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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 2966075" data-attributes="member: 16574">The answer you seek is staring you in the face in the passage you quote from OD&D vol. I: the character in the example gets 10x as much XP from the treasure as he does from defeating the monster! Obviously the quickest road to success in the game is to gather as much treasure as possible, and defeating monsters is a means to that end, rather than an end in itself. A couple more key quotes from OD&D (vol. III):(showing that treasure, and access to it, is the key consideration for referees designing dungeon levels)And perhaps most telling of all is the Example of Play on pp. 12-14, which I won't quote in full because it's quite long, but suffice to say that while there is combat in the example it is glossed over quickly ["(here a check for surprise is made, melee conducted, and so on)"] and the overwhelming bulk of the example is devoted to the characters' efforts to recover as much treasure as possible (searching for secret compartments in treasure chests, scrounging through a pile of rags looking for elven boots, etc.). In particular, note how the example ends (as the party flees an encounter with a wandering monster):He didn't saying onward to more and bigger combat (after all, if combat was what they were after, they could stay and fight whatever it is right outside the door). Recovery of treasure was unquestionably the primary goal and source of experience in early D&D (the 1981 (Moldvay-edit) Basic Set explicitly states (p. B45) that 3/4 or more of character experience is likely to come from treasure rather than combat), and combat is an obstacle thrown up in the way of that goal by the referee.And this is consistent with the source literature, especially those stories that correspond to "low or mid-level" D&D adventures (i.e. early in the heroes' careers). To name just a few off the top of my head, "Tower of the Elephant" (Howard/Conan), "Two Sought Adventure" (Leiber/Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), "While the Gods Laugh" (Moorcock/Elric), The Face in the Abyss (A. Merritt), "The Helix from Beyond" (Fox/Kothar) and many more all center around (or at least start out centering around) the heroes' attempts to recover fabulous treasures. Of course the treasures are maguffins and the complications that arise in the attempts are what the stories are actually about, and the heroes more often than not don't actually get the treasure they were seeking, but that's the difference between a game and a story -- what works to make one entertaining isn't necessarily what works for the other. Also note that later stories in these various cycles, as the heroes grew in prominence and gained more responsibilities the stories tended to be less about loot-seeking and more about righting wrongs and responding to threats and other "character-oriented" goals, and this is also consistent with D&D -- once the characters hit name level and "settle down" in their castles and towers, the draw of treasure-seeking becomes less of a motivator, and such high-level adventures are likely to have other sorts of motivations (philanthropic, protective, "because that's what heroes are supposed to do," etc.). But that's later, after a year or two of play during which time the player has developed the personality of the character through actual play, so that such "plot hooks" can develop organically and not seem forced (the infamous "r" word). But until that point, for the first 8 or 9 levels of play, seeking loot is the primary motivation, and the game rules reinforce this.</blockquote>

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