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.