Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
It's not a binary choice of "leave it alone" or "you're a rat bastard DM."
Nothing in your world should be as boring as a safe box in the middle of town in the game of Diablo, whether it's the inn they stay the night in or where they stash their loot. Don't go out of the way to screw the characters, but their home base should be populated with people with goals and ambitions and whose lives continue even when they're not on stage.
Presumably the players won't hand over the keys to their loot to the boozy evil-curious borderline personality guy who can't help flipping through forbidden tomes he comes in contact with. But if you wanted to make the players have to recover the guy who has access to the vault from kidnappers who wanted to get at the PCs' treasure, or simply blackmail them, that's part of playing characters in a living world.
That said, the best way to resolve wealth issues is to spend it. Unless your characters are going to leave this island and retire to become investment bankers, they should be more interested in what their money can do for them in the near term and given opportunities to turn it into stuff they can kill other stuff with.
Nothing in your world should be as boring as a safe box in the middle of town in the game of Diablo, whether it's the inn they stay the night in or where they stash their loot. Don't go out of the way to screw the characters, but their home base should be populated with people with goals and ambitions and whose lives continue even when they're not on stage.
Presumably the players won't hand over the keys to their loot to the boozy evil-curious borderline personality guy who can't help flipping through forbidden tomes he comes in contact with. But if you wanted to make the players have to recover the guy who has access to the vault from kidnappers who wanted to get at the PCs' treasure, or simply blackmail them, that's part of playing characters in a living world.
That said, the best way to resolve wealth issues is to spend it. Unless your characters are going to leave this island and retire to become investment bankers, they should be more interested in what their money can do for them in the near term and given opportunities to turn it into stuff they can kill other stuff with.