WHAT IN THE HELL, do you do with all of the gold that stacks up in previous editions of D&D?

The worst offender is the beloved Basic D&D (what people now fashionably call the Rules Compendium or whatever).

Simply put: if you followed the rules of (basic) D&D as is, you'd have to collect gold in order to level. If you removed those rules, you really couldn't level without an ad hoc system in place. Back in the day, I was a proponent of removing the "gold = experience" rule. It didn't make "sense" to me, plus I didn't want to be seen as a "Monty hauler" or something.

But after a recent attempt at running (basic) D&D for serious for my son and his friends, I concluded that the rule was for the best. You can't fucking level with so few points. My analysis was something like one character having to personally slay 400 goblins before he would get to 2nd level.

So my solution when I was running Basic D&D last year is "Hey, let's just use the rules as is."

Huh. seems like a no-brainer, right? Well, here's the deal.

The gold piles up. It piles up high. And there's nothing good to spend it on! People would be writing articles about this in Dragon back then-- "Here's 10 ideas to make your players spend all that gold they have stacked up.."

But it was kinda pointless. They get taxed. They get.. robbed. You know, it was like that kinda thing.

In basic D&D I want to see gold as a motivator. Like the players have to get the gold in order to level up. and that works. But it kinda bothers me, that players don't have much more of a motivation than that.

Two side issues:

Issue #1 -- The carryout issue: This is what Eliot Wilen was referring to, I think. In the old days you had to be extra careful to maintain stats on the containers and carrying capacity you brought along on an adventure. I remember to this day that a backpack can hold up to 300 coins worth of stuff. So you'd be equipping your dude with a backpack and a pair of large sacks, and the idea was "I need to fill these sacks up before I leave the dungeon..."

So this acted as a defacto CAP on how much XP you could bring out of an adventure. Many is the adventure we went on that we actually poured out the copper and silver in order to load up on more gold and electrum.

Issue #2 -- The magic Shop: This was considered the height of munchkinism in my day. All that gold stacking up.. you want to spend it, right? Well, the natural thing is to spend it on extremely expensive yet portable items that helped you do your job. Those are called Magic items. Pretty much this is how the current version of D&D works. You get gold, those translate into gear, and gear is part of the 'secret points-based customization system" of D&D. But back then you got items that you found.. you never picked out what items you ended up with. Calithena says "this is a bad idea" but doesn't elaborate. I am willing to concede that in all previous editions of D&D this IS a bad idea, because there was no way to control what gear people were buying and how that character was scaling.  

"Why this was never a problem for you": This only really comes up in campaigns. If you just play an adventure here and there or a module.. it doesn't matter. You stack up gold, mark it down as XP and it's all good.

But on a campaign, it just stacks and stacks and stacks. And there's nothing good to spend it on. magic items are a bad idea. Your'e not allowed to buy a stronghold yet. The equipment list is kinda tiny and not that expensive. (I think Plate Mail is 200 gold or something).

So what do you do with all of that?

The only answer I could come up with for my son is "uhh..just mark it down and ignore it until your'e like 12th level and you can buy your castle."

He was satisfied with that, but it kinda bugged me.

Also, I was forced to come up with a really corny fantasy concept- the "City Bank"

So there's that. My issue is- these rules forced me to come up with corny stuff or left me without good answers. ok. Go ahead.

Well, you could always just say bugger to the existing rules about building your own domain, and start it right off with funnelling your money to that, or to improving the kingdom your character serves.  

You could go the Dungeon Maker route, and let the players use that saved up gold to build their own nasty dungeon.  Have I mentioned I really like the concept for this game?

You could introduce inflation.  Surely with all that goold suddenly flooding the economy, it's gonna fuck things up a bit.  Jack up the prices on stuff.  Make magic weapons more widely available.  This seems to have been the route taken in 3.0 D&D as it is.

I don't award xp for gold. Advancement is kind of slow in my settings. With the gold they get...and if they can hang on to it, the pcs can pretty much do anything they want with it.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Abyssal MawWHAT IN THE HELL, do you do with all of the gold that stacks up in previous editions of D&D?

I ran one of those 20 year D&D/AD&D campaigns. I just removed the level restrictions on buying a stronghold. Actually, I let them buy anything they wanted. Palaces, gold plated armor, patents of Nobility, whatever. Worked a charm. Castles and palaces are expensive, y'know?

Added: Plus, a lot of the treasure was in big non-portable stuff - a tapestry, a rug, even furniture on occasion.

-clash

Quote from: J ArcaneWell, you could always just say bugger to the existing rules about building your own domain, and start it right off with funnelling your money to that, or to improving the kingdom your character serves.  

You could go the Dungeon Maker route, and let the players use that saved up gold to build their own nasty dungeon.  Have I mentioned I really like the concept for this game?

You could introduce inflation.  Surely with all that goold suddenly flooding the economy, it's gonna fuck things up a bit.  Jack up the prices on stuff.  Make magic weapons more widely available.  This seems to have been the route taken in 3.0 D&D as it is.

In my Live 3.5 campaign thats how I do it. I think thats expected. You just let the players pick out the items they want to buy, and they pay for them and thats that.

In my online FG II campaign, I started experiementing with a "Shop" concept. I have a shareable document that I update every week. It's the list of everything available in the ONE shop in town. (actually, I decided there's a second shop in town, but they haven't figured that out yet).

So the list looks something like this:

(6) Cure Light Wounds Potions - 60gp each
(1) Alchemical Silver Dagger - 10 gp.

(...etc)

This controls the items available, but based on whim. So I tried to widen out by saying "The proprieter can commission any item you can afford to pay for, but you have to wait 1 week to get it."

So if a player decides he wants a Masterwork crossbow, and I forgot to put one on the shop list that day, I tell him "please check back again next week".

I got this entire stupid concept from Tom Nook's store in Animal Crossing. Thats exactly how I run it.

But in Basic D&D, there's no good reason to let players buy their own magic, no prices, and I'm not even confident that I could guess what the price should be or how it scales in power. And at the amount of gold that gets heaped up, how do you even set a price? Sooner or later someone will just say "I'm going to buy... Blackrazor!"

And then I'll be screwed!

Hmm.  I can see what you mean.  If there's not enough general guidelines for the economy, you're left to design the game from scratch, unless you want to just rip off the prices from D&D3 ( don't know what kind of gold amounts we're talking about here, so I dunno how well the numbers would cross apply.)

At which point then, I'd go again with the build your own dungeon/kingdom stuff.

Quote from: J ArcaneHmm.  I can see what you mean.  If there's not enough general guidelines for the economy, you're left to design the game from scratch, unless you want to just rip off the prices from D&D3 ( don't know what kind of gold amounts we're talking about here, so I dunno how well the numbers would cross apply.)

At which point then, I'd go again with the build your own dungeon/kingdom stuff.

One of the most useful tables in D&D3.5 is DMG Table 5-1. Thats the one that tells how much equip value people are supposed to have. I watch that thing like a hawk in my other campaigns and I'm not sure how I ever lived without it.

I guess I should just let him buy whatever out of the stronghold section.

1) There was actually a fix for this in the proto-D&D rules designed by Dave Arneson, which for whatever reason Gary did not include in the original game. Namely, there each character had a 'hobby' which was worthless to the character, and you only got XP for the GP you spent on your hobby. (Sample hobbies: drinking, women, gambling, some stupid model in your basement, etc.). So if you got 10,000 gp out of an adventure and bought a new horse and new weapons for 600, banked 400 against future expenses, and blew the last 9000 on whores and ale, you only got XP for that last 9000. And it was gone. IIRC it also took you some time to spend it: this is detailed in First Fantasy Campaign from Judges Guild, the original Blackmoor supplement.

2) I don't like treasure for magic items because it's un-fantastic. From a game balance point of view it can be made to work, and Gary's values in the 1e DMG are not so bad. But aesthetically it repulses me; it turns D&D into a fantasy technothriller, "Tom Clancy's Lord of the Rings".

3) If you're thinking long-term then all that stuff can go into armies, etc. for the character's eventual conquests, rise to power and so on.

4) I had a neutral evil halfling thief character who started his own bank for other characters in the campaign and became a GP multimillionaire. What incredible usury I got away with! No-one ever robbed me either, because I was teen level and head of the thieves guild. Eventually that guy became Lord Mayor and got really fat and I retired him.

5) Something you might want to think about: regulating equipment, for me, in 3.5, does help promote balance, but it also decreases the reward of getting something cool and unique for your daring and cunning in play. I actually like the fact that in earlier versions characters were pretty different in power at the same level due to the magic they got. Sure, it led to some frustration in monty haul games, but it also led to a sense that 'ooh, this is something special' when you got that cool item in a fair one. It sounds like the equipment for level thing is working fine for you, but that's actually one of my biggest beefs with the game (after skills for monsters and the rationalization of spells and a few others).

Well, I've got more to say on this, but I'm out of steam. Enjoy!

Ale and whores!

But seriously ... Conan gets huge treasures on a fairly regular basis.  Next time you see him?  Poor and scraping for cash again, performing some piece of thievery to assure his fortunes for the next fortnight.

If your players want to be like Conan (and who doesn't?) why not just say to them "Y'know all that gold from last week?  Well, you wouldn't be grubbing about in a fuckin' dungeon if you still had that, or anything saleable that you bought with it.  So what did you low-lifes blow it on this time?"

Maybe it'll be ale and whores.  Or maybe they'll invent a pilgrimage trail whose shrines need a huge influx of money to return to their ancient glory.  Or maybe they'll say "Weren't the people of that last town, like, desperately poor?  Glorathank is such a softy ... he probably just kept giving away money until he was penniless again."

There is a chance, at least, that they'll come up with a solution for where the money went that makes them happy.

Quote from: TonyLBAle and whores!

But seriously ... Conan gets huge treasures on a fairly regular basis.  Next time you see him?  Poor and scraping for cash again, performing some piece of thievery to assure his fortunes for the next fortnight.

If your players want to be like Conan (and who doesn't?) why not just say to them "Y'know all that gold from last week?  Well, you wouldn't be grubbing about in a fuckin' dungeon if you still had that, or anything saleable that you bought with it.  So what did you low-lifes blow it on this time?"

Maybe it'll be ale and whores.  Or maybe they'll invent a pilgrimage trail whose shrines need a huge influx of money to return to their ancient glory.  Or maybe they'll say "Weren't the people of that last town, like, desperately poor?  Glorathank is such a softy ... he probably just kept giving away money until he was penniless again."

There is a chance, at least, that they'll come up with a solution for where the money went that makes them happy.

If you do this, I fear that you basicly commit two simultaneously unforgivable GM  sins:

#1) Your'e robbing the PC. All that gold he fought for and then you just telling him it's gone? He'll be pissed. I suspect that simply wiping an earned palpable accomplishment like that out between adventures will hurt campaign play.

#2) Your'e also chopping the legs out of the entire strategic management part of the game. Now, granted- it doesn't even kick in until the player is at a later level.. but he's not going to be happy to be robbed of his eventual nest-egg, even if there's nothing to spend it on.

That said, I kinda like the worthless hobby idea. The whole appeal of that is: the gold actually went to something, and you (as a player) get to budget how much gold you save for strategic gaming, and how much your'e just going to sink as experience. This 'budget decision' part is a crucial factor in putting the strategic long-game back into the players hands.

I have to give credit to Tony for making this example though: it shows how trying to make gaming be more like the literature/comic-book/movie can disconnect with what the best thing is for just the game. And of course some people might even like that idea.

• Bury it and dig it up later.
• Invest in a merchant business, either as owner or as a silent partner and wait for the payoff down the road. Be your own caravan guard.
  
• Use it as capital for an insurance agency to cover other people's risky merchant ventures.
  
• Be a loanshark.
• [Evil characters] Pay a portion of your gold to have the rest of it melted down and spun into gold thread for a new wardrobe. Other adventurers will be drawn from miles around, seeing your shiny new clothes as a blatant dare for them to try to kill you and take your stuff. Kill them to get even more XP and gold. Repeat. To add insult to injury, sit back and watch as they fight your army of gold golems.
• [Good characters] Distribute the wealth among the poor and downtrodden, freeing them from the chains of poverty that help to keep the undeserving aristocracy in power. Come on, what's a hero doing hoarding wealth while people are starving?

My own approach has always been to charge for training.  Only instead of the DMG method, I just say that only gold that's spent on training provides experience points.  And then I make it take 10gp per day.

The hobby idea is great. Throwing out the "You can only get a castle at 9th level" is another good one.

Sympathetic to Reign, give XP for debauchery and other pointless excesses.  Adventurers should, as a hallmark, blow their savings.  That next dungeon could be your last, man, and nothing sucks more than dying with unspent gold.

Well, I can share from the point of view of my experience running a D&D Basic campaign that went from 1st to 36th level, playing it all "by the book".

At "basic" level, the PCs were constantly broke, buying basic necessities.

At "low expert level" (4-8th) the PCs were cycling from moderate wealth to bankruptcy, mostly because at this point they had enough money to actually pay to get their party members "raised" from the dead.

At "high expert level" (9-14th) the PCs were usually not strapped for cash, but they were now at the point where they could buy magic items (which were hard to find in many kingdoms, and were also quite expensive compared to what they cost in 3e), and this drained a lot of their extra cash.  They still had to pay to raise dead party members (though this was happening less often by now), and on top of that if you read the Mystara Gazeteers you'll note that many of the Kingdoms in Mystara have some pretty obscene Taxation rates.  Even Darokin, where they were mostly based out of, which was supposedly a bastion of the Free Market.

At "Companion level" (15th-25th) most of them started buying REALLY expensive magic items, and started building dominions.  These fuckers were expensive to start up (usually costing them 100k+ GP), and then almost always ran at a loss, it COST THEM MONEY to own them. They were never really poor anymore, but they had to keep getting more GP to pay for their various expenses and bling bling they wanted to buy.

Finally, by the time they got to "Master" level (25th-36th) they were filthy rich, but it no longer mattered.  Now they went to kill things and get GP for the pure XP and for the glory.  The enemies they fought had shitloads of gold, yes, but they were also some of the deadliest creatures on Mystara, and it garnered them prestige to go fight them. The game basically stopped being about economics at that point.

So on the whole, I never really had a "my players are too rich" problem, contrary to what the nature of OD&D would seem to gear towards.

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