D&D 5E Do We Really Need a Lot of Gold? (D&D 5th Edition)

[Fanaelialae]

If you have no other use for the money, and you are "investing' it, that means you are basically using money as a player coupon for "give me Plot X that I want to engage with". Why not just give the players those anyway, without connecting it to currency?

We could look to designs like Gloomhaven uses - it has cash the party can use for buying stuff it needs, but it also has Prosperity for the area that player actions impact.

IME, it just doesn't work as well. Give the PCs an option to help build the library and they'll typically balk on the grounds that they have more pressing matters to attend to.

Give them the option to donate an absurd sum to build the same library, and many players are happy to throw gold at the problem with no more return on that investment than a case of the "warm and fuzzies".

In fact, I've noticed the same tendencies from myself, when I'm a player.

As for why not give it away for free? It just doesn't have the same impact. There's a more visceral sense of investment if the player donates the money to the orphanage, rather than if the townsfolk are simply thankful to the PCs because they chased the bugbears away and allowed the villagers to rebuild the orphanage (but without a monetary investment from the players). If you give it away for free it loses most of its value.

 

[hopeless]

So it doesn't get named after them?
There's usually a reason behind their act of charity after all!

 

[Thunder Brother]

One of the troubles with Kingmaker is that once you have your gold and you want to build your kingdom... you start playing a board game. (It's not, but it feels very similar to the games I've spent so much time with over the past 20 years). It's a little sim-city, which is engaging for a couple of sessions and then turns into a bore.

The hexcrawl adventuring is fun. The initial building of the city is fun. But after that, you begin to notice how poor a simulation it is, and also how poor a game it is (because there's a lot of maths and not many interesting decisions).

The less said about Pathfinder's attempt at a mass combat system, the better. (Most of Paizo's subsystems introduced in APs were really bad - also see the Jade Regent caravan rules!)

Running good rulership RPGs is hard. It's not impossible, but my feeling is that it needs a ton of preparation - and it helps if the DM is versed in history.

I hope to keep things relatively modest, more frontier town than kingdom-building.

I think this one of the reason I've been waffling on running this type of sandbox campaign; I'm not certain whether to make the settlement building side of things simulationist or narrativist: "You can invest X amount of gold and Y amount of material to build a blacksmith" or "you helped the dwarves establish a new outpost in the nearby hills, so one decided to do set up shop in your settlement as a thank you". Besides cannibalizing a system from another game, like Pathfinder, I don't really have the desire to come up with something myself.

With a narrativist approach we're back to the issue of needing gold in the first place. Like another poster mentioned, a wealth rating or dice seems just as valid as actually tracking gold.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So it doesn't get named after them?
There's usually a reason behind their act of charity after all!

It might, but I consider that falling under "warm and fuzzies". As would the townsfolk throwing them a party or whatnot. It has no immediate benefits, except perhaps in an RP sense. It primarily just makes the player feel good for having done it (even if the good feels are more from the townsfolks' gratitude and less from having done a good deed).

 

[hopeless]

Now I'm imagining a game where a party member or a favourite npc dies and a PC has a bench or gazebo built to commemorate that character so it either has their name engraved on it or is named after them as a way of honoring their memory...

 

[MGibster]

Your response basically boiled down to, "All we want to do is adventure. Social and exploration pillars are just ways to get us to more adventure." What I'm saying is that you can have a lot of fun with those other pillars if you engage in good storytelling techniques and engage your players.

It's a long thread, but it includes a post where I made it explicitly clear that I view the social and exploration pillars as part of the adventure not a way to get to the adventure. As an example, in the original I-6 Ravenloft module from 1983, exploring the city of Barovia and speaking with the inhabitants, including Ireena and Ismark Koylana, are part of the adventure. Heck, if you aren't talking to Strahd at various points during the module you're really missing out.

My basic problem with the overabundance of gold in D&D is that it doesn't add anything to the core experience which is adventuring. And remember, exploration and social pillars are part of the adventure not separate from it. D&D doesn't really support spending a whole bunch of gold on strong holds, infrastructure, or bribes (at least not to the point where it's a significant drain on funds).

And this has been a part of D&D since before AD&D existed. Hirelings and followers were a huge part of the original editions of the game, with the assumption that the heroes, around 10th level, would become the leaders of large groups.

Sure, they were. But who uses hirelings these days?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Now I'm imagining a game where a party member or a favourite npc dies and a PC has a bench or gazebo built to commemorate that character so it either has their name engraved on it or is named after them as a way of honoring their memory...

There was actually a really great campaign I played in where another player's character was a stonecutter who built a wall engraved with the names of the dead, to honor all our comrades who had fallen. It was a long and fairly deadly 3.x campaign, so the list of names was fairly lengthy. I think we spent the better part of a session building that memorial and commemorating the characters, iirc.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But if some folks are asking for what to do with all the gold, this thread is full of great suggestions that people are dismissing because "it's too much work."

Isn't the easiest solution just "stop giving them so much gold?"

In one of the campaigns I'm running during the pandemic, the player characters spent several adventures tracking down a pirate treasure, and when they finally got it, they scooped off the magic items and a few gems, and left the chest overflowing with coins. They're only fourth level and these are their first characters, but even they knew that coinage doesn't really matter in 5E.

If they were staying in one place full time, they might be interested in building themselves a headquarters or buying a tavern, but this is a nautical campaign and have already had one ship sunk out from beneath them (don't ever kill a sea hag's lover, folks) and are more likely to ride on other folks' ships than worry about buying their own.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But I may be going too far with my dismissal of AD&D's use of followers - I just don't know how much they affected the campaigns of that time!

No, you have the right of it. They most existed to get killed by traps or do a round or two in battle before an AOE effect killed them.

One of my campaigns has four sidekicks (using the Essentials rules; I haven't looked at how I'd need to upgrade them to match the Tasha's rules) and they are a substantial amount of work to include each round in combat even at level 2.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sure, they were. But who uses hirelings these days?

I hope more people. The sidekicks system is pretty great.