Thursday, 26 April 2012
Sources of Treasure
Why are dungeons filled with treasure? Aside from enticing brave (or foolish) adventurers to come visit them and serving as an important game-play element in our hobby, treasure can and should, in my opinion, be more.
In my dungeons, treasure is rarely just sitting in the corner of a room. I tend to avoid using treasure chests at all. I just don't think most monsters would be keeping treasure around like their finest set of china, waiting for important visitors to show it off to. Most of the treasure I dole out is found more naturally - on the bodies of fallen explorers.
Unless you are designing a tomb or crypt in which the occupant's wealth was buried with them, the majority of a dungeon's treasure would not be secreted away in sarcophagi and medieval bank vaults. Monsters kill people - that's what they do. Then they either take their treasure (if intelligent or greedy), or leave it where it is. Few monsters have the tendencies or intelligence to hoard treasure. It is more likely that some adventurer made his way into the place in search of rumored treasure and was killed by the local monsters. That adventurer's belongings become the treasure for the dungeon.
In general, I include one or two main treasure hoards as set pieces and themes for my dungeon, and as a hook for the players. Otherwise, the rest of the treasure is found on skeletons and corpses in the form of old armour, jewelry, coins - and maybe even magic items the unlucky adventurer might have been carrying when he died.
Labels:
mechanics,
worldbuilding
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