Proton’s free tier gives you 1 GB storage, 25 MB attachments,50 emails per hour, 150 per day. Plenty for most personal uses.

“foolhardy”, not “fool hearted” smh

Anyway - different DMs have different styles. If your group is into extensive backstories, your startup session can incorporate that. Do the characters know each other because they’re all citizens of the starting town? or did they each respond to a town bulletin-board recruitment flyer and the recruiting event is their first meeting?

The classic Basic D&D module “Keep on the Borderlands” has characters arriving at the titular Keep because they’re the best and brightest of their home villages, sent to do a tour of duty in service to the Kingdom.

The classic AD&D module series “Scourge of the Slavelords” opens with characters breaking free of captivity in a slaver camp. Maybe they knew each other before being kidnapped, maybe not, it’s not really important to how the campaign plays out either way.

Wadgour Raughters, halfling bard embarking on his solo career due to “creative differences” with his former bandmates from Blink Pig.

it’s all relative to a mutually agreed reference point. Within our solar system you might relate an object’s position as “sunward” or “outward”, and motion tangent to the rotation of the planets as “spinward” or “trailward”. In galactic space, the same directions apply, but substitute “coreward” for “sunward”.

To address your original question more squarely - I might use such a resource if it was free. First because the rarity tiers are poorly thought out and second because even if characters are networking through factor/dealers instead of browsing a shopkeeper’s dispaly case - you still have to assign a price.

The 1st Edition DM’s Guide gave every wondrous item its own specific gold piece value. The relative valuations weren’t perfect but I was shocked when I came back to D&D in 5E to find per-item valuation was abandoned. If I was going to tackle the problem myself, I’d refer to the 1E DMG valuations as a starting point for consumables like potions and scrolls, then consult a few of the most popular “magic item tier guide” articles to supplement 5E’s overly broad and internally flawed valuation by arbitrary rarity tags.

Classic example, the merely “Uncommon” Weapon of Warning is arguably a keeper all the way to endgame. Many DMs even nerf away its party-wide benefits entirely, because making the whole group reliably immune to surprise is game-breaking. You could gain the same personal benefit, and free up the attunement slot, by spending a precious Feat slot to take the Alert feat - but even that doesn’t compare with also making all allies within 30’ immune to surprise.

If you survey the 1E magic item valuations, it helps to be aware that a) attunement slots weren;t a thing - you could equip a lot more magic! Also, b) wands in general and many other “spend a charge” items did not regain X number of charges every day. A Wand of Fireballs with 50 charges was worth about 50 Scrolls of Fireball - and when you spent the last charge, it was just a nonmagical stick again.

I didn’t question the trope of magic item shops back in the 1E/2E days. I wouldn’t run it that way now. For anything more wondrous than healing potions and +1 weapons/armor, the characters have to network through patrons, quest givers, guildmasters, mentors.

This isn’t a big problem in less experienced/more casual groups, but some players (myself included) do like to pore over articles like “most powerful wondrous items for bards”. I don’t think it’s good for the game to feed an expectation that characters can acquire any item they can name if they just save up enough coin and search enough magic shops.

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