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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nightcloak" data-source="post: 2456224" data-attributes="member: 23862">GM Notebook Essentials #10: Prepared Treasure List -  part 1All right. You have maps for adventures, NPCs to engage your players, and Monsters for your players to fight. You have names ready to go, rules at the ready, and your d20 waiting to roll some criticals. You are ready to roll on anything and not miss the action. But what happens when the action is over? If your players are like mine, then you hear the same war cry after the dice stop rolling: “We loot the Dead!”Yes. Treasure. The great score card of how players measure their characters and the memento of the adventures they complete. Treasure, as a concept, is a corner stone of the d20 game: Players are required to gather treasure if they hope to survive at higher levels. Just like the NPCs and monsters you may need on the fly, you will also need some prepared treasure. It may be for some mark your rogue pickpockets, or a random NPC that gets the business end of the player’s sword, or a monster the players stumbled into; but in the end, the players are going to turn to you with those bright big eyes and wonder what exciting bounty they will receive for their work. You better have an answer.If you don’t have the answer, then you’ve dashed the player’s hopes for a big payoff, figuratively and literally, after all the hard work they have done. But we’re not going to let that happen. The notebook is filling up but there is plenty of room still!Be it generators on your computer or online websites (the site with the NPC generator also has some great treasure generators), or an old fashion flip through the DM guide, or even some random dice rolls – you need to start generating some treasure and prepare for the players when they learn the pointy end goes into the monster. Always remember to “Rule 0” something that you don’t like or has the potential to bring trouble to your game. If you have the luxury of always knowing the level of your players, like a weekly campaign, then you can periodically scale the list to the range of your players. Otherwise you might as well get a few at each Challenge Rating. Either way, you will want some extra low-level treasure prepared for rogues to pickpocket or other DNPCs the players may end up searching. But don’t stop there! As I pointed out in the post about monsters, the average GM has tons of books lying around. Time to rifle through them for treasure goodness also. Just like the monsters that never get used, so is it easy for treasure to get overlooked. Especially magic items. How many times have you flipped through a new book and have said, “That’s cool” but yet only ended up using a few items that were relevant to your game at the time. I suffer from this problem, especially since I can go through streaks of buying new books and quickly forget one book after scavenging a few details for a current campaign (damn Ebay and it’s book lots!)Revisit those literal treasure troves of information and find a bunch of cool items to add flavor and fun to encounters. Those wide eye looks you get will turn to wonder when you surprise them with something new and interesting. It’ll be like Christmas morning as far as the players are concerned. As always, the operating principle is to open up the game and have fun. Take each treasure type and run with it to it’s full potential. Here is checklist of things to cover to spice up the treasure mix:1. Coins. This one is easy to give out. It is the most numerous and available treasure to choose from. It should be the default choice of treasure. But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Give out odd numbers of coins, say 358 silver pieces instead of 300. Or large amounts of a coin that is of a lesser value, say 10000 copper pieces instead of 100 gold pieces. Some unusual coins, say an ancient empire had square coins. Or even introduce a new metal, like a mithral coin being worth 100 gold pieces. 2. Gems. Another common type of treasure. The key here is to remember that you can have various types from 1 gp all the way to a million gp if you want. 10 small gems worth 10 gp each is more interesting that a bag of 100 gp. What really brings gems alive, however, is the type. Don’t just tell the players they have found a gem, but describe a clear but milky shaded crystalline stone with sharp edges. A quick appraisal score will reveal it to be a smoke-quartz. 3. Mundane Items. There called mundane because they are not magical, but they are still more interesting than another bag of gold coins! Holy water and alchemist fire is great at low levels, while anti-toxin is always useful. Masterwork items come in handy, say a masterwork lock-pick set or healing kit. An exotic and well-described pair of masterwork daggers is more interesting than 600 gp any day of the week.4. Commodities. Very common in the world at large but rarely used by players, commodities are the preeminent mundane item, but can certainly be more interesting than a few gold pieces. Plus you can get adventure miles out of these. Defeating some bandits could yield a treasure haul that is nothing more than a bunch of stuff they have stolen: Silk, salt, tobacco, or even cattle! Those kegs of ale may be worth a lot if you can deal with getting them to market. Imagine the conundrum of your players when they can either cash in the exotic keg of Hammer and Anvil Dwarven Ale or brag how they drank it instead!5. Art. This is a pretty broad category. Art can be anything from paintings to vases to statues to something exotic, like a song. Art is all over the spectrum. It is interesting and can inspire lots of roleplaying as the players try to figure out what something is worth, try to ship it somewhere, and sell it off. The real difficulty with art is in the GM being inspired to come up with interesting items. Start a list now, and don’t be afraid to use books for inspiration. If you jot a few ideas down occasionally then you will have a list in no time. If you ever have time, tune in to The Antique Road Show on PBS and end up with tons of art and antique ideas.6. Jewelry. Close to gems, but a category all it’s own. Jewelry is wealth that you can actually ware. Metal, gems, and art combine to make the ultimate treasure. It can be a ring, necklace, broach, belt (buckle), earrings, or even a bracer. Why give the players 1000 gp when you can give them a platinum necklace with a medallion crafted like a phoenix and set with ruby eyes.7. Potions and scrolls. These are the most common magic items and should be used frequently. Of course, intelligent monsters will attempt to get mileage out of these when they can. But don’t let your players find yet another potion of cure light wounds . Just as you searched other books for interesting magic items, you should look for interesting spells that you can introduce by way of scrolls and potions.  There are tons of new spells out there waiting to be introduced to your players. Instead of a potion of Spider Climb , how about giving them a potion of Location Loresight . Plus you give wizards the fun of deciding whether to use that scroll or save it and copy the new spell into their spellbook.8. Armor and weapons: Specific types. There are a slew of special types of armor and weapons out there. You don’t need to keep piling abilities onto a standard suit of chain mail to make it interesting. Specific armors and weapons are rare but are underused and can add lots of flavor. Players will remember that shield with the lion’s head that would bite their enemies long after they found that +3 shield, used it for a few levels, and sold it. Heck, they may even keep it instead of selling it off later!9. Armor and weapons: Abilities. Lots of books have additional abilities for weapons and armor written up, and they are in-line with the DMG system of an “equivalent bonus modifier” for calculating the price of magic items. Why give a war hammer the same old +2 bonus for the “Flaming Burst” ability when you can flip open the Magic of Ferune and give it the Thundering quality for the same +2 bonus. Creating lists of treasure will keep you prepared for a multitude of situations. It is just as necessary as having prepared NPCs and monsters. You will eventually need it. But don’t just settle for the usual. Spice up those hauls with a little TLC and watch your players excitement in your game continue to grow. Treasure is the last point of an encounter, like the punctuation at the end of a sentence. Make it an exclamation point!On-Line Resources:<a href="http://www.aarg.net/~minam/treasure2.cgi" target="_blank">Great On-Line Treasure Generator </a></blockquote>

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