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?

 

[Celebrim]

This is a circular argument.
« There wouldn’t be magic stores that sell magical weapons »
« Why not? »
« Because the sale of magical weapons would be highly restricted «
« Why? »
« Because the sale of magical weapons is analogous to the market for real world jet fighters and tanks »
« In what way is the market for magical weapons similar to the real world market for tanks »
« Because it is highly restricted with limited buyers and sellers! »

Look, a whole field of burning scarecrows!

Let’s start with the big one. Highly restricted markets are an outgrowth of the modern administrative state with a large bureaucracy that has both the will and the means to effectively regulate the sale of products. This isn’t the case in many fantasy settings.

Do you know what a Guild is? Your argument is both irrelevant and wrong.

Assumption 1: Magical items are relatively expensive and relatively difficult to produce.
Assumption 2: PCs are rare.
Assumption 3: Only PCs are making magical items.
Assumption 4: Only PCs would purchase magical items.

Not content to burn down one field of straw men, you go after another.

Look, I don't even feel particularly compelled to refute your arguments because it's pretty clear you have no idea what I argued. The fact that you didn't even particularly read through to my arguments or conclusions is proven by this statement.

It ignores the possibility of magic being common enough for there to be the occasional shop that sells magical items, but rare enough that powerful people can’t reliably call on the power of high level wizards.

If you'd actually read any of my posts, you would realize that this so called "ignored possibility" is exactly the state of affairs that I claimed would prevail under standard D&D demographic assumptions. So for all your snarky attempt to make me look bad, we actually agree! You just wrote a flame post to ultimately espouse the very conclusion I made.

Could a level 11 mage with a couple of apprentices run a magic shop? Probably. Does this imply that they are the most powerful creature in the kingdom? Of course not.

In my campaign world, an 11th level magic-user would probably be the most powerful wizard in the kingdom, and as such if he was willing to make magic items at all you would be inherently bidding against the king for his services who would no doubt what to appoint him the court wizard and monopolize his power as much as possible.

But all of that is irrelevant, because all your trying to do is prove that it might be possible to buy a magic item. And that means that not only do you not understand what I argued, but that you don't understand what the thread is about. The thread is about whether or not it is realistic or necessary to a D&D setting to walk into any town and expect virtually whatever magic item you desire to be available for purchase and already on the shelf in a sort of magic big box store - a "magic mart". The question is not whether there exists a 11th level wizard capable of making a magic item and selling it, but whether the marketplace of magic items would produce such surplus production that entire warehouses of useful items would be sitting around awaiting purchase.

 

[Alzrius]

Do you know what a Guild is?

I was going to mention guilds if no one else did.

In my experience, a lot of fans of fantasy settings seem to think that guilds were some sort of combination of contemporary unions and industry-wide quality-control boards, and while there were aspects of those, guilds also acted as oligarchs who monopolized (legitimate) access to a particular industry in a given area for their own monetary gain.

 

[Starfox]

I think that it's also a silly idea that wizards wouldn't cross copy spellbooks with all the gravity of bumping elbows at a bar with a total stranger you might exchange a few words with.

For me this is one of the differences between a medieval and a renaissance setting. In the medieval setting there are few standards, little trust, and wizards live alone in isolated towers with their apprentices. Trade between wizards is either very suspicious or highly regulated by guilds. In a renaissance setting, there are magic universities, publications where wizards exchange ideas, and libraries that collect the spellbooks of dead wizards, that other wizards can access for a simple fee.

When i say my Greyhawk setting has moved into the renaissance, this is very much a part of that development. Wizards isolating themselves in ivory towers is a thing of the past, and those who do isolate themselves will be overtaken by more liberal collogues.

 

[cbwjm]

I never really subscribed to the whole "MU don't trade spells freely with each other" of easier editions. I may be misremembering but I recall something about PC wizards getting a bad reputation amongst NPC wizards if 2 in the party freely traded spells in each other's spellbooks. I always felt that idea was a little dumb.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you wanna spend the hours it takes to theorize a magic item economy, be my guest.

For everyone else, there's Magi Mart.

 

[Voadam]

The thread is about whether or not it is realistic or necessary to a D&D setting to walk into any town and expect virtually whatever magic item you desire to be available for purchase and already on the shelf in a sort of magic big box store - a "magic mart". The question is not whether there exists a 11th level wizard capable of making a magic item and selling it, but whether the marketplace of magic items would produce such surplus production that entire warehouses of useful items would be sitting around awaiting purchase.

I don't think that is accurate. I think this is mostly about magic shops of any kind and to what level are you able to buy and sell magic in the setting. To what extent is a magical item available for sale the way other items are.

From the OP:

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.

Which seems to me to be the 3e model with the suggested gp limits based on population of settlements and so decently available minor magic for sale but rarer for more powerful magic.

In the 3e default magical marketplace you need to go to at least a large town to be able to buy a 2,000 gp +1 sword and that is the most powerful magic weapon available there. To get an 8,000 gp +2 sword you have to go to at least a small city. 50,000 gp +5 or equivalent swords cannot be bought at large cities, you have to go to one of the world's metropolis's. And swords go up to +10 equivalent value (max +5 of straight enhancement bonus ) before you hit non core epic level stuff.

Pathfinder 1e refined that further with most stuff below a set threshold depending on population generally available but with a few specific randomly determined higher value items available for purchase in population centers.

I think "walk into any town and expect virtually whatever magic item you desire to be available for purchase and already on the shelf in a sort of magic big box store" is not what everybody in this thread is discussing when talking about magic shops and trade in magical items.

 

[Celebrim]

For me this is one of the differences between a medieval and a renaissance setting. In the medieval setting there are few standards, little trust, and wizards live alone in isolated towers with their apprentices. Trade between wizards is either very suspicious or highly regulated by guilds. In a renaissance setting, there are magic universities, publications where wizards exchange ideas, and libraries that collect the spellbooks of dead wizards, that other wizards can access for a simple fee.

When i say my Greyhawk setting has moved into the renaissance, this is very much a part of that development. Wizards isolating themselves in ivory towers is a thing of the past, and those who do isolate themselves will be overtaken by more liberal collogues.

Just as in the real world, in my setting there isn't an entirely even social and technological progress around the world. I tend to start games in the most "progressive" areas of the world solely because I don't think my players will be able to relate to a truly medieval culture. I don't want to run a game for players where there is so much they have to learn in order to understand the world they are in and roleplay a member of it.

So both things are going on depending on where you are at, and both things have their problems. In my most recent campaign, the BBEG turned out to be a history professor at a university - one of the leaders in a developing field of scholarly study he called "archeology". But it turns out that there can be less than benevolent and scholarly reasons for being a "tomb raider", and in fact the history professor was (in his other alias) "Keeropus the Necromancer" whose access to magical knowledge was wrecking cities and fueling a potentially world cursing plot.

However, none of that justifies off the shelf rings of protection and gloves of dexterity.

 

[Celebrim]

I think "walk into any town and expect virtually whatever magic item you desire to be available for purchase and already on the shelf in a sort of magic big box store" is not what everybody in this thread is discussing when talking about magic shops and trade in magical items.

The original poster begins by stating that his opinion hasn't really changed in forty years, and he links to his original article in which he wrote:

"You can visit an herbalist, apothecary, or temple for potions and spell components. There are dealers of random curios in the marketplace that might have some minor magical trinkets among the placebo good luck charms. Mages or priests might set aside time to inscribe you a spell scroll, if you can convince them through personal ties, favors in exchange, or great monetary expense. The thieves and assassins guilds might hook you up with poisons or even a cursed item to give to a victim, if they trust you."

If we are all saying that a limited selection of minor magic items might be available, but that significant ones would not be, then we are all actually in agreement. But, I'm of the impression that at some point it became quite common to just allow players to "shop" for anything they wanted and handwave it away, leading to something like the OotS shopping spree that we see as various points in the story: 969 It's Only His SECOND Favorite Cuisine - Giant in the Playground Games Granted, OotS is intended to be funny, but my impression is that that shopping spree is playing out how many tables actually worked.

 

[tetrasodium]

For me this is one of the differences between a medieval and a renaissance setting. In the medieval setting there are few standards, little trust, and wizards live alone in isolated towers with their apprentices. Trade between wizards is either very suspicious or highly regulated by guilds. In a renaissance setting, there are magic universities, publications where wizards exchange ideas, and libraries that collect the spellbooks of dead wizards, that other wizards can access for a simple fee.

When i say my Greyhawk setting has moved into the renaissance, this is very much a part of that development. Wizards isolating themselves in ivory towers is a thing of the past, and those who do isolate themselves will be overtaken by more liberal collogues.

No I don't think so. First let's both acknowledge the objective fact that blacksmiths level 10-20 NPCs (many being retired adventures) were fairly (clerics and bartenders especially) in forgotten realms and maybe greyhawk used in 2e & 3.x when the whole "wizard's Don't let folks copy their spell book" thing really got cemented. I'm going to continue assuming that you acknowledge that.

The idea that anyone worldly enough to know which direction the nearest village/town/city or two is wouldn't also be able to point a traveler in the direction of the nearest monastery or someone who could like a village head or the local feudal lord they deliver crops to until the renaissance period is not at all plausible until you get to darksun style mages are illegal & hunter down type worlds.

A wizard would logically be able to find somewhere that facilitated cross copying just as easily as a peasant finding the nearest monastery. But unlike the peasant, a wizard with any spells worth copying and the gold to do it could easily make the trip.

 

[James Gasik]

Not really. It's not that great unless a) you need to carry a lot of stuff, or b) you're a fighter. If you are a fighter, it just brings your damage more in line with what is expected at a given level. I believe, but can't really prove, that is was one of the "Essential Two" of 1E fighter characters. The other would be a magic weapon of sufficient strength to harm the targets you encounter.

Well, Clerics and Thieves can use Belts of Giant Strength as well. A friend of mine had an Elven Thief in 2e who got his hands on a belt of Stone Giant Strength and suddenly he was (thanks to two weapon fighting) able to crank out some hefty damage numbers in melee...for about 2 seconds until monsters decided he needed to die in a fire lol and realized "hey there's this elf in leather armor with a d6 hit die kicking our butts". The one time I saw him actually be able to backstab was epic (though mostly only because the DM refused to accept that backstab only multiplies weapon dice for some reason- you ever have that? A DM who is super strict about most things, but then randomly allows something the players have to be way more powerful than it should be?).

So it really can be a useful item for most classes, but I can see why a Wizard might think it's a minor item because they, themselves can't use it (being class-locked*)...but, I don't know, surely they have an ally or bodyguard they could put the thing on?

*Class-locked magic items are an interesting concept and one I'd like to discuss sometime, but I don't know that it deserves it's own thread. I just recall an incident with the infamous cursed belt (you know the one) where a Wizard tried it on, the DM is like "ahahahaha, curse!" and I was like "but the DMG says Wizards can't use that belt".

He looked at me funny, checked the book, and outright declared that was stupid, lol. Then as evidence presented one of the D&D trading cards (anyone remember those?), which presented a hapless Wizard (with the Amazon Kit, somehow?) who was a victim of said belt. "Ok, so does that mean Wizards can use Girdles of Giant Strength?"

"No, that would be silly."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.