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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9088255" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Definitely.  Judging both by the modules and by his comments about devices and wands in the initiative rules, Gygax clearly expected wands to be fairly common and relatively standard tools of mid to high-level M-Us. And judging by the modules, for lower level ones to occasionally find depleted wands with limited charges so they could get some of the fun too.I think Voadam and Hussar and Thomas have the right of it here.  The rulebooks show us some things with the tables, and the modules give us examples.The modules aren't always 100% representative of what you get strictly following the guidelines in the rulebooks, but I think that's more a flaw in the rulebooks.  The early rulebooks are incomplete and unclear in some places. OD&D is quite clear that you are not expected to merely follow the tables for treasure and content generation in your dungeons, but are expected to "thoughtfully place" some interesting encounters and lairs and the most important hordes on each level of the dungeon, which are explicitly supposed to include some magic items and big-ticket treasures like gems and jewelry.  Random tables are meant to be used for other areas for ease of stocking the rest of the level AFTER you've placed the most important and interesting bits.The AD&D DMG is less clear about this, for the usual reason- when Gary wrote and Gary and Tim edited together the DMG they were still assuming that practically everyone reading it had already read and absorbed OD&D.  This is why, for example, they also gave extra-complex rules for things like overland, air and sea movement, and fine details for ships, but not the most basic stuff needed for straightforward play.  Or the same comparing the rules for diseases with the ones in Blackmoor.  OD&D had already given the simpler, more playable versions of those rules.  I think this was a design and editing mistake with AD&D, TBH.  Which resulted in far too many of us ignoring the rules for ships and diseases entirely, and struggling unnecessarily with land and air movement, or just handwaving and kludging those rules. I don't think the rulebooks actually conflict with the campaign-style modules like B1, B2, B3, X1, etc.  I think the modules help us understand the rulebooks and their intent better.From my reviews of the material there are both tournament modules and "campaign-style" modules.  And we can see higher-than-the-treasure-tables-alone-would-give-us numbers of magic items in both. But if you bear in mind the "thoughtfully place some really valuable goodies" advice from OD&D, this makes more sense. Good point that some of the monster entries, and in particular the NPC party rules, are also more generous with magic items than the main tables.Yep. D&D characters are expected to have a bunch of items.  OTOH Gary inveighs against Monty Haul play hard in his editorial voice in the DMG, which some of us took to mean that magic items were supposed to be much rarer than they actually are in his stocked dungeons. So while Micah may see that as a contradiction, and that the modules are in error, I think the better and more functional way to reconcile the seeming contradiction is that Gary was complaining about even MORE generous campaigns, and ones in which items were never taken away or broken, as seems to have been a regular possibility in his games, judging by the item save tables, for example. Side note: I think that use of items saves is one of the missing pieces in a lot of people's play.  In my reading and study of old school stuff over the last fifteen years or so I've increasingly gotten the impression that Gary's style of game and intent was supposed to foster a certain "easy come, easy go" attitude to the game and to characters and their stuff.  Swings and roundabouts.  Reversals of fortune like in pulp novels.  With treasures and with things like levels and ability scores, which could be instantly impacted by a monster or a trap or trick but equally easily could be boosted by a treasure, a magic fountain, or by granted Wishes which were apparently so common in early play that they necessitated a rule in the DMG that you could only raise an ability score to 16 using an individual Wish and that after that it required TEN WISHES PER POINT!  Clearly Gary was expecting more common magic than a lot of us later came to expect as standard.Another side note: This is one of the design decisions I love about B/X.  That demihumans aren't a tool for min-maxing by boosting ability scores.  Instead they have min requirements to qualify for them.  Which ensures that all Demihumans are at least above a certain min level in their key stats, but doesn't give them higher stats than humans just for being selected.  And that demihumans DO have cool special abilities, but they pay for them with greater xp to level requirements right out the gate, rather than JUST by being level-capped later, at levels you might never even get to in an average campaign.I like the treasure tables, but I never had a problem mixing up the coin types a little for verisimilitude while maintaining the same values.  Although I'm careful not to do TOO much swapping to higher-value coins, to avoid making the encumbrance issue too easy.One of the things I dig about your game is the active use of item saves.  That's an area you seem to be really hitting what I have gathered was Gary's intent.</blockquote>

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