Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, B/ED&D, and D&D3 - updated 11-17-08 (Q1)

[Storm Raven]

I remember as well that there was a leveling comparison where the number of orcs a fighter had to slay to get from 1st to 2nd level was compared between 2e and 3e, and the 3e fighter was at a real advantage. More than a factor of 10.

Of course an 1e AD&D fighter "suffers" when the comparison is "how many monsters does he have to kill to advance". His experience gain was something on the order of 80% biased in favor of experience gained from treasure.

Let's compare how much experience the 3e and 1e fighters gain from treasure. On no! The 1e fighter has an infinite advantage over the 3e fighter. Dude! The 3e fighter is simply not going to be able to compete!

You may note that Quas isn't comparing 2e to anything.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Which means you missed the main thrust of the argument which is this: the bulk of the treasure isn't hidden at all.

Please note, in my argument above, "if there is a 100% chance of finding X if you look in the right square". The ground area of a module is relevant, as is how much of that ground area the PCs need to search to succeed. For example, in Keep on the Borderlands, is it assumed that the PCs will go to each wilderness area? Clean out each cavern? If other things are happening in the campaign world -- if there are other hooks to draw them away -- this is unlikely to happen. I've never actually run a game in which the PCs have cleaned out the caves.

"Sitting on the floor" is still hidden if you never enter the room it is sitting in.

The modules with the aspis is A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity. The campaign version of the module is anything but linear. if you want a linear adventure in that series, you need to look at A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. But neither is truly relevant here, since they weren't part of the survey.

I was thinking about the layout of the dungeon, and how you need to progress through rooms in order to accomplish a goal. I.e., how linear is the map? How likely is it that you will actually reach all of the encounter areas before doing something else?

I note, btw, that all of those old tournament modules were originally timed, and that the treasure was not only a means of scoring, but also a means of preventing the players from finishing in the time allotted if they forgot what their goals were.

Except for things like frogs, dinosaurs, giant lizards, and other creatures that swallow their food whole.

If you, as a player, were reading Gary's modules, you would start to look there, sure. But as a novice player, how likely were you to recover these treasures if the DM didn't twig you to it? Honestly? IME, very few "gut" treasures are ever recovered.

Multiple states, two countries, hundreds of players, same conclusion.

The lizard's bounty is explicitly listed as being "easily found" if one takes the appropriate steps, but this is obviously because a shield is much larger than a gem. You still have to twig to opening 'em up.

An hour? How big do you think that pile of bedding is? I am married and have two kids. You could pile every bit of clothing, bedclothes, and towels the four of us own into a single pile and it wouldn't take an hour to look through.

Cool. Take those clothes. Let a hobo sleep on them for a year or so. Don't launder them. Soil them. Tear them up. Now go back and tell me how long it will take someone who has never seen these particular items before to determine if there's anything worth keeping in the pile. One hour is a conservative estimate.

I guess there is simply no defense against a DM being a dick.

Read the example of play in the 1e DMG.

In the end, your argument simply doesn't hold up because it assumes that the value of the treasure that is "hidden" is huge.

You (intentionally?) misunderstand what is meant by "hidden" within this context.

Besides, if you don't agree with me, that's no skin off my nose. I'm not trying to convince you; I'm merely trying to prevent you from mischaracterizing my argument.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

On no! The 1e fighter has an infinite advantage over the 3e fighter. Dude!

If it is your intent to carry on civil discourse, by all means do so.

If you are already starting the hysterics, please understand why I am not accompanying you on this journey again.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

Ah, Tamoachan, temptation is thy deadly name!

Excellent with the tournament-style setup, too, in my opinion. Unfortunately, my current group (perhaps really just one particular player) would balk at anything so far from their quasi-Tolkien concept of "standard" D&D. The "fun house" Inverness or White Plume seems more likely to get a go someday.

 

[Fifth Element]

If it is your intent to carry on civil discourse, by all means do so.

If you are already starting the hysterics, please understand why I am not accompanying you on this journey again.

Sometimes certain message board rhetorical techniques (hysterics, pedantry) are called for, I think you'll agree.

 

[fanboy2000]

I hope you read the bit from Quasqueton that you quoted, where he makes the claims that neither magic treasure nor speed of advancement have changed.

Oh, I read it. But those are his conclusions he came to in post 11, after he had compiled data based on the conditions he gave in post one. To me, the point of the thread is to get the data. Anyone can come to their own conclusions or compile different data using different conditions. The existence of the data is more important than any conclusions.

There are three things I'm going to have to do once I get done with the RCFG Player's Guide and have a bit more time.

(1) Go through the pre-3e Dragons where the first 3e hints are coming up. If memory serves, WotC's market research showed that people like leveling, but often didn't reach high levels because older edition leveling was too slow. It was actually an explicit design goal to speed up rate of leveling, again, if memory serves.

I didn't read pre-3e Dragon. On similar lines though, Monte Cook said that leveling was one of the reasons D&D continues to be successful. It's on his blog, somewhere.

(2) Perform what I would consider a thorough analysis of one or two of the same modules chosen by Q, showing explicitly what would be required in order to gain the benefits he lists.

This I look forward to. But I have to wonder why you would bother given the following:

Frankly, due to rules, I'd rather run RCFG than either of those games.

Since you're writing your own RPG, and prefer it over AD&D1 and 3d, why does it matter what the rate of advancement is in AD&D1 vs. 3e D&D? It sounds to me like you've solved the problem.

I still haven't run Keep on the Shadowfell using RCFG, although I have now run some of the classic Gygax modules.

But.....1e would run much more quickly, especially combat. This means a higher encounter rate, and therefore more willingness on the players' part to spend time dealing with what might seem like minutia. I.e., exploring the setting. It would be easier to make any 1e combat seem relevant enough for the time spent, because so little time would be spent on that encounter.

OTOH, characters in the 1e world would take more in-game time to deal with the same encounters, because their damage would be more lasting, and because they would need to take more care with in-game resources on a broader level (as opposed to merely within the combat sub-game).

1e is also more firmly rooted in the tropes of S&S, which makes for a game more suited to my tastes.

I am sure I could hodgepodge 4e into something I'd want to run, but I'd get a lot more bang for my buck with 1e. And RCFG would give me best value.

Thank you for your answer.

 

[Jhaelen]

Umm, why was this thread resurrected?

Anyway, in my totally unscientific opinion based on purely anecdotal evidence, official 1e adventures contained loads of treasure, probably more, but certainly at least as much as 3e adventures. It's particularly noteworthy that the concept of balancing treasure based on party levels did not seem to be one of the design goals back then.

2e adventures weren't much different in this.

When I DMed 1e/2e I mostly used homebrew adventures or modified official adventure modules to restrict treasure to what I considered more reasonable.

 

[Ariosto]

D1: Quasqueton's group starts at an average level of 10.5 -- close enough to that of the 9 sample characters in the D1-2 (1981) edition, which is 10 exactly.

A party with only 6 members, though, rather than 7 to 9, should (in the designer's own view) have a hard time succeeding in the depths of the earth, regardless of level, making some "elven aid" needful. That is all the more likely if the emphasis is on what profits 3E characters most, and AD&D ones least: combat.

In terms of the different "power curves" in the different games, 15th level is probably about right for 3E.

 

[Ariosto]

Average Values of Gems and Jewelry:
Gems: 287.5 g.p.
Jewelry: 2910 g.p.

... except that I don't recall how many iterations of potential increases I considered. I think, though, that going further than however far that was is unlikely to make much difference.

 

[Storm Raven]

Please note, in my argument above, "if there is a 100% chance of finding X if you look in the right square". The ground area of a module is relevant, as is how much of that ground area the PCs need to search to succeed. For example, in Keep on the Borderlands, is it assumed that the PCs will go to each wilderness area? Clean out each cavern? If other things are happening in the campaign world -- if there are other hooks to draw them away -- this is unlikely to happen. I've never actually run a game in which the PCs have cleaned out the caves.

Which is as likely to apply to a 3e adventure as to a 1e adventure. In other words, your objection is a wash. And thus irrelevant to the comparison.

I was thinking about the layout of the dungeon, and how you need to progress through rooms in order to accomplish a goal. I.e., how linear is the map? How likely is it that you will actually reach all of the encounter areas before doing something else?

Slave Pits of the Undercity as a non-tournament module is incredibly nonlinear. There are four different ways to enter the complex, there are multiple paths to take within the complex. The tournament version is highly linear, but the campaign version is decidedly not.

I note, btw, that all of those old tournament modules were originally timed, and that the treasure was not only a means of scoring, but also a means of preventing the players from finishing in the time allotted if they forgot what their goals were.

Which is entirely irrelevant to the discussion here, as we are not talking about tournament play. Saying "there's time pressure in a tournament situation" has no bearing on how the adventure plays in a campaign environment. In the tournament series, the PCs are prohibited from leveling up too. Who cares about that rule in a campaign game?

If you, as a player, were reading Gary's modules, you would start to look there, sure. But as a novice player, how likely were you to recover these treasures if the DM didn't twig you to it? Honestly? IME, very few "gut" treasures are ever recovered.

Or someone with a basic knowledge of how lizards, birds, and other similar animals eat.

Cool. Take those clothes. Let a hobo sleep on them for a year or so. Don't launder them. Soil them. Tear them up. Now go back and tell me how long it will take someone who has never seen these particular items before to determine if there's anything worth keeping in the pile. One hour is a conservative estimate.

Not even close. Torn items can be set aside quickly for example. Assuming that the pile is as large as the entire volume of clothing in my house is also ridiculous. The pile is probably not much longer or wider than the orge, so it is maybe nine feet long and four feet wide. Let's be generous and say it is a foot deep. That's not that much.

And it is entirely irrelevant. The volume of treasure that is "hidden" in 1e modules is trivial, and T1 clearly demonstrates this.