Treasure of the Week: Old School Encounters Reference

Treasure of the Week is a new "feature" I'm hoping to do, appropriately enough, once a week, to highlight something I've found that's intended to be useful to DMs/GMs. We'll see how that works out! My focus is naturally on 4E, but I'm guessing the better part of what I find will be useful regardless of edition or even system.

The start things off, I wanted to call attention to B. Scot Hoover's Old School Encounters Reference, #4 in his Classic Dungeon Designer's Netbook series of PDFs. I saw this praised in the comments at some grognard blog, so I figured I'd check it out. I started looking through it and was about to write it off since it seemed to just be a collection of NPC and monster stat summaries for AD&D 1E and OSRIC. Great if you're playing those games, but of no value to me. But as I looked further (it's 160 pages), I found tables for fleshing out NPCs, ruins, mines, weather, wilderness journeys, encounters at sea, herbs, foraging, and much, much more. Tons and tons of meaty content that for the most part doesn't care about what edition or what game you're running (well, assuming it's fantasy). Some of the tables are directly useful, others not as much but can easily be used as springboards for ideas. This is something I really would have geeked over back when I was playing First Edition. The layout is spartan but utilitarian and clean; if it wasn't for direct references to D&D monsters, I think it could be published and would likely make a fair amount. The author has some other "old school" PDFs on the site as well, though they're much more specific to AD&D/OSRIC/etc.

The Old School Encounters Reference looks like it would be perfect for someone running a "sandbox" campaign, but I think it could be useful regardless of the style of game you're running.

Minaria for 4E

Off and on I've been reading a collection of PDFs concerning Minaria, the setting for the old Divine Right game. The articles were originally published in Dragon magazine, but they were also collected on the CD-ROM that came with the 25th Anniversary Edition of the game (which is where I got them from). Some interesting stuff, and after reading the "origins" document I realized that the setting would work well for 4E. The passage strikes a familiar chord:

During the Cataclysm's long aftermath, each race sorted itself into tribes, all of which struggled separately to survive. Only here and there did civilization keep its feeble light burning -- at the Temple of the Kings, in the ruined cities of Neuth, in the fertile heartland of Kalruna-Sasir, and in the trading cities of the South Plains.

The "present day" of Minaria is a little more civilized, with much of the setting controlled by good-sized kingdoms, but overall it still seems like a viable place for a campaign.

4E Alternate Treasure System

What follows is essentially my thinking out loud in the process of developing/refining my alternate treasure system for 4E. As such, it may be disjointed, messy, or both.

I'm not a fan of treasure parcels, the default treasure distribution method in 4E. I like the concept in and of itself, but it doesn't work if you don't keep everyone in the party at the same level (which is also the suggested default for 4E, but not something I care for, either) nor if the number of characters in the party fluctuates. So I've been thinking of an alternate system. I do prefer the "old" standard, which we've had in various forms from 1st Edition to 3.5, for the most part, except for the weirdness that occasionally results from the random tables. But the idea of "shifting" treasure around from opponents that wouldn't have much (or anything) to different parts of an adventure (like a treasure vault or dragon's lair) is a good idea, and essentially part of the 4E system, not to mention something I used to do myself.

So what's the solution? My idea is sort of a mix of the two, 4E and old. Essentially it still uses parcels, but for adventures, not for party levels. The plan is to come up with a "treasure budget" (similar to the budgets you have for encounter building), which is based on the monsters and traps in the adventure, and then distribute it within the adventure as appropriate.

The design is based on the following premises:

• A character will advance a level every 10 encounters.
• A character should gain a equal portion (based on the party size, 1/5 is the standard) of the total monetary value of a treasure parcel for a given level.
• One encounter should yield 1/10th of the treasure of a given treasure parcel.

Looking at the XP values for monsters, we can see that by reducing numbers to the level of the individual PC, a single PC can defeat 10 creatures of their level to advance one level. Since each of those "encounters" would yield 1/10th the value of a treasure parcel for that PC, each monster would provide 1/50 of the total treasure parcel's monetary worth (1/10th of the entire parcel, and 1/5 of that for the individual PC). Based on this, a level 1 monster would be responsible for 75.2 gp of treasure, while a level 10 monster would provide 1400 gp. (Note: "Monster" could be a monster, NPC, skill challenge, trap, or anything that provides XP). Note that "provide" and "be responsible" doesn't necessarily mean that the monsters would have that treasure on them. They might have that amount or less, or more (or even none). What it does mean is that within the context of the adventure that monster provides that amount of value to the "treasure budget".

Naturally, this system doesn't insure that the PCs will get all the treasure from a module, just as there's no assurance that they'll engage in every encounter. It's not perfect, but it's "close enough" in my estimation, which is fine for me. Also, I'm using the 1/5th as a standard (i.e.; a PC should get 1/5 of a parcel's value), even though the numbers don't work out the same if you don't have 5 PCs in the party (the proportions go up if you have 3 or 4 PCs, they go down if you have 6 or 7). But again, they're close enough that I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Based on all of that, we end up with the following:

1: 75 11: 1900 21: 47000
2: 100 12: 2700 22: 67000
3: 150 13: 3800 23: 95000
4: 200 14: 5250 24: 131000
5: 300 15: 7000 25: 175000
6: 375 16: 9400 26: 235000
7: 525 17: 13400 27: 285000
8: 750 18: 19000 28: 325000
9: 1050 19: 26200 29: 355000
10: 1400 20: 35000 30: 437500

Note that these numbers are for "standard" monsters. In accordance with their XP values, minions would provide 1/4th the amount to the budget, elites twice that amount, and solos five times the amount.

The next step is to go through the adventure you're planning for, and total up the treasure values for all of its monsters, traps, etc. based on the table above. The end total is the "treasure budget" for the adventure. Based on this, you can look through the PH, Adventurer's Vault, and whatever other sources you're using to put together the adventure's treasure. Where the treasure goes is up to you. Some may be on the monsters themselves, some may be hidden in secret caches, etc. What the treasure is is also up to you; I have some plans for a random generator, though in practice I figure I'll do a combination of random generation and manual selection.

Again, not a perfect system. But one that on "paper" seems good enough. Once I implement, we'll see how well it works.

So What Random Generator Did You Use, I Wonder?

Looking at your lists, it's obvious that a lot of what's there was generated by some program. Seriously, many of those names just are...lame, really. Not something a person would have just pulled out of their head. So what's the value of having tons of lists if so much of their content is so weak? Quantity is not quality. And God forbid you acknowledge anything that may have helped you.

Windows is Vastly Superior to Linux (Part 2 in a series)

Copying large and/or numerous files from a Linux disk to another: Transfer time slowly degrades until it's virtually slower than moving data across a 10 baud modem. An hour to copy a 30GB file? Really?

And from reading the on-line forums, the summary seems from the developers to be: "Works for me. You newbies/Ubuntu users suck. Don't bother us." Excellent way to draw people away from Windows.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying. And no, I don't care.

The Outrage! Dwarven Wiz-er...I mean, Unaligned Metallics!!?!?

From the "Seriously? This Is A Big Deal?" Department

Apparently, the latest travesty being thrust upon us in 4E is the fact that metallic dragons aren't good or lawful good, but "unaligned". The chromatics are still evil - but unaligned metallics? The horror!

Or not. I admit I was surprised to see it, but who cares? It's easy enough to just say "Hey, gold dragons are good in my world." Has nothing to do with verisimilitude (neither does the way rust monsters work now, but that's another post). Tradition? That's a valid argument, but in retrospect, I rarely used metallic dragons anyway. When they did show up it was in some sort of role-playing/non-combat manner, such that I really didn't need stats for them to begin with.

In any case, Bahamut is still good (lawful good, to be exact), so there's still that.

(BTW, the title is in reference to the vitriol pre-3E about the fact that dwarves could be wizards. insert yet another use of the "more things change" saying)

On the other hand, why the duergar have quills now...TF? :)

Sell Me on What You Have, Not What You Don't Have

I was recently reading an RPG site I frequent and one of the articles was above YAFRPG (Yet Another Fantasy RPG). Though it wasn't so much an article as it was ad-copy - besides reading like one, it was written by the author of the game. Much of it was discussing why it was so much better than D&D (it didn't call out D&D by name, but it was obvious, just as when people in the tabletop community refer to "MMOs", they're invariably talking about WoW). One thing that struck me was something I've seen elsewhere - the ad pointed out how they didn't use alignment and why that was such a good thing. I've never understood that - alignment is pretty much an exception in RPGs; outside of D&D/d20, the only games of any note I've seen using it are the Palladium RPG and Warhammer FRP 1st Edition (and it was very loose in the latter, much like alignment in 4E).

Saying you're better than "X" because "X" uses "Y" and you don't doesn't do anything for me. Sell me your product based on what it does - I don't care what it doesn't do. Comparisons like that convey the impression that you don't have enough confidence in your product for it to stand on its own merits so you have to attack the competition (or you're bitter because you're jealous of their success). I realize that type of marketing is common, and not just in gaming, but I don't care for it regardless - whether it's politics, software, gaming, or whatever.