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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4953836" data-attributes="member: 3820">It's all a spectrum. On one side, the wish lists and magic shops that enable a player to get what the player would like. On the other side, random treasure placements that care nothing for whether or not the party fighter is a flail specialist, it's a longsword again. More tellingly, on one side, the gold piece economy and the magic economy are separate things, on the other they are one and the same. I think there are many games that sit somewhere between the two extremes, where the DM places treasure with specific PCs in mind but doesn't adhere to the players' specific lists. Nobody does their ulcers any favors by assuming that the people who are on one side of the viewpoint are sitting all the way out at the end of the spectrum.I also don't think it's really all that generational; I know that the concept of being able to find fabulous treasures in cramped and interesting shops has been with us for a long time. Robert Asprin's Myth series was an example I recall from my youth, and of course there are the peculiar bookshops and other stores where one could find all kinds of Life-Changing Deals from all sorts of young adult fantasy. (Though I admit So You Want To Be A Wizard was found in a library, not a shop.) Were there odd shops where you could buy magic in Guardians of the Flame? I forget. Anyway, really not a new concept in fantasy. There's nothing quite like what happens when that trope collides with the demands of gameplay, but as other people rightly point out, that's true of everything about D&D. The demands of gameplay change every fantasy trope in some way or another.It's a complicated issue that varies from game to game. I can't agree with any statement that gold pieces "are simply" this or that if you talk about more than one roleplaying group at a time. In one group, you may find a simple answer. Beyond that, every point on the spectrum is going to be filled.</blockquote>

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