The players in my OD&D open table periodically ask me, “Are there any magic items for sale?” Not certain of how I want to handle that, up to now I’ve been fairly content to simply say, “Not yet.”

It’s a question I’ve also struggled with in my Ptolus campaign: On the one hand, positing a setting where wandering mercenaries go delving into dungeons in order to pull out vast hordes of wealth which frequently include magical treasures, allowing the PCs to sell those treasures, and then concluding that there’s no way to buy magic items seems unreasonable. (Although running a campaign where the PCs really are the sole sellers of magic items in the whole world seems like it could be potentially fascinating, albeit completely different from a typical D&D campaign.) On the other hand, I think it can be quite evocative to see what the “competition” has been bringing in.

As far as Ptolus goes, I’ve largely been handling it in an ad hoc fashion. And I feel like it’s been a mild success in evoking the wider sense of a setting in which delvers are plumbing the depths of the vast catacombs beneath the city. But I’ve also longed for a better/systematic way of handling it, and now my OD&D campaign has raised the demand to a figuratively fever pitch.

The method described below hasn’t been heavily tested yet, and it does require a fair bit of prep for larger communities. (Although there are some methods for breaking that prep up into manageable chunks if you find yourself needing to generate it on the fly.)

THE LOCAL MARKET

The local market can vary quite a bit. While it could be a generic “magic mart” there are lots of other options: In small communities, it might be nothing more than Bob who has a couple of magical items stuffed in a trunk that once belonged to his adventuring grandfather. Local churches might have a supply of divine items. It might be an eclectic collection of antiquities dealers, pawnshops, down-on-their-luck magicians, and the like. It might be a secretive cult of black-robed alley-dwellers. The local mage’s academy might buy up all the items that come into town and then re-sell them (along with new creations) at a mark-up.  There might be specialty fences trying to evade the local prohibitions on the dissemination of dangerous magical weaponry.

THE LOCAL SUPPLY: You can determine the initial supply of items in a community by randomly determining magical treasure once per 1,000 inhabitants. (So in a community of 40,000, you would make forty checks.) If appropriate, you can vary this according to the treasure type of the predominant population. Or you can just go with a flat 50% chance.

In OD&D, for example, a typical human settlement of 30,000 people would use Treasure Type A (40% chance of any 3 magic items) and you’d made the check 30 times.

For AD&D1, you might want to use Table II.B on pg. 120 of the DMG in combination with the random check.

For D&D3, you’ll need to figure out what level to roll using the tables on pg. 52-53 of the 3.5 DMG. (You might try randomizing that by rolling 1d20.)

(Note: You’re not generating a list of every single magic item in town. You’re just generating the stuff that’s currently available for sale.)

THE MARKET LIST: When you’re done, you’ll have a list of items currently available for sale in town. Where the PCs will need to go (or what they’ll need to do) in order to procure a particular item on the list is up to your discretion.

MODIFYING THE MARKET LIST: Obviously, anything the PCs buy should be removed from the market list and anything they sell should be added to the list.

Adding Items: At set intervals (either once per session or once per some set amount of time in the game world), roll on your treasure tables again once per 10,000 inhabitants. (So if you rolled 40 checks originally, the market fluctuates using 4 checks on a periodic basis.) Items generated in this fashion are added to the local market — either due to new finds from local adventuring parties or new creations from local wizards.

Removing Items: Count the number of items you just added to the market. Modify that number by (1d10 – 1d10) and then randomly remove that number of items from the market.

(For example, if you generate 8 new magic items and then roll (9 – 3 =) 6, you would remove (8 + 6 =) 14 items from the market. If you had rolled (2 – 6 =) -4, then you would have removed (8 – 4 =) 4 items from the market.)

NOTES

In practice, generating the initial list of items may be a bit time-consuming for larger communities. But keeping the list updated after that point shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

If you find yourself needing to use this system on the fly, you can de-centralize the local market for magic items and reduce the load by generating only the supply available at each potential “outlet”. If the PCs don’t find what they want from Aldric One-Eye, of course, they might go check with the local fences from the Thieves’ Guild… but that should give you time to generate the short list of what the Thieves’ Guild has on hand. (Simply jot down which items can be found where on your market list for future reference as necessary.)

Of course, the entire process can also be considerably sped up by using one of the numerous automatic generators that can be found scattered around online.

Go to Part 2

From “The Psychology of Immersion” by Jamie Madigan:

The game world also needs to behave as you’d expect it to. “Consistency is the single most important factor in creating a real sense of place,” says Josh Foreman, an experienced designer at ArenaNet who works on the Guild Wars games. “The style can be anything from photo-real to abstract to impressionism, as long as there is an internal logic to what the player perceives.” This means that in-game characters, objects, and other aspects of the world should behave like their real-world counterparts.

Interesting to read this in the context of dissociated mechanics in paper ‘n pencil roleplaying games.

During the Search for Varla the players quickly realized that they were dealing with a foe who could reanimate the dead, so they made a point of incinerating the corpses they left behind.

(Fun fact: In OD&D, a fire ball spell has a duration of 1 turn. The only possible explanation is that the spell creates a raging inferno that lasts for 10 minutes.)

I decided, however, that the powerful necromantic energies surrounding Atarin’s Delve were capable of raising even these insignificant remains. This prompted the on-the-fly creation of ash wraiths — animate clouds of corpse ash.

They particularly appeal to me because they provide an incorporeal form of undead that can be used in a fashion similar to skeletons and zombies. (In other words, minor undead that aren’t mind-searingly terrifying in their level-draining devastation.)

As with the lycanthropic ghouls from yesterday, the ash wraiths use a combination of AD&D stat block and OD&D verbiage.

Frequency: Rare
No. Encountered: 3d10
Move: 12″
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1d6
Special Attacks: Nil
Special Defenses: +1 or better weapon to hit
Magic Resistance: Not subject to fire-based attacks
% in Lair: 40%
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Neutral

Ash wraiths are born from the burnt remains of corpses. They are most often found haunting ruined crematoriums or lingering near the horrors of execution pyres, but there are also tales of woods being haunted by ash wraith animals for years or even decades after the devastation of forest fires.

Ash wraiths cannot properly be said to have any corporeal body, which makes them totally impervious to all normal weaponry (although they can be struck by all magical weapons). Their touch, however, retains the passionate heat of their deaths and is scalding to mortal flesh.

In “Tales from the Table: Gems in the Belly” yesterday, I mentioned the use of wererat ghouls in my restocking of Atarin’s Delve. Here’s what those look like (using a mixture of an AD&D stat block with OD&D verbiage):

Frequency: Rare
No. Encountered: 4d6
Move: 9″
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 1d3/1d3/1d6
Special Attacks: Ghoul touch, vestigial lycanthropy, surprise on 1-4
Special Defenses: Immune to sleep and charm spells
Magic Resistance: Standard
% in Lair: 20%
Treasure Type: B
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Ghoul Touch: Wererat ghouls paralyze any normal figure they touch, excluding elves. Any man-type killed by a ghoul becomes one.

Vestigial Lycanthopy: Anyone seriously wounded by an undead lycanthrope (assume about 50% of total possible damage) will be infected and himself become a similar lycanthrope within 2d12 days unless they are given a cure disease spell by a cleric. A saving throw may be made, with a +4 bonus due to the vestigial nature of the lycanthropic infection.

I’m preparing to run some combat stress tests in order to put the monster creation rules in Legends & Labyrinths through their final paces. In order to do that, I would like to get my hands on high level character sheets from actual play.

Let me explain what I mean by that: What I want are actual 3.0/3.5 characters who are 10th level or higher and reached that level by earning experience points at the gaming table and leveling up in an organic way. They don’t necessarily need to have started at 1st level, but I’d prefer to see characters who have seen at least 4-5 levels of actual play.

What I don’t want are pregens or characters that were freshly rolled up at higher levels. I’ll be doing some testing with those, too, but they’re easy to find or create.

(Why do I want ’em? In my experience, characters who are created at higher levels tend to look significantly different than characters who have leveled up to those levels.  The organic process of gaining loot and shifting your intended character build in response to the campaign’s events creates different characters than those who are given an equipment budget and allowed to build to a focused spec in a single sitting. And while I’ve got samples from my own games, I’m specifically interested in getting a wide sampling of what the organic processes at other tables created.)

If the sheets are online, you can link me to ’em in the comments. Otherwise drop me an e-mail with “[Character Sheet]” in the subject line. (You can find my e-mail address on the About page.) I don’t particularly care what format they’re in, but I’m particularly interested in the equipment lists so don’t leave those out.

Also: The more the merrier. And if you’ve got multiple versions of the same character at different levels, send ’em all.

If you send me a sheet, I’ll be crediting you as a “Playtest Assistant” unless you tell me not to.

Thanks!

(I don’t need additional external playtesters at this time. When I do, I’ll be posting something about it here.)