D&D 5E Magic Item Creation: Which book should contain rules for magic item creation?

[SkidAce]

I voted DMG, because I don't always use the IC rules RAW. No use confusing the players.

Huah...

 

[Lanefan]

Playing an RPG while "inhabiting the mindspace" of a character in the game world makes sense. Trying to design the game world while inhabiting such mind space does not make sense. That's what I'm saying.

When designing the game world I just inhabit the mindspace of the god(s) that created it.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

I am saying that one goal of the game is immersion, and that you appear to not only prefer to disassociate from immersion, but to deride those who do enjoy it.

I'd say that that is one of your goals. Not a goal of the game.

 

[Hussar]

When designing the game world I just inhabit the mindspace of the god(s) that created it.

Lanefan

Really? And that's not meant to be snarky in the slightest. It's an honest question.

When I design a game world I always start from the point of view of what kind of adventures do I want to run in this world? Everything for me flows from that starting point.

 

[Lanefan]

Really? And that's not meant to be snarky in the slightest. It's an honest question.

When I design a game world I always start from the point of view of what kind of adventures do I want to run in this world? Everything for me flows from that starting point.

Yeah, me too to a large extent - I was mostly joking above.

That said, the world I'm currently using *was* built by a goddess for Her subjects to play on; but their civilization has long (very long) since died out.

Where I more often start from is what cultures do I want to see - no D&D world is complete without Norse, for example, so they've gotta be in there somewhere. For this world I wanted a Greek-based culture at the core, with outlying Celtic, Norse, and Aztec; and further-outlying Norse, Roman, and a bunch of things I lob under "other". Then there needs to be space for the Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, and so forth; and lots and lots of wild land where monsters live and adventuring happens. Then I dream up a map (for me, that's the fun part), a history of sorts, climates, and away we go.

Lanefan

 

[Mistwell]

I'd say that that is one of your goals. Not a goal of the game.

It is a stated goal of the game. It's not the only goal, but it's definitely one of them. You can play D&D without immersion, but some parts of the game are intended for an immersive gameplay and the authors state that.

For example, in this article Mike Mearls states, "The idea behind the three pillars of D&D Next—interaction, combat, exploration—is to ensure that the game is as immersive and flexible as possible...Our goal with these rules is to deepen immersion in the game..."

 

[Ichneumon]

Playing D&D without any sense of immersion? Sounds like eating chocolate cake while wearing a dental dam.

 

[Hussar]

It was certainly a pretty standard way of playing for a very long time. Not my bag, true, but certainly the way I've seen numerous people play.

 

[pemerton]

Playing D&D without any sense of immersion?

I think if you read play reports from late-70s tournaments like the G-series or ToH, you'll see that people are mostly playing in what is sometimes called "pawn" stance.

That's not to say that they're just boardgaming - the shared fiction matters to resolution (eg you can set fire to things because they're described, in the fiction, as being made of wood). But there is no "inhabitation" of the PC. The PC is pretty obviously a playing piece.

the form is important. Players frequently form attachments to their PCs - rewarding the PC makes use of the emotional attachment. You can ignore that connection, but you're discarding a strong and useful tool in so doing.

<snip>

Give them something that means something to the function of the character, they'll recognize the value.

you don't need to give magic items. Nobody's arguing that magic is the *ONLY* reward available.

<snip>

It shouldn't really be a surprise, or arguable, that a magic sword would often be appealing to a fighter, or the player whose hobby is running that character.

There seem to me to be two strands in these passages, which correspond (more-or-less) to what seem to me to be two strands of thinking about items as rewards.

One strand takes the approach that the function of the reward is to improve the PC's fictional situation from the PC's point of view, and the player then enjoys that because the player is emotionally invested in the PC's fictional situation. From this point of view, magic items are no more special than compliments from the king, the awarding of land and titles, the winning of an NPC's hand in marriage, etc.

But the other strand, which in my view at least is the more dominant strand in D&D history, focuses on the mechanical significance of the magic item - unlike the compliment or the wedding, which at least as typically adjudicated do not matter much to D&D action resolution, the magic items changes the scope of action resolution for the PC.

As I indicated upthread, in post 73, this sort of mechanical reward for the player may have worked one way in classic Gygaxian play, but probably is less relevant for many mainstream adventure path styles. For instance, what difference would it make to an adventure path which has (say) gargoyles in the 5th level segment of the AP, to drop the AC of the gargoyles and all future monsters by 1, and to make magic items able to his gargoyles +1 to damage only (for their magically sharp edges) but grant no bonus to hit?

Or to slightly drop the hit points of all those monsters too, and make the magic items simply capable of striking gargoyles but otherwise mechanically neutral?

Making the PCs' numbers bigger, in circumstances where the GM and not the players is deciding what the numbers are on the monsters and NPCs, seems like a potentially illusory reward (which I think was part of [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s point in post 85).

Sure, they may mean those things with your particular spin on them. But I think they all suggest a dysfunctional mentality toward the game and players. They could mean:

a) That the players will be able to take on tougher challenges, enabling them to survive deeper into the story or risky environment where the rewards are even better and more interesting.

b) That the mission/task/quest to be achieved will be easier and quicker to achieve, enabling the players to take on more quests and tasks without getting bogged down in frustrating slogs. Yay!

or c) That the power-up has little relevance to the previously planned challenges so the GM uses the new powers to open up new and more varied play environments now that the PC have the ability to enter or interact them.

Your (a) through (c) have implications:

(a) without the reward, the game won't get better (so we are prepared to play a game not as good as one we can conceive of, if the players don't somehow earn the rewards for their PCs);

(b) without the reward, the game will involve frustrating slogs (ditto the above brackets);

(c) the reward is a purely "story" reward like a compliment from the king, which I think is not the general trajectory of D&D history.

Gygaxian play is prepared to embrace the implications of (a) and (c): the game is competitive, and for some players the experience will be more sloggy and not as good as we can conceive of, compared to other players. In that respect playing D&D is no different from any other sort of competitive game.

But how many contemporary D&D tables play in that sort of style, embracing all the features of play group (large and mutable), GM work (designing and running a mega-dungeon), PC immersion (potentially quite low as turnover is quite high), story (perhaps none of any consequence - ToH is much closer to a crossword puzzle than a novel in its literary merits), etc that are required to make it work?

I don't think the answer is "none", but nor do I think the answer is "most" or even probably "lots".

Really, guys, this isn't rocket science. There are times when the high-concept gaming theory gets in the way of remembering there are people playing the game. Just people. Not theoretical emotionless people with theoretical game agendas. But this guy named Joe who likes killing orcs.

Without wanting to be disrespectful, I think that this comment slightly misses the point. Games can be better or worse designed for certain purposes. Good game designers should think about those things - you can see, in 4e for instance, the attempt of good designers to maintain classic D&D tropes (like magic items as rewards for players) while accommodating them to changes in playstyle that mean their Gygaxian function is no longer relevant. (They also tried to avoid adventure path style too - wishlists are part of that, for instance, putting the choice back into the players' hands but at the metagame level rather than via Gygaxian mega-dungeon sandboxing.)

And even Gygax saw some of these issues in his gaming - part of the reason a Monty Haul game is a "crashing bore" is because the apparent rewards aren't really rewards for the players, because they undermine the playability of the game. He didn't think it made a difference that the character/I] really would enjoy being the most powerful being in the universe.