Alternative treasure

[Mark Hoover 330]

A little while ago I put my own homebrew campaign on hiatus so that I could be a player in the reign of winter AP. Trying not to spoiler things too hard but we encountered a particular humanoid foe of dubiously primitive intellect and lair with some ridiculously effete art objects as treasure.

Where did they get them? Where were these being stored on their loin-cloth-clad person? It was pretty jarring.

Since then I've been trying to work treasure more organically into my own campaign and I'm wondering if anyone else does any of these things or has any tips. By "organically" I mean that when my PCs defeat monsters or foes they don't just collapse into piles of coins and items like a video game anymore.

Sure, I still include video-game tropes in my adventures: chests filled with loot, literal vases and urns that can be smashed or opened for treasure, etc. But I usually litter the setting with just as much GP worth of valuables for the players to take advantage of, if they wish.

Things like: vintage furnishings, expensive (mundane) clothing, very minor magical "novelties" with Cantrips in their item creation, rare herbs, plants or fungi around the adventure site, permanent art features like friezes or carvings which would be difficult to move but could be depicted for cash, and so on.

The PCs in my game routinely encounter creatures that don't inherently have treasure, such as some magical beasts or undead, and the "mastermind" types in their adventures don't always have NPC-level loot. As such it's been hard for my players to hit WBL.

When the players began grumbling I not-so-subtly began pointing out all of the "background" treasure they'd been ignoring. I also directed them to the Ultimate Wilderness rule for Trophies. For the past couple levels the players have gone from being paupers to being premier dealers in rare alchemical and arcane monster parts.

Does anyone else incorporate treasure variants that fall outside the typical coins/magic items/art and jewelry/gems that typically inhabit fantasy adventures?

[Hugo Rune]

I tend to incorporate a lot of trade goods in my treasure. Humanoid tribes are likely to raid caravans and travelling merchants and are unlikely to have a mint. Similarly, some predatory magical beasts and the like will only have their victims' possessions and other things that they have collected.

Collected treasure, is probably the reserve of the civilised and the exceptionally intelligent who are collecting it to pay for some master plan.

[Dave Justus]

I find that the extra bookkeeping of keeping track of all this sort of valuables and how to convert it into cash is more trouble then it is worth. It also tends to slow down the game dramatically and players ask about if/how literally everything in their environment can be converted to cash.

When I want to add flavor to treasure of an encounter would describe it (a beautiful painting of the Count's grandmother, rumored to have been part fey) but I'd just have the players record it a $500 gp (or whatever) and move on. No bothering with trying to appraise it, or searching for a buyer or anything like that. Insert the flavor when they find it, but after that it is effectively just coins.

Obviously this is just a matter of taste and there isn't necessarily a 'right' way, but I have seen you complain about your party moving 'slowly' before, and I can't imagine that having to figure out if a Minotaur's spleen has any value and where the best market for it might be doesn't contribute to a slower paced game.

[Kayerloth]

Yes, I've certainly done it. And because of the issues Dave mentions it can be strongly influenced by my players, the nature of the campaign, the amount time available to prepare, and gaming time available for the session. Usually it falls somewhere around what Dave describes. Sometimes it'll run towards the detailed end (find buyers, using various knowledge checks, etc.) Less often it'll be towards the 'find stuff, sells for this amount end of the spectrum.

The most off the wall treasure wasn't even intended. I was running a Dark Sun/Athas campaign involving lots of intrigue. It revolved around the party uncovering a super secret sapphire mine. Eventually they thought they'd found it a tried to sneak it to explore and verify. They came across a large iron portcullis gate ... and their eyes about popped out. Iron of any kind was extremely valuable in Dark Sun and here was an entire gate made of it! Forget the sapphires!! Forget their mission/contracts!!!

[thorin001]

I will echo Dave's comment that it is not worth the time.

[Loren Pechtel]

Dave Justus wrote:

I find that the extra bookkeeping of keeping track of all this sort of valuables and how to convert it into cash is more trouble then it is worth. It also tends to slow down the game dramatically and players ask about if/how literally everything in their environment can be converted to cash.

When I want to add flavor to treasure of an encounter would describe it (a beautiful painting of the Count's grandmother, rumored to have been part fey) but I'd just have the players record it a $500 gp (or whatever) and move on. No bothering with trying to appraise it, or searching for a buyer or anything like that. Insert the flavor when they find it, but after that it is effectively just coins.

Obviously this is just a matter of taste and there isn't necessarily a 'right' way, but I have seen you complain about your party moving 'slowly' before, and I can't imagine that having to figure out if a Minotaur's spleen has any value and where the best market for it might be doesn't contribute to a slower paced game.

I partially agree. Routine items they know the value of. Artwork or the like they know the value of when they get to town (unless they have the skill to figure it out in the field, which I have yet to have happen.) Converting it to money is automatic in town. However, in the meantime it has encumbrance. When it's trade goods or the like they very well might be faced with more loot than they have the ability to haul off.

[avr]

Shaking down the witches home for obscure animal bits, glassware or luncheon vouchers is amusing for a while, but gets boring eventually.

[thorin001]

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Dave Justus wrote:

I find that the extra bookkeeping of keeping track of all this sort of valuables and how to convert it into cash is more trouble then it is worth. It also tends to slow down the game dramatically and players ask about if/how literally everything in their environment can be converted to cash.

When I want to add flavor to treasure of an encounter would describe it (a beautiful painting of the Count's grandmother, rumored to have been part fey) but I'd just have the players record it a $500 gp (or whatever) and move on. No bothering with trying to appraise it, or searching for a buyer or anything like that. Insert the flavor when they find it, but after that it is effectively just coins.

Obviously this is just a matter of taste and there isn't necessarily a 'right' way, but I have seen you complain about your party moving 'slowly' before, and I can't imagine that having to figure out if a Minotaur's spleen has any value and where the best market for it might be doesn't contribute to a slower paced game.

I partially agree. Routine items they know the value of. Artwork or the like they know the value of when they get to town (unless they have the skill to figure it out in the field, which I have yet to have happen.) Converting it to money is automatic in town. However, in the meantime it has encumbrance. When it's trade goods or the like they very well might be faced with more loot than they have the ability to haul off.

Is dealing with that fun or are you trying to find a way to cheat the PCs out of their loot?

[Kayerloth]

It's not a binary thing. It's an entire spectrum. Am I trying to cheat them or give them a chance to employ skills not often used and get a bonus reward for the effort?

[Quixote]

I will always make sure that the treasure found at a site/on a foe fitd the situation.
Orc and goblin raiders obviously obtained their wealth from merchant caravans, small towns and such. A wight wears ancient jewelery. A witch's wealth is in potions, spell components and enchanted baubles.

I don't bother with appraisal of worth or identification of magical effects, in order to streamline the process. But I do ask my players to keep track of how much crap they're carrying, so a necklace of moonstones set in silver worth 3,000gp is way more convenient to carry around than it's equivalent of 60lbs of gold coins. The only downside is that it's hard to get change for such things in, say, a village of 50 people.

It definitely adds to the book keeping (which is part of why I cut some of the more pointless and tedious steps out), but it also adds a sense of depth and scope to the game. Sort of like when you spend half a moment describing the meal they bought at the inn for the night.

I've had a small handful of players determined to eek out every scrap of wealth they could get, right down to carrying a few day's worth of firewood back to town from an ogre's camp. That sort of thing slows the game down more than any other, but it's fairly rare and easy to discourage.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I hear you folks when you say this is a time sink. That has come up on occasion in my current campaign, where time is a factor. I started running a second game however that meets once a month and adding treasure like this has been more well received by my players in that one; we play for like, 9 hours a session and its based around trips to a megadungeon so during a lot of the downtime between encounters this motivates the PCs to actually interact with their surroundings and the players get a lot more of the lore of the dungeon which is helpful to me as the GM.

In my main game I've taken a hybrid approach, to save time. I usually point out lucrative details here and there, when I describe a scene or immediately after a fight ends. It might run something like this:

Before fight: you enter the hall of the ancient wood giants, long abandoned and now the home of the vampire's proxies. Huge oaken statues of exquisite carvings stand forgotten but immortal along the walls and any one might merit a masterwork bow if presented to the Erastilin lodge near town.

After battle: the giant scorpions shudder in their death throws. Investigator, you know for a fact that the poison glands of these creatures will stay viable for several hours now, should you want to try and procure some for your own stores. Moreover, you all know that the head, pincers or even the creature's shell would fetch a pretty penny in the more esoteric markets of the city of Valyg's Crossing.

Then, once I've described stuff the PCs might take I leave it to them. Usually the players take the articles I described, though they've gotten clever enough to once in a while ask about other stuff in the room, make Perception checks for things they might've missed, or ask about other monster's value.

I generally just handwave the selling of this stuff in settlements, too. If I've established a settlement that's too small or rural to really appreciate, say, troll spleens or the rug of ancient demon worshippers, I might have the party wait to capitalize on their loot, but otherwise when they make it to town they just get gold.

In the 1/month campaign, one player is running a dwarf paladin who is a merchant in his spare time. He's taken my setting-based loot to a whole new level.

Usually he'll hinge on one thing in the loot - something I've described as ancient, or eldritch, or historically significant or whatever. After talking it over with the players for their buy-in, the player will then run a mini-game with me once they get back to the city.

He runs around using Diplomacy to find the exact right buyer, then tries to negotiate the best price for the item. We don't resolve it by simple die rolls alone; rolls will be thrown but there might also be some in-character conversation. The other players might contribute to the scene with Aid Another from Diplomacy, Knowledge: History rolls, spells and abilities, etc.

In this way the players have earned extra cash. Its also netted them at least one Contact in the city, Merchant Lord Lindergen. It even earned them a secondary mission in the dungeon, to retrieve a sister blade to a dagger lost in the dungeon during the Orc Wars decades earlier.