Ben at Mazirian's Garden is soliciting for more #Dungeon23 blogs so he can collect and share them. I am thrilled that Thalian Musings was accepted and added. There are few things like being in the public eye to make a person step up their game!
As such, here is this weekend's offering.
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Treasure is the main reason for adventuring and exploring a dungeon, at least in games where gp recovered = xp earned, like mine. As such, at least some of the treasure found needs to be memorable, and often the easiest way to make treasure memorable is to make it vast, magical, or at least mysterious and perhaps historical, as Ben at Ars Ludi explains.
The ideal treasure would be all of the above.
art by William McAusland
Based on the math I worked out back in March, my first level of 100 encounter areas should include (roughly) 8 unguarded treasures, 6 treasures 'guarded' by traps, and 17 treasures guarded by 'monsters.' That is 31 treasure troves of varying sizes for bold adventurers to discover and recover.
At some point, I read a great explanation of how much treasure a dungeon level should contain for a gp = xp game, and it amounted to the dungeon level x 10,000 x 2, so 20,000 gp value across the first level (I might have read it here or here or here). The idea being that each level should provide enough to see 4-6 PCs of the same level advance.
This may seem like too much treasure, until one takes into account that some of it won't be found, and some of it will be 'wasted' when the PC that earned xp off of it dies or the player never returns to the game. Also, the ruleset does matter here - it takes far more xp to move up in B/X than in 5e.
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20,000 divided by 31 is 645 and change, which will not be 31 piles of 645gp each. Technically, each monster has a Treasure Type to spur the contents of each hoard, and should I make use of this chart from the AD&D Monster & Treasure Assortment - and I will - even the unguarded treasures are unlikely to be easily found or even identified as treasure at all.
From the Monster & Treasure Assortment, 1977, 78, 80; artist maybe David Sutherland? Can anyone confirm?
In a pinch, I can use the treasures from the same title or those from the homages put out by Pacesetter Games & Simulations (which I can no longer find on Drivethrurpg; I bought the first three and always intended to get the next three, but alas).
Writing this post, it occurs to me that the best way for me to approach #Dungeon23 might be the checklist approach - I need six trapped treasures, so that is six days' worth of write ups. Approaching the project with this checklist in mind makes it seem less daunting.
Of course, discovering a treasure hoard and actually recovering it are two entirely different animals. Yes, bold adventurers could lug it all out themselves, but treasure (especially on the upper levels) is heavy, which makes it difficult to move quickly or run away when necessary - and retreating should be necessary on occasion.
But that is a post for another day.
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As a bonus, a former student of mine is willing to discuss drawing some original art for me for a commission, which is neat, because I have never commissioned art before. It makes me feel all Renaissance-y.
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