Theoretical: Weekend w/ No Loot on Monsters

M

mikestrauss

Squire
Creating this topic as a mental exercise. Assume that you are writing an Alliance weekend. The weekend should have all of the normal things that players enjoy: a good plot, lots of monsters to fight (including wave battles and random damage), modules, fish bowls (quick role play encounters for those who haven't heard the term), etc.

What makes this weekend different from many normal weekends, is that not a single monster on it drops treasure. All treasure must be disbursed through other methods. And, since we are following Alliance guidelines, you still need to disburse 6 silver pieces / player level worth of treasure during the weekend (plus one component per player, one rit scroll per 5 players, and at least 2 catalysts).

Here's the mental exercise. What kind of weekend would you write to accomplish this? How would you give out treasure?

-MS
 
Hehe. Quests.

We've written about 4 months worth of "NPC-less" mods in Denver. The concept was to create adventure that required no involvement from NPC camp besides putting some quest items on some NPCs (Undead Eyeballs, stuff PCs were searching for like sheet music). Many required no NPCs at all, they just had to follow hints or search for stuff.

PNPC/Guild Group introduces them (Healer's Guild, Merchant's Guild, Tavernmaster, etc), and rewards the players for each piece or when its complete. Rest was random stuff place all over site (Lost items, leaves from trees in a specific spot, I put out fake berries of Red and Blue color once, but people found REAL red and blue berries, etc). Some of the plots actually required delivering stuff themselves, one was planting tree saplings that may one day become dryads. It's prop heavy, and each has a story behind it.

But for your purposes, just create story line quests. Quickie example:

Right before entering town, Merchant Billy Offstage was attacked by a group of goblins. While he and his guard were fighting them off, they grabbed his family necklace, and broke it. The goblins quickly snatched up the pieces, and took off. Merchant Offstage is offering a reward for all 4 pieces: the chain, and 3 red medallions. If you want to expand on the story, add in how the Necklace belonged to his mother, whom was an Adventurer who did blah, received it from a Knight for valor in X fight back in year YYY. If you want to feed the shady/moral choice stuff, have the pieces be rumored to do A, B, C magical things that the PCs would have a hard time turning in vs keeping.

Bottom line: PCs know to look for a chain, and 3 red medallions off goblins for X coin/reward. If you want it to lead as a mod hook, just have to say they had (Tribe Symbol) on them, and the PCs go off to where the nearest known Tribe is. Yadda yadda.

Keep it simple on concept, expand on story, use props. Make quests.
 
While this is a huge gamble, I'd love to run a real crunchy heavy weekend, with a ton of treasure boxes scatters through out town. Push people to explore new areas of the camps we spend so much time at. It's just hard since coin costs a lot, and putting in out in the forest means you may just be throwing it away. It'd make clean up a nightmare.

But, I think the experience of finding these would be awesome, it'd put people on most a level playing field in regards to treasure. Each box could have a lot of treasure or a little treasure.
 
Alkalin3 said:
While this is a huge gamble, I'd love to run a real crunchy heavy weekend, with a ton of treasure boxes scatters through out town. Push people to explore new areas of the camps we spend so much time at. It's just hard since coin costs a lot, and putting in out in the forest means you may just be throwing it away. It'd make clean up a nightmare.
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Utilize 1-3 people to put these out, number them, and MAP them for reminders. I put all types of stuff out in the woods that isn't close to a specific landmark, and I map everything.

Alkalin3 said:
But, I think the experience of finding these would be awesome, it'd put people on most a level playing field in regards to treasure. Each box could have a lot of treasure or a little treasure.
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You'd think that, and I thought that, but man I was wrong. Several people get up early and take walks, and find nearly everything from components to props to mod cards. Your game could be different with that, though. Honestly I'd expect a lot of butthurt as the people who are walky mc walkersons, "I get up before the butt crack of dawn", and people who can spot a tick on the back of a horse a mile away grab all the loot and the ones who aren't...get nothing.
 
A trap/puzzle mod is always a good one, requiring concerted efforts (rather than just one PC handling it all), with failure leading to an explosive trap ruining all/most of the treasure.
 
I proposed this thought experiment without an answer of my own, but now that I've had time to think about it, this would be my approach.

I'd write the weekend around the idea that a large caravan has just arrived at the edge of town, and lucky for it. A few horses are going lame, many of the wagons are desperately in the need of repair, and there are signs of thievery among those in the caravan. ALL of the treasure for the weekend is on the caravan, whether it be armor and weapons in the crates of the arms dealer, coin spread among the merchants, or a horde of components on the squirrely looking mage that was hired at the last stop to help protect the caravan.

The weekend would be based around that caravan. There would be raids on the caravan by monsters and bandits, requests for help with repairs and restocking, a child that wandered off an got lost, and scoundrels in the caravan itself. Players could engage in negotiation for guarding, repair work, trading, or investigate the thievery. Players could take on mercenary work by some merchants to recover stolen goods, scout out the road ahead, or maybe something a little less legal. Monsters and raiders would have bounties on their heads that players could claim. And, of course, the caravan offers a rare chance for players to actually engage in thievery against a non-warded target that makes perfect sense to have locked and trapped chests.

Treasure acquisition would require much more creativity than your standard "kill the thing swinging the most damage".

Anyone else got an idea that would work with this?

-MS

P.S. - I like some of the brainstorming here. As a reminder, this is an entire weekend, not just a single module, though I assume, with the right resources you could string together a VERY module heavy weekend.
 
I am enamored of field trip events. If someone gave me the imperative to write a weekend in which the monsters do not drop loot, I would send the players on a Fantastical Piratical Adventure through Time and Space, and have their reward be to literally dig up a fat treasure chest full of goodies.

Although I trust my players to not be dillholes about divvying up said fat chest's contents, I would likely be running the event with a benny NPC who would take charge of the treasure distribution for the sake of the people who would fear dishonesty.
 
Evan, any of my characters would go on that trip with you.
 
Question is Evan, how many of the PCs just wait around, or do as little as possible, for their split at the end?
 
In regards to loot splitting: There's a player in Oregon with a Merchant character that does the loot splits. {from what I've observed} He makes a list of the characters actually present and involved in whatever large scale mod/fight/etc, then divides loot up after. Generally by the next game if there are items to sell/auction off.
 
Eadar said:
Question is Evan, how many of the PCs just wait around, or do as little as possible, for their split at the end?
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The ones who paid seventy bucks to sit around with their thumbs up their butts. You can lead a horse to water, and all that.
 
stonegolem said:
The ones who paid seventy bucks to sit around with their thumbs up their butts. You can lead a horse to water, and all that.
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That just doesn't seem very entertaining or like, effort in = stuff out. But if that flys in your neck of the woods, okay :)
 
Eadar said:
That just doesn't seem very entertaining or like, effort in = stuff out. But if that flys in your neck of the woods, okay :)
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Thank you for the feedback.
 
Eadar said:
Question is Evan, how many of the PCs just wait around, or do as little as possible, for their split at the end?
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However many are lazy and/or bad players. You can't stop people from playing in a cheesy, selfish or otherwise undesirable way past the point of what the rules govern. All you can do is encourage better play by whatever means you have available. Like JP said a little bit ago: you learn which players play the game with the right attitude, and you play with those players.

PCs are also capable of addressing these issues; if someone shows up, contributes nothing, and then demands compensation just for being there, the other PCs are certainly allowed to tell them no.
 
Dan Nickname Beshers said:
PCs are also capable of addressing these issues; if someone shows up, contributes nothing, and then demands compensation just for being there, the other PCs are certainly allowed to tell them no.
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This is more sensible. I just know I wouldn't be interested in a game where sitting around doing nothing = share of loot others risked their PCs for, let alone anyone else I larp with to my knowledge.

However, if the intent is to create IG drama over that, it's a great idea.
 
Edit: Deleted this post. I got mad and I posted something mad on the Internet. :(
 
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I think that's basically what Evan meant. If someone pays to play and then "plays" by not participating, they're already demonstrating that they're not really getting it. Internet sardonicism is tricky at best.
 
Evan you're taking this waaaaay too personally.

Edit: Or with what Dan is saying in PMs, I'm totally reading your sarcasam waaaaaay wrong. Either way, totally not dismissing your idea, I'm curious more on how to address those kinds of concerns.
 
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Honestly? I don't address those concerns. I, along with Dan and several others, write for a game that invites and encourages as many people as possible to interact and participate. We send out NPCs specifically to seek out players who aren't "big wheels" and get them involved in weekend plots, chapter arc-plots, and personal plots. We run modules for all skill and character levels. We offer players an in-game newsletter chock full of information. We post on the IG and OOG boards of our chapter forum. And, when all of that fails, we send in screwed-up drool monsters to shout important information while they get beaten up for their silver coins.

If every single one of those things passes over a player's head, we also encourage people to come around to NPC camp and say "hey, I'm bored, entertain me." If even THAT isn't enough... thank you for your donation to our chapter, and I hope you enjoyed your peaceful camping trip.

My point is essentially your point. People who elect to "play" the game without actually putting in the effort deserve exactly as much reward as they earn.
 
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