The Magic-Walmart myth

[wingsandsword]

Yeah, well FR does have these. I think it has been ditched since 3e but wasn't there a thing called Auroras Emporium wich was kinda magic item mail order corporation in FR in the old days.

Actually, the Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog explicitly said they didn't trade in magic items.

The whole catalog only had three items that had any magical properties. One was some window lace that imposed a mild magical penalty on attempts to open any lock the lace was draped around or over, the other was a small carved "lucky bead" that gave some minor luck bonus, the big one was an "infra-lantern", a drow crafted magic gem in a lantern housing that amplified infravision (well, probably darkvision now), but the infra-lantern was listed as being usually unavailable (and only available at explicit DM permission).

As for the Thayan enclaves, they do provide a way for PC's to get just about any item or magic service, but I'd really not call them "wal marts". They aren't in every country, and while you can buy a lot of common items off the shelf.

The idea of a magic store makes a lot more sense than the nonsense in older editions of D&D (like the 2e High Level Campaigns book) that nobody never, ever sells magic items and the only way to get them is to find them by adventuring or make them yourself, and even the most minor of items would never be on the market or available by commission, and if they ever did, it instantly becomes like a modern big-box retail store and the game becomes a farce (complete with a silly illustration of a wizard shopping at a "magic mart" complete with a bargain bin of wands).

In a world where in any random town, 4 or 5 local teenagers (i.e. low level adventurers) can take a walk outside town to one of many local spooky caves or old ruins (the local dungeon/s) and come back with a wagonload of treasure including magic items, and this is a common way of life, it's foolish to assume that there aren't a lot of magic items in circulation.

When you realize that basic potions, simple magic weapons, and basic wondrous items can be made by characters that by the demographics rules can be found in most towns, and how many creatures exist in the world that can only be meaningfully injured by magic weapons, it's inevitable that magic items would be a lot more common than the impossibly rare way they are treated in some campaigns.

 

[Doug McCrae]

So why does this phrase and comparison exist as a measuring stick?

I think you know the answer to that as well as I do. It's a straw man. A misrepresentation of a position designed to make that position look ridiculous.

The default in the core rules is that magic items can be freely bought and sold, limited only by the size of the town. It does not suggest that there should be vast stores filled with magic items, because that of course would be ridiculous. Rather the majority of magic items sold are not held in stock, but crafted to order.

 

[Imp]

In a world where in any random town, 4 or 5 local teenagers (i.e. low level adventurers) can take a walk outside town to one of many local spooky caves or old ruins (the local dungeon/s) and come back with a wagonload of treasure including magic items, and this is a common way of life

Right, do you assume that the PCs are engaged in an ordinary activity for the world in which they dwell, or an extraordinary one? Cue questions about whether old ruins and spooky caves are a renewable resource or not.

Anyway, I think that taking the DMG as a guide for how your fantasy worlds work, instead of just as a guide to how your fantasy adventures can work, can only lead to grief and nitpickings.

 

[Treebore]

Oh, I'm not saying that some bit of attittude might not come along with such shorthand but I think Q actually is taking that to be a literal statement.





I think in those cases they mean that they fall in between and it isn't just a matter of walking into a shop, but that for the right price and a great deal of effort, almost anything is for sale.

And luck. Don't forget the luck. Its not as easy to roll 25% or less as some people might think. 1% is outright luck, but I have rolled it a fair number of times over the years.

Like I am amazed when I roll the d1,000 when I use my "Mother of All Encounter Tables" just how often I have actually rolled at the extremes. I have actually rolled both 1,000 and 0,001 when using those tables.

 

[IceFractal]

Ok, I can see the argument that it would take a while in game time, but that doesn't mean it should take a long time in real time. When someone just goes and "buys" Gloves of Ogre Strength, the actual process may be something like:
1) Ask around town for who might know about such an item.
2) Track down a transaction broker, paying his commission (included in the item's "purchase price").
3) The broker uses his contacts to locate a merchant with gloves matching your description, or possibly several. The merchants probably got them from adventurers like yourselves, mage's guild members experimenting with new creation methods, or treasure seized from outlaws and auctioned. They've had a long time to accumulate stuff, as well.
4) You check out several merchants, as some might have the wrong kind of gloves (Gloves of Climbing could make you seem stronger, for instance), or want an unreasonable price.
5) Haggle with the merchant till you get a good price.

But out of game, you just say you're buying them, and life goes on, because the adventure is not normally about shopping. And a town's GP limit doesn't indicate that the items are sitting on store shelves, necessarily, but that someone in town has one and would be willing to sell it.



Ok, but how does that work with +5 Vorpal swords? Who has one of those sitting around? Well, remember that by the time PCs can afford stuff like that, they have abilities that alter the normal shopping process considerably.
1) They can use divinations to find the one person in the world willing to sell one.
2) They can travel to extraplanar markets like Sigil, where a much wider variety of things are on sale.
3) They can summon a Djinn and use it as an intermediary to hire a Noble Djinn to wish the item into existance, or likewise with an Efreet (Note: Does not involve trying to scam free wishes). Genies need money too, as they can't grant it to themselves.
4) They can hire someone to do the above, if they can't themselves. This may well explain the universal 100% markup on items - commisions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Post #12 FTW.

If there were no MagicMarts, there would be no responses claiming that calling them MagicMarts is snobbish. Nor would there be folks claiming that they are a logical extention of the rules on every "low magic" thread that ever gets to four posts.

I know that you were hoping to play Mythbusters, but in this case the only "myth" is that MagicMarts don't exist outside of Internet forums.

I'll bite.

Show me.

 

[The Green Adam]

One of the favorite places in my main D&D campaign world is a 'magic shop' run my an Elven adventurer now long since retired. A former PC, like many NPCs of note in this particular milieu, the proprietor is constantly testing and experimenting with various magical potions and spells, making entry into the store an adventure in itself. Players have opened the door to the entire place being coated in shades of orange, the shopkeeper unable to deactivate a self-inflicted polymorph and the "stock boy" (a 9 ft. troll) being lost amid the shelves for hours on end.

The shop carries, buys, sells and trades everything from magic items to spell components and is willing to identify and/or translate items and ancient texts to the best of the owner's ability. His colorful antics, foppish clothing and slightly effeminate English accent are all a carefully constructed facade to hide his vast wealth of arcane knowledge and phenomenal spellcasting ability. Make not mistake, he players the clown but is a deadly combatant. And of course, the stock boy is a troll.

For regulars and favorite customers it is not unusual for the shopkeep to preform identifications free of charge, order special, hard-to-get items and even teach a few unique spells of his own creation.

This to me is far from a Magic Walmart and I can safely say my campaign would not be the same without it.

 

[Thurbane]

I think the "no magic Walmarts" statement usually means no bulk magic stores where PCs waltz in with a shopping list from the DMG and MiC. Whether or not this is specifically spelled out in the rules, many see it as an inevitable side effect of the Wealth by Level guidelines...

 

[Imp]

Ok, I can see the argument that it would take a while in game time, but that doesn't mean it should take a long time in real time.

Oh lord no. It can be kind of fun to take players through the process, once, maybe later twice if it's different, so they get an idea of what it entails, and you make it interesting with maybe some rivals out there looking to buy the same thing, but yeah, going through a laborious item-hunting process in-game every single time, that sucks, no question.

It's only really an issue if you treat a 3e campaign as a six-month nonstop thrillride to 20th-level demigodhood, which the game makes very possible if you don't allow downtime, and which is really pretty cartoony – though that can be fun. If you give the campaign a pre-modern pace to begin with, make it more episodic, and have the characters grow at the comparatively glacial but still objectively impressive rate of a level per game year (on average), or even just provide a month or three of downtime between adventures, the time considerations aren't such a strain.

 

[Toras]

Planescape has always been a magic intensive setting, and given that the wheel exists in many settings that can be a starting point for many of the magical items that filter their way onto the prime.

In the case of Sigil itself, magical items are easy to come by if you have the cash or the credit. The reason for this is due in part to the fact that magical items continue to be created but a smaller number are destroyed. Add to that the fact that the setting allows for other ways of creating such items, like exotic materials or techniques, grand artifice of all the outsider races and the forges of the Gods themselves and there is a great deal of them.

The reason that so many of the ones that seem to change hands or return to stocks happen to be weapons and armor, is easily explainable due to the Blood War. The war creates an ever present demand for new material, and when people wielding the current are killed the other side or scavengers will claim the weapons and sell them back.

It creates an abundance of the lower level magical items. Beyond that it is more of a boutique sale or knowing the right person (that term is applied broadly). And it can be commissoned or located. The trick of course is having the money to pay and a way of getting to there.