This post is almost entirely in the context of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. It's influenced by my current game's actual play, but also in light of the way my original game - AD&D - treated acquisition of magic items.
In standard DF and DFRPG, PCs cannot make magic items. That's exclusively something NPCs do. They can buy magic items in town - and quite a broad array of them, even using just DF1 or Adventurers for a list.
What are the implications of PCs being able to buy magic items?
PCs buying magic items:
- has a loot cost, primarily cash but also selling found items that don't match your preferences to fund the creation of one that does.
- no time cost; time to enchant is a delay on receiving but doesn't take the PCs out of play.
- limits on what you can buy can seem arbitrary but can be tied to in-game social abilities (Status, Wealth, Social Stigma, etc.)
- no template limit on purchases.
Cash found in a dungeon, and things exchanged for cash, can be swapped into magic items of whatever sort the PCs need unless the GM puts on specific limits or creates sale item lists. PCs just delve, spend, repeat. Time delays on purchased items can be imposed but the time limits are on the item, not the PC.
What about making items?
PCs making magic items:
- has a loot cost, some cash but also finding the "right" ingredients, if required (either as baseline rules or color.)
- has a time cost, because time spent enchanting is time not spent delving.
- if the loot cost is primarily finding ingredients, this can have a neutral effect on selling found items.
- limits on what you can make can seem arbitrary but are more easily tied to in-game magic/knowledge abilities.
- template limits.
If you take an AD&D-style enchantment approach, you're going to need a lot of monster bits and specific gems to make things go. Even a GURPS Magic approach will have some specific requirements on design and ingredients. Cash alone will usually suffice but may not for all things. There will also likely be time costs - if it takes 100 days to make a magic items, you're out of play for 100 days. What templates and abilities you need to enchant are likely to limit item access. Bards and wizards may be able to make items, clerics some other items, but most other templates might be out of luck. Or maybe not, if you allow shamanistic barbarina practices, fighters to hone steel so well that it becomes enchanted, or thieves to go through certain rituals to make magic keys and dead man's candles and so on.
All of them come with time out of play, definite needs to find ingredients before you can just go get the custom magic widget of your dreams, and in-game advantgae or skill acquisition.
It might be that to make money less of a way to get custom magic items, and make found items more important, you might benefit from letting PCs make the items. It seems a little counterintuitive but the thoughts above point that way.
I need to spend a bit more time noodling this over. Maybe the future of magic items in Felltower is PC made?
Presumably your commitment in Felltower to "1 real-world day = 1 in-setting day" throws a spanner in the works?
ReplyDeleteAt least when games are happening on a regular schedule, player characters might be hard-pressed to find the in-world time to get enchantment done.
It just means you'd need more paper men. Nothing stops people from having a whole stable of active PCs, and running one while the other is away for whatever reason!
DeleteBut what if one paper man is churning out magic items for the rest of the paper men? Wouldn't they then essentially get the best of both situations?
DeleteThat paper man would have to be played once to get started, and get played again to pass the items on to the other characters. We've sorted that issue out with Wealth, already. You have to be an active PC to contribute to the current PCs. Sitting on the sidelines, even if you played before, doesn't count. It's why Dryst has magic items and "quest items" and the party has no access until Dryst's player decides to rejoin us.
DeleteI like the way Dragon's Dogma does item enhancement, perhaps it could work as an intermediate solution here.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about it a few years ago here:
https://bira.github.io/octopus-carnival/gurps/2016/11/25/equipment-part-2.html
This only covers things as they are in the first game, but I understand the newer one works similarly. Basically, PCs might be able to add quality modifiers (i.e, make a standard weapon Fine) or magical enchantments to a weapon by paying half of the modifier or enchantment's cost in money and the other half in appropriate components. Rarer components have more value, kinda like the spell components from DF 19. You can only go so far with the artisans in town but you might be able to find hidden masters elsewhere that can further enhance your favorite weapon, or quest to do something foolhardy like bathing your weapon in dragon's blood.
Thanks for the summary. I think you're right, this pretty much is a half-of-each kind of approach and worth considering.
DeleteAlthough I do get, just about every session, a "do any of these monster bits work well as raw materials for special items?" question. This would pretty much ensure that never ever stops, which isn't a pretty thought. :)