Treasure!
Today I was doing some reading in the AD&D Dungeon Master’s guide reviewing the information provided by Gary Gygax starting on page 25. Before I post anything, I thought I would open the discussion for the few of you who read this Blog in order to find out how you handle the situation of playing characters maintaining their wealth in between adventures. Also, I’d like to invite those few who play the Iron Kingdoms game to chime in as well. With Privateer Press soon releasing their updated version of the Iron Kingdoms RPG, I plan to be posting about it as well. Please share your thoughts! Thanks very much.
Gold for XP. Don’t spend it, don’t get it. Keeps the characters poor and thus motivated to adventure, and creates a real tension between hoarding (for expensive spell components, buying that little wizard’s tower they’ve always wanted or that second-hand steamjack they saw the other day) and levelling up (and thus being able to take on bigger challenges with more reward).
By “maintaining their wealth,” do you mean how they keep up their current lifestyle if they’re not bringing in more coin? Or do you mean how do they manage keeps and lands and careers between adventures if you have those? Or both?
(Since I GM Warhammer, they generally just don’t have any money to begin with, but I’m curious about the question.)
Usually they save money for a tower or to hire mercenaries (a lot of em … my players are the monsters in my campaigns), livin in cheap taverns, eating even cheaper food .. or begging their patron for food and lodge …. yeah i know … but sometimes things are funny. one of the guy married a noble elven beauty with a severe complusive need for expensive jewels, clothes, food … he was always out of money … till he planned to kill her, but he didnt .. was too funny takin money form his pockets.
so i can say i let em stock the coins.
Answering all three:
Interesting thoughts. Yes, I am referring to the idea that they have to maintain their lifestyles, repair their equipment, buy supplies, and all of that. There are different methods out there … for example, Gygax recommended 100 gold x level per month spent for basic lifestyle needs. I just wondered if any other Dungeon Masters or Game Masters had a method they used for if their playig character just had huge stocks of coins laying around.
Now when you say “Gold for XP” do you mean that they are spending their gold to earn XP? If so, is this due to training or what?