I’ve been playing role-paying games for quite a few years. My best friend in boot-camp introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons back in 1979. (To be precise it was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.) I was hooked from the first game, and I still play to this day.

The game has changed a lot over the years, AD&D, gave way to 2^nd Edition AD&D, then 3^rd edition D&D, then that got patched by 3.5 D&D (What I currently play), that got superseded for some by 4^th edition D&D, setting of the nuclear war of edition wars, and soon we’ll see yet another iteration.

For sometime I have been pondering how the changes in the rules have change how we, or at least how I play the game. I’m not speaking of the mechanics, what dice you roll and how you determine success or failure in the game, but rather how the worlds and adventures are constructed and from that what the feel of the games become.

Back in the primordial times games varied greatly from gamemaster to gamemaster, but it was also common that characters traveled between games. Your 7^th level wizard might play under half a dozen GM’s over the course of his adventuring, treasure going from game to game. Not all GM’s gave out the same sort of treasure, and if you played a game where the treasure seemed overly generous you’d quickly find yourself accused of having played in an ‘Monty Hall’ game. (For any youngsters reading, this is a reference to the game show ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ and the suggesting is that you did not face the right level of danger to earn the treasure your character boasted.)

This was hardy true in all cases. Some GM’s ran damn dangerous games and gave out rewards in measure, while some were overly lax.

3^rd Edition D&D not only introduced guidelines, they are far too vague to be called rules, for creating magical items and weapons, it also introduced values for all magical weapons and items, listed as a purchase price in gold pieces.

Now there was, in theory, a quantifiable system for judging the magical loot a character should possess, including charts and tables to give players and GM’s a reference to what was appropriate.

I suppose in theory the ‘monty hall’ character would now be easily spotted, but I think the cure has been worse than the disease. There is the endless debate if something is correctly priced, magical weapons are really hurt by this system in my opinion, and a twisting of perception and style of play. Shopping becomes much more important that it used to be as purchase price now promotes the buying of items rather than the winning of them, and it creates a sort of homogenous feel the characters and their magical items.  The wild sense of wonder wth magical items has vanished and been replaced with a very material and mechanistic view of magic as just another technology.

I think in my own game I shall be jettisoning the suggested gold treasure values for character by level – I will retain the values to the items as a crude measure – but I will be shifting to greater and more varied treasure and making items harder to purchase. I miss the sense of the fantastic and you don’t get that by buying your best stuff at the Wizards Wal-Mart.