D&D (2024) Gold & Other Treasure (Can we get off the treadmill?)

[Clint_L]

i hope not. In all the games i run and play in treasure feeds our out of game activities. We get keeps and orders and buy off councilmen all the things you'd do in the realworld. the game you describe would simply make me quit DND forever.

I think less treasure isn't really an issue as 5e pretty much leaves that in DM hands. But more options for how to handle treasure would always be a good thing.

 

[tetrasodium]

i hope not. In all the games i run and play in treasure feeds our out of game activities. We get keeps and orders and buy off councilmen all the things you'd do in the realworld. the game you describe would simply make me quit DND forever.

That's your GM not the system, you should slight your GM's work and effort in building all of that for you by attribting it to the system. Some of those things once had rules in d&d, but 5e lacks rules for those too

 

[nevin]

Didn't really have rules for that stuff till 4e. What 1e had wasn't really detailed enough to be useful. I just like running games where players can be part of the world around them. just being combatants is like 1/4 of a game.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Experience for Treasure had some benefits…

We never said ‘meh’ to treasure…

It may have had problems but lack of desire for gold was not one of them.

 

[Shardstone]

A lot of players need guidance on how and when to spend gold. Not everyone has your humble genius.

Money is a plot device. That's all. Whether or not the players have too much or too little cash depends entirely on what they wish their D&D adventures to include and where they want to go.

If players want to spend gold on something to further their story and adventure... they will. If they as a group want to buy a keep and run it? Then they will collect all the money they can, make all the connections to the nobility they can, and actually play their story to acquire / build / renovate their keep and lands. And thus all the gold you gave them as DM will see use.

But if the players don't care about that... if their reason for playing D&D is to just go out and explore the lands, find tombs, or interact with interesting people for example... then money will serve no purpose. Money doesn't give them that which they want and why they play. So there's no reason to consider that "reward" and little reason to give it to them. To them... new places to go and new locations to explore is the reward. That's why they are playing the game.

The age of nickle-and-diming your way through equipment tables is over. It's been done hundreds of times by every player for decades. So few players at your table probably care about going through that same exact "mini-game" again and again and again of "going out to acquire treasure and then coming home to spend it." That novelty is gone. So don't try and recapture that genie and stuff it back into the bottle. Instead... merely see what the players enjoy most about D&D and angle the stories of the campaign such that they get more of what they want

 

[MGibster]

i hope not. In all the games i run and play in treasure feeds our out of game activities. We get keeps and orders and buy off councilmen all the things you'd do in the realworld. the game you describe would simply make me quit DND forever.

In the real world, once I accumulated a fortune and had my own keep, I'd probably stop adventuring. It's a risk job, why not just be fat an comfortable running the local area from my keep?

 

[Micah Sweet]

In the real world, once I accumulated a fortune and had my own keep, I'd probably stop adventuring. It's a risk job, why not just be fat an comfortable running the local area from my keep?

This is what we used to do back in the TSR days. I still think it's pretty cool. You can break out the magic sword and armor when an army of wights threatens to invade your province.

 

[bostonmyk]

In my campaigns, treasure ties into slowing progression a good deal which helps make narrative sense (Ha!) of long campaigns covering a character's lifespan, etc. It buys them time to do all the other things they want to do other than adventure etc. With some, it buys time to live the good life and do nothing at all. In all cases, time passes and you're not likely to have characters at 20th level at 20 years old which is very possible in 5e. Obviously, the type of campaign you are running and what the players' motivations are matters. Live and die fast is ok narratively too in some cases.

Mike

 

[Vael]

Has anyone tried an abstract wealth system in 5e? Like, rather than tracking gold, you have a wealth score, and can just assume to be able to buy certain items, expensive items require a wealth check and will reduce your score ... that kinda thing? Does it work?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Has anyone tried an abstract wealth system in 5e? Like, rather than tracking gold, you have a wealth score, and can just assume to be able to buy certain items, expensive items require a wealth check and will reduce your score ... that kinda thing? Does it work?

Blue Rose 5E uses a narrative wealth system that looks like it works well. I've informally moved my higher level campaign to such a system, since they can afford all of their day to day needs and aren't interested in buying castles, making counting copper pieces a waste of everyone's time.