Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts

I dislike magic item stores. Here's why.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Magic items are a part of every fantasy role-playing game, and wherever player characters meet, someone will want to buy or sell such items. What the players do among themselves is their business, in most cases; but when non-player characters (NPC) are involved the GM must know where magic items come from, how rare they are, and how hard it is to produce them. [Quoting myself from 40+ years ago]

Magimart: Still a Bad Idea​

I don't like the idea of "Magimarts" -- something like a bookstore or small department store, often with a public storefront, where adventurers can come and purchase (or sell) magic items. I said as much over 40 years ago in an article titled “Magimart: Buying and Selling Magic Items” in White Dwarf magazine. My point then still stands: at least for me and in my games, magic-selling stores don’t make sense.

They don’t make sense from a design point of view, as they may unbalance a campaign or cause power-creep. From an adventure point of view such stores partly eliminates the need to quest for specific powerful magic items. From a realistic point of view they would only provide targets for those who are happy to steal.

The Design Point of View​

From a game design point of view, how experience points, gold, and magic fit together makes a big difference. For example, if you get experience points for selling a magic item (even to NPCs), as well as for the gold you get, adventurers will sell magic items more often. If adventurers acquire scads of treasure and have nothing (such as taxes or “training”) to significantly reduce their fortunes, then big-time magic items are going to cost an awful lot of money, but some will be bought. If gold is in short supply (as you’d expect in anything approaching a real world) then anyone with a whole lot of gold might be able to buy big-time magic items.

Long campaigns need a way for magic items to change ownership, other than theft. As an RPG player I like to trade magic items to other characters in return for other magic items. But there are no “magic stores.” Usability is a big part of it: if my magic user has a magic sword that a fighter wants, he might trade me an item that I could use as a magic user. (Some campaigns allocate found magic items only to characters who can use them. We just dice for selecting the things (a sort of draft) and let trading sort it out, much simpler and less likely to lead to argument about who can use/who needs what.)

The Adventure Point of Views​

Will magic stores promote enjoyable adventuring? It depends on the style of play, but for players primarily interested in challenging adventures, they may not want to be able to go into a somehow-invulnerable magic store and buy or trade for what they want.

Magic-selling stores remind me of the question “why do dungeons exist”. A common excuse (not reason) is “some mad (and very powerful) wizard made it.” Yeah, sure. Excuses for magic-selling stores need to be even wilder than that!

I think of magic-item trading and selling amongst characters as a kind of secretive black market. Yes, it may happen, but each transaction is fraught with opportunities for deceit. Perhaps like a black market for stolen diamonds? This is not something you’re likely to do out in the open, nor on a regular mass basis.

The Realistic Point of View​

“Why do you rob banks?” the thief is asked. “’Cause that’s where the money is.”

Realistically, what do you think will happen if someone maintains a location containing magic items on a regular basis? Magimarts are a major flashpoint in the the dichotomy between believability (given initial assumptions of magic and spell-casting) and "Rule of Cool" ("if it's cool, it's OK").

In most campaigns, magic items will be quite rare. Or magic items that do commonplace things (such as a magic self-heating cast iron pan) may be common but the items that are useful in conflict will be rare. After all, if combat-useful magic items are commonplace, why would anyone take the risk of going into a “dungeon” full of dangers to find some? (Would dungeon-delving become purely a non-magical treasure-hunting activity if magic items are commonplace?)

And for the villains, magimarts seem like an easy score. If someone is kind enough to gather a lot of magic items in a convenient, known place, why not steal those rather than go to a lot of time and effort, risk and chance, to explore dungeons and ruins for items? There may be lots of money there as well!

When Magimarts Make Sense​

If your campaign is one where magic is very common, then magic shops may make sense - though only for common stuff, not for rare/powerful items. And magic-selling stores can provide reasons for adventures:

• Find the kidnapped proprietor who is the only one who can access all that magic.
• Be the guards for a magic store.
• Chase down the crooks who stole some or all of the magic from the store.

Maybe a clever proprietor has figured out a way to make the items accessible only to him or her. But some spells let a caster take over the mind of the victim, and can use the victim to access the items. And if someone is so powerful that he or she can protect a magic store against those who want to raid it, won't they likely have better/more interesting things to do with their time? (As an aside, my wife points out that a powerful character might gather a collection of magic items in the same way that a rich person might gather a collection of artworks. But these won’t be available to “the public” in most cases. Still just as some people rob art museums, some might rob magic collections.)

Of course, any kind of magic trading offers lots of opportunities for deception. You might find out that the sword you bought has a curse, or that the potion isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Many GMs ignore this kind of opportunity and let players buy and sell items at standard prices without possibility of being bilked. Fair enough, it’s not part of the core adventure/story purposes of RPGs. And magic stores are a cheap way for a GM to allow trade in magic items.

Your Turn: What part do magic-selling stores play in your games?

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

So instead of "a +1 sword is worth 2,315 gp", it becomes 231 gp and 5 sp? And that 5000 gp emerald is worth 500 gp? A dragon's hoard with thousands of coins is now hundreds of coins (or it's still thousands but those thousands have 1/10 the purchasing power)?

No, I meant that the typical "normal person" lives on 1 gp per day instead of 1 gp per 10 days. ("a week or more") That's the shifting of the decimal point I was referring to, not to changing prices in addition to the change in "normal person" income.

Sorry for being unclear about that.

 

[James Gasik]

No, I meant that the typical "normal person" lives on 1 gp per day instead of 1 gp per 10 days. ("a week or more") That's the shifting of the decimal point I was referring to, not changing prices in addition to the change in "normal person" income.

Sorry for being unclear about that.

Oh ok. So like how the Japanese koku was equal in value to a bushel of rice, ie, the amount of food one needs to live for a day. At which point, we assume that common laborers are making more than 1 gp per day, and that skilled people and a clerk makes instead of the 2 gp a week the 2e DMG suggests, 20 gp a week.

That still doesn't help with "massive treasure hoards being dumped into the economy by adventurers", but it does seem more reasonable.

Another way to do this would be to put D&D on a silver standard instead of gold (similar to Earthdawn).

 

[Staffan]

How could any economy survive having that much money dropped on it without gold becoming effectively worthless due to inflation? D&D doesn't concern itself with this, it's a fantasy about pretending to be heroes who strike it filthy rich exploring lost cities and forgotten tombs as opposed to working a 9-to-5 job as a baker or a miller.

IIRC, at least in 1e this has already happened. I believe there's a sentence or paragraph somewhere saying something like "These equipment lists and costs in no way represent an actual medieval economy, because they assume there are adventurers finding and spending lost treasure turning things into something like the gold rush."

 

[Distracted DM]

If we're looking at old editions, I'm pretty sure the DMG in 1 or 2e said something like "you can't buy magic items, that's crazy no one would part with them, if the players want to barter theirs away then they can trade them for consumable items, which is a crazy thing to anyone in the world but let them do it."

I'd have to actually find the text, but that's the impression I recall

 

[Voadam]

IIRC, at least in 1e this has already happened. I believe there's a sentence or paragraph somewhere saying something like "These equipment lists and costs in no way represent an actual medieval economy, because they assume there are adventurers finding and spending lost treasure turning things into something like the gold rush."

1e Player's Handbook page 35:

"Your character will most probably be adventuring in an area where money is plentiful. Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand — the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers are in great demand."

 

[Lanefan]

If we're looking at old editions, I'm pretty sure the DMG in 1 or 2e said something like "you can't buy magic items, that's crazy no one would part with them, if the players want to barter theirs away then they can trade them for consumable items, which is a crazy thing to anyone in the world but let them do it."

I'd have to actually find the text, but that's the impression I recall

I don't recall anything like that being in the 1e DMG; and it wouldn't make sense in any case given that the 1e DMG has a fairly comprehensive price list (IMO the best such from any edition) for magic items, thus very strongly implying there's a market for - and trade in - them.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't recall anything like that being in the 1e DMG; and it wouldn't make sense in any case given that the 1e DMG has a fairly comprehensive price list (IMO the best such from any edition) for magic items, thus very strongly implying there's a market for - and trade in - them.

The 2e dmg talks about them on pg116 but what it says is more complicated than "you can't buy magic items"

Spoiler

Buying Magical Items
As player characters earn more money and begin facing
greater dangers, some of them will begin wondering where
they can buy magical items. Using 20th-century, real-world
economics, they will figure there must be stores that buy and
sell such goods. Naturally they will want to find and patronize
such stores. However, no magical stores exist.
Before the DM goes rushing off to create magical item
shops, consider the player characters and their behavior. Just
how often do player characters sell those potions and scrolls
they find? Cast in a sword +1? Unload a horn of blasting or a
ring of free action?
More often than not, player characters save such items.
Certainly they don’t give away one-use items. One can
never have too many potions of healing or scrolls with extra
spells. Sooner or later the character might run out. Already
have a sword +1? Maybe a henchman or hireling could use
such a weapon (and develop a greater respect for his mas-
ter). Give up the only horn of blasting the party has? Not
very likely at all.
It is reasonable to assume that if the player characters
aren’t giving up their goods, neither are any nonplayer char-
acters. And if adventurers aren’t selling their finds, then
there isn’t enough trade in magical items to sustain such a
business.
Even if the characters do occasionally sell a magical item,
setting up a magic shop is not a good idea. Where is the
sense of adventure in going into a store and buying a sword
+1? Haggling over the price of a wand? Player characters
should feel like adventurers, not merchants or greengrocers.
Consider this as well: If a wizard or priest can buy any item
he needs, why should he waste time attempting to make the
item himself? Magical item research is an important role-play-
ing element in the game, and opening a magic emporium kills
it. There is a far different sense of pride on the player’s part
when using a wand his character has made, or found after
perilous adventure, as opposed to one he just bought.
Finally, buying and trading magic presumes a large num-
ber of magical items in the society. This lessens the DM’s
control over the whole business. Logically-minded players will
point out the inconsistency of a well-stocked magic shop in a
campaign otherwise sparse in such rewards.

elsewhere it also talks about how the DM might want to make potions of healing readily available (pg120). It talks at length about pros

& cons to consider with a world that has rare vrs common magic items making it even more complicated to pinpoint a specific stance. I'd summarize it with make them as common as needed for fun without going overboard & take every opportunity you can to use working with players crafting magic items to justify cool adventures.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Oh ok. So like how the Japanese koku was equal in value to a bushel of rice, ie, the amount of food one needs to live for a day. At which point, we assume that common laborers are making more than 1 gp per day, and that skilled people and a clerk makes instead of the 2 gp a week the 2e DMG suggests, 20 gp a week.

That still doesn't help with "massive treasure hoards being dumped into the economy by adventurers", but it does seem more reasonable.

Another way to do this would be to put D&D on a silver standard instead of gold (similar to Earthdawn).

Not really like the Japanese koku, but rather a matter of allowing that ordinary people in D&D land really are better off than people in real-world medieval history, in extremely poor modern fourth-world countries, or in the various Dung Ages stereotypes that seems popular in certain quarters. So if the the 2e DMG or other official or semi-official materials suggest a Dung Ages stereotype world co-existing with heaps of treasure and relatively common magic, then that stereotype is a part of D&D's economic craziness. And it's a part that can be dropped to good effect. Doing so won't solve the craziness of D&D economics - I don't think anything can - but it will make things just a bit less crazy.

As for going to a silver standard - that won't help with the problems caused by a low value for typical incomes compared to the prices of goods and services. Fixing those problems require raising the value of typical incomes relative to the prices of goods and services. But it will make things more aesthetically pleasing in terms of increasing the value of an ounce or a pound of gold.

(And as it turns out, there is a way to make gold more valuable on a per-pound basis while keeping nearly all the prices the same in nominal "gold pieces" - see Golden Gold)

 

[kigmatzomat]

If there are magic stores strewn about the land why aren't the local lords (bandit or otherwise) capitalizing on this?
Why aren't there armies of guys with +3 swords running around?.

Marginal utility is the term you're looking for. It's like is it worth it to spend $10k on a crap car or $30k for a solid car? Generally the $30k car is a better choice from maintenance, performance, and experience. Is it worth going to a $90k luxury car? Not for most people. They'd spend that extra money on other things, like a home or a second car. There's a lot of marginal utility to most families to having 2 or 3 vehicles.

How about a $500k supercar? No, only people with money to burn go for that nonsense.

So in 3e, which had an official price guide for magic items, one +3 weapon cost 18,000gp, which is enough to buy 9 +1 weapons (2,000gp ea). Or 450x +1 arrows (40gp ea). Given that magic weapons are needed to injure some creatures, having more weapons in more hands is a better choice

Or to break it down further, a noble could buy one +3 weapon, or equip 4 bodyguards with a +1 weapon (2,000gp), +1 armor (1,000gp) and +1 shields (1,00gp) and still have ~2,000gp to spend on potions. That's a much more beneficial boost than one person with a +3 sword...unless that one person gets many attacks, like a high level adventurer.

And from a simple "hit better" standpoint, Masterwork weapons only cost 300gp and provide a similar combat boost to a magic +1 weapon. You could buy 60x masterwork swords for bows) for that single +3 sword, which militarily is a significant increase in performance. Or maybe you just hire & equip another unit of troops.

Although if you have a cadre of casters, scrolls of Magic Weapon spells are an inexpensive way to have a boost on demand. And it's super funny as a gm when priests use those scrolls on barrels of arrows so every archer in a squad gets a magic arrow for a volley of "monk go home! Or even better, don't!"

So that's why no squads with +3 weapons even if they were available. It'd be a silly waste. Like buying a social media site just to make a point and then lose $Billions. Sure, someone could afford it, but they'd have to be a giant galaxy-brained man-child convinced of their infallibility. Never happen in real life.

 

[James Gasik]

The 2e dmg talks about them on pg116 but what it says is more complicated than "you can't buy magic items"

Spoiler

Buying Magical Items
As player characters earn more money and begin facing
greater dangers, some of them will begin wondering where
they can buy magical items. Using 20th-century, real-world
economics, they will figure there must be stores that buy and
sell such goods. Naturally they will want to find and patronize
such stores. However, no magical stores exist.
Before the DM goes rushing off to create magical item
shops, consider the player characters and their behavior. Just
how often do player characters sell those potions and scrolls
they find? Cast in a sword +1? Unload a horn of blasting or a
ring of free action?
More often than not, player characters save such items.
Certainly they don’t give away one-use items. One can
never have too many potions of healing or scrolls with extra
spells. Sooner or later the character might run out. Already
have a sword +1? Maybe a henchman or hireling could use
such a weapon (and develop a greater respect for his mas-
ter). Give up the only horn of blasting the party has? Not
very likely at all.
It is reasonable to assume that if the player characters
aren’t giving up their goods, neither are any nonplayer char-
acters. And if adventurers aren’t selling their finds, then
there isn’t enough trade in magical items to sustain such a
business.
Even if the characters do occasionally sell a magical item,
setting up a magic shop is not a good idea. Where is the
sense of adventure in going into a store and buying a sword
+1? Haggling over the price of a wand? Player characters
should feel like adventurers, not merchants or greengrocers.
Consider this as well: If a wizard or priest can buy any item
he needs, why should he waste time attempting to make the
item himself? Magical item research is an important role-play-
ing element in the game, and opening a magic emporium kills
it. There is a far different sense of pride on the player’s part
when using a wand his character has made, or found after
perilous adventure, as opposed to one he just bought.
Finally, buying and trading magic presumes a large num-
ber of magical items in the society. This lessens the DM’s
control over the whole business. Logically-minded players will
point out the inconsistency of a well-stocked magic shop in a
campaign otherwise sparse in such rewards.

elsewhere it also talks about how the DM might want to make potions of healing readily available (pg120). It talks at length about pros

& cons to consider with a world that has rare vrs common magic items making it even more complicated to pinpoint a specific stance. I'd summarize it with make them as common as needed for fun without going overboard & take every opportunity you can to use working with players crafting magic items to justify cool adventures.

Ah I loved TSR. They tell me that magic shops don't exist in the DMG, then The Magic Encyclopedia, Volume One depicts a fully fleshed out extradimensional magic item shop, Chemcheaux, with branches all over the multiverse (including one in Raven's Bluff, which was destroyed).