My problems with old school treasure
My problems with old school treasure
One thing I'm starting to dislike running OSR adventures* is the insane amount of treasure and magical items that you find. In addition, the...
One thing I'm starting to dislike running OSR adventures is the insane amount of treasure and magical items that you find. In addition, the more I read the DMG, the more I feel they were just too generous with treasure and had to come up of endless ways of spending it (training, upkeep, research, rust monsters, disenchanters, etc.).
So, this is kind of an interesting issue that I've grappled with before myself.
The easy answer is that as the GM you have control over how much treasure your players find in your games. It's easy enough to just put in the amount of treasure you want them to find.
That said, one thing in OSR play that often gets overlooked is the idea of domains and home bases. Outside of actual name level domain play, investing in a home base or a local tavern or just in the local town is something that is extremely beneficial and also extremely costly to adventurers. There's a reason that so many older editions of RPGs included detailed information on exactly how much individual portions of castles or buildings cost.
Not every OSR game brings in the idea of domain play and strongholds, but I think they should. They're a great place for players to sink money while also gaining tangible benefits. And magic items also are subject to breakage just like other items. If your game is not breaking or wearing down items then maybe that's something you could look into tracking.
At the end of the day I think the idea of being showered in gold and treasure or being completely destitute and sort of fluctuating back and forth fits with OSR play because OSR play is just by nature a little more swingy. Life is cheap and death comes quick. Treasure follows that same paradigm.
@bluelander @copacetic @osr and don’t forget fees, taxes, tithes, and charity!
@bluelander @copacetic @osr and there are settings, even old-school ones designed specifically to address that, #DarkSun then and #DragonKingsProject now.
@bluelander @copacetic @osr and don’t forget fees and taxes!
When gold = xp this can be a problem, otherwise just giving less gold is the easy solution.
If this is a problem you even want to solve this is what I would do:
- Use a silver standard, this reduces the amount of treasure to level up significantly
- Track expenses . Tracking doesn't need to be comprehensive just assign a single amount for a week which covers everything (rather than tracking how many ales they have each night).
- Have long periods of downtime. Slow healing helps force long down times, but unless the PCs are in a rush to complete something you could arbitrarily force a week long down time as minimum. This will eat up the parties resources from expenses but it also allows them to persue things other than getting loot. Carousing, chairty, research, domain play. All can be fun - and also eat into their gold
- Don't give the full value of treasure. For example they find a gem worth 100gp, they take it back to town and earn their 100xp. Next they'll want to sell it, the jeweller only offers them 50gp, because they have to sell it at 100gp and they'd expect a profit and to cover their expenses (shop upkeep, tax etc.)
Well keep in mind the fact that there would normaly be at least 2 seperate groups in the dungeon at the same time. We all know the compettive nature and greed of players.
I tend to at least half if not 1/3 the listed values.
I mean if it's your table you can set the loot value (and cost of things, for that matter) at whatever you want.
For that matter you could have no loot at all and merely have them get better gear as they level, from their "mentor" or "guild" or the patron of a quest. Oh, you're a level 5 thief, your mentor gave you a +2 dagger as a mark of your rank.. etc etc.
That said i think a lot of Players like having lots of loot and money because it's fun to see big numbers and interesting items.