Does getting treasure equal fun?
- Thread starter Crothian
- Start date
In D&D, as it exists, it's at "Mostly" for me. It's not the only source of fun, but it's hard to have fun without it.
Caveats: If you're playing d20 Modern or Grim Tales, you're not playing D&D. I'm talking about core-rules, by-the-book D&D.
Treasure is the main way I get more powerful, for almost all character classes. Treasure is what lets me know I'm gonna be able to take down the bad guy, because now I've got the sword that can take that big bad guy. Treasure expands the possibilities for what I can do, opening up gameplay options that my character class doesn't have on its own -- whether that means doing X at all or doing X more times per day.
I do roleplay, and I do have a character concept, and those are both very important to me -- but treasure is what affects my character sheet by modifying my attacks, my damage, my skills, and, well, everything else. Crunch is fun, and the crunch of "Hey, cool, this sword increases my AC!" is a nice way to pass the time between levels.
Treasure, in fact, enables roleplaying in some ways. Watching the looks on the faces of everyone else at the table when I suggested that the big pile of loot we'd just found should be given to the victims of the orcs' families was fantastic. If it'd just been some dead orcs and their cooking fire, an entire discussion about what we should take, what we should donate, and what we should try to find the rightful owners for would never have happened. (Note: I was playing a rogue at the time, and this suggestion made jaws drop. A lot of people still confuse rogue with thief.)
Treasure isn't the end-all and be-all. But frankly, if I'm playing in a game with rules and numbers, I need something that expands my own rules and increases my own numbers in order to compete with the bad guys. It's fun from the hoarder's perspective, it's fun from the powergamer's perspective, it's fun from the exploration guy's perspective ("I've never seen a rod that does ____ before. I wonder if I can make it useful?"), and, if done right, it's fun from the roleplayer's perspective as well.
D&D without treasure approaches the point of not being D&D at all. That's not necessarily bad -- I'm running Grim Tales, not D&D, at the moment, because I didn't want to track treasure as rigorously -- but because the poll question specifically said D&D, I think you've got to give treasure its due.
Caveats: If you're playing d20 Modern or Grim Tales, you're not playing D&D. I'm talking about core-rules, by-the-book D&D.
Treasure is the main way I get more powerful, for almost all character classes. Treasure is what lets me know I'm gonna be able to take down the bad guy, because now I've got the sword that can take that big bad guy. Treasure expands the possibilities for what I can do, opening up gameplay options that my character class doesn't have on its own -- whether that means doing X at all or doing X more times per day.
I do roleplay, and I do have a character concept, and those are both very important to me -- but treasure is what affects my character sheet by modifying my attacks, my damage, my skills, and, well, everything else. Crunch is fun, and the crunch of "Hey, cool, this sword increases my AC!" is a nice way to pass the time between levels.
Treasure, in fact, enables roleplaying in some ways. Watching the looks on the faces of everyone else at the table when I suggested that the big pile of loot we'd just found should be given to the victims of the orcs' families was fantastic. If it'd just been some dead orcs and their cooking fire, an entire discussion about what we should take, what we should donate, and what we should try to find the rightful owners for would never have happened. (Note: I was playing a rogue at the time, and this suggestion made jaws drop. A lot of people still confuse rogue with thief.)
Treasure isn't the end-all and be-all. But frankly, if I'm playing in a game with rules and numbers, I need something that expands my own rules and increases my own numbers in order to compete with the bad guys. It's fun from the hoarder's perspective, it's fun from the powergamer's perspective, it's fun from the exploration guy's perspective ("I've never seen a rod that does ____ before. I wonder if I can make it useful?"), and, if done right, it's fun from the roleplayer's perspective as well.
D&D without treasure approaches the point of not being D&D at all. That's not necessarily bad -- I'm running Grim Tales, not D&D, at the moment, because I didn't want to track treasure as rigorously -- but because the poll question specifically said D&D, I think you've got to give treasure its due.
Olaf the Stout
Legend
I voted mostly. I can go without it for a while, and I have played in more historically-based roleplaying games where we didn't get a lot in the way of treasure. However, as a player, I always loved finding a magic item or two and trying to figure out what it did. As a DM I like seeing my players do the same.
Olaf the Stout
Olaf the Stout
EyeontheMountain
First Post
Consideringthat in D&D treasure mostly means an increase in effectiveness (new stuff or options) or more possible actions, yes, I like to get treasure. I don't need it to ahve fun, but it is one of the things that makes the game more fun for me.
el-remmen said:I take the opposite point of view, it's all D&D - and the rules you are using are not what determines that unless you are using a wholly other rule-set - and sometimes not even then.
Then this is mostly a matter of semantics. Because, really, I don't need loot in a d20 Modern game, except occasionally more clips for whatever gun I'm using.
That's because in d20 Modern, my ability to take down the big bad guy isn't (or shouldn't be) dependent upon whether I've got a +4 kevlar shirt of fire resistance. Heck, in Mutants & Masterminds, I don't even need those ammo clips. In Grim Tales, it can go either way, depending on what kind of game you're running.
But if you're trying to run low-treasure D&D, you've got to change a whole bunch of spells, class abilities, and in some cases even rules in order to rebalance things -- or you have to mess around with the CRs of many, but not all, monsters.
Well, "got to" is strong -- you don't "got to". But if you don't, you are almost definitely going to mess up the class and power balance in a lot of ways.
I'm not saying that you're doing that, Nemm. But a dude who runs a no-magic-item, little-money game with all the other rules unchanged should not be surprised when nobody wants to play a straight fighter.
In my mind, and again, semantics, if you don't change a lot of stuff to account for low treasure, you're a bad DM. If you do, you've changed the feel of the game enough that you're not playing D&D -- which does not mean that the game isn't fun. It just means that, in the mind of the Tacky, it's different enough that it ought to be called something else.
FireLance
Legend
One of the ways in which my group deviates from traditional D&D is that the DM doesn't give out treasure. Instead, every time the PCs level up, they can change and upgrade their equipment up to the standard wealth level of a character of their new level.
(Incidentally, this convention allows us to make sunder, mordenkainen's disjunction and other equipment-destroying abilities into "temporary", change-of-pace effects without throwing the entire campaign off track.
)
I guess that for us, finding treasure is not so important as actually using neat magic items.
(Incidentally, this convention allows us to make sunder, mordenkainen's disjunction and other equipment-destroying abilities into "temporary", change-of-pace effects without throwing the entire campaign off track.
)I guess that for us, finding treasure is not so important as actually using neat magic items.
Gold Roger
First Post
Treasure is icing on the cake.
I like cake, but I don't require icing.
I like cake, but I don't require icing.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Finding treasure is fun.
Dividing treasure somewhat evenly, with the corollary arguments and rampant greed, isn't fun.
Not dividing treasure evenly, with characters keeping what they can use, isn't fair.
So, my vote was for "somewhat".
And I prefer when the coinage of defeated foes doesn't conveniently come in amounts that end with a 0...it's just not realistic. Same for them only having gold coins when there are so many other types of coin out there...
Lanefan
Dividing treasure somewhat evenly, with the corollary arguments and rampant greed, isn't fun.
Not dividing treasure evenly, with characters keeping what they can use, isn't fair.
So, my vote was for "somewhat".
And I prefer when the coinage of defeated foes doesn't conveniently come in amounts that end with a 0...it's just not realistic. Same for them only having gold coins when there are so many other types of coin out there...
Lanefan
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
takyris said:
Yep.
Of course it is semantics. We're talking about what something is called. . .
I was just trying to say that I have seen D&D played in all kinds of ways with all kinds of rules, low magic, high magic, moderate magic, monty haul, grim n' gritty, all-psionic, stone-age, etc. . .
And it was all recognizable as D&D to me.
Sorry for the derail.
