I Search For Treasure

When do you roll for treasure?

For most of you it's probably when you create your dungeon. You follow treasure-type codes, make some rolls and voila -- treasure.

How many of you fudge this roll? 

What if you roll an artifact or some such object of enormous power?

When you pay for an adventure, do you expect the treasure to be listed? And when it is, do you wonder if it was specifically chosen or randomly determined? And if it was random, couldn't you have just done that yourself? Or is it simply a matter of convenience? 

In my published adventures the treasures are almost always specifically tailored for that adventure and most of the magic items are unique, never seen before. I do this because I think it is what people expect when they pay for something -- to see something they wouldn't (or couldn't) have come up with themselves. 

It's funny, because in my mind, the ultimate dungeon is still the stereotypical, randomly created, nonsensical dungeon. Random rooms, random monsters, random treasure, random traps, random, random, random... But, this is not what I create, at least not for sale, anyway. 

These days in OSR products there is sometimes a table called "I Search the Body" (first seen by me in LotFP books). These tables usually cover treasure in its more mundane form -- a dagger, some rations, a few coins, a potion of healing, etc., and are generally meant for the odd corpse here and there. These tables are fun and seem to suggest a more gritty type of game, a game where you're grateful to have a few more torches.

Have any of you ever played the game where treasure was never predetermined, but rather, rolled randomly right there on the spot? 

What if all treasure was: I Search the Body? Where, after a fight or searching an empty room, you open the book and let the players roll. It creates a mini game within the game, a new subsystem to the dungeon crawl, a new excitement for the players. There's a certain psychology and satisfaction when a player rolls to see what they've found, knowing that anything can happen and that it is even out of the DM's control.

Would you be willing to live with said results? No matter the level of the PCs? It takes a certain type of DM and not one who is worried too much about their precious campaign.

Remember DMs, you're not a storyteller, you're a referee. You're not writing a book. You're not even creating a world, the dice are. Sure, you've planted some seeds, but you don't know if they'll grow or even into what. So sorry if your favorite subplot never develops. It's your job to facilitate and interpret results; the dice should surprise you as almost as much as they do the players. Yes, you should be descriptive at times. I've always been known for making combat exciting, dangerous, and fun. After my combats, you feel like you've been in a fight. If an ogre hits you with a large club, I might say you go flying across the room, crashing into a wall, but don't worry, you can get up and do whatever you were gonna do, unless there was a specific die result that states you remain prone. Anyway, back to treasure...

You could have fun with this: Ok, you rolled a weapon... a sword... a two-handed sword... and then, you require a detect magic spell to reveal the exact type, at which point they would make the final roll. BTW, Detect Magic is probably one of the most neglected spells in the game and I am as guilty as anyone. Or you can just tell them exactly what they've found, that's what the vast majority of us have all done throughout the years. Afterall, magic is not mundane, its power should emanate. I'm reminded of Larry Elmore's outstanding painting for the Basic D&D Companion Set, were the knight wields a two-handed sword absolutely overflowing with power. 

More and more I favor random results for everything, I've even been questioning the notion of stratified dungeon levels. 1st levels could be as random and dangerous as the wilderness (though yes, the wilderness is stratified to a degree -- e.g., plains are not as dangerous as forests or mountains, unless there's a dragon flying above...).

I wonder how many randomly created adventures are out there where people thought, My God, this is genius!

I'm not looking for answers, this is just food for thought, a sort of continuation of my previous post -- use your books at the table, they aren't just for prep.

Game on.

Memorial Day 2025

Praise the fighters and the fallen.

Looking Up Rules Is Part Of The Fun!

This notion of rulings not rules...

It is not being applied properly.

It doesn't mean NEVER LOOK UP THE RULES, it means make up your own rules when rules for something don't exist! Then... you make a ruling.

Somehow this has turned into, "Put that book down!"

I believe this is a symptom of the storyteller DM. Egotistical DMs so concerned about their narrative, this grand story they've been dreaming up, oh no, don't you dare interrupt it! I'm on a roll, I'm flowing, don't you dare touch that book!

No, I say pick that beautiful book up!

Reference it damn it. You wouldn't be sitting around playing without it.

The books are great. They are artifacts; wonderous things that got us into the game in the first place. They are fonts of knowledge and inspiration -- especially the one pictured above.

For some gamers the only time they ever got to look at the books was when we were playing. We were always surrounded by D&D books, and other games, it was part of the culture to look at them as we played... and any time we had (or have) a question about the rules you're damn right we looked it up!

Wizards have spell books and gamers have rule books.

This modern notion that rules can't be looked up during play is pure garbage.

The notion that it's not the "OSR way" is also garbage. Although maybe it's true in the sense that the OSR is a modern creation; a modern reinterpretation of the old. There are a lot of myths involved. 

The way people play now is not the way they played then.

It is older people rereading the rules and perhaps coming to a better understanding of them (technically) and then playing the game now, not as they did, but as they wish they had, or as they feel they "should have" and then imposing this falsely as something that always was.

Nope.

There were, and always have been, pauses and interruptions to consult the books; the aversion to it now is repulsive to me. Consulting the very books that the games are based on is an essential part of the experience. I would want it no other way.

In the desire to save the past, the past is being revised.