Abracadabra

Recently, I’ve had a revelation. One of my pet peeves in Dungeons and Dragons (and this is despite the fact that I join in with the rest of them) is when we come back from an adventure, the first thing the players do is go to the Dungeon’s Master Guide to look at what magic items everyone can buy. And I always considered magic items to be special, unique. It annoyed me to no end that the equivalent of Excalibur could be purchased with enough gold, sold at some high-end peddler’s market. As I mentioned, I’m annoyed, but not annoyed enough to stop figuring out what I can sell and buy to improve my character’s chance of not dying.

But, am I outraged that I can go out to my local Walmart and get a chair and table set? In the old days, this would need to be hand carved, probably by hand. But that was then – we now have mass production and globalization and many other facets of our society that allow this particular consumer good to be present. Medieval life didn’t have assembly lines, but then again medieval life didn’t have magic either. The ability to mass produce goods is assisted by technology (like conveyor belts and computers to manage supplies), but it’s not entirely necessary. If the rules surrounding magic allow young apprentice mages to create items, then there’s no reason why some enterprising sorcerer can set up a magic sweatshop.

So, two views. First, my view. Magic items are artwork, each piece unique and suffused with individual talent. You can purchase magic items, but even the lowest potion of healing or mace +1 has an aura about it. Because individual people need to build from scratch without a template, there are going to be fewer duplicate items. Items that are suppose to be duplicated may have a few quirks, and when buying, it’s caveat emptor. That healing potion may only heal burns, or the mace +1 may emit a high-pitched squeal that repels orcs. Some items may be, well, cursed, and each item is an adventure. Because of the quirkiness of the magic items and the relative rarity, prices aren’t going to be set. Instead, prices are a case-by-base basis, and that’s assuming that a buyer is willing to part with his magic item. Many magic items are going to pass from father/mother to son/daughter, or taken in combat.

Second, there’s the “magic items as mass produced commodities.” Creating magic items may not be easy, but at least it’s easily reproducible. Some magic items may have brand names — a way to guarantee quality. And where you have brand names, you have counterfeit brands, the Ralex of magic items. And if there’s enough money in counterfeiting brands, then the real brand will set ways to prevent counterfeits, and with magic new techniques are open (“Note that the hilt is engraved with the three axes, and if you cast Detect Magic, the real sword glows blue, while counterfeits will glow white or yellow”). And if you think this is a bit anachronistic, AD&D does this already with the Bigby and Leomund names, and research has said that certain manufacturers in medieval Europe created distinct weaves, or pewter that resonated at a particular pitch in order to prove that this was their product.

Prices will be fixed (or at least a suggested MSRP), but as in all sales, local markets can drive up or down prices. AD&D reflects this in merchant skills, but skill alone is not going to change the factor. If a plague hits a kingdom, prices for Cure Disease are going to skyrocket, and adventurers of a less scrupulous nature can make a killing (so to speak) selling to the highest bidder. Likewise, lawful good adventures may place the part of the medieval Red Cross, transporting potions across borders for the common folk. Or if there’s a glut in the market, prices may go down.

Prices and brand names — this means that you are going to have variation in magical items. Brand names may do more damage, have a farther range, hold more charges, or be more reliable. The “generic” brand may have a 10% failure rate, or a 1% of catastrophic failure. In a sense, AD&D and other games do this already with the ubiquitous “greater potions of X” and “lesser potions of Y”, but why not call them “generic healing potion” and “Healing Potion of Apollo.” Add some flavor. And you can add flavor to your encounters as well — mercenaries down on their luck may have the generic +1 swords, while that sharpshooter may have not just a longbow +3, but a Valley Elf Quickshot Bow +3. Take a page from J. K. Rowling — her brooms aren’t just brooms, but Nimbus 2000s and Firebolts. Something else that Harry Potter books do is advance the timeline — last year’s model isn’t as good, just like each automobile is better (or different enough to get people to buy this year’s model) than the last year. You can ridicule the PCs (and get them to part with well-earned money) just by having the bad guys mock their out-of-fashion magic.

Who can sell these magic items? A potential seller of items is going to run afoul of two issues: law and marketing. First, local constabularies are going to frown on people buying wands of fireballs, just like the modern person can’t stop by the local pawnshop and pick up an automatic weapon or explosives. Some larger cities may require a permit (if the item has potential uses, like a horn of blasting), or ban the sale altogether (if the item is too dangerous or is focused on doing mischief — a wand of death isn’t a subtle many-purposed device). Conversely, some items may be promoted — a kingdom that is plagued by undead may give a tax credit against swords of killing, undead, on the idea that each sword used encourages killing undead. And if an item can be sold, it may only be sold by licensed dealers, depending on how savvy the brand is. It may also be localized to a specific market; adventurers who travel to strange lands (as they are wont to do) may not be able to pick up their trusty potion of healing. Used goods may be cheaper, depending on the resell rate, or they may be just as pricey as the originals, especially considering that magic items are durable and the magic itself doesn’t seem to wear out. Or does it?

Where are all these items created? And who builds them? True, it may be a cottage industry, but if massive numbers of devices are being produced, then someone has to be getting the raw material and doing the enchanting. Are these factories family industries, or are they run by slave labor, innocents being drained of their essence to power a few cheap baubles for the rich. An adventure can spring from one of these factories, with the PCs either hired as corporate spies by a rival or government inspectors. Or, PCs may be hired to find people who are good at enchanting, getting a finder’s fee for each referral. Or, PCs are hired to procure and transport raw materials, especially if the raw materials are dangerous to produce (only one way to get dragon’s blood, and that’s from a dragon).

If these items are as common as blue jeans and Ikea in our world, this changes the fabric of society, making it less “medieval agricultural world” and more “Eberron clockwork-punk meets magic as technology.” A typical middle-class house may have a pot that boils water magically, and a large castle may have multiple gems of seeing and sending stones to aid in communication. A way to create food alleviates massive time in the fields, and a decanter of endless water allows cities to spring up without being tied to a water source. Things to disrupt magic would be as much of an impact as an EMP pulse in the modern world, and a household could be disabled by a Dispel Magic spell.

One of the disadvantages with mass production is once the template for that line is started, it can produce a lot of pieces before the template can be modified. If someone tweaks the initial template to create, say, cursed swords instead of the standard longsword +1, then thousands can be built before someone catches the mistake. Also, the individual people in the production effort are not involved in the overall picture. An evil overlord can create horrible magic items just by tampering with the line with no one the wiser, the magic equivalent of the Tylenol scare. Folks who are conscientious of their brands may try to do a recall (as much as they can, based on communications), while other issues may get swept under the rug.

Some magic items may be prototypes, one-off creations that never made it to market. I can envision the wand of wonder as a failed experiment. “Let’s have something that can grow grass on a dungeon floor. That, and throw fireballs. And shoot butterflies.” Because these are prototypes, they will be unreliable and probably useless.

Two wildly different worlds. D&D seems to have taken a middle road — fixed suggested prices, can purchase items freely, but few brand names. But, as a good roleplaying games should, AD&D gives the template and good GMs can modify their world as needed. Rare or common, unique or branded, magic items not only twist the game, but influence the society they inhabit. Next month is an article I am looking forward to: a handy dandy list of magical failures.