The previous column, On Death and Dying, drew a couple of e-mails. One was from Pete, who wanted to set the record straight about the time the banshee and trapper had killed the entire party except for Bodo. I wrote that Bodo "ran away". Pete reminded me that Bodo stayed and killed the two monsters, making liberal use of the many magic items that were left lying around, and then returned the entire group to the surface to be raised, again with the use of a few of his deceased companion's items and his own cleverness. The record is hereby set straight.

Barbara wrote that at some point in the course of the campaign "I had deduced that you didn't like killing characters after the several occasions over the years when characters didn't die when by all rights they should have." She also wanted to clear up the fact that, while she always cared when her characters died, it really bothered her only twice: the first time it happened, when she felt almost physically ill, and the time that Orsnian drowned during the Spineless Shiela adventure (written and run by Richard, be it noted). "It was such an anathema to me that all my future characters had swimming as a proficiency. I'm not sure if this had more to do with my 15 years as a swim instructor / lifeguard / aquatic director or the fact that I learned how to swim so long ago that the dinosaurs still roamed..."

On Treasure

"Beneath him (Smaug), under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light."
    - J.R.R Tolkein, "The Hobbit"

"Ali Baba saw in the cave a large quantity of provisions, numerous bales of rich merchandise, a store of silk stuffs and brocades, rich and valuable carpets, and besides all this, great quantities of money, both silver and gold, partly piled up in heaps, and partly stored in large leather bags."
    -"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves"

Blame it on Dennis Brauning.

Dennis was the dungeon master of my first D&D campaign, back in the spring of 1979. I only played in his campaign for a few months, but by the time I went home for the summer my character had over 160,000 gold pieces of personal wealth. I knew instinctively that something was wrong with this picture. I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment in having amassed this huge fortune, and that left me feeling vaguely cheated. I was beginning to develop ideas about my own campaign, and this was one of the sharpest lessons that stayed with me.

The Elcea campaign started that summer in my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Over the course of a summer of steady playing the characters amassed a large number of powerful magic items, gathered piles of loot, and one of them reached 16th level. By the standards I had been exposed to this was minimalist stuff, but I decided that it was still too much. When the campaign moved to MSU I pared things down a bit. When the Heroes of Telemarch group formed in California I pared things down a bit more, and when the Bloodhawk campaign started I pared things back a bit more. By this time my reputation as a miserly, tightfisted GM was firmly established.

The lesson I had learned from Dennis was that "anything which is gained too cheaply is held in contempt." Well, my players cherished every little bit of treasure they found, which pleased me. I learned a couple of other lessons along the way, however. One was that players whose characters sweat and work and bleed for months to win a treasure become a tad sullen when that treasure turns out to be a disappointment. Their enjoyment of the campaign is diminished as much as if all the treasure was sorted and piled for them at the entrance to the dungeon. The other lesson I learned is that most earned experience is based on treasure recovered, and if small amounts of treasure are recovered, level advancement is painfully slow.

Another interesting observation I made is that adventurers who have too much money are troublemakers. They are always looking for neat things to spend their money on, such as +3 swords or small keeps (a simple shell keep runs about 10,000 gp). Adventurers who are broke, on the other hand, are adventurers who are hungry and on the lookout for their next adventure. This follows the model from the two authors who have probably had the most influence on Elcea, Fritz Leiber and Robert Howard. Howard's Conan and Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser found many fabulous treasures over the course of their careers, only to lose them in a variety of ways. I have contemplated making this a more overt part of the campaign, but I've noticed that players aren't always reasonable about this. If they get robbed too often, or if too many gratuitous lightning bolts begin frying their favorite magic items, they are quick to suspect that the GM is "gunning" for them, and they tend to feel this is unfair.

About midway through the California campaign I began trying to address the issue of slow level advancement by multiplying the experience point value of treasure found by 1.5. This was a partial fix, but didn't completely balance things out. In more recent times (very recent, by campaign standards) I have been more aggressive about awarding large experience point bonuses for successfully completing adventures, and for granting individual experience awards for things like casting healing spells, picking locks, and clever play. I may yet hit on just the right balance between keeping the characters broke while moving them up in levels at a reasonable pace.

Treasure will continue to be the yardstick for success, though. There is a romance to treasure, a fascination with it, that I think persists no matter how many hordes a group has uncovered. The mental picture of a treasure chest carelessly heaped with gold, silver, gems, and jewelry fires the imagination and inspires the adventurer in all of us. The genie's cave in "Aladdin", the treasure cave in "The Count of Monte Cristo", or Smaug's lair in "The Hobbit" are indelible mental images. I try to take care to picture each horde for the players; I have spent countless hours detailing treasure hordes. It would be easy to just say "You find a gold bracelet worth about 800 gold pieces", but it is much more fun to find "A gold bracelet, about an inch and a half wide, slightly scalloped along the edges and covered with a delicate tracery of hummingbird designs". These details bring the treasure to life, and turn it from a series of entries in the player's notebooks to something fascinating. I have noticed that at no time do I have the player's attention more thoroughly then when I say something like "You sort through the mound of treasure and find the following...".

Treasure, of course, is also what you make of it. My players have always shown a lot of cleverness in broadening the definition of "treasure". This is especially true in low-level groups, when cash is scarce and the need to upgrade spells and armor is great. In addition to the modest amount of coin and gems they recovered, for example, the Swords and Scrolls group recently added a lot to their take by selling other "stuff" they had found. They sold armor and weapons found or taken from foes, a shaman's spell components, kitchen implements, and Winslow was even able to sell some locks he cut out of rotting doors for a nice chunk of change. Creatures also furnish "treasure"; beholder eyes, specter dust, cockatrice feathers, and various hides, hearts, claws, and numerous organs and other bits the creatures no longer have any use for have all been sold for cash. Squishy organs in jars lack the romance of glittering heaps of gold, of course, but once sold they can help fill a character's coin pouch. As a cautionary note, don't fill coin pouches with them before they have been sold; the stains can be almost impossible to remove, and the smell can attract wandering predators.

Magic items are almost everybody's favorite kind of treasure. Gleaming swords, mysterious wands, murky potions, glittering amulets - the variety of enchanted items is almost endless. As a consequence of having experienced players, I have long since given up generating most of the magic items character find from the tables in the DMG. "Oh yes," the players say, "it's another 'Staff of Sizzling'. They can be set to 'rare', 'medium', or 'well done', and the command phrase is usually 'extra crispy'". I enjoy making up items, or creating variations on known types. There are also hundreds of items from obscure sources that I can be confident that no one will identify right away. Magic items have their own mystique, a bit different from other kinds of treasure, and a few useful items can really expand a player's abilities.

One very cool thing about magic items is that they can be booby-trapped, or, as this is more commonly referred to, "cursed". Unlike many forms of attacks against characters, these items are almost impossible to defend against. For that reason I have always tried to be judicious about how often I include really nasty cursed items in treasure hordes. If used too often, players become suspicious and cynical, which is not exactly the atmosphere I want to create when loot is being examined. My favorite example of this sort of thing is one of the results of the "cursed scroll" table in the 1st edition DMG, the one that says "Character turns to liquid and drains away." No defense, no saving throw, and the character is gone forever, unless the group has a wish handy. I love it, but I'd never use it (well, not anymore - not since the very early days of the campaign). Far more entertaining, and balanced, are curses or side effects that are annoying or even crippling, but not fatal. A magic ring that has a 10% chance of turning the user into a rabbit when used is my idea of a good cursed item. The very height of the art of creating this kind of device is when the players know exactly what the consequences are, but can't resist using the item anyway. Kivan's +4 bastard sword, which on a roll of a 1 or a 2 would lash out at a fellow party member instead of the monster, is an excellent example of this sort of thing.

Probably the best of all items of this type that I ever created was the "Staff of Chaos". The 400 random effects of this item could be effective, devastating to foes or to friends or to both, or just plain wierd. Mentiri was the perfect wielder of this device, because Laura couldn't resist using it on occasion. When she announced that she was going to use it, groans would echo around the table and characters would dive for cover. I loved it! A very similar class of item is one that the characters suspect may be cursed, but can't resist testing anyway. The "Belt of Messy Death", found over 12 years ago, is still discussed. This item was never tested, and to this day the players do not know if it is cursed or if it is a powerful, valuable item. One of the characters still has it, though, and perhaps some day the truth will be known.

Creating treasure, and revealing it to the players when the monsters have been overcome and the traps neutralized, is for me one of the most entertaining parts of game mastering. This statement may surprise long-time players, many of whom have accused me of doling out treasure by the thimbleful, but I'll stand by it. I too am drawn by the lure and allure of fabulous gems, bejeweled gold, and glittering magic. But enough talk. There is a rumor that the legendary Diamond of Thrush, lost since the sack of the Blue City, lies at the bottom of the dungeons below the ruined Tower of Tenegost. Let's go...

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