Monster & Treasure distribution in older editions

[Raven Crowking]

Thanks. Your elucidation of the setup is far clearer than my own.

So, still waiting for Example One.


RC

 

[Aurumvorax]

Holy crap, this whole guarded/hidden/trapped conversation is absolutely ridiculous. If you want to be super literal then no, there's no such thing as an unguarded/unhidden/untrapped treasure because there'll always be some roadblock to getting it. Considering every module involves aspects of danger, even walking down the road, you could argue that a gold piece lying in the middle of the street was guarded by the previous encounter (if the PCs died fighting a dragon 5 days ago they wouldn't have found this shiny goldpiece, now would they?), hidden because it isn't directly obvious, or trapped because trying to pick it up runs the ever-so-small risk of being hit by a runaway donkey cart.


The pizza I keep in the fridge is therefor hidden from myself.

I think we can agree to disagree, here. Whether or not there are examples of treasure sitting out in the open, all modules have a presence of danger. There are no free treasures because you will always have gone through some kind of trial or tribulation to reach it. You kill a band of hobgoblins and find a map that leads to their lair; inside you find a sack of gold lying in the middle of the floor. That gold was "guarded" but you just happened to kill the guards 10 miles away from their lair.

As it applies to AD&D, intelligent monsters carry portable goods and spend wealth. Just because the DM rolls 5,000gp doesn't mean you'll find it in their lair. A tribe of goblins could've used the money to please a local dragon or spent it on bugbear mercenaries meaning the PCs may only find 1,000gp in the lair. Animals and plants likewise digest or discard treasure from their lairs as they clean up. If the DM rolls for a vorpal sword inside a bear's cave but decides he doesn't want the party to have it, lightning won't strike him down if he decides the bear dragged it to the river when he was cleaning his cave out.

 

[Wycen]

I believe a fun and integral part of earlier editions was random encounters and treasure. Hell, some of the best gaming was the seat of the pants stuff which random treasure and monsters dove tailed with.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Holy crap, this whole guarded/hidden/trapped conversation is absolutely ridiculous. If you want to be super literal then no, there's no such thing as an unguarded/unhidden/untrapped treasure because there'll always be some roadblock to getting it.

The pizza you keep in your fridge might be guarded from me.

The money kept in your pockets is not hidden (EDIT: At least in the sense that someone who mugs you will automatically check your pockets); that kept in your refrigerator, or even on the jar you keep on the dresser, (EDIT: or in your sock, where a mugger is less likely to check) is. Not hidden from you, but not necessarily obvious to anyone else who enters your bedroom. The pizza in your fridge is not hidden.

Money kept in a bank vault is guarded, and that is true even if you have bypassed those guards and are now standing inside the vault.

The aforementioned treasure in Caldwell Castle is not guarded -- you can get to it without any encounter at all -- but is hidden (albeit poorly, and, within the context of the module, probably placed for the express purpose of teaching the players to search).

The treasure in the maze in Pharoah is guarded by the nature of the maze and the denizens...it is part of an encounter design where picking up the treasure is, in and of itself, a trap.

There is a ton of equipment in the Moathouse in T1, which is not guarded (in that no creature pays any special attention to it), but is hidden in rooms concealed by a mass of old furniture, etc. In the same dungeon, the bandits have treasure that is not hidden (it is carried on them) and a much larger treasure that is well hidden (it takes 1/2 hour digging to uncover it, if you know where to look.....and doing the same elsewhere in the complex is likely to get you killed due to collapsing ruins).

Also, keep in mind where this thread started -- the assertation that, if one defeats Monster X, one has automatically earned treasure Y, and whether or not this was true of pre-WotC D&D or not. In Bullgrit's .sig, you will find a link to a thread where it was argued that all the treasure in a module (specifically including T1) would be found and recovered by the average PC party.

It was held that this was the expectation of the designers, despite direct quotation to the contrary (see my .sig). When the levelling times of the designers was examined, and found contrary to the expectations of Bullgrit and others, there was a marked lack of willingness to take the statements of Monte Cook and Gary Gygax at face value.

Can you just find Treasure Y by defeating Monster X? Obviously.

Is it possible to just find Treasure Y without it being hidden, without there being any guardians, any traps, or any puzzles to contend with in finding it? Well, yes, you can....if your GM sets things up that way. But that is not consistent with Gygaxian D&D in general.

What ought to be patently and obviously untrue by this point is that "There are many examples in published AD&D1 modules where treasure is found unguarded, untrapped, and unhidden in a dungeon."


RC

 

[Aurumvorax]

Okay, I see this argument way predates my joining. Loaded words like "The players aren't expected to find everything" may or may not be true given the party's tenacity and propensity to search, but I definitely won't say anything Gygax wrote just gave away free junk. Usually free treasure in the open was a great context clue that something bad was going to happen ("You spot a gorgeous pearl necklace around the neck of a skeleton...").

For people playing retro-style with the random treasure charts, just keep in mind that it isn't set in stone. The DM has the ultimate responsibility of handing out treasure so it's safe to assume that just because you rolled for a +5 vorpal sword in a goblin's lair it won't actually be there.

And if you do decide to place it, that's what magic eating monsters are for. In a Monty Haul situation, a rust monster ambush can go a long way. Some people say this is cheap but it was a viable tactic back then. Easy come, easy go especially if your DM is one who gives away lots for little work. It's not like AD&D has a wealth-by-level chart where all characters are required to have specific amounts of cash at each level. A fighter with a +1 sword at level 9 is only slightly worse than a fighter with a +2 sword at level 9.

 

[Hussar]

We might also be able to put the whole "Everything in the module will automatically be found/recovered" meme to rest, at least in terms of 1e.

The problem is RC, we have very good evidence that THIS IS THE TRUTH. This is how a number of players INCLUDING GYGAX'S own actually played.

Greyhawking an adventure is hardly a new term.

The really, really funny thing is, in Bullgrit's thread, it was pointed out numerous times, two very important facts that you continually ignore in your quest. One: You could find half the treasure and still get the same results. Two: NO xp for magic items was included. Finding even half the magic listed would net far more than all the treasure listed combined.

The fact that you consider a silver baton in a torch holder to be "hidden" speaks far more about your intention to be deliberately obtuse than to any actual facts in the matter. I mean, come on. A silver stick, in plain sight, hanging on the wall is HIDDEN?

I'll readily agree that you cannot see any examples because you continue to move the goal posts in order to "prove" your point.

 

[billd91]

The problem is RC, we have very good evidence that THIS IS THE TRUTH. This is how a number of players INCLUDING GYGAX'S own actually played.

Greyhawking an adventure is hardly a new term.

The really, really funny thing is, in Bullgrit's thread, it was pointed out numerous times, two very important facts that you continually ignore in your quest. One: You could find half the treasure and still get the same results. Two: NO xp for magic items was included. Finding even half the magic listed would net far more than all the treasure listed combined.

The fact that you consider a silver baton in a torch holder to be "hidden" speaks far more about your intention to be deliberately obtuse than to any actual facts in the matter. I mean, come on. A silver stick, in plain sight, hanging on the wall is HIDDEN?

I'll readily agree that you cannot see any examples because you continue to move the goal posts in order to "prove" your point.

Greyhawking is hardly an old term either. Earliest genesis I can find for it is Living Greyhawk year one, because of the fairly stark contrast between looting in LG and Living City.

And you might want to recalculate the XP values of the magic items. They're not that high. In fact, they're quite a bit lower than the monetary value of the magic. And, no, you can't find half the treasure and get the same results.

Also that silver stick on the wall... it's not exactly polished after years of hanging out there. Easily mistaken for an old torch stub if players aren't paying attention.

 

[Hussar]

Greyhawking is hardly an old term either. Earliest genesis I can find for it is Living Greyhawk year one, because of the fairly stark contrast between looting in LG and Living City.

Because the idea of taking everything that wasn't nailed down in a dungeon was something that didn't occur until Living Greyhawk?

And you might want to recalculate the XP values of the magic items. They're not that high. In fact, they're quite a bit lower than the monetary value of the magic. And, no, you can't find half the treasure and get the same results.

Yes, yes you can actually. XP needs pretty much double per level, but that levels off at higher levels. Cutting the treasure in half resulted in less than one level lost overall. Selling magic items was worth far and away more than keeping them, and you got xp for selling magic items. How many +1 swords do you really need to keep?

Also that silver stick on the wall... it's not exactly polished after years of hanging out there. Easily mistaken for an old torch stub if players aren't paying attention.

Oh come on. You're actually going to tell me that a foot long silver stick, hanging on the wall is HIDDEN?

Wow. Those goalposts must come with rollerskates.

Player 1: Hey, look, there's a tarnished silver baton hanging in plain sight on the wall.
Player 2: Forget about it, it's hidden. It'll take us at least ten minutes of searching to find it.
Player 1: But... but... it's RIGHT there.
Player 2: Naw, I said forget about it. If we hang around, wandering monsters will come.
Player 1: But, hang on, there's only a 1 in 6 for them to come right? So, we could search for ten minutes to find the baton hanging on the wall right in front of us, and there isn't really that high of a chance of wandering monsters. Besides, if wandering monsters come, it's just more xp for us right?
Player 2: Dammit Bob, you're playing wrong.

My whole beef with this is this apparent claim that there was only one right way to play AD&D. You could NEVER find all the treasure in an adventure. All treasure MUST be hidden. Players MUST jump through fifteen different hoops before they become eligable for finding their rewards.

That might have been how some people played. Sure. I don't doubt that. But, I do doubt that it was the One True Way of playing. I do doubt that my group was the only one that figure out that if we killed everything in the dungeon, then spent a week or two going back over things, we'd get 99% of the treasure.

Really? My group was the ONLY one who figured this out?

 

[billd91]

Because the idea of taking everything that wasn't nailed down in a dungeon was something that didn't occur until Living Greyhawk?

No, the term came about with Living Greyhawk, as far as I can tell, because the treasure doled out assumed (or required) that the body be picked pretty clean whereas in Living City the year before, loot was a lot more flush. So, yeah, it's a fairly new term that has nothing to do with the old Greyhawk campaigns run by Gygax and Kuntz.
People have been looting like crazy since history began, much less the games, but there's no particular association with old school fantasy gaming vs newer school.

Yes, yes you can actually. XP needs pretty much double per level, but that levels off at higher levels. Cutting the treasure in half resulted in less than one level lost overall. Selling magic items was worth far and away more than keeping them, and you got xp for selling magic items. How many +1 swords do you really need to keep?

Unless halving the treasure leaves you unable to pay for the level-up training you needed to advance. That's a significant flaw in thinking that simply by amassing XPs you're advancing in level. In 1e, it was a two-part processed.

Oh come on. You're actually going to tell me that a foot long silver stick, hanging on the wall is HIDDEN?

It's as hidden as any rogue wearing a beggar disguise in the streets. If the players didn't catch on to the DM's description and decide to specifically check out the thing, they weren't going to know it was silver. The room description, for the DM, basically says that one of the cressets has a torch stub that's actually a silver baton worth 30 gp. Not exactly a chunk of gold lying out on the middle of the floor. I'm sure lots of players didn't think anything about the DM describing the ruined room and mentioning that there was the remains of an old torch still stuck in a cresset.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh come on. You're actually going to tell me that a foot long silver stick, hanging on the wall is HIDDEN?

Depending on how tarnished and sooty it is, it could easily be masquerading as a half-burnt piece of wood until someone looks more closely at it.

My whole beef with this is this apparent claim that there was only one right way to play AD&D. You could NEVER find all the treasure in an adventure. All treasure MUST be hidden. Players MUST jump through fifteen different hoops before they become eligable for finding their rewards.

That might have been how some people played. Sure. I don't doubt that. But, I do doubt that it was the One True Way of playing. I do doubt that my group was the only one that figure out that if we killed everything in the dungeon, then spent a week or two going back over things, we'd get 99% of the treasure.

As both DM (in the many adventures I've run) and as player (via debriefings with the DM after the adventure) I don't think I've ever known an adventure where the party came out with every shred of treasure in the place. I've seen 'em get close...99% on more than one occasion, I'm sure...but never 100%.

I'm sure lots of players didn't think anything about the DM describing the ruined room and mentioning that there was the remains of an old torch still stuck in a cresset.

Were I to describe it thusly to my crew, there'd probably be an immediate break due to at least one person asking what a 'cresset' is...

Lan-"and half the time, I might be that person"-efan