How do you distribute treasure?

[The Green Adam]

Huh?

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means.

Adventure ATM?

Dumping magic items and integrating a cost-based system that allows players to purchase improved equipment by quality?

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

Granted I don't do it the ol' 'treasure type'/1e way but neither is it so complex. I wing it like I do 75% of everything else in my games. It just needs to make sense. My players don't tend to loot the bodies but they do look for useful clues and check rooms for traps and secret passages. You never know where the villain might be hiding or where they escaped to.

AD

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Don't worry, Green Adam, (I feel like a side kick in a silver age comic strip) I do it much the same as you. I put stuff that seems likely for the adventure (not what is necessarily the best synergistic/level scaled stuff for the heroes) in there. AFter that it's up to the PCs to divide it amongst themselves.

oh and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: "adventure atm" means "adventure at the moment." Just a bit of short hand, not some sort of auto-teller-machine that hands out cash and magic stuff.

cheers.

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

My gaming group just yesterday talked about how the GM decides what magic items to give out as treasure. We built a general consensus that mixing player picks and GM picks is a good solution. Its a compromise between the old school GM controls the world and 4th edition preference for players to give lists of wanted-items to the GM.

 

[Woas]

Treasure is whatever gear the characters can pickup from the enemy that would seem natural to being there. If the characters smoke out a space-pirate base then it can be assumed that their ammo supplies are fully restocked, maybe some medical supplies could be pillaged an a few gadgets that the higher-ups owned could be procured.

Granted I don't run a D&D game (perhaps the space pirate mention above made that apparent) so I really don't have any other guidelines to go by other than "whatever items would realistically be there". But organic rule applies more so to how treasure gets doled out during the action packed parts of the game. Kind of like the equivalent of being IN the dungeon.

Outside of these scenarios, treasure is doled out in the form of bounties (they characters are bounty hunters), business contacts, political/economic/social perks (free parking for life) and just general knowledge. All things that still fall in line with organic 'treasure'.

Works out great cause I don't have to deal when the characters roll their eyes after getting "another Bag of Tricks? Uuggghhh... dump that trash at the next town for gold." and other 'worthless' treasure that isn't appreciated.

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

 

[Wormwood]

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

My players find the items on their wish lists (unless I feel like improving upon the wish list, let's say with an artifact or a cool new item they haven't seen yet).

If the warlock is due for her Rod of the Feywild, it'll be placed at an appropriate encounter within the 'evil temple'---and I have no problem reflavoring the item to reflect its origins.

I'd venture to say this system is the exact opposite of random or arbitrary.

 

[Asmor]

I place treasure the same way I've done for 20-some odd years. Most of the time where it would be appropriate, occasionally where it's not appropriate (to keep the players on their toes) and make sure the total amount of treasure doesn't make the players too fat and happy or too powerful for what I'm planning on throwing against them.

The section on treasure parceling is ok for a novice DM who has no idea how to go about placing treasure but to stick to the rules in that section is a recipe for boredom, IMO.

That seems somewhat dismissive towards those of us without 20 years of DMing 4th edition. Or are you implying that your experience and knowledge about a gaming economy is completely system-agnostic? Because in the latter case, I'd have to strongly disagree with you.

Also, I don't really see how following guidelines on how much treasure to give out is a recipe for boredom.

 

[Hawke]

I like 4E's treasure guidelines a lot.

We're leveling a lot faster in my current game than we should be... mainly because I have a very good idea of the story arc and where they want to be and we agreed we'd rather play through several levels of 4E in our limited time and tell a great story while doing so than spend several of our shorter sessions clearing out dungeons.

As a result, this time around I've basically taken the 4E system and collapsed it into "end-of-level" stuff minus the magic items where I drop them in reasonable places. In the few cases of a player simply wanting their weapon to go +1 to +2 I'll award either end of level or as a balancing factor prior to a boss battle.

IT's going okay... kind of taking some of the fun out of the loot, but we agreed this is a tradeoff we accept while trying to level a little quicker than normal.

 

[LostSoul]

I randomly roll a treasure parcel equal to the level of the encounter. If I get a magic item I randomly roll that, and if I don't like the magic item I roll again (or just pick).

 

[Asmor]

As a result, this time around I've basically taken the 4E system and collapsed it into "end-of-level" stuff

Dude... I just had a flash of a Japanese-style action game where at the end of each level you watch your score get tallied up for things like time, accuracy, etc, and then get ranked.

That could totally work, too. Imagine playing a competitive game-- maybe using Dungeon Delve-- and getting ranked after passing each dungeon. You're automatically leveled, but you get your equipment per your ranking...

 

[the Jester]

Well, I tend to have some encounters with no real treasure (eg a 6th level random encounter with 5 orcs- they might have 1d6 gp and sp each). Others have one parcel, and still others have more than one.

What I am tending towards lately is to roll parcels randomly based on the encounter level, not the party level, and base my treasure off of that. At first I was assigning parcels pretty much exactly as suggested in the DMG, but that got kind of boring.