DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 24D: The Second Hound of Ghul
Everyone fell silent. Impossibly, the shadows seemed to deepen. And then, out of the darkness, the second hound of Ghul appeared: It was a bony, undead thing. At its shoulder, it stood nearly twice as tall as Agnarr. Four interlocking, razor-sharp sabered fangs punctuated a jaw of jagged teeth. Its claws were nearly as large. Its bones were thick and at the end of a long, sinuous tail was a bulbous ball of bone twice the size of a grown man’s skull.
“By the gods…” Elestra murmured.
In this session we see the dawn of one my favorite RPG in-jokes of all time, as Tithenmamiwen tells the illiterate Agnarr that “C-A-T” is the elvish word for “faithful companion,” leading the barbarian to name his new pet dog Seeaeti. I think every long-running campaign develops these shibboleths that are only meaningful to the players, and this one has been part of our group for thirteen years now. (And will probably remain so until we’re all dust in our graves.)
Speaking of Seeaeti, if you’ve been following In the Shadow of the Spire you know that getting a dog has been a major goal for Agnarr as a character. I’ve previously talked about how other milestones in this quest including important character crucibles that permanently reshaped the course of Agnarr’s life (and the entire campaign).
When I was designing the Laboratory of the Beast and included the dog-soon-to-be-known-as-Seeaeti, I did suspect that this particular hound might become Agnarr’s. In fact, would I have included the slumbering dog if Agnarr hadn’t been looking for a dog? Maybe not (leaning towards probably not).
(At the table, though, there was a moment when I thought Tee was going to kill the dog before Agnarr even had a chance to see it. Given my previous comment about a thirteen year shibboleth, it’s really weird to think about that alternate reality.)
Later in the session, the group runs into an undead dog and Ranthir uses a spell to enslave it. For awhile there, it actually looked like this dog would also become a permanent addition to the group, but (as you can see here) it ended up getting destroyed instead.
Ranthir, of course, did not have a long-standing goal to get a dog and the ghulworg skeleton wasn’t something that I had anticipated becoming a “hireling.” So you can kind of see both sides of the coin here: Elements that we bring into the narrative because they’re long-standing goals of the players/their characters and elements that emerge out of the narrative.
We saw a third sign of this coin (thus irreparably rupturing our metaphor) earlier in this session, when Tee reached out to the Dreaming Apothecary and arranged to purchase a magical item that she particularly wanted. (With the twist that rather than just getting the magical lockpicks she wanted, the Dreaming Apothecary delivering a cool lockpicking ring.)
A few years ago there was a big folderol about magic item wish lists. I’m not actually sure what specifically prompted this advice fad, but it seems to have faded away a bit, along with the controversy that surrounded it.
Basically, the advice was that players should prep a wish list of the magic items (and other stuff) that they wanted for their characters and give it to their DM so that the DM could then incorporate that stuff into the campaign.
The controversy arose become many felt that this pierced the veil and ruined immersion, “Oh! I’ve always wanted a +1 flaming ghost touch dire maul! It’s so wonderful that we just coincidentally found it in this pile of treasure!” It also reeked of a sense of privilege and laziness: “Here’s my shopping list, Ms. Dungeon Master, please have it delivered to me as soon as possible!”
Personally, I think the controversy mostly misses the point.
First, one simple has to acknowledge that many people are playing in linear and/or railroaded campaigns. I can talk endlessly about why that’s a bad idea and that there are better ways to run your campaign, but unfortunately that’s still not true for a lot of people. Probably most people. And when a GM runs a linear/railroaded campaign, one of the many problems they create for themselves is a massive responsibility for everything that happens in the game: Since the players don’t have any meaningful control over what happens, the GM needs to ensure that every challenge is correctly balanced; that everyone has the appropriate spotlight time; and on and on and on and on.
Within that broken paradigm, for better or for worse, the magic item wish list provides the players with a method for communicating their desires as players, and it’s also useful to the GM who has, unfortunately, made themselves completely responsible for everything that goes into the game (particularly if they’re not using random methods for stocking treasure). It’s good for everybody involved. It’s good advice.
But, in my opinion, the magic item wish list has utility even beyond that linear/railroaded paradigm. It’s really just a specific subset of the wider concept of players clearly communicating what their goals (and the goals of their characters) are. That expression can be done diegetically, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it being directly communicated in the metagame (via a character’s background, a frank discussion, a wish list, or whatever). And although I’ve seen some who feel that it’s not “realistic” for a fantasy hero to say, “I really need some magic lockpicks!” I just don’t see it that way. They live in a world filled with magic and they use that magic in their daily lives to accomplish their goals. It’s no different than me trying to figure out what tripod I need for my teleprompter.
Here’s the key thing, though: The perception is that the magic item wish list makes the players passive; that by expressing their desire to the GM, it automatically follows that they’re just going to sit back and wait for the GM to deliver what they want without making any effort on their own part.
In my experience, this isn’t really the case. With a “wish list” in hand, there are still three core techniques for how it can be fulfilled:
- The players can take initiative. (Tee ordering her magic lockpicks. Or Agnarr’s earlier efforts in the campaign to find a stray dog.)
- The GM can seed their goals into their adventure prep. (Putting a sleeping dog into Ghul’s Labyrinth, which the PCs are exploring for reasons that have nothing to do with the dog.)
- The GM can seed the opportunity to achieve their goals into the campaign world. (For example, by having them hear a rumor in a local tavern that the legendary +1 flaming ghost touch dire maul of Leeandra the Nether Brute might lie within the Tomb of Sagrathea.)
Understanding what the goals of your players and their characters are will allow you to use the full plethora of these techniques to enrich the campaign. Achieving that understanding can come in a number of different ways, whether it’s a wish list, a character background, session post mortems, or diegetically framed campfire chats.
NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 25A – Running the Campaign: TBD
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
(Honestly I’m not sure whether to keep using Pteryx on here or use PuzzleSecretary now, but…)
I seem to recall having heard that magic item wish lists were an idea specifically suggested in 4e’s books; can anyone confirm this?
As for whether wish lists are a good or a bad thing, I agree with you that how you use them is a factor. But so are the expectations around them. Does the person who’s giving the DM a wish list see that as a set of things they hope to find, or as giving the DM orders? (On that note, I tend to prefer the metaphor of a suggestion box rather than a wish list.) Are the players in general mature enough to consider uses for items not on their wish lists as something other than sales fodder?
There’s also the question of what kind of campaign the DM is running. There is, after all, a spectrum ranging from every town of a significant size having at least one magic item shop to the techniques of artifice being long-lost. I’d consider wish lists to be more appropriate to the former end of the scale to the latter.
Isn’t asking for a magic item wish list a variation of “description-on-demand”? Of course, the players don’t know the circunstance in which they’ll find the item (or if they really will), but they know at least that there’s a high possibility that the item will be there somewhere. I’m afraid that the players will start exploring my scenarios looking for a particular item that there’s no way their characters would know the existence.
Also, unless you use some red harring, they will be able to tell the properties of the desired magic items as soon as they find them, thus loosing a bit of the sense of uncertainty and discovery.
Never test it though. But after this post I’m willing to give it a try.
And I mean, what they want might not be what they get, it might be a guide to what they’re interested in for their character, more plot, more backstory relevance, more front line resilience, more variety of options in combat that might be achieved that way or another way.
“For awhile there, it actually looked like this dog would also become a permanent addition to the group, but (as you can see here) it ended up getting destroyed instead.”
Ehm, as we see where? As far as I can tell the ghulworg was still fully intact at the end of the last campaign journal…
There are other stuff to consider why magic items wishlist became to be. First is DMs running published adventures without customising the loot for the party. I remember on my 3.5 days having this talk with my friend and forever DM. Basicaly because he used to run published materials, a lot of them amateur (wathever we could find for free on the internet) most of the loot would end up in the Paladins hands, cause it was way usefull in his hands. So in that scenario a wishlist might have helped a group of begginners in D&D.
Second is that current D&D doesn’t have a robust craft system nor put much enfasys on downtime. Comming back to the example I’ve told in my other paragraph, I didn’t care that much with the paladin getting a lot of loot was cause my cleric had invested on craft talents. Potions, scrolls, wands. He porvided all sort of equipament for the party and himself and that was super fun for me. The rogue want to bust his dagger with some magical bulshit, lets do it! By the time the campaign inevitable blew up my character was dreaming bout make his own staves.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, there are two different paradigms for magic items in D&D (or similar games). One is “magic items as technology”, where magic items are a normal part of the world, readily craftable and available to anyone with sufficient funds and access to the resources of civilization. The other is “magic items as wonders”, where magic items are rare and unique, things that break the rules and give the PCs capabilities that few others possess. Both paradigms have their advantages and disadvantages.
Now, I suspect that item wishlists became such a fad in part due to players and GMs not understanding this distinction. GMs wanted to provide their players with magic gear, or had players who wanted specific magic gear, but they had been inculcated in the idea that magic items must never be purchasable or craftable. So they came up with this kludge: instead of just letting players buy or craft the gear they want, have them tell you what gear they want so you can dole it out in treasure hoards.
Problem is that, like a lot of kludges, this in many ways gets the worst of both worlds. It doesn’t really make the player who wants “magic items as tech” happy because he’s still dependent on the GM doling out what he wants instead of having control over his own equipment list, because it’s an unnecessarily slow and roundabout path compared to simply being able to buy or craft magic gear, and because it still begs the question of why he *can’t* buy magic gear when there’s clearly a bunch of it floating around. And on the flip side, having the player make a list of the things he wants and having the GM provide it undermines a lot of the mystery and wonder that the “magic items as wonders” player is shooting for, makes the magic items feel like just things to check off the equipment list instead of wonders that bend the rules and make the PCs special and unique.