Looting Bodies

[Menexenus]

Telling them how much was left behind was a mistake.

I agree. That was your only mistake.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

When do you give them the list? Have you ever waited to give them the list until after hours had gone by in-game? If you hadn't given them the list yet, and two rooms later one of the PCs was devoured by a monster with all possessions lost, how would you decide what part of that list the PC was carrying? Do your players automatically know they are missing something when you "innocuously" ask them questions about a procedure that is normally glossed over as "SOP", thereby ruining any feeling of surprise the players can enjoy by their characters being surprised?

Use of S.O.P. is not intended to relieve the players of all responsibility regarding these thing. It is intended to eliminate the annoyances of a "gotcha" mentality that creates meta-game tension between players and DM. It eliminates the TEDIUM of going over the same recitations over and over. Some aspects of looting such as who gets what still need to be taken care of by players. One of the agreements of following SOP (that can indeed backfire on groups that use it) is that it WILL be followed unless specified otherwise. Players who are afraid of traps on loot MUST make specific statements to that effect. Failure of the players to specify who is searching where and who will temporarily hold onto what loot means that they MAY NOT object when the DM makes those determinations randomly.

I've had plenty of players establish that their characters will - as SOP - NOT participate in searching and looting because they do fear traps. I've had plenty of players establish that as SOP their characters will not be carrying unidentified loot not only because they don't want their characters burdened with cursed items but because their characters just can't carry much weight.

There are many reasons they might forget to rifle through a bunch of bloody corpses, pick one.

There are just as many reasons they might remember to do just that LONG before the players at the table do (especially since time at the table is highly malleable - in the course of mere moments of real time, hours, days and even weeks can pass.)

The point is it's absolutely not wrong for the OP to not retcon the looting that the players forgot to perform just because it's not what you would do.

And the counter-point is that it is not absolutely wrong for the OP to have simply reminded the players that they seemed to have forgotten to loot, and ask if it was intentional.

The DM wasn't deliberately withholding the loot from the characters. In their game (and many other people's as well) looting is not assumed to be routine, so it needs to be played out.

Well the DM wasn't necessarily being unnecessarily oppositional, but it doesn't seem as if there's any room being left for judgement there either. If the players state that they loot then they get loot, but if the players forget there is no recourse to other reasoning such as the characters being more alert than the players to performing that simple, repetitive task.

 

[Thurbane]

If the players state that they loot then they get loot, but if the players forget there is no recourse to other reasoning such as the characters being more alert than the players to performing that simple, repetitive task.

Hence the extremely simple expedient of leaving standing instructions with the DM, such as "Unless we state otherwise or are in a time limited situation, we loot the bodies of all of our opponents".

Our party do that - we also do the same thing with watch order, marching order etc etc. It really isn't that big a deal...

 

[Sigg]

Use of S.O.P. is not intended to relieve the players of all responsibility regarding these thing. It is intended to eliminate the annoyances of a "gotcha" mentality that creates meta-game tension between players and DM. It eliminates the TEDIUM of going over the same recitations over and over. Some aspects of looting such as who gets what still need to be taken care of by players. One of the agreements of following SOP (that can indeed backfire on groups that use it) is that it WILL be followed unless specified otherwise. Players who are afraid of traps on loot MUST make specific statements to that effect. Failure of the players to specify who is searching where and who will temporarily hold onto what loot means that they MAY NOT object when the DM makes those determinations randomly.

I've had plenty of players establish that their characters will - as SOP - NOT participate in searching and looting because they do fear traps. I've had plenty of players establish that as SOP their characters will not be carrying unidentified loot not only because they don't want their characters burdened with cursed items but because their characters just can't carry much weight.

I have no problem with having a SOP for how loot is searched for and distributed, just when. Once the players state they will loot, a SOP can then be put in effect no problem, because it gives me the info I need, but I'm not going to just assume they are looting.

There are just as many reasons they might remember to do just that LONG before the players at the table do (especially since time at the table is highly malleable - in the course of mere moments of real time, hours, days and even weeks can pass.)

I never said they couldn't remember, just that it's possible for characters to forget. If they group made a habit of forgetting to loot I might remind them, but the OP didn't make it sound like this was a chronic problem, but in fact stated that their usual SOP was to say they are looting.

And the counter-point is that it is not absolutely wrong for the OP to have simply reminded the players that they seemed to have forgotten to loot, and ask if it was intentional.
Well the DM wasn't necessarily being unnecessarily oppositional, but it doesn't seem as if there's any room being left for judgement there either. If the players state that they loot then they get loot, but if the players forget there is no recourse to other reasoning such as the characters being more alert than the players to performing that simple, repetitive task.

I also never said it would have been wrong for the OP to gently remind them, or make an int roll to see if someone thought of it. I simply assert that he was not "screwing" the players, or being a RBDM just because he didn't (although then telling them the amount they missed straddles that line ). Also, as has already been described in this thread, I'd hardly call looting a simple, repetitive task.

 

[hopeless]

Reg: Looting (sort of)

Going a little off topic but I played in a campaign where I ahd a bit of trouble with the player who ran the Paladin (I won't go into detail about THAT).
However in the first game after we caught the villain, a pair of half orc barbarians he had hired to serve as his squires stripped searched the villain and one found a wand he was carrying.
The party had a cleric, a druid and my halfling sorceror.
Since my character was inside the villains lair at the time I didn't cast detect magic, however that didn't stop the others who didn't think of it.
Just after the end of the second adventure when we went to retrieve the barbarians who stayed outside as they couldn't enter with their great axes I found out about the wand and figured out it was a wand of animate dead.
The Paladin's player even though his character wasn't present when I figured this out and explained to the barbarian immediately jumped in and with the dm's help liberated the wand out of the barbarian's hands even though he wanted to sell it (something the dm hadn't counted on since he had forgotten about the wand).
I didn't mention it back when he got the wand because I roleplayed it properly and had mentioned my suspicions when the party first moved out after the villain since his army of skeletons had collapsed at dawn.
This might be a little off tangent but I felt this thread deserved to see the opposite end of this topic, what happens when rather than not looting but when players use information they don't have and the dm isn't prepared to run the game properly.
As a final note that second adventure which was underneath greyhawk resulted in recovering a lot of recovered monies, which the paladin's player then threatened to pass onto the city guard, we protested since not all of it could be returned to their prior owners, but that just highlights that player's attitude.

 

[hopeless]

Reg Previous message

I think my reply was a little far out of the discussion this threads' all about.
Apologies on that I was trying to explain the reverse problem of looting in that I would have been better talking about an item written on a character sheet of the player who found an item and then discovers that because the dm ignored that players' remarks on keeping it secret between him and two other players that he then went and told the other player who hadn't been paying attention and thus it was on two character sheets even though the dm's own rules for such things had been followed what i later understand as favourtism seemed quite idiotic.
When I ran a game I ended up asking them after they insisted they had picked up everything who was carrying what. It took a few minutes before they finally decided who was carrying what, in retrospect I should have harried them, I guess hindsight is something I need to understand too.