Magic shops are the bane of modern gaming. Your heroes have won fame and fortune in the Great Deeps of Golmar and want to spend their gold on virtually the only thing that matters to them: magic items. So you offer them a magic shop. But either they don’t have enough money to buy what they want, or they get magic fever and try to rob the place, but you sweatily improvise the owners being 20th-level adventurers. Now you’ve wasted a session on shopping in a game about delving into dungeons and slaying dragons.

There are better ways to deal with such things.

Shopping… for Adventure

You don’t even have to part with your precious treasure. You can just ask around.

• Innkeepers have heard tales of magical items wielded by awful villains.
• Sages have read accounts of enchanted weapons entombed with great heroes.
• Troubadours sing songs of wondrous artifacts lost in deep dungeons.

This can be a major source of your adventure hooks–you know: the thing the game is all about. Tell your players about monsters causing trouble, ruins that need exploring, and treasures that could be recovered if they choose one over the other. Let them decide which seems most enticing. Now you’re running a sandbox campaign the players will largely drive.

It should go without saying that the treasure rumors they get for free are not about a specific item the players ask for. They’re about whatever random treasure the GM has rolled up or decided to give the villain.

Sacrifice & Divine Visions

First, it’s historically accurate that people threw valuable items into lakes and rivers as a sacrifice to the gods. Use that notion to make your game more interesting. The heroes can donate treasure (gold, gems, tapestries, lesser magic items…) to their church and pray for something: a specific magic item they’ve heard about (or even a resurrection spell for their fallen companion).

• If you donate up to 25% of the item’s value, you get a vision of the item wielded by, say, a powerful and wicked villain several day’s travel away. Have fun on that journey.
• If you donate 50% of its value, you envision the item in a wyvern’s nest not far away. Enjoy that adventure.
• If you donate 75%, you see that you merely have to fetch the thing from a crypt below a church in town… which might be haunted by some restless wraith. Enjoy the side quest.
• If you donate 100%, you see in your mind’s eye the item in the possession of a nearby nasty mercenary captain. You’ll barely have to try to provoke a fight.

All of these are far more fun and flavorful than a simple financial transaction at Dickno’s Sporting Goods. Of course, if the heroes aren’t sacrificing treasure to the gods, they’ll need something else to spend their money on….

Let Desire Drive Lore

Avoid letting your players treat the rule books and supplements like the Sears Wish Book catalog. They can only ask about or pray for magic items they know exist from tales they’ve heard. If you’re generous, maybe you let them fantasize about items that probably exist.

But “I pray for a +5 Holy Avenger” needs to be more like “I pray for a sword like the one wielded by Sir Halomite the Virtuous.” This does two things: it means the exact nature of the item remains up to the GM, and it encourages the heroes to seek out lore. Now the heroes have a reason to actually read some of those dusty tomes they find in a sage’s library and to talk with sages and troubadours to learn the lore of your world. “O sage, tell us tales of great heroes with wondrous weapons.” And imagine their thrill at finding a dusty tome: The Arms of Great Heroes of the Second Kingdom.

You can let them roll for the chance that a magic item is described in a book they’ve found. Just roll it up like any piece of treasure–now they know that a portable hole or ring of flying is a thing. Now they can ask around and roll for the chance that an NPC has heard of such a magic item and where it might be. Now your on your way to adventure!