In Playing at the World, section 2.5.2, Draco Horribilis, Jon Peterson goes into some discussion of the use of dragons in fantasy literatures, and how they are tied to the theme of greed, how they are tied to something that is human and greedy within us, giving examples from the Hobbit and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Eustace defeats a dragon, claims its hoard, and by so doing becomes the dragon himself.
He then remarks that "[a]ny such sense of the negative consequences of greed is entirely absent from Dungeons & Dragons."
Now, the topic of this thread is to come up with some ways in which greed could have negative consequences in the game without destroying its premise (i.e. adventuring in dungeon, gaining experience in part through the acquisition of treasure, and the like).
Here are the rules. Your propositions...
(1) Should not modify the baseline or themes of the Dungeons & Dragons game. It's a game about exploration, adventurers go in dungeon and wilderness, acquire treasure and experience. That shouldn't be modified.
(2) Should not devolve into railroads for players or assholish moves on your part. I know this is up to great interpretation, but basically that means that the propositions of consequences for greed in the game shouldn't be fucked up bait-and-switches, getting out of the game's natural development to fuck the players over, and the like. It's up to interpretation. This means your proposition(s) should provide opportunities for more adventure and more player agency over the course of the campaign. Not less.
What would you do to reintroduce the themes of greed and its negative consequences in your D&D game?
I'm all ears.
Quote from: Benoist;579178In Playing at the World, section 2.5.2, Draco Horribilis, Jon Peterson goes into some discussion of the use of dragons in fantasy literatures, and how they are tied to the theme of greed,
What would you do to reintroduce the themes of greed and its negative consequences in your D&D game?
I'm all ears.
I don't think you can if you retain the Xp model. the Gold gathered = xp paradigm is one that was quickly eroded in later RPGs to become Monsters defeated or goals obtained = XP.
Pundit suggested in a post a couple of years back that only gold spent garnered you XP so encourging both the desire to adventure, to get more gold to spend and trying to mimic the pulps in that no matter how much gold conan, the Grey Mouser et al find they are always broke....
This seems to defeat the hoarding of gold but of course does nothing to sait the desire to acquire it.
Personally I found the guilt-free greed in D&D quite liberating. That's not to say it would apply in other circumstances, only an insect would take the one situation and use it as an indicator of one's personal values.
Anyway, yes, monsters have relatives. Why don't people steal from the Mafia, since they aren't likely to call the police? Because "bad clams" Tony and the after midnight crew will pay you a visit. Except in this case its the dragon's seventy three ton armour plated aerial mate firebombing your entire city while you're off at the beach. And this one you won't catch napping. Lets hope the families of the bereaved aren't too insistent in their demands for compensation from the hoard...
Quote from: jibbajibba;579182I don't think you can if you retain the Xp model.
Yes, that's kind of the conundrum of the thread. The premise here is that you retain the XP model. 1 XP = 1 GP. Gaining wealth IS and should remain a factor of motivation for player characters. Now that means you'd have to have something of a balancing act, that plays both on the premise of the game AND also includes some negative consequences to greed which would enhance BOTH at the game table somehow.
Is that even possible? And if it is, how would you do it? That's basically the question of the OP.
Already a bit OT, but what are players going to do with a Dragon Hoard? In D&D, the Dragon Hoard is one of the best ways to fund a castle, temple, tower, etc. In other words, the death of the dragon and the placing of the wealth into "normal" society fits in perfectly with the source material.
The Hobbit is basically a retelling of Beowulf. In Beowulf the dragon as a symbol of unreasoning greed is the antithesis of Norse society where generosity is a virtue and one of the main social ties. Don't want to derail this too much with getting into the literary analysis of Beowulf or Tolkien, but if the character's are spending the money and making their realms better, it's "working as intended", they've returned a measure of balance to the world.
Now what if they don't? What if they hoard, become obsessed with cataloging every last gold piece and the only thing they buy with the hoard is defenses for the rest of it? Well, in the campaign world, they, in essence become the new Dragon, and others will come looking for them, theft attempts, wars, etc.
The only thing worse then not getting a Dragon's Hoard, is getting a Dragon's Hoard.
Quote from: Benoist;579185Yes, that's kind of the conundrum of the thread. The premise here is that you retain the XP model. 1 XP = 1 GP. Gaining wealth IS and should remain a factor of motivation for player characters. Now that means you'd have to have something of a balancing act, that plays both on the premise of the game AND also includes some negative consequences to greed which would enhance BOTH at the game table somehow.
Is that even possible? And if it is, how would you do it? That's basically the question of the OP.
I know :)
I am basically saying you can't. The only way is to change how you gather XP.
You can prevent its hoarding after all training in 1e is really just a gold sink to prevent PCs hanging up their sword and shields and living the good life. There are numerous other methodolgies.
Why do you want to keep the 1gp = 1xp ?
Why is that better than the myriad of other xp paradigms that exist?
Quote from: CRKrueger;579187The Hobbit is basically a retelling of Beowulf. In Beowulf the dragon as a symbol of unreasoning greed is the antithesis of Norse society where generosity is a virtue and one of the main social ties. Don't want to derail this too much with getting into the literary analysis of Beowulf or Tolkien, but if the character's are spending the money and making their realms better, it's "working as intended", they've returned a measure of balance to the world.
That's a good point. What if the consequences of greed were derived from what you do with your wealth, or the manner or motivations, the purpose for which you get the treasure in the first place and then what you DO with it, rather than whether or not you acquire it in the first place?
Quote from: CRKrueger;579187Already a bit OT, but what are players going to do with a Dragon Hoard? In D&D, the Dragon Hoard is one of the best ways to fund a castle, temple, tower, etc. In other words, the death of the dragon and the placing of the wealth into "normal" society fits in perfectly with the source material.
The Hobbit is basically a retelling of Beowulf. In Beowulf the dragon as a symbol of unreasoning greed is the antithesis of Norse society where generosity is a virtue and one of the main social ties. Don't want to derail this too much with getting into the literary analysis of Beowulf or Tolkien, but if the character's are spending the money and making their realms better, it's "working as intended", they've returned a measure of balance to the world.
Now what if they don't? What if they hoard, become obsessed with cataloging every last gold piece and the only thing they buy with the hoard is defenses for the rest of it? Well, in the campaign world, they, in essence become the new Dragon, and others will come looking for them, theft attempts, wars, etc.
The only thing worse then not getting a Dragon's Hoard, is getting a Dragon's Hoard.
But in D&D obtaining the hoarde and getting it home is what you get XP for after that you can give it away, piss it away or melt it down to make statues of yourself to line the roads from Kingsport to the Waterdeep. Training notwithstanding of course.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579189Why do you want to keep the 1gp = 1xp ?
Why is that better than the myriad of other xp paradigms that exist?
Because it's D&D to me. The subject of this thread is emphatically not to modify the baseline of the D&D game or create a different game and so on. It's to work with the game as it is and come up with something that works with the framework already in place.
To be crystal clear, I don't want this to devolve into a debate about this existing rules, how they function in the original game and whatnot. That's not the topic. The topic is to work with this framework. If you basically can't do it, or don't think it's possible to achieve, that's a good answer to me. Just don't turn this into a edition debate and the like. That won't do.
At the level of the indivudual character or campaign there are always ways to spin it. Indiana Jones is the ultimate treasure hunter, but he's not motivated by greed.
But if you want to retain the generic, broad umbrella premise of plundering dungeons as a goal in itself I don't think you can square the circle. The willingness to kill or be killed in search of fabulous riches is a pretty extreme form of greed.
Quote from: Benoist;579185Yes, that's kind of the conundrum of the thread. The premise here is that you retain the XP model. 1 XP = 1 GP. Gaining wealth IS and should remain a factor of motivation for player characters. Now that means you'd have to have something of a balancing act, that plays both on the premise of the game AND also includes some negative consequences to greed which would enhance BOTH at the game table somehow.
Is that even possible? And if it is, how would you do it? That's basically the question of the OP.
You could build sins and virtues into a campaign, wherein morality is expressed in the land itself. Characters can undergo quests, have virtue/sin based encounters and then have some mystical consequence. For example, you could have monsters and encounters spawned each time someone increases in level, and that acting is a sort of test.
I haven't read the original article, but there is a very good, old literary dragon story that's worth considering - Beowulf. There, the dragon was an "anti-king" or anti-Beowulf. Whereas Beowulf demonstrated virtues, the dragon was the antithesis of them.
A good king cares and lives for his people, is a "giver of rings" to his comitatus, does not act with impulsive violence and the like. But earthly kingdoms are not perfect - even the act of a lowly servant or slave can set chaos into motion.
Quote from: CRKrueger;579187Now what if they don't? What if they hoard, become obsessed with cataloging every last gold piece and the only thing they buy with the hoard is defenses for the rest of it? Well, in the campaign world, they, in essence become the new Dragon, and others will come looking for them, theft attempts, wars, etc.
The only thing worse then not getting a Dragon's Hoard, is getting a Dragon's Hoard.
Hm. Food for thought too.
You could always do a Pirates of the Carribbean thing, the more evil the monster the more tainted the treasure, stained with the blood of its victims.
Quote from: Lynn;579197You could build sins and virtues into a campaign, wherein morality is expressed in the land itself. Characters can undergo quests, have virtue/sin based encounters and then have some mystical consequence. For example, you could have monsters and encounters spawned each time someone increases in level, and that acting is a sort of test.
I haven't read the original article, but there is a very good, old literary dragon story that's worth considering - Beowulf. There, the dragon was an "anti-king" or anti-Beowulf. Whereas Beowulf demonstrated virtues, the dragon was the antithesis of them.
A good king cares and lives for his people, is a "giver of rings" to his comitatus, does not act with impulsive violence and the like. But earthly kingdoms are not perfect - even the act of a lowly servant or slave can set chaos into motion.
Yes. *nod* I'm following you on that. So you could have some kinds of tests of virtue throughout the campaign, as well as natural consequences of the use of wealth after it's acquired, whether you are a good lord of men and give back to the land, or become the dragon yourself, in fact.
Quote from: The Traveller;579200You could always do a Pirates of the Carribbean thing, the more evil the monster the more tainted the treasure, stained with the blood of its victims.
So some kind of magic item thing? Like the hoarder's soul and psyche somehow taint their treasures and pass on to their next owners in some way, shape or form?
Seems relatively straight-forward. The biggest treasures would be guarded by the toughest monsters and deadliest traps - in other words, they have the biggest risk associated with them. Want to push your luck getting the biggest treasure? Go for it! You'll risk death, imprisonment, (sadly there's no maiming in D&D that I'm aware of)...undeath, perhaps, insanity?
The consequences are already built in. The bigger issue is enforcing them in a campaign scenario where the loss of a character is seen as detrimental to the campaign.
Quote from: Benoist;579178What would you do to reintroduce the themes of greed and its negative consequences in your D&D game?
This has already been done with 3.x/
Pathfinder by decoupling treasure from XP. Introducing negative consequences of greed can be done easily into settings using those systems.
Case in Point: You can use the
Niebelungenlind as a scenario in 3.x/Pathfinder with moral of the story intact while it would feel shoe-horned in and contradictory using previous versions of the game system.
I think the simplist way, if you want to introduce this, is have a god of charity who punishes wealthy individuals (ie PCs) who spend most of their money on themselves. This is just the first idea that popped into my head but establishing it as part of the setting does seem the best way to me.
Quote from: Benoist;579202So some kind of magic item thing? Like the hoarder's soul and psyche somehow taint their treasures and pass on to their next owners in some way, shape or form?
Well you don't want to actively discourage players from seeking out evil creatures, so maybe just spring it on them from time to time - the Abbot of a burning monastery that laid a bane on the sacred treasures of his order as the Warlock Prince's forces stormed it, merged into the pile. And only the now-deceased Prince's wicked stepmother knows how to break the curse, evil begetting evil.
Its a fine line between leavening greed and turning the whole thing into a morality tale unless that's what you're aiming for, though. D&D is one of those games with unambiguous evil so the initial premise is a bit wobbly itself.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;579208I think the simplist way, if you want to introduce this, is have a god of charity who punishes wealthy individuals (ie PCs) who spend most of their money on themselves. This is just the first idea that popped into my head but establishing it as part of the setting does seem the best way to me.
If you did that though (systemicaly throughout the whole game world) you would change the entire dynamic of the society. There would be no poverty, no muddy peasants, the costs of all goods and services would be much higher because everyone would be much richer.
It would be like real communism :)
Quote from: Benoist;579178He then remarks that "[a]ny such sense of the negative consequences of greed is entirely absent from Dungeons & Dragons."
No.
The secret endgame of D&D is that the characters become obsessed with their stash and hoard their booty in the hardest place for dragons to raze -dungeons, employing beasts and traps (cheaper than an army) to guard it. PCs become what once they fought. If they are MUs -they live the playboy lifestyle in their pocket dimensions until the next batch of bravos usurpt them. Greed begets paranoia.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579211If you did that though (systemicaly throughout the whole game world) you would change the entire dynamic of the society. There would be no poverty, no muddy peasants, the costs of all goods and services would be much higher because everyone would be much richer.
It would be like real communism :)
That depends. People who do decide to horde wealth might have to ally with evil beings to protect their riches. I am sure there is a way around the problem. Any major setting feature like this will domino.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;579215That depends. People who do decide to horde wealth might have to ally with evil beings to protect their riches. I am sure there is a way around the problem. Any major setting feature like this will domino.
But then anyone richer than the norm is by definition evil so its actually a pillar of faith to storm their castles with pitchforks and burn everyone.....
You can imagine the Paladin riding into town and killing random strangers for flaunting too much bling....
Kind of developing into a Dying Earth culture
Quote from: jibbajibba;579191But in D&D obtaining the hoarde and getting it home is what you get XP
That's pretty much tangential to the discussion. People questing for gold isn't the problem, it's what they do with it. The Dragon wasn't the epitome of Greed for possessing the hoard, it's the epitome of Greed for Hoarding the hoard.
Quote from: Soylent Green;579194The willingness to kill or be killed in search of fabulous riches is a pretty extreme form of greed.
Actually no, willing to kill or be killed in any endeavor is a sign that it's an endeavor that can be life-altering. Even today, some humans play out the "kill or be killed" scenario daily just in putting food on the table. It's the "knowing a thief stole a single cup out of 350,000 metric tons of treasure, and putting an entire city to the flame because of it" which is the extreme form of greed.
Quote from: CRKrueger;579223Actually no, willing to kill or be killed in any endeavor is a sign that it's an endeavor that can be life-altering. Even today, some humans play out the "kill or be killed" scenario daily just in putting food on the table. It's the "knowing a thief stole a single cup out of 350,000 metric tons of treasure, and putting an entire city to the flame because of it" which is the extreme form of greed.
I stick with my statement. I did stress kill or be killed for fabulous treasure; you don't need a fabulous treasure to simply put food on the table. Also the basic D&D campaign is predicated on the assumption that you won't just do this once, but that after you clear one dungeon you will go off and clear another (or engage is some other similar risky but lucrative enterprise), keep leveling up and keep increasing the stakes.
Quote from: Soylent Green;579228I stick with my statement. I did stress kill or be killed for fabulous treasure; you don't need a fabulous treasure to simply put food on the table. Also the basic D&D campaign is predicated on the assumption that you won't just do this once, but that after you clear one dungeon you will go off and clear another (or engage is some other similar risky but lucrative enterprise), keep leveling up and keep increasing the stakes.
and how it goes from there depends on the GM and world. Will it simply be greater and greater Dragonslaying until Thor is on the hitlist, or will the characters stop dungeoneering once they have a kingdom to run and the throneroom has become a prison?
Neverending DungeonCrawls is a trope more then a structure for a long-term campaign IME.
I take you point and amend my remark so that it extends only up to mid-levels. That is still a lot of risking you life for money. I figure a few dangerous jobs until you've saved enough to open your own tavern, I can just about get that. Doing tons dangerous jobs until you can afford your own kingdom - that is greedy!
Hierocentric exchange. Move from a loot based system to a reward based system. The good stuff comes from patrons and the cursed stuff comes from hoards. Don't hand out significant rewards for looting the bodies and remember that to find the 1000gp in the dragon's hoard you have to sort through the 1000000 cp. Make them haul it, make it hard, have it make them a target for every footpad and desperate renegade if they've got a massive fortune in a treasure caravan make them pay for guards or meet an army of thousands who think, perhaps, it belongs to them since it was stollen from their ancestors.
The possibilities are endless. To look past Beowulf and on to Fafnir and the accursed rhinegold for which entire families were murdered.
It's in the handling of the thing. But then, long ago, I had my PCs run into a young dragon with a hoard of furs it had stollen from trappers. Thousands and thousands of smelly uncured furs... it was sure they were worth a great fortune...
Think Renaissance and Early Modern rather than Dark Ages.
The reward for clearing out pirates? The lieutenancy of the Five Ports, an office worth 10,000 gp if it was purchased from the king - the lieutenancy also includes control of three royal galleys. Defeat a dangeous wizard? A professor's chair at the College of Wizardry worth 50,000 gp, and the option to privately tutor students on the side. Holding the pass against the frost giants? The castle of Scarrock, worth 100,000 gp, plus a company of guards.
Of course, with all of these rewards comes responsibilities.
Quote from: Benoist;579178(1) Should not modify the baseline or themes of the Dungeons & Dragons game. It's a game about exploration, adventurers go in dungeon and wilderness, acquire treasure and experience. That shouldn't be modified.
Keeping with the spirit what was said earlier of the Beowulf myth, you add the following rules.
1) You gain X XP for each Y gold you spend.
2) Per Month/Year you gain X XP for every Y Gold you posses. However if you lose the gold you lose all the XP the it conferred. If you lose a lesser amount then you lose that percentage of your XP. Even if recovered you won't gain it back until time have passed.
This make the greed choice explicit in the mechanics. You either spend generously or you keep it all and hoard it.
The in-game explanation that having gold effects one's wyrd or karma on a spiritual level. Having large amount of gold equate into greater power for an individual.
This seems to me the least complicated and most D&Dish way of emulating the choice of gold in the Beowulf myth.
Quote from: CRKrueger;579187The Hobbit is basically a retelling of Beowulf. In Beowulf the dragon as a symbol of unreasoning greed is the antithesis of Norse society where generosity is a virtue and one of the main social ties. Don't want to derail this too much with getting into the literary analysis of Beowulf or Tolkien, but if the character's are spending the money and making their realms better, it's "working as intended", they've returned a measure of balance to the
Awesome post!
Suggested mechanics: substitute 1xp/gp earned for 1xp/gp spent, e.g. paying hirelings, donating to temples, giving the thieves' guild a cut, building and mantaining a stronghold, etc.
Hell, even gold spent in adventuring gear might be worth xp. You're keeping smiths and merchants and innkeepers in business and advancing the cause of civilization in D&D's archetypically untamed, monster-haunted world.
Edit: Scooped by estar, above.
Quote from: CRKrueger;579187The Hobbit is basically a retelling of Beowulf. In Beowulf the dragon as a symbol of unreasoning greed is the antithesis of Norse society where generosity is a virtue and one of the main social ties. Don't want to derail this too much with getting into the literary analysis of Beowulf or Tolkien, but if the character's are spending the money and making their realms better, it's "working as intended", they've returned a measure of balance to the world.
I don't want to derail either, but even more than
Beowulf I'd point to the
Volsungs Saga, to an episode which is also told briefly in the
Prose Edda, that of Fafhrd and the dragon hoard. It was the obvious prototype for the story of Eustace in the
Dawn Treader, though this fable ultimately goes back to the dragon of Phaedrus, the joyless miser. The possession of vast wealth, in these allegories, transforms you into a dragon who loses touch with humanity and does nothing but guard treasure. So, being a dragon isn't as awesome as it sounds. The dragon that Eustace meets is miserable, and Eustace is miserable when he becomes a dragon.
So, a really literalist system for the fable would be one where, once you control beyond a certain threshold of treasure, you need to make a save to leave it, anywhere - in a basement, in a bank, in a castle, wherever. If you fail the save, you gain a dragon trait. Dragon traits are physical changes that make you more powerful, but also more you look more reptilian, perhaps give you some control issues. Maybe in extreme cases, the dragon tongue becomes your native language and you forget Common. The difficulty of the save scales against the value of gold in the hoard. If you gain a certain number of dragon traits, you risk becoming an NPC who can do nothing but guard the treasure. Every time you go back to your hoard, to deposit or withdraw, you need to make a save again on departing. The only way to rid yourself of dragon traits would be by doing something altruistic with the treasure, perhaps.
You could also probably design a campaign feature around a cursed magic item with this property.
Maybe a bit more White Wolf than TSR, here.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;579250Think Renaissance and Early Modern rather than Dark Ages.
The reward for clearing out pirates? The lieutenancy of the Five Ports, an office worth 10,000 gp if it was purchased from the king - the lieutenancy also includes control of three royal galleys. Defeat a dangeous wizard? A professor's chair at the College of Wizardry worth 50,000 gp, and the option to privately tutor students on the side. Holding the pass against the frost giants? The castle of Scarrock, worth 100,000 gp, plus a company of guards.
Of course, with all of these rewards comes responsibilities.
Excellent point.
Also, taking away more gold than you need xp for the next level is 'wasted' effort; you only get one level's worth of xp at a time. A 200,000gp dragon hoard is fairly useless when you only need 12,500 xp for the next level. Sure, it's still money to use in the game world, but you have 187,500 gp to haul away that isn't getting you any more levels. If you can somehow manage a ton per trip, that is 180+ trips (one out, one back), to say nothing of where to safely store it while you are out on the next trip. Best bet is to use some of it to make the dragon's lair your new home. Wasn't there a statement about becoming the new dragon earlier in the thread?
Local rulers will not take kindly to a group having more money than them, either. The 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide details a number of ways to relieve the party of their money, starting on page 90. As mentioned earlier, getting the dragon's treasure is often worse than not getting the dragon's treasure. Best to stuff your pockets and bags with all you can carry and hightail it out of there. Maybe one or two more trips before everyone realizes the dragon is gone. One other option is for the Magic User to carefully study the lair so they can teleport in anytime they want and collapse the entrances. That would take even longer to get the treasure out, however.
I think AD&D took care of 'greed' as an emergent property of other rules on the mechanical side. Building a stronghold and maintaining it was pretty expensive, for one thing. The DMG provided guidelines for a common sense approach to the rest of it. Taxes, tithings, and so on, as the header for the aforementioned section details. And as Black Vulmea states, money=power=responsibilities. Those responsibilities can be fairly onerous and put a serious crimp on adventuring.
There's a real incentive to scrape every copper piece from every dungeon in D&D. Buying magical gear is expensive.
But that doesn't encourage the feel that I want. Remember in the '3 Amigos' how the 'heroes' return the money? When was the last time your adventuring groups did that?
I've talked with my players, and the best thing we've found is to agree that they won't spend a lot of time stripping the bodies of the dead for loose change, and I'd ensure that they're rewarded appropriately.
Thus, the king can give them a magical item for accomplishing the mission, but if they steal every suit of banded mail then they won't get 'real rewards'. Since 'real rewards' are more interesting and heroic, it really works. But the DM has to be willing to reward players for NOT chiseling the frescoes off every dungeon wall.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;579208I think the simplist way, if you want to introduce this, is have a god of charity who punishes wealthy individuals (ie PCs) who spend most of their money on themselves. This is just the first idea that popped into my head but establishing it as part of the setting does seem the best way to me.
It wouldn't even have to be a "God of Charity"; a "God of Commerce" or "God of Merchants" would likely take a dim view of hoarding wealth, rather than spending/investing it.
Greed hasn't been much of a problem in my games in many years. First, I moved to a "spend treasure for XP" system after reading "D&D Option: Orgies, Inc." in The Dragon #10. However, the main thing that keeps every character from being a greedy, hoarding miser is that the character have to live in the world and greedy, miserly adventurers aren't really all that popular in many places.
Quote from: RandallS;579273Greed hasn't been much of a problem in my games in many years. First, I moved to a "spend treasure for XP" system after reading "D&D Option: Orgies, Inc." in The Dragon #10.
I'll tell you what frustrates me sometimes: you probably read the print version of The Dragon #10. Sometimes being in the second generation of gamers only serves to remind me of the cool stuff I
juuuuust missed. :)
Stellar. Great suggestions folks. Keep it coming.
Quote from: StormBringer;579274I'll tell you what frustrates me sometimes: you probably read the print version of The Dragon #10. Sometimes being in the second generation of gamers only serves to remind me of the cool stuff I juuuuust missed. :)
Yes, I have the print version -- I bought it the month it came out. It was the first issue I was actually able to get as it came out. Any more, however, I usually look at my PDFs from CD-ROM collection of the magazine. It's easier to get at the issue I want that to dig through a couple of hundred issues.
What edition are we using? If 2e, this is readily doable because of the various alternative methods to XP, including optional ones like general puzzle solving, quality role playing or humor, and other GM judgment calls.
Then all you need to do is add carrot & stick:
Carrots - NPC blessings, blessed treasure, avoidance of vice coercive quests, good reputation which attracts: vice negative attention (plot hooks!) and/or helpful virtuous company, etc.
Stick - NPC curses, cursed treasure, quests of virtue vying for same time, bad reputation which attracts: virtuous negative attention and/or dangerous vice company, etc.
The premise is easy to say, but perhaps hard to implement. Let's make this more practical. Give us a concrete example and we'll drop seeds to reward virtue and punish vice, and then let you decide which direction you find best.
Quote from: estar;579253Keeping with the spirit what was said earlier of the Beowulf myth, you add the following rules.
1) You gain X XP for each Y gold you spend.
2) Per Month/Year you gain X XP for every Y Gold you posses. However if you lose the gold you lose all the XP the it conferred. If you lose a lesser amount then you lose that percentage of your XP. Even if recovered you won't gain it back until time have passed.
This make the greed choice explicit in the mechanics. You either spend generously or you keep it all and hoard it.
The in-game explanation that having gold effects one's wyrd or karma on a spiritual level. Having large amount of gold equate into greater power for an individual.
This seems to me the least complicated and most D&Dish way of emulating the choice of gold in the Beowulf myth.
Damn, was thinking the same thing but you beat me to it!
One thing that was really different about my all-time favorite D&D campaign was that the DM upped the moral ante on the players. We soon found ourselves responsible for a small duchy and its people, much sooner than we expected. Then a kingdom... then an empire. And there were Dark Forces in the world which threatened to destroy all of it. We spent several dragon hordes worth of treasure protecting our people, and our allies; shoring up our border defenses, raising local militias, espionage (magical and conventional), diplomacy... and of course, we fought wars. Those things are expensive! We had more important things to spend money on than ourselves.
I'm not saying we never spent any of the "national treasury" on our own magic items. Once we reached a certain level, our characters became the kingdom's best defense, so equipping them properly was a priority... just not the only priority.
Of course this approach only works if you have characters, and players(!) who give a damn about the game-world. In my experience, some players will welcome this type of gaming, while others will fight it tooth and nail.
Quote from: RandallS;579276Yes, I have the print version -- I bought it the month it came out. It was the first issue I was actually able to get as it came out. Any more, however, I usually look at my PDFs from CD-ROM collection of the magazine. It's easier to get at the issue I want that to dig through a couple of hundred issues.
That's how I have them all. Sometimes I thought they should have done an expansion to cover later issues, but looking back, issue #250 is probably a good place to end it. For my purposes, it only had to go to issue 152, that is about the end of my self-defined 'Vintage Games' period.
There's one thing in many original D&D dungeons that handled this pretty well: the trick, with treasure as bait. You have a bunch of easily-transportable treasure, and one treasure that looks extremely valuable. Taking the bulk of the treasure has no special risk and may be quite a haul. Going for the tempting treasure triggers something bad. The quintessential example is "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Eye_of_the_Little_Yellow_God)"; stealing the eye of the idol triggers a punishment. More fantastic versions have the eye carry an actual curse, or (in the old Plop! comic,) the eye of the idol physically supports the temple.
I've always assumed that the idol on the 1e PHB is one of *those* idols. There's a whole team ransacking that temple, but they just have to have those huge gems, don't they?
Speaking of which, one of the basic assumptions of the game is that you have hirelings. The more treasure you get, the more people you can hire. If you secure your own ship, you need sailors. If you maintain a household for your home base, you need servants to keep the place up. Build a keep, you need even more servants. Keeping a hand in court or city politics requires a good reputation, which can depend on hiring even more and fancier servants. A simple ratio of wealth spent on hirelings to wealth on hand could be used to predict the chance of reputation rising and falling, or in extreme cases triggering some kind of magical retribution. (Hmm, I may have to develop some mechanics for this in a blog post...)
I think there's also something worth saying about what kinds of treasure sources are assumed in the rules. You have unguarded, hidden/trapped treasures, which no one currently claims; you have treasure hoarded by mindless beasts or undead; and you have treasure stolen by bandits, brigands, pirates, rampaging humanoids. It's when the players deviate from those treasure sources, to rob the Keep on the Borderlands instead of the Caves of Chaos, for example, that you have a greed problem...
Quote from: Benoist;579201Yes. *nod* I'm following you on that. So you could have some kinds of tests of virtue throughout the campaign, as well as natural consequences of the use of wealth after it's acquired, whether you are a good lord of men and give back to the land, or become the dragon yourself, in fact.
Yes, indeed. Ive been exploring allegory and duality in my campaign, which takes place in an alternate medieval Europe. The characters travel back in time to Arthurian Wales, where the highest nobles (highest leveled) lands are plagued by various monsters. In fact, those monsters are the evil expressions of those nobles. The players slay those monsters, in turn freeing the nobles from their basest desires, allowing them to grow as rulers and in turn assist the players on their greater quest.
The players understood the allegorical nature of the realm, and faced the first of the tests of the deadly sins - but they blew it with "wrath", in which they met the proverbial knight at the bridge.
Now one of the player's characters is haunted by the appearance of the helmet of the knight he fought unjustly and in anger, which appears each morning, closer and closer to him.
What the players may later discover is that by freeing so many lands of their nemesis beasts, the result is that the "tales" they altered became stitched into the fabric of their own world.
Quote from: Soylent Green;579228I stick with my statement. I did stress kill or be killed for fabulous treasure; you don't need a fabulous treasure to simply put food on the table. Also the basic D&D campaign is predicated on the assumption that you won't just do this once, but that after you clear one dungeon you will go off and clear another (or engage is some other similar risky but lucrative enterprise), keep leveling up and keep increasing the stakes.
That's not greed, that's just entrepreneurial spirit. Greed is what you do with the money later.
Like many people, you seem to be mistaking "Capitalism" for greed.
RPGPundit
Greed is good. It motivates adventurers to explore dangerous places.
The negative consequences of that greed happen all the time when adventurers push themselves too far, or mess with things they cannot hope to overcome in the name of obtaining more treasure.
" Its a dragon. Big deal, means its probably got good loot."
" Being outnumbered isn't so bad. This tribe looks pretty rich."
" I know we are lost and out of rations , but theres something shiny reflecting light down that hole."
" I seriously doubt there is more than one wight in this place."
" Unholy relics? Who the F cares how much are they worth?"
" Guys, do you know what awesome stuff we can make out of the tarrasque's hide?"
A lot of the talk here has focused on XP for GP, but in my experience, the primary greed is for items rather than coins. Items along with coins are a key game reward that is coded in.
If I wanted a game that was less materialistic, I would want to cut out that cycle. As it stands, if I as DM make an adventure where there's no gold or items reward, the players will be angry. If something happens such that the players lose or are asked to give up their items, then that's a dick move. By contrast, if these things were to happen in some other fantasy games - like Mouse Guard or Fantasy Hero - the players wouldn't blink an eye.
The most direct approach to me would be to remove treasure as a standard reward, and remove magic items entirely. This would change the dynamic of the game a lot, but actually now that I say that, I think it would be interesting to try. I'd also emphasize the usefulness of social rewards even though some items are clearly useful.
Quote from: jhkim;579963A lot of the talk here has focused on XP for GP, but in my experience, the primary greed is for items rather than coins. Items along with coins are a key game reward that is coded in.
If I wanted a game that was less materialistic, I would want to cut out that cycle. As it stands, if I as DM make an adventure where there's no gold or items reward, the players will be angry. If something happens such that the players lose or are asked to give up their items, then that's a dick move. By contrast, if these things were to happen in some other fantasy games - like Mouse Guard or Fantasy Hero - the players wouldn't blink an eye.
The most direct approach to me would be to remove treasure as a standard reward, and remove magic items entirely. This would change the dynamic of the game a lot, but actually now that I say that, I think it would be interesting to try. I'd also emphasize the usefulness of social rewards even though some items are clearly useful.
Our games have always been Magic lite. Because we don't want our characters to become frames for their kit.
However the D&D engine doesn't support this well. A 15th level fighter with a +2 sword and a suit of regular Chain mail simply can not take on level appropriate challenges so they end up mopping up weaker stuff they can hit and as such their XP reward drops and they basically get stuck. Nothing wrong with that from a roleplay perspective but its not how most people expect D&D to play.
You can fix some of it. We removed the need for a lot of creatures to be hit by only magic weapons replacing instead with Cold Iron or Silver but we also had to revise the HP system moving towards something close to 4e, simply because a fighter with AC of 4 will take a lot of hits fighting a 10 HD Ettin that does 2d10 damage or whatever. We also made better use of Parrying and other variant combat options.
I see this as a relatively easy fix. Greed begets greed. The PCs aren't the only people in the world with levels, crafty plans and Teleport spells who want to steal money for a living. Once the players start slinging around hundreds (if not thousands) of GP, it will attract unwanted attention...likely from other intrepid adventurers that want to raid someone else's treasury for their own gain.
Or, you could simply turn the idea of the Monty Haul game entirely on its ear, get creative and give players other forms of rewards asides accumulating a bunch of coins.
I desperately hate the "loot" model engendered by a lot of RPGs. Not my cup of tea.
If you wanted to keep the 1 GP/XP model, simply shift it from GP taken to GP eligible to be taken.
I typically do this sort of thing with food and water, for example. I've never made my players actually stop and refill their rations, and unless they have been in a desert (or some other story-driven place where it would matter) I don't even require that they count them. That they HAD them in the first place matters, not the upkeep.
Same with the GP. It matters that they were able to loot them, not that they actually brought the wheelbarrow and carted them out.
Quote from: mcbobbo;580012If you wanted to keep the 1 GP/XP model, simply shift it from GP taken to GP eligible to be taken.
It's not always 1gp=1xp. The 'exchange rate' depends on how difficult the treasure was to gain. A 15th level Fighter that kills a Kobold who had a 100,000gp gem (wildly improbable, but possible) doesn't get 100,000xp. Something like 1,000xp would be appropriate. (DMG 1st Edition, pg 85, "Experience value of treasure taken")
Of course, no matter what the dice say, a Kobold shouldn't have a 100,000gp gem, so that is just one example. Other less extreme situations come up with more frequency. The overall point being, xp for gp is intended to be scalable.
Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;580004I see this as a relatively easy fix. Greed begets greed. The PCs aren't the only people in the world with levels, crafty plans and Teleport spells who want to steal money for a living. Once the players start slinging around hundreds (if not thousands) of GP, it will attract unwanted attention...likely from other intrepid adventurers that want to raid someone else's treasury for their own gain.
Or, you could simply turn the idea of the Monty Haul game entirely on its ear, get creative and give players other forms of rewards asides accumulating a bunch of coins.
I desperately hate the "loot" model engendered by a lot of RPGs. Not my cup of tea.
but slinging round money is not greed its hoarding money that is greed. so if the players keep all their wealth in a secret tomb are they punished?
Quote from: jibbajibba;580033but slinging round money is not greed its hoarding money that is greed. so if the players keep all their wealth in a secret tomb are they punished?
If monsters can have their hoards raided, so should players' wealth. And all of the underhanded trickery PCs use, NPCs and monsters should use as well to get to that hoard. In fact, it's one of the main precepts of AD&D at high levels. Hirelings, retainers and fortifications are there to protect your wealth and lord over your little hex of land.
That's my thought on the matter, at least.
Quote from: jhkimThe most direct approach to me would be to remove treasure as a standard reward, and remove magic items entirely. This would change the dynamic of the game a lot, but actually now that I say that, I think it would be interesting to try. I'd also emphasize the usefulness of social rewards even though some items are clearly useful.
Quote from: jibbajibba;579966The D&D engine doesn't support this well. A 15th level fighter with a +2 sword and a suit of regular Chain mail simply can not take on level appropriate challenges so they end up mopping up weaker stuff they can hit and as such their XP reward drops and they basically get stuck. Nothing wrong with that from a roleplay perspective but its not how most people expect D&D to play.
Well, yes, I understand that this isn't how most people would expect to play - and I'd certainly treat this as a variant rather than straight D&D. Still, problems at 15th level seem minor to me. I could do something like the E6 option, or just reset campaigns that long. I've never been in a D&D campaign from 1st to 15th before, so I wouldn't feel the lack.
In this option, I would emphasize explicit social rewards (allies, patrons, resources, positions, etc.) instead of material items/treasure.