The Magic-Walmart myth

[Arashi Ravenblade]

I had to make it so your couldnt find Magic Walmart shops about a few years ago, when players began thinking they could get whatever was in the DMG from any community that could afford it.
I got tired of telling people that Wizards dont just make +5 Vorpal Great Swords for the fun of it and then seel them to whomever wanders in with enough cash.
Of course Thayans are an exception. Though I could have sworn they had a limit to what they would make and how powerful they made it regardless of the amount of cash?

 

[Aaron L]

If I remember right, the Thayans do not sell weapons or destructive spells (like wands of fireball), or anything disruptive. They only sell non-offensive luxury items.

That is, officially.

 

[Jeysie]

My group has actually shopped at a WarMart... however, it was a conscious parody in a setting that is as much tongue-in-cheek as it is serious. And the only magic item we bought was a set of full-plate armor that had pants with the Blinding ability, which we had already vetted by the DM beforehand anyway. The venue was just a handy (and funny) excuse.

All the rest of our magic items we'd picked up as treasure somewhere, and we were pretty happy with it all, even the weird stuff. The only thing we sold off was the immovable rod the cleric picked up last campaign.

So, easily available magic isn't always unfun and it doesn't always spoil the players. Just depends on the players. In fact, one of my other campaigns is just the opposite... treasure is scarce, and "fancy" stuff isn't easy to come by. But despite some good-natured teasing, nobody's really bothered by it; we just get creative. Most of the stuff we *have* bought has actually been fluffy stuff we only bought because it was in-character to do so.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[kaomera]

I think the phrase "no magic Wal-Marts" is to indicate that players should not expect to be able to buy whatever magic items they want simply because they have enough money to buy one according to the rules. It does not by itself create a low-magic setting, but it is one indicator of the level of magic: magic items being rare enough to not be able to fuel a cottage industry in the buying and selling of them.

I agree. The real "Magic Wal-Mart" in FR is Waterdeep. This isn't even a FR thing, by the DMG a sufficiently large city will have nearly anything, including magic, that the PCs might want to buy. Calling it a "Magic Wal-Mart" is an exaggeration, but often not too much of one. Players tend to want cool, shiny stuff for their characters, sometimes without regard for the effects that may have on the game ~ that's the DM's problem. But it can be hard (lead to arguments) to put a lid on such purchases, because the rules say it's OK. Couple this with the fact that most groups don't really want to roleplay out every second of a "shopping trip", and you can get the same effect as if you really had just gone down to a one-stop magical warehouse store and bought yourself some +3 Vorpal Plate Barding of the Bad Example It's Early Leave Me Alone. It's simple enough to fix. One line in your house-rules that says: "Magic items tend not to be on the open market, expect to spend at least a day to a week per 1000gp of value to find such an item, regardless of local community gp limits." tends to fix it fairly well, at least if your PCs have got anything at all better to do than hang around a given city for possibly months on end...

 

[shilsen]

Magic-marts are a handy exaggeration that people bring up when they want to be snobbish about how -they- game.

I think this really does sum it up best, IMNSHO.

Personally, while I've never run a game with a Magic-Walmart or seen a game with one, it would actually strain my sense of disbelief less than the older system of dungeons chock-a-bloc with monsters guarding and/or wielding magical items, with no explanation of where the items came from.

 

[JustKim]

Are these real DMs or hypothetical DMs, like those Pun-Pun characters that everyone complains about but no one ever actually sees in a game?

Yes, we are real.
We have players who want to sell magic items they don't want, and who know the market price for magic items they do want. We don't have the time to populate every single NPC and store in a community with appropriate magic items, nor the inclination to grind the session to a halt with glorified shopping chores every time a PC wants to buy a magic item- and PCs want a lot of magic items.

To suggest that this is lazy behavior is pretty unreasonable.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Actually, the latest published version of the Forgotten Realms does have magic marts. The Red Wizards have set up their "embassies" to be like big magic bazaars where you can order, or even get off the shelf, any magic item you're willing to pay for. This gives them a foot in the door to affect the economies of the nations they're trying to take over, and power over the individuals who desire magic items that can't be had elsewhere.

All in all, that's very much like a big box corporation.

What big box store in the real world specializes in custom orders? Big boxes, by their very definition, specialize in bulk purchases to lower costs and sell millions of identical widgets.

The Red Wizards -- while they do constitute a break with what's come before -- are the magical equivalent of high-end artisans. If your 2E game had blacksmiths capable of making exotic armors or weapons, this is very similar.

 

[Treebore]

Yes, we are real.
We have players who want to sell magic items they don't want, and who know the market price for magic items they do want. We don't have the time to populate every single NPC and store in a community with appropriate magic items, nor the inclination to grind the session to a halt with glorified shopping chores every time a PC wants to buy a magic item- and PCs want a lot of magic items.

To suggest that this is lazy behavior is pretty unreasonable.

I don't stock stores with anything except potions of healing and eve those I limit to 2d6 in any given month.

How I determine if anything the PC's want to buy is availabe is simple. They tell me what they are looking for and I determine a percentage chance of it being available. Somewhere bewtween 1% for very powerful items, like Staff of Power, +5 Full Plate, etc... to 25% chance for various potions, low level scrolls.

If the charactrer wants something badly enough to travel around from city to city to find something then that is what we do, rolling percentiles until he gets it.

Usually players won't do that, but I have had a few.

Plus, if it is something I don't want the players to have yet, the chance of finding it for sale is always zero. Not that I tell them that.

As for selling their stuff. There has to be places where you can off load such stuff. Not only is it inherent to the rules themselves, but it just makes sense. Unless of course your adventurers are the only ones adventuring, and the only ones who are wealthy enough to afford to buy such items.

The rest of the world is just a bunch of boring smucks waiting around for the adventurers to show up and make their lives exciting.

Thats not my kind of world. I try to make mine as living and viable as possible. I have used Expeditious Retreats and Gary Gygax's World Builder books to flesh out my world economy in broad brushstrokes, and in a few cases down to specific lands/manors/towns, so that I can "wing it" with enough accuracy to work within the economics structural boundaries I have worked out.

So I have "magic shops", which are usually temples, but they certainly aren't like Walmart.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For what it's worth, one of those at least partially responsible for the 3E magic item assumptions, Monte Cook, has magic items purchasable -- to an extent -- in his campaign setting.

In Ptolus, there's three tiers of magic item sales:

1) Most temples sell holy water (with possible restrictions depending on the customer), and may sell healing/curative potions and low level scrolls. Given the uneasy relationships between the faiths in the city, not everyone can get a potion or scroll from every temple, and even those faiths that will sell to a given customer won't necessarily sell out of every temple. The pseudo-medieval-Catholic Church -- Lothianism -- has one church out of the many in town that sells these, and it's the church for the dirty, dirty adventurers, the equivalent of a Midnight Mission sort of place. When your players decide they want to worship one of the city's wackier gods, they may well be shutting themselves out of the low end magic item market. (And if they worship Lothian, there's all sorts of complex things they've just signed up for, as you might imagine.) I think this is pretty similar to how a lot of DMs handle potions/scrolls/holy water anyway.

2) Ptolus is built on the ruins of multiple civilizations, including the laboratory/armory/barracks of Ye Olde Evil Wizard, so magic items trickle up with adventurers periodically and there's a store or two that specifically traffics in them. The inventory here is explicitly limited and includes a few bozo items that no one's going to be excited to get.

3) Finally, there's a group that makes magic items to order, but they're a lot closer to scary real world arms merchants or violent drug dealers. They have a bad habit of murdering anyone who starts selling magic items without being affiliated (making items for friends is OK) and the power to back it up. Since they're a semi-secret arm of a prominent organization, there's lots of people they might not actually take on as customers (assuming said people can find them to begin with) and if they provide a product, there's no saying it'll work as intended. And, most importantly, since the Dreaming Apothecary has no actual storefront per se, they're the easiest to drop out of the setting for DMs who don't like them. I suspect that Monte didn't have their wares constantly available, given how he wrote them up. I know that if my gnome illusionist/bard ever gets high enough to have the money and desire for a magic item, I'd be a LOT more comfortable getting a friend to make it for me than dealing with the scary-ass Dreaming Apothecary.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Magic-marts are a handy exaggeration that people bring up when they want to be snobbish about how -they- game.

Verily.

Brad