So you ransack a wizard's laboratory and find a bunch of 'potions'... or: wizards don't use GHS

One of my other hobbies is rockets; specifically, the history and eccentricities of liquid-fueled rockets. (Don't worry, all you solid afficianados - I appreciate a tonne of PSPC just as much as the next guy.)

I don't remember how, exactly, but this got crossed the other day with thinking about D&D and potions.

D&D has potion mixing and potion tasting charts. Often they do nothing, or create a poison, or mix effects, or whatever. In any case, it seems like the common thing to do with strange bottles of weird liquids recovered from a wizard's study is to try them out. I imagine the conversation going like this:

DM: You've slain the basilisk standing guard out front, and you open the door to a crowded laboratory. Bottles, flasks, and retorts line the walls and teeter precariously on a large wooden table, covered with illegible notes and scratches. Everything is covered in dust.

Player: Cool! I look through and see if there's anything that looks valuable! Are there any potions?

DM: You grab a whole bunch of bottles and stuff them into your knapsack, but there are too many to fit all of them, so you have to leave the lion's share behind-

Player: Oh, we're definitely coming back here, with a caravan!

DM: Right, but for now you have to leave some behind.

Player: OK, OK. Are any of them potions?

DM: You don't know. None of them have readable labels. Some of them have no labels at all.

Player: Fine, how can we test them?

DM: Lots of ways. The same way you test anything, really. It's not like you're carrying a Potion Testing Kit in your backpack - are you?

Player: No. Huh. Okay...potions are meant to be drunk right? I drink one, and see what it does!

DM: Are you sure? It might have hostile effects, and you'll have used it up regardless of what it does.

Player: Okay, okay...I got it. I'll uncork it and try a little taste. That should work, right? I mean, even if it's poison, it'll only be a little bit.

The thing that struck me is that ransacking the wizard's laboratory is one of the few actual touchstones we have with real life. Arcane alchemy captures a sense of wonder and strangeness that doesn't have much place out here in Paper & Paychecks, but one thing we do have is strange arcane chymical laboratories with truly strange and wonderful things on the shelves outside normal human experience.

However, in real life, most of these things aren't exactly meant for human consumption. In real life, wizards have rocket fuel on their shelves.

The thing about these strange and wonderful chemicals is they require careful handling. Some of them are so reactive that uncorking the bottle might kill you, if you're careless about it. Almost all of them are so reactive that yes, a tiny sip is a very bad idea.

What's a thousand words worth when you can have some examples?

High Test Peroxide

Peroxide's normal, right? I have some under the bathroom sink right now! Sure, but that stuff's at 5% strength. At 40% the stuff starts getting interesting. At 70% it's a rocket monopropellant - meaning it's so reactive (in the presence of lots of catalysts) by itself that it'll violently explode.

Here's an example

I was unable to find an example of someone reacting HTP with meat, but you can extrapolate from what happens when you pour your household stuff onto an open cut what'll happen - except those bubbles will be strong enough to become an explosion.

HTP should be stored in an opaque bottle in a sealed place, else the light and heat will cause it to slowly degrade. Or quickly.

Why a wizard wants it: You mean your wizards need excuses to play with explosives? Fine. HTP can easily also be used to spark other reactions, and probably has a pivotal role in the distillation of Bloom of Giant's Eye (a solid, metallic substance that's one of the primary 'less dangerous' sources of small amounts of orichalcum, since it only involves harvesting the eyes of storm giants).

Fuming Nitric Acid

(Also all sorts of other nitric substances)

I don't really need to say much about this, do I? It's nitric acid; it's an acid. But concentrations powerful enough to be used as rocket fuels exist and should exist in a wizard's lab. (It's also useful for other stuff.)

Two 'common' variations are called White Fuming Nitric Acid (or WFNA) and Red Fuming Nitric Acid) or RFNA. These things are so nasty they're usually mixed with a 'inactivating agent' to keep them from eating away the bottle you want to store them in.

(Skip to 4:42 if you don't care about the rest.)

Why a wizard wants it: Fuming Nitric Acid is an essential tool for the distillation of just about anything. In the real world, nitric acid is an industrial chemical for a reason: it's too damn useful. Same thing in fantasy; fuming nitric acid is probably an essential reagant in many, many reactions that eventually lead to those Potions of Gnome Control that litter your campaign world. There's a reason not just anyone becomes an alchemist, and most wizards are crazy.

Hydrazine

Hydrazine is an odorless, colorless chemical that to the eye and touch seems just like water. It's also pretty stable on its own, but when mixed with oxidizers (like the nitric acid shown above, or many of its byproducts) will violently explode.

In fact, the explosion is so violent that hydrazine is still used in rockets today. The Soyuz rocket that sends astronauts to the ISS runs on hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide (one of the byproducts of a nitric acid reaction in some cases). Careful jostling it around with other potions; if a flask breaks your backpack may explode!

However, we're interested in a taste test. Unfortunately for adventurers, its reactivity is outmatched by its toxicity. A mouthful or even a sip may very well kill you.

Case Study of Hydrazine Poisoning

---

In a 1965 correspondence from F. James Reid to the British Medical Journal, the effects of accidental hydrazine ingestion can be seen.
A young English sailor had been drinking beer during the afternoon before being placed on duty in the evening. He was considered to be fit for duty and competent until the accident. While working in his ship's engine room, the young sailor ingestion between a mouthful and a cupful of concentrated Hydrazine believing it was water.

• Hydrazine, greatly diluted, was used on board the ship to prevent corrosion in the ship's boilers by seawater.

Immediately upon drinking the chemical, the sailor vomited and returned to the deck to report to his superior officer at 11:30pm. After having been given a raw egg and milk, he vomited once more and collapsed, unconscious onto the floor.
Upon admission in a West African Hospital at midnight he was flushed, afebrile, unconscious, continent, and vomiting. His pupils were dilated, central and reacted to light; however, there were no chemical burns on his lips or mouth and he was able to swallow. At this time the respiratory and central nervous systems were normal upon clinical examination.
In response to the accident, the stomach was washed out with warm water which was partially siphoned and vomited back. He was given intramuscular chloroquine sulphate due to the prevalence of malaria in the region; cyanocobalamin, because the chemical was believed to have a cyanide-like effect; and ascorbic acid all intravenously with dextrose, dextrose-saline, and Hartmann's solution. These chemicals were given in all three liters over a period of 16 hours. The patient then passed 600ml of alkaline urine via a catheter, with the condition of his bladder at that time remaining unknown.
Twelve hours after the ingestion of the hydrazine, his condition remained unchanged with the exception that vomiting had ceased and the pupils were smaller and divergent to the right. Two episodes of violence requiring restraint by four strong African nurses also occurred.
Sixteen hours after ingestion, the patient was more flaccid and once again violent; it was decided to send him to the U.K. by air. 33 hours after the accident, the patient was flown out; however, once reaching France, the pilot of the aircraft refused to accept responsibility of the patient as his respiration became irregular and shallow.
48 hours after the accident the patient was admitted to a Paris hospital. His condition upon arrival was described as comatose and convulsive. He was intubated under anesthesia and given mechanically assisted respiration for the next ten hours; he was also given 10% dextrose and vitamin B.
The patient improved hour by hour, though the main concern was for his neurological state. His psyche, memory, voluntary motor skills, and higher functions were normal. However, he had ataxia even with his eyes open, a lateral nystagmus to the right, and a loss of vibration sense. He was unable to write, though he could draw. There was paresthesia of all four limbs at the extremities and he was unable to reproduce one hand movement imposed upon the other. Severe hypoesthesia of the hand (especially the right hand), in distribution of the radial nerve ensued. E.E.G. results were within normal limits and tendon reflexes were normal. Fortunately, the ataxia was improving to the point that the sailor would able to travel unescorted by air to England, only two weeks after leaving Africa.

• The final condition of the young man is not known.

With all that in mind, I recommend the use of a new table:


Sipping random bottles from a wizard's laboratory table: (roll 1d6)

1. The stuff explodes in your mouth. Save vs. poison or die messily. If you pass, take 1d4 damage.
2. Horrible poison. Save vs. poison or die.
3. Nefarious poison. No immediate effect, but you will die in 1d4 days and start feeling ill in 12 hours. No save.
4. Hyper-volatile! Uncorking the flask causes it to react with air. Save vs. wands or have your hand blown off, taking 1d4 damage, and everyone nearby save vs. paralysis or get splashed. Those splashed take 1d4 damage.
5. No effect. It's inert, I guess.
6. Huh, this might actually be meant for human consumption. Roll on another chart to determine what potion it is. (Don't forget to include lamp oil and 'normal' poisons.)

Don't swig random chemicals. Get an expert, or test them with objects other than your body.

JDIMS - Joint Dungeon Inventory Management System

I've heard and read a lot of complaints that tracking encumbrance is just too much work, or too fiddly, or too unfun. I sympathize. After all, who wants to be ciphering and double-checking rules every five minutes instead of killing goblins and taking their stuff? Yet at the same time, people do recognize that encumbrance management is an important part of the game: it's about recovering treasure, and part of the core mechanic of the game is figuring out how much you can bring out for what level of risk.

There are a fair number of good alternatives out there, but none of them quite feel right to me. So I made my own.

First steps

Before going on an adventure, calculate your encumbrance according to the normal rules. You're in town; it's time for bookkeeping anyway. Additionally, you can choose to re-calculate encumbrance according to the normal rules at any time, so long as you're not bogging anything down in the game. By the same token, the DM can require the same, of course

 Item classifications and their meanings

Once you're on the road, items come in two main categories: Small items, and Large items. What category an object falls into is a combination of weight, bulk, and how much care must be taken with that object in trasport. It's important to note that this only matters for new items you pick up, since you're using your previously-calculated encumbrance as your starting point.

Small Items

Small items don't weigh you down. Some common examples of small items include swords, scrolls, potions, cloaks, very small rugs, helmets, and spellbooks. 100 coins also count as a Small item in my game.

Five Small items count as one Large item.

Large Items

If you are carrying a Large item, count yourself one step more encumbered. If you are carrying 2 Large items, count yourself two steps more encumbered, and take a -2 to hit and AC. Also, you aren't going to be stealthy. You cannot normally carry more than 2 Large items. Examples of Large items include plate or chain mail, shields, tapestries, small treasure chests, busts, and Halfling bodies.

Free Items

Anything not big enough to be a small item basically doesn't count against encumbrance. This includes rings, jewels, certain other jewelry (often assuming you're wearing it), lockpicks, and generally anything that would easily fit in the palm of your hand and not feel terribly weighty.

Two-man Items

The name's pretty much self-explanatory; these things require at least two adventurers to cooperate to move them. Two-man items count as two Large items for each member of the moving team. Examples include large chests, armoires, and elf-sized statues.

Another example of a large item

Extensions and Variations

The core works pretty well all by itself. People I've played with have agreed that it hits the sweet spot between complexity and plausibility, allowing them to actually make meaningful choices about what they'll carry while not feeling like it takes too much time and effort. However, over time I've identified some tweaks I like to make to differentiate characters and some further rulings I've made that help the system feel more complete.

Strength

Characters with a Strength of 5 or less can only carry one Large item, and for them it behaves as though they are carrying two. (Two encumbrance levels, minuses in combat.) Characters with a Strength of 15 or higher can carry an extra Large item before being doubly encumbered. Characters with the rare and coveted 18 Strength can carry two more.

Race

Dwarves can carry one extra Large item before being doubly encumbered, because dwarves are naturally doughty. (Woe betide the dungeon denizens who run across a Dwarf with 18 Strength; they'll all be naked.)

Halflings on the other hand can carry one fewer, because they're tiny.

Elves are roughly human-sized, but slightly smaller. Some items that would count as Small for a Man might count as Large for them, and they only get four Small items to the Large (unless you forget or don't care).

Load Bearing Equipment and Beasts of Burden

These rules assume that characters are entering the dungeon with a backpack and the very basic pockets, ties, and such that come with clothing made for adventurers or outdoorsmen. If for some reason this isn't the case, reduce carrying capacity to suit. (Naked people can carry three small items - one in each hand, plus one between the teeth.)

Ponies and donkeys can carry three Large items. Horses can carry five. Mules can carry six. Good luck fitting a mule in a dungeon. Other more fantastic animals are up to the GM.

Bags come in two different sizes. Small bags can carry up to 3 Small items, combining them to count as one. Large bags can carry up to 10 Small items, counting as 1 Large item. Small chests are the same, but you don't have to worry about your bundle of swords accidentally cutting through it while you're running away from goblins.

Medium chests can carry up to 25 Small items, but they count as 2 Large items. (You can share this load between 2 people if you can't carry enough, and this allows you to easily drop it in combat.)

Large chests are Two-man items, and can carry up to 50 Small items.

A hand-cart or wheelbarrow will allow you to carry 50 Small items by yourself, but of course you aren't going to be stealthy and you aren't doing anything else with your hands.

Potion belts, scroll belts, and the like carry 5 or so of the specified Small items and count the total as just one Small item.

Magical load-bearing equipment such as Tenkar's Flying Disc and Bags of Holding should be similarly rated by the GM for how many Small items they can carry. (I like calling Bags of Holding Large items that can carry up to 200 Small items.)

Once you get to wagons and the like, you've grown beyond the limits where this system is useful.

Use your judgment on what to allow players to put in bags. Just because a glaive is a Large item doesn't mean it'll fit into your large bag.

Parting Thoughts

I like this system because I find it easy to run at table and easy for players to understand. It doesn't require looking things up, ever. I also think that, because of the ease of use in play, it opens up inventory management as a real object that can be manipulated in play. For example, a cursed Loadstone is two Large objects that cannot be put down. Further, temporary effects can really, actually be useful or debilitating in play without requiring a mood-crippling amount of number fiddling. As proof, below I'll share two spells that have made it onto the Cleric list in my game.

Share the Load

Cleric 2

Range: Touch

Duration: 1d4 + cleric level hours

This spell allows the subject to carry one more Large item before experiencing any encumbrance effects. Only works on humanoids.

Burden of Truth

Cleric 2

Range: 30 ft

Duration: 1d4 + cleric level turns

This spell causes the subject to feel the extra heft of 2 more Large items. Save vs. magic to resist. 

Eyes of the Overworld

With all credit due to Jack Vance.

Like this, only pink

Eyes of the Overworld are brittle, concave cups of a slightly pinkish material. The inner edge keeps itself moist through some mystical method or other.

When placed over the eyes, Eyes of the Overworld shrink to fit over the eye. Anyone wearing them is obvious; they look like pink globules over the eyes. They are very slightly sticky on the interior surface and so will stay in place through all manner of exertion after placement, but they are easy to remove, with a single Ready action per eye if done in combat.

When worn, the world appears a happier, more beauteous place to the world. Ordinary men and women appear as queens and kings, as does the wearer himself; the ugly is rendered beautiful. It affects all senses, so that the dumpy hermit with a speech impediment appears instead to have regal features and raiments and to speak with refinement. This has several beneficial effects:

• Immunity to Sense-Based attacks. You cannot be affected by a basilisk's gaze or a ghast's stench while wearing the Eyes.
• Immunity to Fright Checks and all fear effects.
• Temporary annulment of some disadvantages like Chronic Depression or Manic Depressive
• Other small effects as the GM sees fit. Examples might include a reduction in cost of living, since you're now satisfied with a broken-down hovel and slop, and a bonus to reaction rolls from some people since you're liable to treat them courteously.

However, there are a few drawbacks as well:

• Between -5 and -10 on Naturalist, Hidden Lore, and other skills used to identify monsters and items, depending on how much the GM feels the Eyes of the Overworld change the appearance to make it presentable to you.
• Complete inability to use Merchant or other value-appraisal skills.
• The Eyes are very easy to shatter. Any attack to the eyes that does at least HP/10 points of damage shatters an Eye and drives the shards into your eye, causing an additional HP/5 injury.
• The Eyes are mildly addictive. Each day spent continuously wearing them, the wearer must make a Will +4 roll or refuse to take them off. If they are forcibly removed, make another Will roll. the wearer suffers Chronic Depression (15 or less) for (24 +- margin of success) hours.

The Eyes must be worn on all eyes to be effective. If not enough Eyes are worn,  the user gets a splitting headache - treat it as being in Medium Pain for as long as the wearer keeps the Eye(s) on, and for 1d seconds after.

Nobody knows the origins of the Eyes of the Overworld. Some say that a wizard of old perfected a technique for creating them from the lenses of Eyes of Death. Others claim they are relics of a god who was slain for his beautiful scales, and these scales are the Eyes themselves. Still others claim they are excreted as spore casings by certain types of fungi that live at magical nexi.

Dashing hats

I have an affectation for hats. Yes, you read that right: an affectation, not an affection. I'm not really a clothes-horse; I just like to pretend to be on the internet.

There's something about hats as distinct from other articles of clothing. Sure, suits can be stylish, trousers can exhibit taste, shirts can be slick. Even socks can be suave. But a hat, well, the hat makes the man. Especially a hat like this:

And of course, some hats show your admirers and fellow adventurers just how clever you are:

Dashing hats as treasure:

Unless otherwise stated, any of these hats will give a +2 reaction bonus from townsfolk, neutral bystanders, and intelligent humanoids you find in the dungeon, who will say things like, "Nice hat; you've got style," and, "That, sir, is the right model of a gentleman's haberdashery. Bravo!" In addition, all of these hats provide DR 3/1* to the skull. (If it matters, the effects are magical. Unless you decide otherwise.)

Hat of Faultless Coiffure: This hat looks like a flamboyant cavalier hat made of deep purple, blue, or red felt with the feather of some flamboyant creature, and in most respects behaves like one. However, it provides DR 10 (rigid, instead of the DR noted above) to the skull (and, if using partial hit locations, on a 2/6 to the face), doubled vs. toxic or corrosion attacks. In addition, it always is in prime condition and never soiled. Even if you swim through a lake of blood, all you need to do with your hat is briskly brush it off.

Of course, as every real connoisseur knows, the truly valuable power of this hat is that it also keeps your hair in faultless condition as long as it is worn.

Hat of Irresistible Allure: This homburg of black felt takes the usual powers of dashing hats and amplifies them. It gives you a +6 (!) reaction bonus on any request that will allow the requestee to stay near you. Mostly this is helpful, though it may occasionally become a nuisance, since creatures will behave according to their disadvantages, so that Greedy folks will try to steal or con you out of the hat, Lecherous ones will...well, let's not go there. Specifically, people or intelligent humanoids with the Jealous disadvantage will instead react at -4, as they envy your fine hat.

Hearty Haberdash: This is a pork pie that has earned its name. Specifically, usually it's an understated piece of headgear, suitable for natty suits and walking about town. However, thrice per day on command (usually something suitable like "If the thief is honest I'll eat my hat!") it will turn into a meal's worth of fine victuals of the owner's preference. Furthermore, the meal is so refreshing it restores all lost FP and ER as well as 1 HP.

Cap of the Wilds: This hat can be any of a number of sorts, with popular options being a papakhi, a kolpik, or among the more quixotic a deerstalker. Instead of the usual reaction bonus, it incurs a -1 reaction modifer penalty with most intelligent humanoids. However, with wood elves and mountain elves as well as all faery creatures and wild animals, it confers a +3 reaction bonus. In addition, it grants a series of woodland skills, either giving them at Attribute+2 or conferring a +4 on those who already have the skills. Popular choices are Survival (Woodlands or Tundra), Tracking, Camouflage, Weather Sense, Naturalist, Animal Handling, and Fishing.
  
Mitre of Holy Might: Of-times a tiara despite the name, this highly-coveted headgear acts as a personal Mana Enhancer 1 for Sanctity to Good religions plus allows divine intervention once per day as per the Cleric power-up in Dungeon Fantasy 11. However, on sight it instantly enrages all demons and undead, who will attack the wearer ruthlessly and exclusively in an effort to destroy him and his fancy-schmancy hat. In addition, any time the wearer comes into proximity to an evil altar, roll 3d: a 6 or less indicates that he has drawn the personal ire of the deity to which the altar belongs, gaining that god/dess as a personal Enemy (Hunter, but with intervention usually restrained to high-powered minions and occasional bolts of unholy fire) with an appearance of 6 or less. Subsequent enemies can either be new deities or increase the frequency of appearance; GM's choice.

One-use item: Cockatrice arrows

This is just a quick post to get this idea down before it flies out of my head. It isn't very original in conception, but hey, you do what you can.

Cockatrice Arrows

These arrows are fletched with cockatrice feathers. As such, they must be handled with gloves to avoid petrifaction. When shot at an enemy, they do normal damage, then provoke a HT-10 roll to avoid turning to stone, along with all carried and worn gear. The HT roll is at +1 per point of DR not penetrated, and is also given a modifier equal to SM (since it's harder to turn larger things to stone). Magic resistance does not add to the roll. The arrow is turned to stone as well, meaning each can only successfully be used once.

The arrows are otherwise normal, and can be enchanted normally. For obvious reasons, most arrows with cockatrice fletching bear bodkin points.

They are effectively priceless, as only a rare few enchanters know the trick of handling the feathers without being turned themselves and yet imbuing the effect on the arrow as a whole. If found on the open market, they might go for $10,000 per arrow.

Rumours persist of other similar arrows, made from the eggteeth of basilisks or like substances. Some even whisper of a bow whose string is made from the sinew of a medusa that confers this effect on all arrows fired from it.



This could also work as a sort of trap for greedy uncareful delvers, but I'd be very careful with this and make it clear that the feathers on those arrows inside that chest you just found are weird, and hey, are you sure you don't want to make a Hidden Lore (Magical Items) roll?

Consumable magic items in GURPS

One of the things that Dungeons and Dragons has in profusion that GURPS lacks are consumable magical items. Certainly, we still have one-use items like scrolls and potions, and there are mana stones for mages, but in the place of wands et. al. with charges, we've substituted items of infinite use whose drawback is instead that they draw on the user's FP.

Unfortunately, this is not an equivalent solution. There's quite a bit of cleverness in limiting the use of a magic item; it allows for imbalances to naturally self-correct, and it adds an interesting dynamic of resource management to the use of the items. (I contend that managing non-renewable resources is inherently riskier than managing renewable ones, because the stakes are higher. Accordingly, the payoff can be bigger, and the act of deciding more interesting).

Here's where if I were less interested in mathematics and fun, I'd suggest waving your hands about mana-stones and just giving the items charges and be done with it.

I've always disliked the system of charges. It's too easy to measure, and it requires meticulous book-keeping. Boring, I say.

On the way home from work I had a flash of insight. GURPS magic items already have a statistic that doesn't usually matter much: Power. Power is usually 15, and is equivalent to the effective skill of the enchanter. Mostly it seems to be used for resistance rolls and determining if the item functions (e.g. low mana zones).

Wait, it's equivalent to a skill, so what about a roll-under mechanic?

Every time a PC uses a magic item with limited uses (usually things that let you cast spells or give you temporary effects, like rings of invisibility or fireball wands rather than magic swords), the player rolls 3d6. If he rolls at or under the current effective Power of the item, it behaves normally. If he rolls above the current effective Power of the item, the effect still happens, but the Power of the item is reduced by 1. (It's more stressing to a wand to use it in a low mana zone.) An 18 is always a failure.

Once the item's power goes to 0 (or 2, if you like - it's a difference of two uses), it is depleted and no longer counts as magical. Maybe it can be recharged, maybe it can't.

To get a feel for how this would work, I ran the probabilities, with my target at 75%; that is, I figured out in how many rolls it would take for the item to have a 75% chance of depletion, based on starting Power:

Power 14: 37 rolls
Power 15: 66 rolls
Power 16: 140 rolls
Power 17: 434 rolls (here's where the exponential progression breaks to a purely arithmetic one)
...
Power 20: 1317 rolls

The system isn't perfect; over a thousand rolls is effectively infinite. However, you can easily assign Power yourself for items the PCs find in the dungeon. Interestingly, this lines up nicely with the enchantment rules in GURPS Magic, which point out that most items will probably have Power 15. (I'm ignoring the bit where they need Power 15 in order to function, of course. I will keep this for swords and other always-on items, but for consumables I'm using it in a different way.)

What about permanent items? If you want to keep some, as truly powerful artifacts, I'd recommend just assigning them a Power of 25 or 30 and ignoring the book-keeping. At the same time you can ratchet up the price for a high-Power item as recommended in Magic, not to mention a premium for the rarity, if this thing even has a sell-price.

Anthropological archaeology through treasure

Please excuse the pretentious-sounding title. It popped into my head and made me giggle enough I wanted to keep it despite myself.

One of the things I've noticed in the Temple of Elemental Evil is that there are rooms that are described as richly furnished, or that are in some other way made obviously full of potentially valuable stuff, that aren't detailed. For example, Lareth's chambers are described thus:

"The Master's chamber is lavishly furnished, with thick rugs, wall hangings, and soft chairs, couch, and cushions. Wines, liquors, and dishes of sweetmeats abound."

but none of that is given a value. Contrast in more modern games, at least according to my limited experience, where the assumption is that player characters will strip a place clean, and then go back to strip the clean off. For example, Dungeon Fantasy 2 even has rules for bringing back doors, bars, and other scrap from the dungeon.

This is neither an oversight nor an bias against these types of value on the part of Gygax and Mentzer. Later in the supermodule there's an entire room that's explicitly stocked to the gills with <certain valuable stuff>, and it's assumed that the PCs will take some of it; in fact, there's a set of sort-of-rules for scrounging through all the clutter to find valuable stuff. However, there's no hard description of exactly what is in place and how valuable it is. Instead, it's assumed (and frankly stated) that the PCs won't/can't run off with it all.

When I first saw this it boggled me. Why would you have what's frankly a treasure trove and not have a clear value to it? What's going on here? I'm not certain, but let me advance two possibilities.

Possibly, this stuff wasn't regarded as treasure. The old chant goes, "Gems, Jewels, Magic," not, "Sofas, tapestries, silks." If that's the case, then it's kind of disappointing; interesting treasures, even mundane ones, fire the imagination. A bundle of rare Ismaili redsilks is much better than a bag of 300 gp, especially if that bundle is embroidered with the pattern favored by the late King's Consort because of her heritage in the barbarian north.

A much more compelling possibility rests on the understanding that such details don't matter until they matter. To put it another way, Gygax and Mentzer specifically didn't detail all the objects in the room because that limits a GM's creativity, and they understood that, even though this was based on Gary's game, it wasn't Gary's game. If you bought T1, you didn't buy it for to brush up on your Greyhawk lore so you could sit at the table in Geneva; you bought it so you could run it yourself, in your own version of Greyhawk (or somewhere else). In this hypothesis, the authors expected you to pick up on "lavishly furnished" and provide to your players what that means. Is it stocked with decadent bloodwines from the heathen south? Etruvian brandies? Silks spun from the eggsacs of void-spiders? That's your call, and by leaving such details out you're allowed, even forced, to make it. The simple issue of weight and value is easily solved. ("Oh, and generally it's all worth 40,000 gp, but weighs several thousand pounds. What do you want to take?")

I like that second option more, so I'm going to chalk this up as another case of understanding the game to be permissive rather than restrictive. It's a vehicle for your imagination to fall back on to maintain its own internal plausibility, rather than attempting to be the scope of everything possible.

This is a good way. I can always just come up with specific weights and values when the PCs go back to town.

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.

Little gems in random treasure generation

In a previous post I said that with each trove I would also be including one randomly-generated item, just because. Boy, am I glad I did, and here's why:

The very first thing I rolled up was a Textbook of a Common Skill, Written in a Common Language with two enchantments and two embellishments. Those Enchantments were Waves and Fog; the embellishments were expensive extensive inlay and a cover of fine material edged with fur.

Oh, did I mention that the Bookbinding Properties table told me that this book was made out of stone tablets? It weighs twelve hundred pounds. I don't figure I'm spoiling this for the players because the book is around seven cubic feet, and so fairly obvious when you find it.

Given this information, I've decided this book is written in dwarvish and is called the Manual of the Sea, teaching whoever consults it Shiphandling/TL3, and allowing default rolls even without the prerequisite skills. It's bound in thick, fur-edged seal skin (elephant seal, naturally), and its letters are filled with tiny aquamarines, too small for individual sale.

I would never have put such a thing in the moathouse, and in the process of reading the dice I learned something new about my version of Greyhawk.

First, enchanters can sometimes go a little mad. They become obsessed with the creation of some masterpiece of their art; usually some extremely implausible but strangely powerful and valuable item that they go to great expense and hardship to complete. It can take years to finish, and is often made of implausible materials or otherwise reflects the partial insanity of its creator. Dwarves in particular are prone to this malady; any truly absurd item is liable to have been dwarf-work. In addition, if something keeps an enchanter in this mood from completing his work for long enough, he will go truly insane, with unpredictable effects - this is part of why there are so many towers of mad arch-mages about.

Second, the original lord of the moathouse was a sailor, both on the nearby river and on the Nyr Dyv it connects to, as a privateer for the Duke. When he was granted his title and the moathouse, he brought the Manual of the Sea with him at great expense (it was in his ship, as his 'lucky charm' - it didn't hurt that he could hide from other ships and change the conditions of engagement with its enchantments). Eventually he gave it to his son, but by that time the Temple was gaining prominence...


If you haven't, I highly recommend using some random treasure in your game. It provides a focal point for peering into the reality of the world you inhabit, sitting around the table, helping to clear away the mists of unreality just a little.

Magic swords

This one's a quick idea:

Magic swords in D&D are different from other magic weapons. In order to simulate this, for enchantments in my game, these rules are in effect:

Any weapon can have Puissance and Accuracy enchantments up to +5, and Penetrating Weapon enchantment up to (2).

Swords, after the first level of Puissance and Accuracy, must put a Bane on all further levels. In addition, they can have up to Penetrating Weapon (4) with the same Bane. All Banes must be for the same category of foes.

Further, only swords can be intelligent (and most magical swords of more than +1 are), and only swords can have more powerful enchantments (such as Dancing Weapon or Flaming Weapon, or others).

Treasure in the Temple

I've been mulling this over for a while; after all, this is the entire point of why the characters would risk life and limb going into dark ruins of evil cults in the first place. Otherwise, they'd settle down into the nice safe positions of village blacksmith/publican/prostitute or whatever. So it had better be worthwhile.

Also, it's there for the enjoyment of the players (including myself), so it had better be compelling, or at least momentarily interesting. No, "you find $4000 worth of stuff," or "you find a thousand silver pieces" in my game. Even if the players don't care about the palladium tiara with a frog motif and just care how much it costs, it will amuse me to put it there in the first place.

Peter over at Dungeon Fantastic has a helpful post about what he's learned about treasure from running Keep on the Borderlands and his megadungeon (play reports of which are what got me doing this in the first place, because they're awesome). I never really felt the temptation he mentions of giving too little treasure, because I have ways to soak up and control money written directly into the adventure (training costs, plentiful hirelings at least after the moathouse, carousing, potential for theft, plentiful mundane/consumable items while keeping enchantment rare by forcing people to make a long potentially dangerous trek to the city and then wait for the enchanter, even animals), so I don't feel worried about treasure destabilizing things. If making a big score means the PCs can replenish their supplies, upgrade their gear, and hire a bunch of people to watch their horses/hold their torches/fill out the front line, well then, good - there are a couple places the PCs pretty much need an army. Nevertheless, the post is useful because it puts the practical experience of someone who has done this sort of thing before in one place with reasons and explanation.

Also, it's nice to know that his experience syncs pretty well with what I've been thinking.

Generally, for every gold piece worth of treasure written into the original module, I will substitute $5 worth of GURPS treasure. If this is not in a hoard of some sort (e.g. carried by monsters), then it will probably mostly remain coin. So, for example, one monster carries 1-6 sp, 1-6 ep and 1-6 gp. We'll assume I rolled 4 for each, which would translate into 6.25 gp. This means he'll carry $31, or four silver and fifteen copper, using the default values from DF 2. It could be any coin that adds up to $31.

For gems, I'll convert those by rolling randomly on the random gem creation tables in Dungeon Fantasy 8 - Treasure Tables - which, seriously, if you want to run (or even just play) DF, you should get. It's probably the most awesome book in the series. In fact, I like gems, and will probably be expanding the gem creation table to include a number more, like zircon, that exist in D&D but not the table. #Then I'll do the spot-check above to make sure it equals or exceeds my 1 gp = $5 base.

For hoards, I'll follow the same guideline for establishing total value. However, for specific non-monetary treasure, I'll convert it according to the DF Treasure Tables, picking items and embellishments that best mimic the item as given. For example, in the moathouse there is an ivory box worth 50 gp. After conversion that's a small stone box made of Fine Material (ivory) and Minimal Painting/Enamel. Since I'm feeling pedantic, I'll roll on the Decorative Motif table and find out it has a leopard motif. If I were feeling especially so, I might give it more embellishments and then make it damaged by its treatment, reducing its monetary value back toward the desired amount.

I now have an ivory box about the size of a large book painted with cavorting leopards, worth $250 and weighing 4 lbs, reduced from 6lbs because ivory shouldn't be as heavy as stone.

Once I'm done converting specific items, I'll take half the value in coin, double it, and then roll in the treasure tables (whichever ones I choose, depending on monster, placement, etc.) to pick out various valuable objects to substitute. I'm doubling the halved amount because DF gives 40% for sold items that aren't jewelry or gems, unless someone takes wealth as an advantage, and such objects are invariably harder to carry about than coin anyhow. So instead of a cache of $10,000 in coin, the PCs might come across $5000 in coin and $5000 in assorted fine garments, spices, tea services, books, and dungeon-delving gear.

Then, on top of this I'm going to roll once completely randomly on the treasure tables, just for kicks. Sure, this could end up with a pair of gnolls guarding a giant magical cannon, but if that happens I have an interesting story on my hands. Maybe nobody realizes what it is, because its in several pieces, or these gnolls managed to avoid having it taken from them by the giants next door by threatening to use it, being comfortably affluent roguish adventurers who found it and are waiting for a buyer to get back to them. (By the way, would the PCs like it? Only 5000 gold pieces and three hirelings and it can be yours!)

In the moathouse, this doesn't stand up very well. For example, one treasure hoard contains the wonderful sum of 2000 copper pieces. That's 10gp, for those playing along at home. That's just going to be kept as 2000 copper pieces, or $2000 in GURPS terms. (It's thematically appropriate, too.)