Where Has All the Magic Gone?

[billd91]

The myth that treasure was well hidden has been well and truly disproved already. TEN PERCENT of the treasure is not readily available. One has to wonder at Raven Crowking's assertion that his players regularly only find 25 % of the treasure in an adventure.

Disproved... for the TOEE moathouse anyway.

But let's not forget that PCs often don't have horses with wagons adventuring with them and that it used to be 10 coins to the pound. PCs often didn't come away with the full amount of loot... because they couldn't carry it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In fiction, something that has a million to one chance of success will always succeed.[/URL].

Terry Pratchett has a bit of fun with this.

"Never tell me the odds!" - Han Solo

In the TV show Psych, the lead character quotes Wesley Snipes from Passenger 57 when he says "Always bet on black!" (as part of a pithy exchange about odds and roulette, in an analogy about the hostage situation).

In Psych, the character takes this literally, and bets his detective agency's entire fee for a particular case on one spin of the roulette wheel. Oddly enough, black is not where the ball landed.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Disproved... for the TOEE moathouse anyway.

But let's not forget that PCs often don't have horses with wagons adventuring with them and that it used to be 10 coins to the pound. PCs often didn't come away with the full amount of loot... because they couldn't carry it.

Lol... never underestimate player creativity. I think it was at the end of one of the Giants adventures that my party was bound and determined to haul off every single copper piece at the end. Stacked, levitating spell casters with rings of Tenser's Floating Disks around them teleported the whole shebang outta there. We might have used a couple of other spells too, but we did it.

Otherwise, just take the higher value coins and one still came away with quite a bit.

For the most part, my own personal recollection from adventures I've read/run was pretty much the same. 1E didn't give me the impression that there was some standard for how much treasure was suppose to be difficult to find. Plus, modules were written by a variety of different authors, who probably did their treasure placement differently.

If there was suppose to be a standard regarding how much treasure should be put behind secret doors or in devilishly designed hidden compartments, don't you think the 1E DMG would have had some indication on what that percentage would have been so DMs could place treasure accordingly in their own adventures? Were the early edition rules really that opaque that we have to do a thorough statistical analysis of these published adventures to reveal the Word of Gygax, like some get-rich-quick Bible Code of D&D? Yeah, you'll probably find a pattern, but in all likelihood it's meaningless in and of itself.

IIRC, there was pretty much just treasure type by monster to roll up and then left to the DM to decide where to place it. That was about it. This lack of guidance about treasure placement was what often lead to Monty Haul campaigns in games of yore.

 

[Hussar]

Disproved... for the TOEE moathouse anyway.

But let's not forget that PCs often don't have horses with wagons adventuring with them and that it used to be 10 coins to the pound. PCs often didn't come away with the full amount of loot... because they couldn't carry it.

The moathouse, IIRC, is less than a days journey from town. How hard would it be to kill everything, and then take a couple of days hauling loot back? Let's not forget, we're talking 6-9 pc's, plus henchmen, hirelings and sundry other hangers on. And, while 10 coins might be 1 pound, most of the big treasure is in gems or jewelry.

People can go on and on about how treasure was hidden, how the game forced you to leave treasure behind and all that, but, at the end of the day, all we have is your word on that. The modules don't support this interpretation, actual gameplay by a number of gamers (NOT all, I do NOT mean that this is universal) doesn't support that. The idea that players would miss 75% of the treasure in a module is patently ludicrous IMO.

But, besides all this, there is still the fallacy of rarity being played out here. That just because magic is rare, it's special. That's not what makes a magic item special. No matter how rare magic is, a +1 sword will NEVER be special on its own. Magic items as well as anything else in the campaign becomes special because the PLAYERS make it so. I can come up with the most eloquently written, fantastic backstory for the item that you can possibly imagine, but, until such time as the players decide that Item X is cool, it's just not.

And no amount of rules can change that.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Disproved... for the TOEE moathouse anyway.

I'd like to see the actual analysis that disproves this.


RC

 

[radferth]

I die a little every time some fanboy quotes this when you tell him "That plan will never work. The odds are stacked against you." It's especially appalling when they say it playing poker, only to lose big... which is practically inevitable whenever you say that but are not Han Solo.

Said in response to the ubiquitous Han Solo quote "Never tell me the odds."

I'd assume that the "real" Han Solo (the one who shot Greedo first, when he tried to shakedown Han) knows the odds at poker rather precisely, but says "Don't tell me the odds," a lot to get his opponent to think Han is bluffing when he is actually not.

 

[Hussar]

I'd like to see the actual analysis that disproves this.


RC

Oh, bloody hell, someone quote my original post so this guy can see the bloody link since he cannot seem to find it himself, DESPITE trying to quote Quasqueton in the first place.

 

[Delta]

IIRC, there was pretty much just treasure type by monster to roll up and then left to the DM to decide where to place it. That was about it. This lack of guidance about treasure placement was what often lead to Monty Haul campaigns in games of yore.

I think there's quite a bit of guidance. 1E DMG has an entire section on "Placement of Monetary Treasure". The Appendix A random dungeon tables basically have every treasure either trapped (1-8 on d20) or hidden (9-20 on d20) -- starting with invisibility and working up from there.

1E DMG p. 92:

There will be much there, but even the cleverest of players will be more than hard put to figure out a way to garner the bulk of it after driving off, subduing, or slaying the treasure's guardian.

OD&D Vol. 3 p. 6-8:

Naturally, the more important treasures will consist of various magical items and large amounts of wealth in the form of gems and jewelry. Once these have been secreted in out-of-the-way locations, a random distribution using a six-sided die can be made as follows...

Unguarded Treasures should be invisible, hidden behind a secret door or under the floor, locked in hard-to-open strong boxes with poison needles or deadly gas released when they are opened. (There are many variants of the above possible, and many other types of protection which can be devised.)​

​

 

[billd91]

The moathouse, IIRC, is less than a days journey from town. How hard would it be to kill everything, and then take a couple of days hauling loot back? Let's not forget, we're talking 6-9 pc's, plus henchmen, hirelings and sundry other hangers on. And, while 10 coins might be 1 pound, most of the big treasure is in gems or jewelry.

People can go on and on about how treasure was hidden, how the game forced you to leave treasure behind and all that, but, at the end of the day, all we have is your word on that. The modules don't support this interpretation, actual gameplay by a number of gamers (NOT all, I do NOT mean that this is universal) doesn't support that. The idea that players would miss 75% of the treasure in a module is patently ludicrous IMO.

Of course, the moathouse part of T1-4 is for low level characters. Less likelihood of lots of henchmen and hangers on. Plus, the Temple is a dynamic environment, recruits keep coming in. It's not unreasonable to think that some actually appear a the moathouse as well, leading to potential competition in looting.

Shifting to other adventures. Try hauling a lot of treasure out of the Pomarj in the A series while surrounded by hostile humanoid tribes. Or out of the Hellfurnaces in G3 (where a substantial amount of the treasure is, in fact, hidden in a secret and easily defended cache). Or the underground shrine of the Kuo-toa. Not all adventuring sites are as easily accessed as the T1 moathouse. And though a lot of value was tied up in gems and jewelry, for other objects of value (particularly magical armors), weight and bulk become significant factors. Some objects d'art may be worth more per pound than the coins, but unless the DM has been extremely up front about value, they are still often the first to be weeded out due to their bulk.

Tracking the value of treasure out of 1e modules, in practice, is a substantially different situation than simply recording them out of the adventures which assumes perfect recovery.

 

[Mallus]

My practical experience with D&D (1e-4e) is that a lot of magical treasure winds up in the hands of PC's.

My practical experience with 1e is that there is a dichotomy between the treasure guidelines in the DMG and the sheer amount of enchanted bling found in the popular published modules (including the pre-generated character's gear).

My practical experience with D&D (1e-4e) is that DM's want enchanted bling in the players hands. While some DM's pride themselves on stinginess when it comes to magic items (or choose to focus on the in-play challenges involved in locating said items), the majority like their players armed with wahoo. Frankly, players using a lot of wahoo is one D&D's defining characteristics (though some choose to play otherwise).

My practical experience with comparing characters that enjoy plot-immunity (ie Luke Skywalker, Bilbo Baggins) with those that don't (insert PC name here) is that they're a considerable waste of time. Call it the "Luke was a Commoner Fallacy".