Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jacob Lewis" data-source="post: 9765472" data-attributes="member: 6667921">I think there’s a mix-up here about what “treasure” really means in the D&D loop. It was never just about gold. The real rewards were always the things that made characters stronger—levels, magic items, and other sources of power that let them keep pace with the campaign’s escalating challenges.Gold itself isn’t the goal; it’s the pacing mechanism. It ensures characters have just enough resources to stay on the curve—buying equipment, services, or upgrades where needed—until the next tier of rewards comes from play itself. The real motivation in these games has always been growth and power, with magic items woven into that equation to varying degrees depending on edition.So when gold piles up with nothing to spend it on, it isn’t that the “treasure loop” is broken—it’s that the currency has lost its function as a pacing tool. The actual reward loop, based on growth and escalation, is still very much intact.And this circles back to why gold tends to lose impact over time. If it only functions as a pacing tool for gear and upgrades, then once those needs are met the piles of coin don’t carry much weight. Players stop caring about the day-to-day because the loop is designed around high adventure, not about whether the characters can afford their next meal or pay the rent.If you do want gold to retain value, you have to shift the frame of play. That means treating money as more than just a step toward the next fight—making it matter for lifestyle, debts, upkeep, or influence. But that pushes the game toward a grittier, street-level tone, which doesn’t always mesh with the heroic combat and high fantasy assumptions baked into most editions of D&D.So the real choice is whether you want gold to serve as a scoreboard in the background, or as a meaningful constraint on the characters’ lives. Both can work—but they point the campaign in very different directions.</blockquote>

Verification