The Magic-Walmart myth

[Emirikol]

We have a money vacuum cleaner in our campaign. You can rid yourself of g.p. for x.p. It's actually a "role playing effect" of what to do with your down time..cost of living, wenching, partying, paying fines/tithes, bribing officials, minimal failed side-quests, etc. We don't spend TIME doing that stuff..we just mark off the gold and increase the x.p.

It's been a dream come true for our "low" magic game

Jay

Are you honestly surprised that, if someone says "How can I do low magic?" that someone else says "Don't let the PCs easily buy whatever they want"? If money equates to magic (which is what the ability to buy any magic with money means), then you cannot have a low magic setting unless it is also a low money setting. Therefore, one has to break the "money = magic" assumption in order to proceed with a low magic, normal money game. That seems so commonsensical to me that I fail to see your point.

 

[Quasqueton]

We have a money vacuum cleaner in our campaign. You can rid yourself of g.p. for x.p. It's actually a "role playing effect" of what to do with your down time..cost of living, wenching, partying, paying fines/tithes, bribing officials, minimal failed side-quests, etc. We don't spend TIME doing that stuff..we just mark off the gold and increase the x.p.

That would have been a great rule for AD&D1! Really. Much better than enforcing training costs to get rid of the gp.

Quasqueton

 

[Warren Okuma]

Or possibly the GM says they get XP for doing their "job" (crafting magical items in this case) which they use to make more items. The XP portion of item creation is there to balance PCs, not to limit the rest of the world. Its not like you have to take time out of scribing scrolls and go kill some orcs and goblins so that you can go back to scribing scrolls again. Anything you do that nets you XP does the trick, not just strapping on a pack and killing things.

DS

Yup. Or they volunteer to join the city watch until they feel "refreshed" or go hunting to "get inspired" enough to go and enchant. It's a very well paying job. For very little time you earn 500 gp or less per day you work. 500 gp per day you work. Yeah, it's safe to say most wizards will be enchanting churning out 1000 gp worth of items per day.

 

[Warren Okuma]

So, let's say the party's wizard can cast teleport several times a day.

Is the world now "effectively a giant planet of holding?"

Ouch. I can get you X, but you will have to pay for two teleports. Ahahaha!

 

[00Machado]

I think the idea of a "Magic Wal-Mart" came about when lazy DMs looked at the list of magic items in the DMG, saw the prices next to them, and decided that they would be available on demand, off-the-rack, in any community that could support the cost.

Isn't it written into the RAW that players should be able to make these purchases? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think it might be more a factor of following the RAW (or at least an implicit expecation that the RAW sets up with players) as opposed to a lazy DM.

 

[Hussar]

Are you honestly surprised that, if someone says "How can I do low magic?" that someone else says "Don't let the PCs easily buy whatever they want"? If money equates to magic (which is what the ability to buy any magic with money means), then you cannot have a low magic setting unless it is also a low money setting. Therefore, one has to break the "money = magic" assumption in order to proceed with a low magic, normal money game.

That seems so commonsensical to me that I fail to see your point.

But, that's rarely where the point stops...

Y'know what, I'm done. I've seen this far too many times to get sucked in here. If you choose to never see this, then fine. But, whenever "Magic Mart" or "Magic Wal-mart" get's trotted out, invariably it's not a simple shorthand, but a backhanded slap at other people's playstyles.

Heck, Aeric's post 6 pretty much called it right out. In his words its shorthand for "lazy DMs looked at the list of magic items in the DMG, saw the prices next to them, and decided that they would be available on demand, off-the-rack, in any community that could support the cost." In other words, it's a perjorative term. It refers to lazy DM's. Nellisar in Post 12 says "Magic-marts are a handy exaggeration that people bring up when they want to be snobbish about how -they- game." Post 16 says, "It works if you assume your NPCs have no personalities or agenda of their own, other than to trade and create magic for your characters to purchase, but I think the system falls short and indeed looks Magic Mart like."

That's just in the first page of this thread and this thread has been pretty well mannered. How anyone could think that Magic Walmart is a neutral term is beyond me when people all over the place are specifically using it in a perjorative sense.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But, whenever "Magic Mart" or "Magic Wal-mart" get's trotted out, invariably it's not a simple shorthand, but a backhanded slap at other people's playstyles.

Invariably, eh?

I think I see the problem right there.

For example, you bring up Nellisar in Post 12 says "Magic-marts are a handy exaggeration that people bring up when they want to be snobbish about how -they- game."

This post is not a condemnation of Magic Marts, but rather, like yours, a condemnation of calling Magic Marts by that title. The equiivilent would be if someone trotted out your posts on the same topic to prove it is a prejorative term.

That's just in the first page of this thread and this thread has been pretty well mannered. How anyone could think that Magic Walmart is a neutral term is beyond me when people all over the place are specifically using it in a perjorative sense.

Well, yes, there is a degree to which the term is used prejoratively. There is also a degree that it is used for simplicity, and a degree to which it is purely desriptive. This is true for just about any gaming term used to describe game style or elements you might care to mention, AFAIK. I've seen "standard D&D" used this way, and any deviation from "standard D&D" used this way.

EDIT: Or, here's another way you can look at it. On the first page of this thread, in which the term Magic Mart or equivilent is used in, what?, almost every post, you found three that you could say were prejorative with confidence, and in one case you were wrong. That seems to me to be far less than "invariably" prejorative.

 

[Felix]

Well, yes, there is a degree to which the term is used prejoratively.

For someone who pours time into developing a campaign world which incorporates the assumed magic and wealth availability, and spends more time roleplaying the adventure instead of roleplaying the shopping, hearing someone else describe your game as "Magic Wal-Mart" is insulting because it implies that you haven't put any time into fleshing out the world. The term is incredibly dismissive, and for someone who allows the term to apply to an entire world, it seems you dismiss their entire world.

No matter how polite, when you lay "MagicMart Campaign Setting" at a DMs feet, they cannot but be miffed, unless the setting is specifically designed to be lighthearted. I don't believe that most campaign settings out there are designed that way, and I do believe that many do use the standard wealth tables, so using it as lightly as you seem to do is, at best, inadvisable. At worst, it's terribly insulting. And it would be so despite your intension to do otherwise.

 

[Raven Crowking]

For someone who pours time into developing a campaign world which incorporates the assumed magic and wealth availability, and spends more time roleplaying the adventure instead of roleplaying the shopping, hearing someone else describe your game as "Magic Wal-Mart" is insulting because it implies that you haven't put any time into fleshing out the world. The term is incredibly dismissive, and for someone who allows the term to apply to an entire world, it seems you dismiss their entire world.

But no worse, I am sure, than the "roleplaying the shopping" comments. You can take offense, or you can shrug and say "different strokes for different folks". These sorts of things are indicative of personal preference, IMHO and IME, and have nothing to do with saying that other players/DM suck.

The reality is, no matter what game you are talking about, there is a spectrum between not selling one iota of magical treasure and selling anything to anyone at any time at list price. Very few campaigns, IME, fall at either extreme.

However, the OP asks if these types of campaigns exist, and the answer has to be "Yes". As I said earlier, though, saying that they exist is not the same as saying that they are bad.

 

[I'm A Banana]

However, the OP asks if these types of campaigns exist, and the answer has to be "Yes".

Actually, the OP seems to be saying that the types of campaigns where absurd big-box warehouses full of any magic item off the rack where "lazy DM's" and the like play don't really exist.

And I'd have to agree with that statement.

There are campaigns where most magic items are available at the use of a simple teleportation spell and an abstracted spending of some gil. The standard campaign, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron (to a lesser extent with the final) are all such campaigns. With a simple attitude change on the parts of the spellcasters, your world with the secrets and artisans could become such a world.

For such a world, I think "Magic WalMart" is an inappropriate term, because it suggests to many what the OP notes does not really exist: the thoughtless magic warehouses of lazy DM's. There are more accurate and less contentious terms to use.

Such as "A standard-magic world." Or simply "standard."

In the interests of clarity of communication and accuracy of langauge, "Magic WalMart" is obviously an unfavorable term, regardless of the definition that one choooses to use.

"Why is it we can buy any item we don't actually need, but when we really need something it's under the sleeping Tarrasque?"

Same reason you can buy McDonald's in any podunk in the US, but to get extremely fresh and delicious Alaskan Crab, you probably need to go to Alaska. And if you wanted to find extremely fresh and delicious Alaskan Crab, but couldn't leave Podunk, you might need to jump through some hoops to get it (like importing a couple of live ones through some traveling associates, for instance).

Certain resources are common because a lot of people need or want them, even in Podunk. Others are luxuries.

I don't base these adventures on what the PC's need. I base them on what the PC's choose to pursue. If they're in Podunk and they want some Alaskan Crab, they can teleport to Alaska, or they can go pry it from the private stash of the eccentric coinesseur wizard who did so, or they can lean on their shady contacts, or a hundred and one other possibilities. The town's GP limit describes, to a certain extent, the vibrancy and diversity of the economy there, of which magic items are a large part in any world that includes an active non-PC adventuring and/or monster population (soldiers need them, adventurers need them, people who clean the sewers need them, other NPC's need them, anyone who is likely to meet a mosnter might need them), or in other words, any world that uses the default D&D assumptions.