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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9660446" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I used to go all-in describing gems and art objects, taking my inspiration from the tables in 2e's Forgotten Realms Adventures.  Love that book.  Anyways, I started to notice over the years that it was just taking way too much time for me to describe the treasure, and for the players to write it down.And often, they just wrote down shorthand "gems worth x gold" anyways.  Only if certain gem types matter is it worth noting, but D&D never really ran with that outside of the occasional need for black onyx or diamonds.  I suppose there's use for houserules, but I'm not a fan of balancing non-ritual magic with gp costs.And I ran into the same problem with art objects- I used to hide important clues and bits of lore in the description of objects ("you find a detailed painting of five heroes standing on a cliff, pointing to a lighthouse, a certain constellation visible in the night sky"), but unless I put equal description into each bit of treasure, the players would instantly hone in on the important stuff (and if I did do that, they'd start chasing red herrings, convinced everything was important).Plus the inevitable "how do I sell this" minigame that could occasionally be fun, but usually just sucked all the (limited) game time we had for more interesting things.I'm starting to wonder if I should just convert everything into monetary value for future games.  It makes the game less immersive and more bland, but in the end, it's just eliminating pointless busy work for myself and my players.</blockquote>

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