D&D 5E (2024) Gold & Other Treasure (Can we get off the treadmill?)

[overgeeked]

I think the creator of the game and owner of the company did manage the finances of a far right populist and agitator.
That's why we don't hear about ACKS anymore.

Buying the game is funding nazis.

Exactly.

 

[overgeeked]

Tell me what about the game or the creator is bigoted, if this is something you insist on talking about.

The OSR already gets a bad rap. It would be amazing if vocal proponents of the OSR didn't actively live down to the stereotype.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The OSR already gets a bad rap. It would be amazing if vocal proponents of the OSR didn't actively live down to the stereotype.

I don't know how true any of this is. What I do know is that ACKS is a great game, and I'm not going to disregard art because the creator has been accused of wrongdoing. The Usual Suspects is still an excellent film, for example.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know how true any of this is. What I do know is that ACKS is a great game, and I'm not going to disregard art because the creator has been accused of wrongdoing. The Usual Suspects is still an excellent film, for example.

It's really too bad. But thanks for proving my point. Tschüss.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's really too bad. But thanks for proving my point. Tschüss.

I don't understand what you're saying here, but goodbye.

 

[Yaarel]

It's been oft lamented that treasure becomes essentially meaningless very quickly in 5th edition D&D. At least it's oft lamented by me. I ran my first 5th edition campaign in 2014 or 2015, and just accumulating treasure off of monsters and foes, even at lower levels, kept the party hip deep in more gold than they really knew what to do with. There were no magic shops, they weren't spending gold to advance in level, they were itinerant adventurers so real estate wasn't an option, and we were really more focused on old school style adventuring. Even when I ran Acquisitions Inc., a few years later, gold was essentially meaningless as it was trivially easy to make enough of it to keep the business afloat and to make improvements.

How important is treasure in a campaign really? Don't get me wrong, I might have characters who are highly motivated by treasure, but as a player, I don't really care about treasure. It doesn't matter to me if I find five gems with 50 gp each or a statuette made out of electrum. In Honor Among Thieves, the obsession with the acquisition of wealth wasn't the motivation for our heroes (I'm not going to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it yet), and it's not necessarily the motivation of many protagonist from various fantasy movies and novels.

Is the revision of 5th edition (I threw up a little calling it a revision) going to feature less treasure or provide DMs and players with more options on how to use treasure?

For me, the amount of wealth and treasure depends strictly on the flavor the adventure setting.

I prefer gaming mechanics have zero to do with it.


If the player characters are in a setting where they are all aristocrats, then any Fighter will have the full plate armor at level 1. If they are in setting where there is metal scarcity or Iron Age or earlier technology, the Fighter will never see it regardless of level.


Keep wealth separate from mechanical character leveling.


In this context too, spells with a "costly" component are a pain point.

 

[Mistwell]

He’s a GamerGater. He is also a lawyer who defended Milo Yiannopoulos. So you’re flat-out wrong.

Did you...did you just accuse a lawyer of going after other people's civil rights by defending a defendant?

You do realize that's the opposite, and a claim which would horrify the ACLU?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Because people who deny others civil or human rights aren't defended while being prosecuted or litigated for doing so.

 

[Mistwell]

Because people who deny others civil or human rights aren't defended while being prosecuted or litigated for doing so.

Lawyers defending defendants is a crucial part of civil rights. As an easy example, read up some day about Miranda from what everyone knows as Miranda Rights. Horrible guy. We have Miranda Rights because a lawyer defended that horrible guy,

 

[tetrasodium]

For me, the amount of wealth and treasure depends strictly on the flavor the adventure setting.

I prefer gaming mechanics have zero to do with it.


If the player characters are in a setting where they are all aristocrats, then any Fighter will have the full plate armor at level 1. If they are in setting where there is metal scarcity or Iron Age or earlier technology, the Fighter will never see it regardless of level.


Keep wealth separate from mechanical character leveling.


In this context too, spells with a "costly" component are a pain point.

It seems like you are saying that the solution to gold and treasure quickly becoming "essentially meaningless" is to award funbucks and pretend that it's meaningful? I don't think that does anything to improve the self inflicted design problem 5e built into every subsystem it could.