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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6204796" data-attributes="member: 42582">How is that a GM's preconceived sequence of events? It all turns on step (2) and that is under the control of the players, not the GM.What happens if the players have their PCs cast Detect Magic and start scanning the tavern, the marketplace, and the streets at the good end of town for magic items? The GM has to tell them what they detect, and typically that will not have been worked out in advance.When we think about this within the broader dynamics of play, it is (at least in my experience) often an attempt by the players to instigate a certain sort of adventure - in effect, to have the GM frame their PCs into a chance to acquire magic loot by robbing from some unsuspecting victim. Or, if we make the detection Detect Evil or Know Alignment, then it's an attmempt to instigate a different sort of conflict.Another example from my current 4e game: the players had their PCs take a bit of down time, and in that time the player of the paladin decided to have his PC try and track down the identities and activities of some Orcus cultists the PCs had defeated. In the context of this particular game, this was much like a random scanning with Detect Magic or Detect Evil - that player trying to instigate a particular sort of adventure. The way in which the GM reponds to these sorts of attempts at instigating adventure is pretty central to different playstyles. In my own case I decided to say yes, and framed the paladin (with the party ranger-cleric in tow) into a scene in which he had followed up various leads and ended up at a shrine to Orcus hidden in a cave in the hills outside of town. The actual play commenced when I told them that they could see some sort of opening at the back of the cave, and they decided to <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">start descending the stairs</a>.I think this is a modest but nice illustration of different approaches.If you're playing in the style advocated by Lewis Pulsipher, and by Gygax in his PHB and DMG, then if the players go to sell a magical sword without realising that it is magic that is their tough luck - part of the skill of play is identify magical items!But in other approaches to the game, the GM will draw the players' attention to magical items that have been placed. At which point the idea of magic items as "rewards" starts to become less relevant - at a minimum they are no longer rewards for skilled play in the Gygaxian sense.For instance, in my 4e game I simply point out the magical items to my players after they inspect them during a short rest (or sooner than that on a successful Arcana check). This is because, in this game, magic items aren't a reward; they're a component of PC-building.</blockquote>

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