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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9325910" data-attributes="member: 4937">But each of these interests would want to monopolize access to magical weapons as much as possible.  In the real world, it's rare for a supplier to be selling weapons to both sides of the conflict, and generally when they are they have to hide this fact from the buyers.  That's why for example most conflicts involve NATO weapons on one side and Warsaw pact weapons on the other.  If you see both sides with the same weapons, it suggests the collapse of some former political structure and something like a civil war. You see, it's not enough to create the conditions for a market in magical weapons.  You have to create the conditions where their is an open market in magical weapons.  If you want a big box store for magical items, this requires magical items to be seen as trivial and inexpensive - something available to the common man.I think this actually would do the reverse.  If you influx a market with a bunch of items that are essentially irreplicable and cannot be commoditized because their own source is some lost technology of the past that is difficult or impossible to replicate today, then those items don't end up in big box stores.  You end up with nations fighting wars over access to those things because they are functionally priceless and whomever can control them has enormous advantages over anyone else.  In my campaign world, intelligent swords are this category of item - only one empire in the past knew how to make them and they are the ultimate prestige item.   Now many if these things were so common farmers were all the time plowing them up in their fields, you might end up with a big box store sort of market but then you couldn't explain why these things were expensive.   Magic mart's problem is that it implies the good is inexpensive, abundant, and trivial - attributes we don't normally ascribe to magic items much less magic items from a long-lost civilization.It's not impossible - see "Howl's Moving Castle" as an example.  But, if you have a single store that defies spatial arrangement and connects multiple distance locations, then the fact that it lets you run a magic mart is one of the smaller impacts on the game world.  If you basically have teleportation networks, then maybe you don't have caravans or ocean going vessels, and nations are terrified of having armies marching straight into their city through a store front or whatever.  If you have magic of that profound of an impact used for mere trade, then the society you are describing becomes really hard to relate to and requires a ton of special knowledge to understand and additionally loses some archetypal aspects.  And if you try to avoid that by having this shop be the only thing that has that technology, then the magic shop keeper faction is the most powerful faction in the world.It's not impossible but it is weird.  There are two things going on here.  First, people in a polytheistic culture normally worship deities for the advantages that they believe the worship will give them.  You don't normally want to worship someone that might help your enemies.  The Spartan main patron god was Apollo, but they did have a temple to Ares.  And if you went into that temple, you would have found the idol of Ares in chains and affixed to its pedestal to symbolically prevent Ares from leaving to help their enemies.  That's a form of anti-reverence, and I suspect a deity that wanted to arm everyone alike would receive not support but the same sort of treatment.   Secondly, unlike mortal rulers deities in D&D aren't hypocrites, but actually representatives of the ideology that they aspire to.  You've got a deity here that is both a god of war and a god of trade, making these magic marts to assure everyone is well armed.  What you functionally have here isn't the god of battle but the god of arms dealing, and it's a Lawful Neutral god of arms dealing that believes in fairness and detente more than it believes in war.  This isn't a god like the wild half mindless Ares.  This is a deity that believes "A well-armed society is a polite society" or "The best way to ensure peace is through strength." or something of that sort.It is a cool deity concept, but it doesn't solve the problem.  This deity still has to be able to flood the setting with enough magic items that they are trivial and inexpensive before selling them in big box stores makes sense.  It's not enough to believe in a megamart for swords.  You have to justify a megamart for magic swords.</blockquote>

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