On Awarding Treasure

loot
treasure

#1

I wanted to pop this here- I just wrote a blog post about getting the most out of your treasure, enclosed in which is a lot of loot troubleshooting. Since ICRPG is so LOOT-motivated, I feel like this is a topic that a lot of people would be interested in, but the thoughts apply to all sorts of games where the characters improve over time instead of degrading (looking at you, CoC). Tell me what you think!


#2

With the kids at school I am veeery slow to give out treasure. They work hard to earn the basics and then feel far more accomplished when the get even regular stuff


#3

Exactly! You seem to have the “pull it back” down pat, and it’s had good results. What do you think of diversification and the other bullets?


#4

Awesome! I agree with almost all of this, it really reads like it comes from a place of great experience in gaming. But i’m gonna talk about the parts I don’t agree with, just for the sake of discussion :stuck_out_tongue:

So, Mechanical Rewards are Boring
I understand how having this mindset adds a lot of flavor to your loot, since you don’t just add boring “stat” items, but mechanical rewards are not necessarily boring:

Mechanical rewards are as boring as the mechanics they actually use

An example is your +5 sword vs a dragonscale chainmail that grants fire resistance but attracts monster’s attention way easily; or a crossbow that pierces through multiple enemies but requires you to deploy it as a turret, nullifying your movement while using it. You see here this little “but” sneaking in? You want your rewards to not fall into the trap of “being just better/an upgrade”, as much as you can. You WANT players to become mechanicaly powerful, it’s alot of fun, but you also want to provide choises and interesting mechanical manipulation too. This also depends on the mechanics your game uses, the boat crafting knife for example kinda becomes less interesting (but not less cool) if your game already has mechanics for crafting. In short, thinking about risk/reward mechanics is always more fun.

So, Make rewards a result of good play
I sort of agree with this, but in my experience with lots of diverse groups (I GM for the local library’s RPG club/workshop), I’ve found out that having one or two REALLY good players paired with some other less good players makes this mindset of good play reward rub the group in the wrong way. This pairs down with designing encounters in a “puzzle” mindset, which many GMs do, making those “smart” players resolve these encounters easily just because they know the meta or they have more experience playing, which in turn makes the less good players feel useless. I don’t like this, at all, it is something the OSR movement loves but that I’ve found it makes a lot of problems for many different groups. Easy fix? Reward EVERYONE when someone makes a good play, this applies to hero coins, loot, xp, whatever you use. Trust me, as a GM, you don’t always KNOW what good play is, and favouritism can take control of you unconsciously.


#5

Seem to run in line with what I like to do. If everyone has a special item, no one has a special item so I keep them to a minimum as well. I like what you had said about the group identifying themselves by a magic item (like the one ring) and with having one item of power it changes how they deal with situations. Too many and things become clustered or overshadow items that may not prove as useful (leaving some kids feeling bad). I like to give something with versatility when I do hand something out and see the stuff they come up with.

As you mentioned a +5 sword is staggeringly good but…kind of boring? A sword that can be asked questions but often lies or a ember from hell that never goes out but is HARD to conceal is far more fun.

As for theme I’m all about it. We are running the Age of Snakes (sort of) and stuff like a venomous dagger in the shape of a vipers fang or a whip made from snake leather are among things found after a fight. So the whip, for example, isn’t anything special as far as stats but it does draw attention to snake men who may get upset about them using it or catch the eye of a wandering warrior who thinks it strange that a weapon like that was found so far out of Khett. An ill omen perhaps. It just adds to the flavor and can make small encounters easier.


#6

@Nimlouth Thanks for reading through, and taking the time to reply! I appreciate your thorough insight and discussion.

I like your take on mechanical rewards, though I want to say that IMHO mechanically rich rewards are typically made strong by offering a choice, like you pointed out. Adding a “but”, “or”, or “if” makes a decent piece of loot into a great one. However, if you can offer the same richness of choice and tactics WITHOUT making the tradeoffs terribly mechanical, your item will be used more often and more flexibly, which is always a strength. However, choices are one of the main things to consider when offering rewards, and if mechanical rigor is your path to that, more power to you. So I agree with you, but I think it’s more of making rewards provide choices than increasing mechanical rigor. Man, I should add that to the post, because that’s TERRIBLY important too.

As for your notes on good play, I see where you’re coming from, but my answer would be “diversify your portfolio”. It doesn’t have to be solving puzzles, rolling high, finding secret doors, defeating all the enemies, or talking to the merchant’s spouse every time. If you provide a lot of different challenges that provide different rewards, the issue of codifying good play might not be an issue. Perhaps in one particularly taxing part of the dungeon, the challenge is survival.

I also like your solution of rewarding everyone. It’s important to keep the rewards balanced between players, even in a structure where you’re rewarding good play and not where treasure is expected.

Thanks for your reply, it really helped me see a lot more nuance, and your perspective is valuable to me. If anyone else has rebuttals, I’d love to hear them, I appreciate it quite a bit!


#7

I totally agree with this tho! My games are usually VERY mechanical because I design, add, modify and overall use a lot of mechanics/rules, but some other games are less focused on that and more on narrative character growth, which is also totally fine. Just wanted to point out that mechanical loot CAN be cool too! Like most things, a balance between both should be the best path imo.

Also yes about good play moves. I come from a background where those situations happen to me as a GM quite frequently, mostly because I play with a lot of casual or newbie types of players, so I’m constantly trying to manage groups of people that don’t necessarily “click” toghether. BUT, I do generally reward good play with AT LEAST a compliment and usually with something else, always being fair that is. I think a good aproach is to be democratic about these things, so the responsability to decide what is good play is divided between the whole group rather than just landing on the GM.

I’m glad you found my ramblings useful haha

Cheers!

EDIT: wording, typos, etc.