When I work up a good ruin, I use one of the tables that randomly assigns whether any given room has treasure, a monster, both, neither, or a trick or trap. Some rooms are stocked outside of those constraints, but I like there to be 20-30 rooms per level with about 3/4 having either a monster, trap or hidden treasure in them.
One of the fun things for me when setting things up is coming up with interesting things to do when the room has treasure but no monster. Hiding the treasure in secret compartments is one easy method, as is the classic trapped treasure chest. But, more fun is turning the coins into items made of solid gold or silver and have them part of an item in a room, especially if the item looks like a trap, but isn't. I also like turning the treasure value into a collection of interesting items and scattering them around. It also fun for me seeing players thinking some items of worthless junk are actually treasure.
Here is where having a good, solid gear list is really helpful to put prices to strange pieces of treasuse and to convert a gold value of treasure into interesting items without being arbitrary.
My current list tries to keep close to AD&D norms for items that are covered in AD&D. I have discovered that the prices for jewlery in AD&D is completely out of whack. For example, a copper earing costs around 10gp in AD&D (variable range), but that's a bit mad. Since a copper earing should contain 3-4 copper pieces worth of copper, and I just don't see that the jeweler multiplies the value of the metal 600 times. I'm sticking with the AD&D prices, but find it kind of whacky.
I vaguely recall a Dragon Magazine article that might be helpful. It was basically something that printed a bunch of different types of loot besides coinage, jewels, and jewelry. It included stuff like valuable furs and skins, ivory or horns, and perhaps spices or incense. I remember a DM throwing a bunch of loot like that at a party one time, and everybody whining about the lack of gold or silver (while my character, the ranger in the group, quietly scooped up the choicer bits while others tossed it aside to look for the 'real treasure').
ReplyDeleteJust thinking of the labor intesive nature of metal-working in the "age". I wonder if that isn't a reasonable mark-up.
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