Why did early editions of D&D rely on Treasure for experience points?

[JenniferRPG]

I am a newbie DM, and haven't hosted a game yet, but am curious (after reading stuff on the web for past couple weeks), why did early editions rely on treasure to get experience points? Later editions don't reward nearly as much treasure right? Is it because you were to avoid fighting with monsters at all costs? Trying to understand the differences.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Treasure was kind of like your score for the game. They thought it would be a fun game if your goal was to find treasure, and the monsters mostly existed to stop you from getting treasure. If they wanted a game where the goal was just to fight enemies and defeat them in combat, then they had war games for that. This was something new.

 

[billd91]

The general idea is that the XPs awarded are there to reward the behavior you want to see from the players - and that's primarily gaining riches from the adventuring environment and not simply killing everything in sight. With the primary XP being from the reward, players can engage in a variety of methods to gain that treasure - peaceful or violent - all of which can be rewarded.

 

[Greenfield]

D&D was pretty much the original "Loot" game. Treasure either included Magic and neat gear, or could be traded for Magic and neat gear.

Including treasure in the Exp calculations essentially worked to keep character level and gear proportional.

At least, that's how I always interpreted it. You didn't have a 1st level Commoner finding Excalibur. As soon as he got it, he wasn't 1st level any more.

 

[Parmandur]

The reason in character to adventure is to get rich and powerful, so the game rewarded getting rich and powerful.





Honestly makes more sense than getting better at sneaking or macramé from killing twenty Kobolds, but whatever works. These days it seems that session XP is becoming the norm, which probably makes the most sense.

 

[Koloth]

The original D&D books mention XP for both killing things and acquiring treasure. Since D&D was designed to be a role playing game vs the then standard table top miniatures tactical/strategic game, I think the treasure XP was a way to allow characters to advance without having to just kill things. Now many modules have a story award that characters gain after completing the mission goals regardless of how those goals were accomplished.

Amount of treasure awarded has always depended more on the GM then the game version. Do a search for Monty Haul games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am a newbie DM, and haven't hosted a game yet, but am curious (after reading stuff on the web for past couple weeks), why did early editions rely on treasure to get experience points? Later editions don't reward nearly as much treasure right? Is it because you were to avoid fighting with monsters at all costs? Trying to understand the differences.

Oddly enough, it was to take the emphasis off combat, and put it on treasure-hunting (the 'exploration pillar,' today). It happened very early, with the old Greyhawk supplement, and stuck around through AD&D 1e. 2e kept it as an option.

In 3e & 4e, you stopped getting exp for treasure, but were expected to get a certain amount of treasure - mainly magic items - as you leveled, keeping treasure part of advancement.

In 5e, advancement is independent of wealth or magic items, so you can have a very rich low-level party, or a high level party fighting Pit Fiends for a few silvers.

 

[Celebrim]

Treasure as your 'score' is on many levels much more interesting than a kill list as your score.

I miss it sometimes.

But it has one huge and fatal flaw, and that is that as the party levels up they becoming so distorting on the economy that it is ridiculous. If I had to do 1e style treasure as score again, I'd move things down to the 1 XP for 1 s.p. standard and correspondingly give away only a fraction of the XP that 1e had to force feed the party to keep them on the leveling treadmill.

 

[Libramarian]

Treasure XP doesn't really steer the game away from combat on its own. Players avoid unnecessary combat in early D&D for other reasons: you die a lot (at low levels, less so later on) and starting over at level 1 hurts!

Treasure XP is about making treasure more fun. It makes treasure exciting even when there's nothing to spend it on. Without it treasure is boring unless the players have something to buy with it.

So it's more about obviating the shopping trip as the conversion step between finding treasure and improving your character. Which I think is good because even with a tight gear economy shopping trips are pretty boring, at least for the DM.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

or a high level party fighting Pit Fiends for a few silvers.

That makes my inner WFRP fan smile.