Wishlists and Finding Items

So one thing that was done new in some 4e games was to use a character generated wishlist of items. The idea is that when you generate treasure instead of generating a completely random item you pick an item from a list of items that your players want. The benefit is clear. When you find a magic item it is exciting and cool. I have been in plenty of games where most of what you find is essentially magical junk that no one will use.

This issue got worse in 3rd edition since you could craft stuff. Your collection of items would include mainly the crafted stuff that you really wanted and maybe a couple of items you found that were useful to you. In early editions that had no real item crafting rules you really had to adapt to what you found, but also since you couldn't craft the items themselves could be extremely powerful.

So the things you want in a treasure generation system:
A) Magic items are not useless. They won't be just tossed into a sack for later sale with the players going 'bleh' i.e. toss that +1 Guisarme into the Bag of Holding.
B) Found magic items will be better than crafted items. (not a big problem in any edition of D&D)
C) Finding magic items won't be like checking off an entry. There will be a sense of 'Ooooh, what does it do? Who can use that best?'
D) Finding magic items will force decisions about what item to use and what strategies to use.
E) Random found magic items shouldn't overwhelm cool or plot specific items.
F) Magic items should have a 'found as part of the game' feel and not a 'found in the books' feel.

In regards to point E, I remember my high school game where I had a living metal blade crafted by a sentient metal creature we had helped. Later on we picked up a +3 sword. I really wanted to use my living metal weapon, but the +3 was better.

So in formulating a plan I have come up with the following. Magical treasure will almost always be a higher level than the players. Exceptions to this will include stuff like, 'Hey these orcs are using magic formed blades from the mystic forges of Placewhere. Lets check out Placewhere!' This will help reduce the whole dump-the-plus-one-guisarme-in-the-sack issue. Also, I will probably randomly roll up the items, but I will roll maybe 3 times and pickout the item that seems most suited to the PCs. This way magic items will still have a random discovery feel and be surprising, but they won't be utterly useless or not fit in.