Monday, January 14, 2013

Distribution of treasure

So, for my purposes, one of the pieces missing from the otherwise-excellent Dugeon Fantasy 8 - Treasure Tables is the ability to generate treasure according to some ideal of Gygaxian naturalism. If you use the main table in the front of the book, you're liable to get a hoard of highly magical nature with no recognizable consistency. Certainly, one can (and should) be divined from the simple aggregate (how did this get here? what is it, really? That sword with Puissance+1 and Noise is actually Modenkeinen's Tuning Fork), but you aren't able to randomly generate treasure while having any control over the nature of the treasure thus created.

By contrast for illustration, take AD&D's treasure types. In these we have the essential components to what I'm looking for:
  • Treasure generation still based on random probability distribution. You could get an Orb of Annihiliation in Type A, but you're more likely to in Type Z
  • Differing probabilities for different classes of treasure to distinguish
  • Treasure put into different classes based on the power of that treasure - silver pieces are less powerful than gold are less powerful than gems are less powerful than magic
  • Lettered treasure types assigned to different monsters
Has anyone built such a thing for GURPS? I may try my hand at it later. I don't need it for the Temple of Elemental Evil, which already has treasure spelt out, but I would if I wanted to built a megadungeon or hexcrawl.

If not, I imagine that the AD&D treasure types are a starting point for such a project, and automating it in my (under-construction) automatic treasure-roller would be A Good Thing, but I don't imagine for a second you could actually stop with a bald conversion of Treasure Types from First Edition.

2 comments:

  1. I went with treasure by depth in the dungeon and toughness of the monsters, not with AD&D style treasure types.

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    1. I don't see those as distinct. At least ideally, more rewarding treasure types would tend toward the tougher monsters, who would most of the time be on lower dungeon levels.

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