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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 8129872" data-attributes="member: 694">Hard disagree with most of this. For reasons better explained by some sixteen years of OSR theorizing than by me. Suffice it to say: you can't assume that all money is treasure, you can't assume that lofty goals are inherently good for tabletop fantasy campaigns (it's often the opposite in my experience), and you can't assume that the intended genre of early D&amp;D is good-vs.-evil epic fantasy (when picaresque sword &amp; sorcery functions so much better without fighting the system).XP for treasure doesn't incentivize &quot;money grubbing,&quot; it incentivizes exploration of the setting (searching for treasure) and avoidance of combat (the goal is gold, not blood). It has the unique advantage of being an associated mechanic tied concretely to the fiction (the number of XPs you earn equals the number of gold pieces you retrieve, a number that exists diegetically; the reward for successful play is objective and measurable, minimizing the need for the DM to make ad hoc rulings which can often be problematic or favor hammy role-players over shy participants). And the search for treasure is a lottery, because the underlying assumption of old D&amp;D is a fantasy world with verisimilitude—the treasure is wherever the treasure is, and it's up to the PCs to find it, because nothing magically moves into the PCs' path for the sole reason that they're the PCs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 8129872, member: 694"] Hard disagree with most of this. For reasons better explained by some sixteen years of OSR theorizing than by me. Suffice it to say: you can't assume that all money is [I]treasure, [/I]you can't assume that lofty goals are inherently good for tabletop fantasy campaigns (it's often the opposite in my experience), and you can't assume that the intended genre of early D&D is good-vs.-evil epic fantasy (when picaresque sword & sorcery functions so much better without fighting the system). XP for treasure doesn't incentivize "money grubbing," it incentivizes [I]exploration of the setting [/I](searching for treasure) and [I]avoidance of combat [/I](the goal is gold, not blood). It has the unique advantage of being an associated mechanic tied concretely to the fiction (the number of XPs you earn equals the number of gold pieces you retrieve, a number that exists diegetically; the reward for successful play is objective and measurable, minimizing the need for the DM to make ad hoc rulings which can often be problematic or favor hammy role-players over shy participants). And the search for treasure [I]is [/I]a lottery, because the underlying assumption of old D&D is a fantasy world with verisimilitude—the treasure is wherever the treasure is, and it's up to the PCs to [I]find it[/I], because nothing magically moves into the PCs' path for the sole reason that they're the PCs. [/QUOTE]

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