this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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OSR/NSR Tabletop Roleplaying Games

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Whither Reddit? In the meantime, here’s a place to chat up old school revival (OSR) and new school revolution (NSR) style TTRPGs.

My name is Todd aka Hexed Press and I am the current caretaker (have I always been the caretaker?). Here are some other places to find me, if you are so inclined:

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My problems with old school treasure (methodsetmadness.blogspot.com)
submitted 1 year ago by copacetic@discuss.tchncs.de to c/osr@lemm.ee
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One thing I'm starting to dislike running OSR adventures is the insane amount of treasure and magical items that you find. In addition, the more I read the DMG, the more I feel they were just too generous with treasure and had to come up of endless ways of spending it (training, upkeep, research, rust monsters, disenchanters, etc.).

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[–] rileylum@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

When gold = xp this can be a problem, otherwise just giving less gold is the easy solution.

If this is a problem you even want to solve this is what I would do:

  1. Use a silver standard, this reduces the amount of treasure to level up significantly
  2. Track expenses . Tracking doesn't need to be comprehensive just assign a single amount for a week which covers everything (rather than tracking how many ales they have each night).
  3. Have long periods of downtime. Slow healing helps force long down times, but unless the PCs are in a rush to complete something you could arbitrarily force a week long down time as minimum. This will eat up the parties resources from expenses but it also allows them to persue things other than getting loot. Carousing, chairty, research, domain play. All can be fun - and also eat into their gold
  4. Don't give the full value of treasure. For example they find a gem worth 100gp, they take it back to town and earn their 100xp. Next they'll want to sell it, the jeweller only offers them 50gp, because they have to sell it at 100gp and they'd expect a profit and to cover their expenses (shop upkeep, tax etc.)