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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5831659" data-attributes="member: 6668292">To me? Genre conventions. Each character with a magic item? High end of fantasy, to me. Some characters with a couple, but most with none? About normal. One or two scattered about the main characters? Low end, to me.Awesome mundane gear? Much more common, from my perceptions. I'd like to see that expanded before magic gear is considered assumed. I have multiple mundane gear levels in my RPG (poor, regular, masterwork, masterpiece, mastercraft), and it helps model the fantasy genre better, in my opinion. A sword that takes a year to craft from a master craftsmen, but is among the best weapons in the world. Mundane, but unequaled.Additionally, I don't think it's at all necessary for magic items to be tailored or assumed for interesting stories and possibilities. I rolled up a random magic item that one of my players uses with his PC occasionally. It's a dagger than potentially enrages whoever it attacks. As the PC is a former gladiator, he sometimes sends himself into a rage with it. Other times, he'll use it to enrage people that he doesn't want to escape. He's got a custom weapon, but he'll break away from it to use the dagger a couple different ways, and it's interesting to see it put to use.It wasn't designed for him. The party also has an inkpen that heals the allies of the one who wields it. That wasn't designed for anyone, it was rolled randomly. The guy who got it on the background chart was very happy with it. He thought it was very interesting (and so did I!).At any rate, I don't think there's been a convincing argument for "give things to your players based on what they tell you they want" as an all-encompassing way to play for every group. I'm not in any way telling you to play differently. I do, however, think that D&D players want specific items for specific builds because magic items are an assumption of play, and are necessary on some level.If that assumption was removed, I still hold that many players would be much happier about random magic items that popped up in the campaign. After all, if it's just icing on the cake, you're not being "cheated" or "gimped" by having a magic item that's inferior to your concept, because there's no reason you can't get that magic item as well. When there's only 1 ring per hand, or 8 slots to fill, or X amount of gold per level worth of items as an assumption, you can get disappointed. "I got a magic item, and it's not that great, and I know that means I won't be getting more, since it's taking away from my magic item total."Get rid of the assumptions, and it's not a problem. Hope doesn't die when you get an "inferior" magic item, and magic items are fun to get. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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