely random (and hense infinitely long), then it would be truly mysterious because it would be completely unknowable. But I'm not worried about proving that something is completely mysterious, only that one thing is more mysterious than something else. Surely if it follows that a thing becomes completely mysterious if there are infinite random results, then a thing merely become more mysterious if it becomes more random. Why? Because, as I said, the outcome becomes less knowable.

Additionally, the examples I provided didn't depend on randomness alone. I provided examples of other types of 'unknowns' as well.

The play-style where players don't have access to the DMG does promote the mysteriousness of magic items; it is encouraged more in 1e than 3e, but, as demonstrated by many people over the years, a lot of players read the DMG (for one reason or another).

In the 1st edition DMG, the abilities of the listed artifacts were considered so important to keep secret that they weren't even included or published - merely some guidelines on the items relative power and how to make something like an artifact appropriately unknowable. So, 1st edition even went so far as to leave secrets that could not be known even to someone that read the rule book, which shows EGG had thought a time or three about this.

I don't see what that has to do with your argument. "Put on a cloak of poisonousness and die" is hardly mysterious.

In a word, 'numinous' - mystery that surpasses comprehension and provokes awe and terror. When an object breaks 'the rules', it implies that anything is possible. It implies that even if you know how things work, that sometimes they just won't work that way. "What do you mean? Don't I get a saving throw?" The cloak of poisonousness is an item that creates mystery after you find out its existence. A PC who doesn't understand that mystery is part of the fun sneaks a peek at the secrets of the fabled DMG. He stumbles upon an entry for something like a 'cloak of poisonousness' and beholds its dread unfair power. All bets are off. The DM can do anything, and any innocous action can lead to consequences of any degree.

We can see this in action in first edition modules, especially those created by EGG. Random and unique things would happen in response to drinking from a fountain, touching an altar, stepping through an archway, putting your hand on a column. The existance of items like the 'cloak of poisonousness' implies that there is no actual limitations on the effects of magical items. They can do anything that the DM wants them to do. "You open the book and your face melts off." Again, you can argue that this isn't healthy for the game, but I don't think you can reasonably argue that this doesn't increase the mystery experienced playing the game because the player is forced to consider the fact that the possibilities are not constrained to those in his common experience of the rules.

 

[Nightfall]

I prefer to let my Clerics of Corean sell some of the most powerful magic items since a) He's the Lord of crafting and b) god of paladins.

Course I don't stop PCs from ways to make their own, just require power components to "finish" the job.

 

[PallidPatience]

IMHO, that sort of thing turns the game into Call of Cthulhu. If I want to be blasted into oblivion by any random action which doesn't seem like it should have that sort of consequence, I'll play Call of Cthulhu. What I want to do is play a character in a fantasy world who, through a series of events, discovers powerful fighting techniques/spells, comes into some sort of wealth, and slays monsters/enemy soldiers/etc... in the search of an ultimate goal. Being killed outright because I put on a random cloak would not strike me as "mysterious". The resulting expression of my displeasure upon the DM might strike the cops, however, as "assault and battery".

In short, if the mystery does not make the game FUN, it's not an improvement to the game. Not knowing what that cloak does is one thing. Being blasted into death because you tried it on to see what it MIGHT do (with no contextual warning of its deadliness) is quite another.