Back on topic: I would run a freaking AMAZING pirate game with a treasure chest at the end and it would be incredible and people would talk about it for years. Yo ho ho.
Theoretical: Weekend w/ No Loot on Monsters
- Thread starter mikestrauss
- Start date
Durnic
Knight
For the record, I would play the hell out of this kind of game.
I'll let you know when it goes up, Rick. It's only, what, three thousand miles? 
While for a weekend it might get a little more difficult, an "all the loot in one place" sort of structure is probably something you could pull off on a one-day faire event fairly easily with reasonably all-PC-encompassing satisfaction.
Curse you, now I want to run a treasure hunt faire!
Curse you, now I want to run a treasure hunt faire!
I'll let you know when it goes up, Rick. It's only, what, three thousand miles?
Sounds like it would be fun. Definitely let us know when.
A couple events go, in Gettysburg, my brother and I set up a cave mod. When they ran it, they filled it with spider npcs and rather then have them carry treasure I was told to spread it trough the cave in little piles near the bones and skulls we had set up.
It made for a more interesting approach as they searched the entire " cave" while The marshal gave them a great description to set the mood.
Ry
It made for a more interesting approach as they searched the entire " cave" while The marshal gave them a great description to set the mood.
Ry
Mike Ventrella
Duke
Part of the problem is player complaints.
In the old days, you needed to turn in coins to get XP. We got rid of that with the Alliance.
"Finally!" I said. "We can have treasure be logical! No more silver pieces on spiders. Players won't need to get coins with every battle. We can do more roleplaying rewards and make everything logical."
Well, the problem is that no matter how good that sounds in theory, in practice, players complained.
Some said "Why should I fight a monster that I know has no treasure?" I replied, "Yes, you're right -- if your character would not fight unless there is treasure, then it makes perfect IG sense for you to not fight that particular battle." And then they'd reply "But that's not fair to me because then I don't get to have as much fun as the other players..."
You see the dilemma. I'd love to have treasure always make sense, but whenever we have tried that, we get complaints. Not from everyone, of course, but from enough that it just wasn't worth not giving that spider a silver piece.
In the old days, you needed to turn in coins to get XP. We got rid of that with the Alliance.
"Finally!" I said. "We can have treasure be logical! No more silver pieces on spiders. Players won't need to get coins with every battle. We can do more roleplaying rewards and make everything logical."
Well, the problem is that no matter how good that sounds in theory, in practice, players complained.
Some said "Why should I fight a monster that I know has no treasure?" I replied, "Yes, you're right -- if your character would not fight unless there is treasure, then it makes perfect IG sense for you to not fight that particular battle." And then they'd reply "But that's not fair to me because then I don't get to have as much fun as the other players..."
You see the dilemma. I'd love to have treasure always make sense, but whenever we have tried that, we get complaints. Not from everyone, of course, but from enough that it just wasn't worth not giving that spider a silver piece.
B.Barber
Scholar
...after some thought...
'By order of the king, all “adventurers” are hereby, on pain of disarmanent and banishment, Ordered to stop being layabout murderhobos. Henceforth they shal lay down their murder-nonsense and set about aquireing and produceing orderly and gainful enployment.
They shal be welcomed to employ in bakeries, taverns, guardsmen, farms, construction projects of the realm and other positions- and paid in accordance .'
All 'mods' run that weekend will be labor jobs at plots discression. On some land on wich you can actually build stuff? Make the buggers raise new building. Got a kitchen? Make them cook or bake. Have some groundskeeping that needs doing? Work that in. Make them craft if they can craft, escort people here and there, deliver stuff, wash stuff... you name it, many options.
All the while, they will keep getting harassed for no apparent reason by “adventurers” who have wandered in from a neighboring realm looking for treasure and a thrill. They will produce no loot themselves... because they're adventurers (. Said “Adventurers will repeatedly get in the way of work, cause collateral damage, and eat up resources of the locals, and the PCs trying to get stuff done. Thats what all the mods/encounters/fishbowls will be about.
At the end of the event, pay them for their work. THey all get paid for doing jobs. If they didnt do any jobs, they dont get paid. Then another missive from the crown
“By order of the king (or whatever), this whole “gainful Employment” thing isnt working out. All “adventurers” or otherwise migrant individuals previously sustained on murderhoboing are ordered to report to the realm's recruitment camps for induction to military service. For king and country. Individuals may purchase exemption for (X amount) of coin.” (<-- select a large and obnoxious but not completely un-doable amount for the average player critter...... especially if you truely want it to be a no loot weekend for reals....)
… About 50% serious.
Plot should conscider locking their door during the event (and at home... after the event... for about a week) to make sure they arent murdered by their players. Unless you have really good sports among your players lol.
'By order of the king, all “adventurers” are hereby, on pain of disarmanent and banishment, Ordered to stop being layabout murderhobos. Henceforth they shal lay down their murder-nonsense and set about aquireing and produceing orderly and gainful enployment.
They shal be welcomed to employ in bakeries, taverns, guardsmen, farms, construction projects of the realm and other positions- and paid in accordance .'
All 'mods' run that weekend will be labor jobs at plots discression. On some land on wich you can actually build stuff? Make the buggers raise new building. Got a kitchen? Make them cook or bake. Have some groundskeeping that needs doing? Work that in. Make them craft if they can craft, escort people here and there, deliver stuff, wash stuff... you name it, many options.
All the while, they will keep getting harassed for no apparent reason by “adventurers” who have wandered in from a neighboring realm looking for treasure and a thrill. They will produce no loot themselves... because they're adventurers (. Said “Adventurers will repeatedly get in the way of work, cause collateral damage, and eat up resources of the locals, and the PCs trying to get stuff done. Thats what all the mods/encounters/fishbowls will be about.
At the end of the event, pay them for their work. THey all get paid for doing jobs. If they didnt do any jobs, they dont get paid. Then another missive from the crown
“By order of the king (or whatever), this whole “gainful Employment” thing isnt working out. All “adventurers” or otherwise migrant individuals previously sustained on murderhoboing are ordered to report to the realm's recruitment camps for induction to military service. For king and country. Individuals may purchase exemption for (X amount) of coin.” (<-- select a large and obnoxious but not completely un-doable amount for the average player critter...... especially if you truely want it to be a no loot weekend for reals....)
… About 50% serious.
Plot should conscider locking their door during the event (and at home... after the event... for about a week) to make sure they arent murdered by their players. Unless you have really good sports among your players lol.
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Muir
Fighter
I'd play that mod because it sounds like a blast, but without any expectation of loot by the time it got down to the low-level characters getting paid out.
Dudes.
The Fantastical Pirate Adventure Through Time And Space is happening January 30 - February 2, at the Ye Olde Commons site in Charlton, MA.
If you can make it and want to brave the WINTRY FROSTS OF DEEP ASTRAL SPACE (aka New England winter), I would love to see you digging up that X-marked treasure chest.
The Fantastical Pirate Adventure Through Time And Space is happening January 30 - February 2, at the Ye Olde Commons site in Charlton, MA.
If you can make it and want to brave the WINTRY FROSTS OF DEEP ASTRAL SPACE (aka New England winter), I would love to see you digging up that X-marked treasure chest.
jpariury
Duke
Why not just put out treasure that makes sense? On spiders, put out tags that can be used in lieu of coin for alchemy production: "ichor, may be used as 5cp for alchemy production" or some such.
mikestrauss
Squire
JP, in all seriousness, that is a great idea. The problem is that it is a logistical nightmare.
I tried it one weekend and here is a short list of the problems I ran into.
1) These tags aren't pre-printed. That means I needed to hand-write a unique tag for each life of each monster that goes out. It is possible to pre-print them, but that is a lot of wasted paper if you don't know exactly what monsters are going out on a weekend and makes it hard to be randomly spontaneous with crunchies.
2) The weekend treasure is set by Alliance policy. You can swap coin for things of equal value freely, but you can't just add treasure without swapping (and shouldn't remove either, because it is unfair to players). Thus, every time I put out these tags, I needed to pull an equal value of coins out of the weekend treasure. That took a lot of time and created slow downs in the weekend.
3) The value added to the game was not equal to the efforts I was putting in. A few players probably noticed and cared, but I basically had to spend my entire weekend doing this (and nothing else) in order to make it happen all weekend. About the only way I could justify this use of manpower was if I was paging due to injury / illness and had absolutely no desk / plot experience or role playing skills (and I would never ask a new player to do this work since it is dreadfully tedious).
4) As I just mentioned, sending out appropriate treasure was dreadfully tedious. I have literally spent whole weekends doing nothing but manning monster desk and that was less tedious than trying to make all treasure make sense.
I've given this a lot of thought over the years, and short of printing out hundreds of tags in advance (ichor, fur, blood, etc.), and pre-sorting them all and then writing that treasure type on the monster card (for easy lookup), I can't figure out a good way to do it. And, in my opinion, even that would take moderately considerable effort and time that can't afford to be wasted during a game.
-MS
P.S. - And, yes, I know I am ignoring the fact that monsters should resurrect, thus most of this "treasure" would disappear in five minutes.
P.P.S. - If you can think of a really efficient (and not dreadfully boring) system, I am definitely all ears.
norman b
Squire
Something we have done in the past is use small plastic baggies pre sorted with treasure. That way NPC's just have to grab a baggie and go. I don't see why we couldn't separate it out (say those little plastic tackle boxes or like our monster cards, a divider folder system) for each type of loot (carapace, blood, fur, etc). NPC's just grab one per spawn, or one ever, or however you want them to do it on the card. Then, you only put in the share of treasure policy in the spots that you have set aside for that particular event for those particular treasure pieces. Once you run out of one thing, those monsters no longer go out with that loot. It's really not too terribly difficult if you work it out prior to event.
The biggest problem I see is not having many craftsman at event...
The biggest problem I see is not having many craftsman at event...
Logistical solutions for logical folks!
1.) Make the tags. Using the appropriate tool, from MS-Paint to Photoshop, you can make sheets of the the things that are able to be cut out just like regular tags.
2.) True, however if you set them as merchantable items the crafters and players with merchant get some focusing, minor roleplay. This however can cause problems in the treasure policy. If the items are set at a different merchant value than the production point values you do run into problems like: Is spider ichor worth the 5cp it's merchantable for, or the 10pp worth of Scroll Crafting it can purchase?
3. & 4) Setting up your main loot bucket to have specific containers for specific recurring monsters means that your NPCs who know they're going out as a lizard can just pull out some lizard scales.
Really the biggest problem is that they're by definition LCO only, so many players don't like them and they're undervalued as a poor currency. Plus, it adds a step into the process of converting monsters into cash.
P.S. - Actually quite a lot of monsters I've seen out here in the PNW specifically do not resurrect. That seems to be a chapter by chapter decision by plot from what I've heard.
P.P.S. - Plastic tackle box with labeled sections for loot to be pulled from by the NPC playing the monster + Pre-made printable merchantable item tags (and if you want to get fancy you can put out better physreps than just the tags)
1.) Make the tags. Using the appropriate tool, from MS-Paint to Photoshop, you can make sheets of the the things that are able to be cut out just like regular tags.
2.) True, however if you set them as merchantable items the crafters and players with merchant get some focusing, minor roleplay. This however can cause problems in the treasure policy. If the items are set at a different merchant value than the production point values you do run into problems like: Is spider ichor worth the 5cp it's merchantable for, or the 10pp worth of Scroll Crafting it can purchase?
3. & 4) Setting up your main loot bucket to have specific containers for specific recurring monsters means that your NPCs who know they're going out as a lizard can just pull out some lizard scales.
Really the biggest problem is that they're by definition LCO only, so many players don't like them and they're undervalued as a poor currency. Plus, it adds a step into the process of converting monsters into cash.
P.S. - Actually quite a lot of monsters I've seen out here in the PNW specifically do not resurrect. That seems to be a chapter by chapter decision by plot from what I've heard.
P.P.S. - Plastic tackle box with labeled sections for loot to be pulled from by the NPC playing the monster + Pre-made printable merchantable item tags (and if you want to get fancy you can put out better physreps than just the tags)