Gems III: Assessments

In this series on gems (four years in the making!) I’ve talked about how to set up gem types for a dungeon and how to assign gems to treasure. But how do the players find out what those gems are worth? How do you determine the actual value of the gems brought back from an adventure?

It’s best to postpone this assessment until the end of an adventure.

Gem Appraisal

The main reason it’s best to wait until the end to identify gems and appraise their value is: the PCs have to find someone who’s able to do it. Gem appraisal is a job for an expert, and usually PCs don’t have the skill to do it themselves. So, they bring their treasure finds back from the dungeon to town and show the gems to a jeweler or someone else with the appraisal skill.

Finding an Appraiser

If the PC home base is a fairly large town or city, there’s really not that much effort needed to find an appraiser: just go to the Street of Jewelers or maybe even any merchant and ask “Can you tell me how much these gems are worth?” If you really need to know how long it takes to find someone like that, decide first if it’s going to take at least a turn (ten minutes) or an hour, then roll a d6: on 5+, it takes exactly one turn or one hour, while on a 1 to 4, it takes that many extra turns or hours.

If there’s some reason why it’s not obvious where the merchants and jewelers hang out, like “gems are outlawed” or “we don’t speak the language or understand the local customs, so we can’t tell who the jewelers are”, you might want to make the process of finding an appraiser more difficult, like requiring a reaction roll to see how well things go. On a Good or better reaction, the PCs find an expert. On a Normal reaction, the “expert” isn’t that good and takes much longer for an accurate appraisal. On a Bad reaction or worse, the PCs will need to look somewhere else.

Making an Appraisal

Even a beginner at appraising who’s no expert can tell the PCs the names of any gems found after about a minute of examination, but it takes 1 to 5 minutes for an expert or 10 to 50 minutes for someone less skilled to determine the actual value. This part doesn’t normally require a roll if the appraiser has plenty of time to use their skills and no outside stress to mess things up. If the GM or players needs to know how long the appraisal takes, a d6 roll like the one described for finding an appraiser will do the job. In many cases, you can make this roll after giving the appraisal.

There’s only one or two rolls that are absolutely needed:

• A reaction roll (maybe) to see if the appraiser is honest, shorts the PCs a little, or straight up lies. This is usually only rolled once, with the first reaction carrying over for all future interactions unless the PCs take actions that warrant a reroll.
• The actual value adjustment roll for each gem involved. The basic roll is a d6 adjustment roll, which I’ve described before.

d6 roll	adjustment
1	halve the gem’s value
2-5	no adjustment
6	double the gem’s value

If there are 1 to 5 gems being appraised, roll 1d6 for each gem. If there are more, split the gems into 2 to 5 groups (whatever works best) and roll 2d6 to 5d6, reading each d6 result individually, left to right. If you need to roll the reaction roll and you use a d6-based reaction roll, you can roll all these dice at once, although that means you might be rolling 7d6 in some cases.

(The reason I cap the number of dice rolled at five is because I think rolling too many dice at once actually slows things down. Plus, if you are using these “literal” dice rolls read left to right, rolling more dice can make things harder to interpret and may even cause dice to ricochet off each other, maybe sending one or two dice flying off the table. If you’re one of those people who likes the excitement of rolling huge handfuls of dice, though, you can go another way with this.)

DIY Appraisals

Some PCs may have an appraisal skill, or may train to become experts at appraisal. I’m one of those people who assumes dwarves and gnomes are experts at appraising gems, Some people assume thieves know how to appraise the value of “found” goods like gems as well. Personally, I think I’d allow most thieves to make amateur appraisals (taking 1 to 5 turns for appraisals,) but thieves with Int 16+ would be experts, taking only 1 to 5 minutes. I might even allow PCs in general to be amateur gem appraisers if their Int is 16+. You might want to check out my pamphlet on Liber Zero Adventurer Skills for more information on backgrounds, previous professions, and training in new skills.

Do It in a Dungeon, Save Time

If the PCs wait until they are back at home base, or at least until they reach some kind of safe zone, before they make any gem appraisals, there’s no need to roll for time. Just make the 1d6 to 5d6 appraisal roll to find the adjusted values of each gem.

If, however, there’s a chance of being interrupted, make the 1d6 situation roll to see how quickly the appraisal can be done: 5+ means it takes only one minute for an expert or one turn for an amateur to make an appraisal, while a roll of 1 to 4 adds an additional 1 to 4 minutes or turns.

It only takes 1 minute for either an expert or an amateur to identify what kind of gems they’ve found (the in-world names of the gem types.) The d6 roll only determines how long it takes to work out the actual value of each gem. If the whole appraisal takes more than one minute and wandering monster rolls are applicable, an expert might be interrupted by a monster arriving, and an amateur might never make it all the way through the appraisal.

Adverse Appraisal Conditions

I’m assuming here that the appraisal is happening in steady, bright light and the appraiser is using a jeweler’s loop or some other magnifier. An expert can skip using the jeweler’s loop as long as there are no other adverse conditions.

Adverse conditions make appraisals harder. If there is at least one adverse condition, roll 2d6 vs. Int. If the roll fails (higher than Int,) look up the result on this modified reaction roll table.

Appraisal Skill Failure

2d6 Roll	Appraisal Skill Result
2	appraisal fails
3-5	amateur appraisal fails, otherwise time x5
6-8	multiply time needed x5
9-11	triple time needed
12	double time needed

If there are two adverse conditions, halve the appraiser’s Int score before comparing the result. If there are more than two, halve Int again and treat everyone as an amateur.

Adverse conditions include:

• Dim or unstable light (very dim counts as two adverse conditions)
• amateur without a magnifier
• expert without a magnifier and at least one other adverse condition
• sleepy or fatigued
• mist or haze
• watery eyes
• distractions

And anything else that reduces vision or affects the ability to focus.

Summary

The short version of this series on gems is: reduce the number of gem types for a location to just three or four, optionally rolling to set the base types if you don’t already have a concept, then figure out which treasures include gems in what proportions. Give players simple visual descriptions, but save space in your own notes by using gem type codes. When the players are ready to sell, appraise the gems to find out the real values.

Series Index

• Gems Intro
• Gems I : Types
• Gems II : Quantities
• Gems III : Assessments (this post)

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Gems II: Quantities

In Part I of this series on gems, I talked about limiting the kinds of gems in each dungeon to just three, maybe four if you really want a fourth type. But what I described was more about designing the top-level dungeon theme than actually stocking the individual rooms with treasure, which is what most GMs are thinking of when we talk about “rolling for treasure”. How is this actually done?

Treasure Troves and Dungeon Loot

In the original D&D booklets, treasure can be divided into what I call “treasure troves” (aka wilderness lair treasure) and “loot” (aka dungeon room treasure.) The chance of gems being part of a trove are based on monster type, per the table in Volume II (Monsters & Treasure), page 23, while loot stashes are based on dungeon level, per the table in Volume III (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures), page 7, which can be summarized as “percent chance equal to 10 times half the dungeon level, round down, minimum 5%, maximum 50%.” The troves of many wilderness lairs and loot in rooms on dungeon levels 1 through 7 usually have about 1d6 gems, loot on dungeon levels 8 and below can have 1d12 gems, while the lairs of bandits, pirates, dwarves, dragons, and the like have much larger quantities.

You could, of course, use these by-the-book methods of determining the total number of gems found, then splitting them up into three batches:

• A quarter of the gems found (round down) will be low value gems,
• Half the remainder (round up) will be mid value gems,
• Whatever is left over will be high value gems.

Make My Treasure Fast!

What I’d like to do, however, is roll all the dice at once. It would also be nice if the procedure were easy to memorize so that I could do it all without consulting a table. We need to modify the chances and quantities to do that, however. Here’s one approach.

Roll 3d6 and read the dice results individually from left to right. Interpretation is roughly the same in all cases, but there are differences between upper levels of the dungeon versus the dungeon’s deeper levels.

Fast Loot for Dungeon Level 1

Gems are rarest on the uppermost level of the dungeon, because this is usually where the dungeon entrance is and it’s thus the easiest level to raid for treasure.

• First d6 and Second d6 values match: Gems are in the loot if both dice are odd.
• Second d6 value: Max number of gems in the loot.
• Third d6 value: Number of mid-value gems, up to the max number.

If the second and third d6 match, half the mid-value gems will actually be high-value gems, round down.

Fast Loot for Dungeon Levels 2 and 3

Nearly the same as for Dungeon Level 1.

• First d6 and Second d6 values match: Gems are in the loot.
• Second d6 value: Max number of gems in the loot.
• Third d6 value: Number of mid-value gems, up to the max number. Half of these gems will be high-value if the 2nd and 3rd dice match.

Again: if the first two dice do not match, there are no gems in this loot.

Fast Loot for Deeper Dungeon Levels (4+)

Not as complicated, but basically the same.

• First d6: Triple the result rolled. Gems are in the loot if this result is <= dungeon level (max level 10.)
• Second d6 and Third d6 Total: Max number of gems in the loot.
• Third d6 value: Number of high-value gems.

Subtract the number of high-value gems (third d6) from the total number of gems found. Half of these (round up) will be mid-value gems.

Fast Treasure Troves

Treat treasure troves as if they were Dungeon Level 6: triple the value of the first d6 and compare it to the dungeon level to see if there are any gems. There are a couple modifications for some monster types: pirates, bandits, brigands, berserkers, dervishes, mercenary armies, dwarves, and dragons all roll 4d6 instead of 3d6. The first d6 is still the chance of gems in the treasure trove, but the other three dice are used for the number of gems, as follows.

• Dwarves (and other wealthy humanoids): Triple the value of the first d6 as for deep dungeon loot on Level 6. The three other dice are the total number of gems.
• Bands of Humans (bandits and so on): Double the value of the first d6 instead of tripling it when you compare the value to Level 6. Double the total of the remaining dice for the number of gems, and double the value of the third d6 for the number of gems that are high value.
• Dragons: As for Bandits, but the multiplier for the number of gems is x5 instead of x2.

Unique Treasures

The standard practice for stocking dungeons and wilderness lairs is “stock unique treasures first, then roll for the random stuff”. If there’s a special artifact, gold statue, magic tome, or other unique treasure that is essentially part of a story or at the very least a memorable moment during play, it should be placed manually, with thematically appropriate monsters, traps, or environmental features.

This applies to gems as well. Those three or four gem types that you assign to the dungeon as a whole are ordinary kinds of gems, even if some of them are rarer and thus more valuable than others. But your unique treasure might include gems that are either unique or of a special extremely rare type.

I previously described gem types as being mad of Size, Color, Opacity and Miscellaneous. The Miscellaneous details are usually reserved for these extremely rare, manually-placed gem types and usually means “unusual behavior, perhaps magical”. For example, you might have an exotic, very rare gem called a “zap diamond”, label it Cw2 (small transparent white gem.) But zap diamonds have a Miscellaneous feature: if two zap diamonds touch, they make a bright flash that has a chance to blind people for up to 4 rounds. It takes an hour for the charge to build back up so the zap diamond can be used again.

These zap diamonds would need to be place manually, since they are not strictly treasure, but more like magic items, or at the very least a minor puzzle to figure out. They are not simply something to cash in for coins without thinking about them.

There are some Miscellaneous qualities like stripes or speckles that aren’t special powers, just ways of distinguishing two gem types of the same color and opacity. These don’t need to be placed manually.

But How do I Describe This?

I’m assuming three stages of play in these posts:

• world-building, where you create gem types for your world and then place them as treasure in a dungeon;
• adventuring, where the players explore, discover treasure, and return home;
• housekeeping, where the players sell off loot, spend their gains, and prepare for the next adventure.

The gem codes, like Lb9 or Dg2, are meant to be a shorthand for the GM to record what a gem looks like and about how much it is worth. You aren’t going to tell the players the actual codes, of course, but you especially should not tell them that second part, the gem’s actual worth, at least in most cases. I wouldn’t even say the number of gems, if there’s more than about six of any given type, unless the PCs literally take time to count them (worth at least one wandering monster roll, I’d say.) Descriptions of what the PCs find should be broad and somewhat fuzzy, becoming more concrete once they return to base and begin the housekeeping phase.

The first letter of the code describes the Size, which can be broken down into small (V and X,) medium (L and C,) and large (D and M.) Remember, this is for opaque gems; transparent, translucent, and murky gems will be smaller, but still worth the same amount. Any gem that appears smaller than V/X can be called “very small”, and those of Size 2M or larger are “very large”.

The second letter is the color, and the numeral at the end is the opacity. I would not normally count Lb8, Lb9, and Lb10 as different types of gems, but one type of gem in different grades of quality. I break it down as:

• 0-2: transparent (passes light, can see through these gems)
• 3-5: translucent (passes light, can see shadows, but not details)
• 6-7: murky or cloudy (passes light only)
• 8-10: opaque (doesn’t pass light, although Opacity8/9 glisten or glow a bit)

Color + one of the above opacity terms = one distinct gem type. A Miscellaneous quality might make this a distinct type, however. Each gem type can come in a variety of Sizes, but speckled translucent blue gems and striped translucent blue gems might have different size ranges.

So, when the PCs find gems, the GM would describe them as something like “three small translucent blue gems, a few medium transparent green gems, and a bunch of large opaque orange gems”. The players would (presumably) write these down the same way, perhaps risking counting the gems to get the exact numbers of green and orange gems, while the GM would record exact numbers and codes in the “loot found” list as:

Lb4 = 3 gems
Dg1 = 9 gems
Cor9 = 15 gems

Thus, the GM keeps track of the approximate value of the treasure, but the precise value is only revealed in the next post in this series.

Series Index

• Gems Intro
• Gems I : Types
• Gems II : Quantities (this post)
• Gems III : Assessments

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Gems I: Types

I ended the first post of my series on gems (Gems Intro,) with this paragraph:

I plan on detailing each of these modified steps in a separate post, with appropriate tables. I won’t be posting before next week, however.

That was four years ago, so I was right.

Part of the reason for the delay was that I had finished (or nearly finished) the next part, but then lost all my draft posts, somehow. And after I found them again last month, I had to review what I’d written to figure out what I was aiming for. Also, I’ve changed my mind on some things, so I had to rewrite parts of it. But basically, my first post laid out three or four steps for generating gems in a pile of treasure.

• Steps Zero and One: Pick a Dungeon Theme and Gem Types to Match
• Step Two: Roll for How Many Gems Are in Each Treasure Trove
• Step Three: Assess Each Gem

Step One happens before stocking individual rooms, Step Two happens when stocking the rooms, and Step Three happens during the game session.

But Why?

What are my basic goals for making new gem rules?

I want two or three things:

• To reduce the amount of information that needs to be tracked per gem,
• To simplify and compress the generation process,
• And maybe to make it easy to improvise without actually looking at a table?

Reduce

There’s really only about eight or so gem names people are really familiar with: diamond, emerald, jade, opal, pearl, quartz, ruby, sapphire, maybe a couple others like jet, topaz or turquoise, but not everyone’s going to be able to recognize the same batch and most of the others are just different types of quartz, anyways. So recording gem names or being meticulous about base values for each type seems like a waste.

Instead, I say: reduce gem information to just Size, Color, Opacity, and Miscellaneous. The first three can be written in a single keyword, like “Xb5”. “Miscellaneous” only pops up if you want a gem with a special (magical?) ability.

Recycle

I’ve used Roman numerals before for things like size categories, so of course I’m going to do that again. We only need V, X, L, C, D, M, because who cares about Size I, anyways? And the hard part of Roman numerals is counting and subtracting, but we only need one letter per gem code. Here’s a table we only need to read once and never need to look at again.

Numeral	Size Reference	Default Gem Value
V	bead-sized (small)	5 coins
X	pebble-sized (small)	10 coins
L	marble-sized (med)	50 coins
C	eyeball-sized (med)	100 coins
D	egg-sized (large)	500 coins
M	fist-sized (large)	1000 coins

Reuse

One thing I use a lot is a simple d6 “table” for adjusting values on just about anything:

d6 roll	adjustment
1	move value down one
2-5	no adjustment
6	move value up one

You don’t even really need a table for this. It’s just “lowest possible result = down one, highest possible result = up one”.

I also like to use dice positions, reading left to right, to roll multiple things at once. I can reduce the number of rolls that way and speed things up immensely.

Building the Dungeon

I suggested that GMs creating a dungeon key should pick a small number of gem types for their entire dungeon. Specifically, I suggest three or four gem types per dungeon, with a color scheme that matches the dungeon’s theme. One gem will be the low value gem, a second would be the middle value, and the third would be the high value. If necessary, a fourth type matching either the low or middle value, but with a different color, opacity, or additional feature like a glow can be added when it’s thematically appropriate.

If you don’t have an idea what color you want your gems to be, just use the rainbow colors (Roy G. Biv.) Start on yellow for the low value, green for the mid value, and blue for the high value. Roll 2d6 and read the dice individually, left to right.

• First d6: 1 = shift values left one color, 6 = shift values right one color
• Second d6: 1 = shift low value gem down, 6 = shift high value gem up

Size

The default gem size for a given dungeon is based on deepest dungeon level / 2.

Level	Gem Size
1-2	C
3-4	D
5-6	M
7+	3M

This is for the high value gems. Low value (common) gems will be two sizes smaller by default (X to D.) Mid value gems will be one size smaller. Values above M use an Arabic numeral multiplier: 3M, 5M, 10M, 30M, 50M.

Roll 3d6 in order and read the dice individually, left to right.

• First d6: 1 = shift all sizes down one, 6 = shift sizes up one
• Second d6: 1 = shift low value gem down one size, 6 = shift high value gem up one size
• Third d6: Opacity

Opacity

Opacity is recorded as an index value (9 = 90% opaque, 5 = 50% opaque, 0 = less than 5% opaque.)

The third d6 rolled is the base opacity for the high-value gem, treating a 6 as zero. For mid-value gems, add +4. For low-value gems, add +8. Opacity is capped at 10, which is completely opaque.

Opaque gems are the listed size for their size value, but murky, translucent, or transparent gems will appear smaller.

• Opacity 0 to 2 reduces apparent size down two steps without reducing the value.
• Opacity 3 to 7 reduces apparent size down one step.
• Opacity 8+ is the listed size.

Gem Codes and Names

So let’s say you’re making a four-level dungeon. You start with the default gem colors of yellow, green, and blue, from low value to high value. You roll 3d6 and get (6, 4, 2). How do you write this in your notes?

• The low value gem is Cy10, an opaque yellow gem the size of an eyeball.
• The mid value gem is Dg6, a murky green gem of the same size, despite being worth 500 times as much as the low value gem.
• The high value gem is Mb2, a translucent blue gem that’s also the size of an eyeball, but worth 1000 coins.

The actual values of the gems can vary up or down during both the next step (stocking treasure in rooms) and the final step (getting the gem appraised.)

But what about the names? Unless a particular gem sounds like a diamond, sapphire, or emerald to you, I think you should stick to fantasy gem names specific to your world. Opaque yellow gems the size of an eyeball might be known as “Ra’s Eye gems”. Murky green gems might be “mossmist gems”. These names wouldn’t be listed in the dungeon key, but on a “list of gems in this world”, which you would build as you expand your campaign.

When players discover these gems, however, they won’t get the gem names or values immediately. Instead, just say "three small translucent blue gems, a few small murky green gems, plus a whole bunch of small yellow stones.

But more on that in a future post.

Series Index

• Gems Intro
• Gems I : Types (this post)
• Gems II : Quantities
• Gems III : Assessments

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Non-Human PC Races

Previously, I wrote about non-human fantasy races, although my main point there was that many, if not most, of the fantasy races we think of as “non-human” are really just variant humans in disguise.

Bur whether they are really non-human or human variants, the question to ask is: When should a fantasy race become a player character race? When should a fantasy race remain exclusively for NPCs?

I have some thoughts.

Races Relevant to the Story

Let’s ignore the trivial case of unique monsters or NPCs that aren’t “races” at all (for now) and focus instead on the obvious cases where a fantasy race should not be available to players.

• Mystery Races: Unknown or nearly unknown races that players can choose to investigate. The Pnume from Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series would be one example.
• Villain Races: Mystery races that are secretly behind multiple evil schemes. The Drow, Dero, and Mind Flayers were probably all originally used this way.
• Secret Ally Races: Mystery races that are either currently helping the PCs secretly or could be asked for help. The Arisians from Doc Smith’s Lensman series and the priest-kings from the Gor series would count here.

The common theme here is that these races are somehow tied to the goal of a potential adventure. They have information, artifacts, or raw power that the players want. Naturally, if a player were allowed to begin the game as one of these races, it would short circuit the mystery.

Mentors or MacGuffins

That trivial case I mentioned where a monster or NPC is unique, perhaps the last (or first) of its kind, or the sole current visitor from an inaccessible world or dimension, is pretty much disqualified for the same reasons. You as GM may have notes on an NPC’s innate talents or skills, knowledge, and technology available to their race, but the race itself technically does not exist. These unique beings typically exist as story or plot elements, in much the same way as the mystery villain/ally races.

If the PCs contact the last known Atlantean, who becomes their mentor, they may gain a significant advantage. But the GM may want to supply information or assistance when needed, rather than grant them unlimited access. It’s hard to justify why a PC Atlantean wouldn’t have access to the same secrets as their mentor, so it may be better to simply not allow Atlanteans as a PC race.

Overpowered Fantasy Races

Related to the villain and ally fantasy races mentioned above are high-powered fantasy races in general. It’s not completely out of the question for a player to have an angel character, or a djinn, or a godling of some sort, depending on the intended beginning power level of the game. But if other players have all created standard human warriors, dwarves, and elves, one player demanding that they be allowed to play Q from Star Trek is generally considered to be a warning sign. There shouldn’t be an enormous disparity between character power levels.

A PC that begins as a member of a standard race who is later polymorphed into a member of another race, even one not normally allowed as a beginning PC race, is not subject to the same restrictions, for two reasons:

1. Polymorph spells don’t alter the PC’s skills or cultural knowledge. It’s basically just a really good disguise.
2. The PC may not be able to use that race’s innate abilities at first, especially abilities the player has not yet seen used. The PC may have to train for a while before achieving the full power of that race.

Surprise! It’s a Fantasy Race!

Other fantasy races may be added as minor mysteries to solve. Not full-blown plot devices, but more like little surprises to keep exploration exciting. Such a fantasy race would be unavailable as PC races at first, but once they have been encountered and their culture or other unique features have been discovered, there’s no harm in allowing players to make new characters from that race.

A slightly similar idea is a reasonably-balanced fantasy race made up by a player, or borrowed from a fantasy novel the GM has no intention to adapt in full. I feel that this kind of custom fantasy race fits in with that well-known section on “Other Character Types” in the original booklets:

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.

OD&D VOL. I (Men & Magic), p. 8

If the race is player-created, especially if the race’s culture and history are being improvised during play, that player should have the same kind of control over whether other players are allowed to play characters from that race.

In Summary

I think all of the above could be boiled down to just a few rules:

1. Keep fantasy races NPC-only if finding out more about the race is the whole point.
2. Unique monsters or NPCs are “races” in name only.
3. Otherwise, if there’s no longer any surprise factor and the race is reasonably balanced compared to other beginning PC race, go for it. There’s no real harm.

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No Mapping, Just Map Rolls

Back in my post about why players might map and why they should be allowed to choose not to map, I teased “there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map.”

I have an idea.

Map Skill vs. Minimalist Maps

Chaosium’s Stormbringer, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, had a Map skill. The GM would roll percentile dice vs. Map skill to see if players make it to their destination. We could use the Int ability score in a similar way. It still feels too bland to me, so I would repurpose the reaction roll (again!) and break the trip to any destination into stages.

Players could (should?) still make simple maps, but only to show which areas of a dungeon are connected. Each area would be represented by one box each, regardless of how many rooms are in each area and where they are in relation to other rooms. The areas are labeled “outer gates”, “crypts”, “treasure vaults”, “prison”, “library”, “caves”, “fungus farms”, or whatever the function or theme of that area is. Each pair of boxes is either connected (draw one line connecting them) or not connected (no line.) No individual tunnels are marked.

If the players have a map and are looking for the exit, they would follow the lines from box to box, with the GM making a reaction roll for each transition to the next area: treasure vaults to crypts, crypts to outer gates, and outer gates to exit would require three rolls.

Map Use Result Table

If the map roll is less than or equal to the Int of the character using the map, use the “Map Success” column for the result. If the roll is higher than Int, use the “Map Failure” column. Halve the Int score if the map is damaged or otherwise incomplete, or if the character is drunk, befuddled, or otherwise inconvenienced.

2d6 Roll	Map Success	Map Failure
2	3x time to reach next area	lost in new (unmapped) area
3-5	1.5x time to reach next area	lost in random area
6-8	normal time to reach next area	lost in previous area
9-11	half time to reach next area	stuck in same area
12+	half time, no wandering monster rolls	5x time to reach next area

Maps Made by Other People

The steps above assume the character reading the map also created the map. If not, the GM needs to know both the Int of the map maker (or assign it randomly) and the Int of the character using the map. Roll against the lower of the two scores when using the map.

The character using the map can substitute their Wisdom if it is higher than their Int, but only when using a map they didn’t make themselves. If the map has a lower Int rating than either, however, it’s not going to help.

When buying a map, make a reaction roll to check if the map is a lie (odd rolls below a certain threshold.) These maps automatically are treated as half Int.

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No Dungeon Mapping Required!

Recently, someone in a forum was curious how many GMs make (require) the players to map the dungeon, and I replied that I don’t require players to map, but they are taking a risk if they don’t.

That response may seem a bit flippant, but really I try to balance clear descriptions of the environment with dungeon features designed to be deliberately confusing. Sure, you could skip mapping and just try to remember which way you came. For the most part, the dungeon isn’t going to change configuration – although it might – so you could get away with it. But mapping makes it easier.

But why map at all?

The Reasons for Mapping

To me, the reason why I make it possible for players to map my dungeons, and why I like to map dungeons when I’m a player, is the immersion. I want to get a feel for what my environment looks like and what my character is doing. I assume at least some players out there are going to enjoy it as well.

Some GMs fill every space on their dungeon maps with rooms, so players mapping as they explore may notice suspicious areas that could contain secret rooms. I used to make my own dungeon maps that way, and I’ll admit there can be a certain joy to finding a secret room that way. But how often does that work? Seems like too much effort that rarely pays off.

But even without that kind of cramped dungeon design, players looking for a hidden shrine or other location they’ve heard exists in the dungeon might notice large unmapped quadrants on a map. This might give a clue which areas they need to search more thoroughly for secret doors into the supposedly empty area. Or they could even try mining their way into it.

Avoiding Mapping

Still, some players just don’t enjoy making maps and won’t do it. Even if you suggest not making a map to scale, just using lines and boxes to make a crude flow chart version of the dungeon. I believe players should be allowed to take that risk, but if they were to ask me to just handwave the return to the surface, I wouldn’t go along with that. The game is about players making decisions and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Just as I wouldn’t spring a surprise TPK on players without giving them enough information to decide not to take that risk, I wouldn’t choose the players’ route back to the surface for them, especially when one route might be more dangerous than the other.

Still, there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map. I’m mulling over an idea, which I will return to in a future post.

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Last-Minute GM: Too Many Tables!

The Problem

In Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone posted a thread about having too many tables when generating adventures on the fly.

[…] I’ve found/made some random tables resources that are great, but I’m getting to the point where I have 14-17 pages of random tables. […] Is there such a thing as too many roll tables?

The Real Problem

The easy answer would be “if you are having problems with your current number of tables, that’s too many.” But if we dive into the problem in more detail, I think there’s actually two different kinds of tables:

1. Tables you use on the fly; and,
2. Tables you use between sessions to prep adventures.

Most of your tables will fall into the second category. These are things like contents of treasure troves, qualities of magic swords, random names for taverns, ships, or NPCs, and so on.

The first category, however, should be a very small number of tables. Your current wandering monster tables geared for the adventure area, for example. Area event tables. The standard attack, save, and reaction tables. Maybe a couple generic multipurpose tables to help you improvise when things go off script, like a table of random letters to create initials to suggest NPC names or other names.

But how do you use Category 2 tables if you want to go full improv?

Lists to the Rescue!

The trick is to prep lists rather than dungeon keys. Remember the TSR Monster and Treasure Assortments? Or the NPC rosters? Those were randomly-generated monsters, treasures, NPCs, and occasionally other things. You could roll or pick from these lists, instead of rolling multiple times on multiple tables. But we don’t really need 100+ entries on a list. We can shorten things a bit.

Between sessions, use those random tables to create a list of 6 to 8 ships, or pirate captains, or taverns, or unique named monsters with personalities, or whatever else you know you will need for the areas the PCs will be exploring. You may need several pages of lists for your entire session, but at any given time, you will only need a few of those lists: the ships and pirate captains lists when down by the pirate docks, or the tavern list when wandering the streets.

Rather than treating a list as a table, use this generic table to pick entries from the list:

2d6	Result
2-3	Use second item on list
4-7	Use first item on list
8-10	Use last item on list
11+	Use second to last item on list

Put a checkmark next to an item when it’s used. The second time you use the list, skip items that have been used. Between sessions, restock your lists. You will probably never need more than 6 to 8 entries for any given session.

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XP Ability Bonuses Redux

The Problem

In a thread on Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone asked about ways to award XP for disarming or otherwise dealing with traps. I replied with this comment:

Just take the easy route and award XP based on the ability score used multiplied by some factor, perhaps based on the difficulty of the trap. EXAMPLE: PC uses Intelligence to disarm a trap that does 2 dice damage, so multiply Int by 2.

Now, this is based on a blog post I wrote ages ago about the more general topic of using ability scores for XP awards. This was originally meant to be an alternative to XP bonuses based on prime requisite, for example Fighters with Strength 18 earning +10% experience for monsters slain. I later broadened the idea to XP for actions other than combat or treasure, which would include dealing with traps. But how large should this reward be?

Scaling by Difficulty

I and some other people playing OD&D use 100 xp per HD and 1 xp per gp for treasure, which means prime requisite bonuses would be +5 or +10 xp per HD or per 100 gp of treasure.

I bring this up because I would set the difficulty of non-combat, non-treasure tasks as either an HD equivalent or a treasure value equivalent. For traps, their “Hit Dice” could be set equal to the damage they do, as in the example from my Reddit comment.

Or, if the trap has a non-damaging effect, the GM can find a spell that more or less duplicates that effect and use the spell’s level as its “Hit Dice”. For example, a trap that drops victims safely into a small cell to keep them from leaving could be treated as Hold Person (Level 3.)

Multiplying an ability score by HD or spell level would thus give an xp bonus in the range of +3 to +18 xp per HD. Higher than -20 to + 10 xp under the traditional system, but not far off.

The Conclusion

My original suggestion was to multiply that score bonus by 10, because I was thinking “average ability score of 10 times 10 equals 100 xp, same as for a 1 HD monster.” But I think I’d prefer one of these two alternatives:

• Add 100 to the ability score and multiply by HD, no other factor. This gives xp awards that are only a tiny bit off from the original.
• Don’t add anything, just multiply scores by 5. This seems low, but if you award xp for non-combat actions and allow ability score combos (Strength + Dexterity for fighters using agile maneuvers to deliver the mightiest blows,) the extra xp awards compensate.

I think I prefer the second option, since it’s easier: just halve the ability score and add a zero to the end as an extra digit (the easy way to multiply by 5.) But I may have more to say about this in a future post.

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Drop Wolves Art

A quick post about an old monster of mine. Remember drop wolves? Well, here’s what they look like.

Drop Wolves

(Or, at least, what a text to image AI thinks they would look like. Although maybe this pic is better for droplet wolves?)

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Gems: A Short Series

I’ve been meaning to do another movie review for a while, so obviously it’s time to start a series of posts discussing dungeon treasure stocking instead. Specifically, how to handle gems. It’s inspired by this OD&D forum post that’s been going on for that last month or so.

How do you assign gems to treasure? More specifically, how much information do you include, or should you include? Full description of each gem and quantity, minimum information necessary, or something in between?

I lean towards the minimum, with a few extra details. But before I get into that, I need break down the steps to assigning gem details. Loosely based on the “official” process, the steps are:

1. Check if there are gems in a treasure cache or trove.
2. Check the number of gems.
3. Assign base gem value.
4. Check how many gems are of higher or lower value.

If randomly assigning treasure, Steps 1 and 2 are handled as part of the treasure table in either Volume II: Monsters & Treasure (page 22) or Volume III: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (page 7) depending on whether it’s a wilderness treasure or dungeon treasure. Step 3 involves a roll on the Gem Base Value table on page 40 of Monsters & Treasure, followed by a d6 roll for each gem or group of 5 to 10 gems as Step 4.

In the official process, you could argue that there is a fifth step, “Record the info, along with extra details like gem type or color”. But the books do not actually say that all four steps must be done at the same time, before the dungeon key is completed.

I would argue that it’s easier to do Steps 1 through 3, record the info as Step 3.5, and put off the final roll for Step 4 when each gem is appraised.

So here is my suggested gem generation process for GMs stocking treasures:

Step Zero: Pick a Dungeon Theme

Picking a theme is of course is part of the dungeon creation process, rather than the gem generation process, but what kind of dungeon you are creating and where it is should, logically, affect what kind of gems might be available. One trivial example is pearls, usually treated as if they were gems. Underwater treasures or coastal treasures might reasonably include more pearls than someplace far from an ocean. Other gem types could be more or less common depending on the region: if jade is more common in one area, dungeons in that area or connected in some way to that area might have more jade in their treasure troves than other gems.

Step One: Pick Your Gem Types

It’s arguably not immersive to describe gems to players this way:

“You find 30 gems of 100 gp value.”

It’s more immersive to describe them this way:

“You find 20 sapphires and 10 diamonds.”

But it’s crazy to roll for each gem to see what its type is, especially since the average PC probably won’t know the exact type, just the general appearance. The easier method is to assign three gem types to the dungeon as a whole, for example opaque red, murky green, and clear yellow. All gems in that dungeon will be one of those types, simplifying the next step.

Step Two: Check the Number of Gems

As you stock each treasure trove in a dungeon, you make three rolls:

• How many gems are Gem Type 1?
• How many gems are Gem Type 2?
• How many gems are Gem Type 3?

You defined each gem type in Step One, so all you need to roll is a number. Gem Type 1 will be different for each dungeon. There is no table lookup for this step.

Since we can subtract a number from the roll and discard any result of 0 or less, we can fold “Check for Gems” into this step as well.

Step Three: Revealing Details to Players

For reasons I’ll explain more in a future post, each of our gem types has a predefined base value. We actually don’t need to roll any more as part of dungeon key creation. We just need to tell the players “You find 10 gems that look like this, 8 that look like this, and 2 that look like this.” And there’s only three "this"es per dungeon, so players can just keep a running total of each gem type found.

If there’s a dwarf in the party, or someone with gem appraisal skills, they can find out more details, including the exact value. Or they can have the gem appraised, or just sell it blindly without knowing the details.

I plan on detailing each of these modified steps in a separate post, with appropriate tables. I won’t be posting before next week, however.

Series Index

• Gems Intro (this post)
• Gems I : Types
• Gems II: Quantities
• Gems III: Assessments

(Will edit to add links as the posts are published.)

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Ethereal Components

The way I run magic in D&D, M-Us use common, easy-to-get “material components” as spell ingredients during their spell prep (not during spell casting.) This helps explain why there is even a need for spell prep and why it is usually done between adventures rather than during them.

But one particular idea I’ve had about this spell prep is: some spell prep involves using a material object to make a temporary ethereal duplicate of that object that the spell caster “carries” with them, as if it were equipment. Examples of this for 1st level spells:

Hold Portal (object: iron spike)

Casting the spell wedges an invisible spike under the door, preventing the door from moving for a short period of time.

Shield (object: wooden shield)

Summons an invisible shield between the caster and opponents the caster is facing at the time of casting.

Magic Missile (object: arrow)

Summons an invisible arrow or large dart into the caster’s hand that can be thrown immediately at an opponent.

Light (object: lit candle)

When prepped, the light from the candle is “stored” ethereally, attached to whatever is holding the lit candle (M-U’s hand, end of a staff, etc.) When cast, the light becomes visible above the attachment point and moves with it. Max duration = max burn time for a candle.

1st level spells would only be able to bring back one quality of the object used (like the light of a candle, or the obstruction ability of an iron spike.) The object itself would not appear (not a conjuration, in other words,) so you couldn’t use Hold Portal to summon spikes to use as climbing gear, for example. The effect is short-lived.

3rd level spells would allow actual items or material to be stored ethereally and conjured when needed.

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Portable Holes in a One-Plane Universe

There’s a question about portable holes on the OD&D forums: do you treat it as a Bag of Holding, or just a temporary hole? The question assumes in both cases that there’s an extra-dimensional space involved, as mentioned in the Greyhawk supplement.

But I thought: What if there isn’t?

I’ve written before about how I prefer a one-plane cosmology with a material world that has additional states of matter beyond solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. To maintain that, there couldn’t be any extra-dimensional spaces under my cosmology. So where does the hole part of a portable hole come from? Where do things inside the hole go when it is removed?

How I interpret Portable Holes:

• Turns a ten-foot long cylinder of connected solid material into ethereal matter.
• The effect stops when it hits liquid, gas, or any other non-solid material and does not continue, even if solid matter resumes before the ten-foot range is reached.
• Objects or living beings that enter the hole at this point aren’t transformed. They are just normal objects occupying space previously filled with solid matter.
• When the hole is removed, any ethereal matter tries to return to its solid state. If something is already in the same space and can’t be pushed out, it remains ethereal until that space is no longer occupied.

This means that if someone is crawling through a Portable Hole through a stone wall when the hole is removed, they become embedded in stone. They will suffocate, if they need air to breathe. Meanwhile, there’s an ethereal stone duplicate of them occupying the same position. When they are removed from that position, the stone reappears. If the surrounding stone is no longer there, you wind up with a statue of a crawling person.

There are some other weird situations that could happen, but the general principle is that two solid objects or two ethereal objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time, but a solid object and an ethereal object can occupy the same space.

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Even Simpler Treasure Codes

I wanted to take a break from endless treasure codes posts, but they keep reeling me back in…

I started a thread on the OD&D forums to get more feedback, and got some that caused me to think of alternatives to making the system even simpler. Two of the main goals of coming up with a new treasure system are:

1. Keeping the codes short but readable, and
2. Reducing the amount of die-rolling.

Switching to roman numerals for base values and reducing the main treasure codes to three is good, but as waysoftheearth pointed out in the thread, having two capital letters with two completely different domains of interpretation right next to each other can cause confusion. But if we replace the codes B, E, and A with actual words like “coins”, “gems”, and “magic”, or even use the standard coin abbreviations in place of “coins”, we still have a fairly short descriptive phrase while making things easier to understand.

We could also eliminate the need for a “chance of treasure” index by making the target number for a d20 roll = HD +/- hp modifier. So, a 1+2 HD creature has treasure on 3 or less on d20 (because 1+2 = 3.)

This still leaves the roll for “how much treasure”. One thing I considered early on, but couldn’t figure out how to do, was making the chance roll the same as the quantity roll. But we could use the chance roll result to set the quantity as well.

So let’s try this treasure code format:

5+1 HD monster, gp D, gem C x10, magic

How to use this code:

1. Roll 1d20 for coins. If <= 6 (HD + hp adds,) there are coins.
2. Multiply the result by 4 for number of containers. The code gp tells us these are gold coins. The roman numeral D tells us there are 500 gps per container.
3. Roll 1d6 per HD (in this case, 5d6.) Count the number of 1s and 6s you get, tracking them separately. Multiply each by the d20 result for the number of containers of coins of lower value and higher value.
4. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for gems. In this case, if there are gems, also multiply the result by x10. This is the total number of gems of base value C (100 coins in value.) You can skip figuring out higher/lower value gems until a PC tries to appraise them.
5. By default, the roll for jewelry is the same as the roll for gems, even if not listed. However, some codes may say “no jewelry” or give a different value/multiplier.
6. Roll 1d20 for magic or other items. If <= HD/2, round up (in this case, 3,) there are items in the treasure. The result is the number of special items, but the target number (HD/2) is the total number of items, so there may be “duds”.
7. Roll 1d6 per special item. On a 5+, it’s a treasure map. Otherwise, it’s magic.

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Simpler Treasure Codes

So, I did all that stuff about mnemonic treasure codes, and then I decided there was a way to make the mnemonics much easier to read and more compact: (1) Fewer primary treasure prefixes, and (2) Ditching table lookups for base values.

Explaining the New Codes

First, the prefixes. We only need three:

• A = Arcane Artifact or Magic Item
• B = Bulk Treasure (coins of various types)
• E = Extra (or Expensive) Treasure, for gems and jewelry

The suffixes remain the same, but come immediately after this prefix, and only when necessary: Bc specifies copper as the default instead of silver. Eg specifies gems only, if jewelry is absent or less/more abundant.

Artifacts (A) only need a numerical prefix and optionally a suffix: 3 A means 30% chance for three items and 4 A+s means 40% chance for any four items + one scroll. For Bulk treasure and Extra treasure, though, use a roman numeral, which is easier to use than the vowel system I came up with earlier.

• V = 5 coins value
• X = 10 coins value
• L = 50 coins value
• C = 100 coins value
• D = 500 coins value
• M = 1000 coins value

To shorten things a bit, though, we can mix in arabic numerals instead of using more than one roman numeral (so, B3X instead of BXXX.)

Most of the time, coins will be in small bags (BL,) large sacks (B3C,) or chests (BM.) 5 BgM means 50% chance of 5d6 chests with 1,000 gold coins each. For gems and jewelry, that roman numeral refers to the base value of each gem or piece of jewelry, not the quantity. The most common value will be EC (base value of 100 coins.) In general, all gems and jewelry can fit into a single container.

How to Check for Treasure

For arcane artifacts, only one roll is necessary: a Chance Roll to see if there are any magic items at all. There may be additional rolls to decide which items are present, but this is optional; you could just pick whatever you want, any way you want.

For coins, you can handle all treasure checks with three rolls.

1. Chance Roll (d10 roll under prefixed number, or whatever you prefer) to see if any coins are present at all.
2. Default Coin Amount Roll (prefixed number = number of d6s to roll.) Total this, then set aside highest d6 rolled; call this the secondary coin amount.
3. Secondary Coin Amount Roll (secondary coin amount = number of d6s to roll as a dice pool.) Every 1 rolled is an extra container of lower-value treasure and every 6 rolled is an extra container of higher-value treasure.

So, if the code is 5 BsM:

1. Roll d10. If result <= 5 (50% chance,) there are coins in the treasure trove.
2. Roll 5d6, get {1, 3, 3, 4, 4}. Total is 16 chests of silver, 1,000 coins each.
3. Since highest d6 in Step 2 was “4”, roll 4d6 and get {1, 1, 2, 6}. Result is two chests of copper and one chest of gold, 1,000 coins in each chest.

If a prefix has two suffixes (Bsg,) roll Step 2 twice, but only set aside one d6 as the secondary coin amount for Step 3. The lower-value treasure is below the lowest value listed as a suffix, while the higher-value treasure is above the highest value listed. In the case of Bsg, this means there would be copper and platinum.

For gems and jewelry, either roll the same as you would for coins, using the third roll for gems or jewelry of higher and lower value mixed in with the rest, or just roll for chance and quantity, then follow the procedure in Monsters & Treasure, p. 40.

Using Treasure Codes for New Monsters

When designing new monsters, you would want to follow a more rational pattern than the original treasure types:

• Don’t worry about minimum quantities, only max quantities.
• Don’t use the plus or minus modifiers.
• Don’t split probability and quantity. Just use one number. If you want the treasure amount to be higher or lower than the probability would indicate, adjust the roman numeral instead (poor monsters might have small bags instead of chests, for example.)
• Only record the most common type of coin, letting the rules above handle other types.
• To make treasures fit better with each monster, focus on exclusions and bonuses. 4 A+2s no w as a magic-using monster’s artifact treasure is a much better customization than randomly raising and lowering coin amounts. 3 BgM no s might make sense for custom lycanthrope treasure.

Instead of assigning numbers to treasure probability and amount at random, work out a formula tying this to monster level. I think this is a good start:

Hit Dice	Quantity X	Base Value	G/J	Magic
up to 1+2	max hp/2	X BL	x1	1 A
2 to 10+	HD/2	X BM	x1	X/2 A
11+	HD/4+1	X B2M	x10	X+1 A

Replace the X in columns 3 and 5 with the value from column 2 (round up) to get the coin and magic treasure codes for a monster. For gems and jewelry, use X EC, replacing X with the value from column 2, then add the multiplier from column 4 as necessary. So, for example:

• For a 1+1 HD hobgoblin lair: 4 BL 4 EC 1 A.
• For a 6 HD troll lair: 3 BM 3 EC 2 A
• For a 10 HD hydra: 5 BM 5 EC 3 A.
• For a 12 HD dragon: 3 B2M 3 ECx10 4 A.

This starter code could then be customized, shifting some low-HD monsters to copper instead of silver, for example, or adding a x10 multiplier to gems for a gnome lair, or adding bonus magic items to mid-level monsters that have more powers than usual.

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Treasure Codes and the Treasure Table

I wrote a lot of posts over the past couple weeks about a new mnemonic way to mark treasure in monster descriptions:

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry
• Part Four: maps and magic items
• Part Five: dice and probabilities

I promised translations for the existing treasure types, although I will warn you right now that they look pretty ugly. This is mainly due to the treasure types not being very well thought out. Aside from scattered patterns I've already mentioned (higher treasure amounts for hoards and active treasure collectors, for example,) there's no real rhyme or reason behind assigning probabilities and quantities. This means you have to record lots of info for each type and can't compress it down to something simple.

And I confess: after I finished writing up the conversion table, I decided I wanted to improve the mnemonic system even more, and maybe do a complete overhaul of the treasure types, which really are quite bad. But for now, here's the conversion table.

Type	... Converts to This Code
A1	2:1 Coyc 3:1 Coys, 3:2 Coyg, 5:6 Gee/Jee, 4:3 Xu
A2	2:1 Coyc/s-1, 2:1 Coyg, 5:1 Gee/Jee-1 x10, 6:3 Xu
A3	6:5 Coyg (no cs), 6:1 Gee/Jee x10, 5:1 Mu
B	5:1 Coyc+1, 2:1 Coys, 2:1 Cyog-3, 2:1 Gee/Jee, 1 Xuw
C	2 Coyc, 3:1 Coys-1 (no g), 2:1 Gee/Jee-1, 1:1 Xu
D	1 Coyc+1, 2 Coys, 6:1 Coyg, 3:1 Gee/Jee+1, 2 Xu+p
E	(1/2):2 Coyc-2, 3:2 Coys, 2:1 Coyg+1,1:2 Gee/Jee-2, 3 Xu+s
F	1:4 Coys-4, 4:2 Coyg, 2:4 Gee/Jee, 3 Xu+ps (no w)
G	7:1 Coyg-1, 3 Gee, 3:2 Jee-2, 4 Xu+s
H	3:4 Coyc, 5:2 Coys-2 x10, 7:1 Coyg x10, 5:2 Gee-2 x10, 5:1 Jee-1 x10, 2:4 Xu+ps
I	5:2 Gee+2, 5:2 Jee+2, 2:1 Xu

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Treasure Codes: Thoughts on Quantity and Probability

This is Part Five in an ongoing series re-examining treasure types in OD&D and discussing a possible mnemonic replacement.

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry
• Part Four: maps and magic items

Today’s topic: Dice ranges for treasure amounts and the probability of finding each variety of treasure.

I mentioned one way of sorting the treasure types in Part Three based on quantity. But we could also sort based on likelihood of finding maps or magic. Mixing the two methods and splitting off Type I as an outlier gives us six categories:

Types	Category Name	Examples
A1/A2	Active Treasure Collectors	bandits
A3	Active Waterborne Collectors	pirates
B-F	Standard Treasure Troves	orcs, ogres
G	Dwarven Hoard	dwarves
H	Treasure Hoard	dragons
I	Individual Items	rocs

Active treasure troves have generous quantities of gems and jewelry and high chances of magic items, although pirate treasures (A3) have no magic, only a map, which is why it’s separate.

Standard treasures have smaller quantities of all monetary treasure varieties and lower the chance of copper coins in a trove as you progress through the alphabet: 50% for Type B down to 0% for Type F. Oddly, the chance of a magic item being in a standard treasure trove increases as the number of items increases. It’s roughly a 10% chance for each item, excluding bonus items like potions and scrolls.

Dwarven Hoards have generous quantities of gold coin, gems, and jewelry, no other coin varieties, and follow the same pattern for magic items as Standard treasure troves.

Dragon Hoards have generous quantities of just about everything, but half the expected chance of finding magic items.

Individual Items have no coins and low quantities of everything, although the chances for gems, jewelry and a magic item are high.

Treasure types with generous quantities of coin, gems, and jewelry have at least 50% chance for each, while almost all types with standard quantities of a category have a chance less than 50%.

Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern linking quantity (dice) to chance of finding (probability.) But we can ignore that and create a link, just to make the mnemonics easier. I’ve already assumed all quantities are rolled with d6s only. Modifiers to the roll can be placed after the mnemonic code. This gives us:

• 3 Coyg = 3d6 chests of 1,000 gold coins each

• Jee-1 = 1d6-1 (or 1 to 5) pieces of jewelry, base value 100 coins each
• 4 Gee x10 = 10 to 60 gems, base value 100 coins each
• 2 Xu +p = any 2 magic items, plus one potion

The base probability for any of these is 10% per die rolled for quantity. So: 30% chance for the 3d6 chests of gold, 10% chance for the jewelry, 40% chance for the 10 to 60 gems, or 20% for 2 magic + 1 potion. No need to use percentile dice: roll a d10 instead, any result less than or equal to the number shown means that treasure is present. If the probability doesn't match the number of dice, use a target number prefix followed by a colon and the dice number:

• 6:3 Coyg 60% chance of 3d6 chests of gold
• 4:2 Xu +p 40% chance of 2 magic items + potion

Some options:

• d20 instead of d10: double target number
• 2d6 Drop 6s: Treat each 6 on a die as a zero, for number from 0 to 10. Target number is the same, but probability is no longer linear.

Next up: I finish this long series by translating the existing treasure types into mnemonic codes to create a new treasure type table.

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Treasure Codes: How Items Work

This is Part Four of in a series re-examining treasure types in OD&D and discussing a possible mnemonic replacement.

• Part One: treasure codes
• Part Two: coins
• Part Three: gems and jewelry

Today’s topic: maps and magic items.

Unlike other treasure items, the monetary value of maps and magic items is not used in the treasure types at all. One obvious reason for this: the random treasure tables include cursed items mixed in with useful items. That’s kind of what you want, if you are aiming for an old-school experience: players never know if an item is useful or cursed based solely on superficial examination.

Instead, items are sorted by their general form and function, which is why I originally chose to assign one letter to each form:

• M for Maps
• P for Potions
• S for Scrolls
• W for Weapons or Armor
• X for Any Magic Item

But in way, this doesn’t make sense. Because:

Any time a treasure type specifically includes a Map, Potion, Scroll, or Weapon, it’s one added item of that type, over and above any other maps, potions, scrolls, or weapons that are rolled by accident.

In other words, “Any 4 + 1 Potion and 1 Scroll” may mean:

• 5 potions and a scroll,
• 1 potion and 5 scrolls,
• 1 potion, 1 scroll and 4 items that aren’t potion,
• Some other mix of 6 items that includes at least one potion and one scroll.

Since the only vowel code that makes sense for items is “unique” (u), it makes more sense to cluster all magic items together in one “word”.

So: 4 Xu+ps would be a better way to write “Any 4 + 1 Potion and 1 Scroll” than “4 Xu Pu Su”, because it’s more compact. Besides, the repeated “u” codes makes the code look repetitive.

There’s only one roll to see if a treasure trove includes maps and/or magic items, not one roll per potential item.

Again, the “4 Xu Pu Su” code would be misleading, because it looks like there are four rolls: one for four magic items of any type, one for a potion, and one for a scroll. It should actually be a single all-or-none roll.

You can still use M/P/S/W if there is only one item type. One example: pirates do not have magic items, but do have a chance for a single treasure map. This would be the code Mu.

Next week: dice and probabilities.

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Treasure Codes: How Gems and Jewelry Work

Topic Two in a series of explainer follow-ups for the treasure codes post is gems and jewelry. The original treasure table specified that gems and jewelry are rolled separately, but in all but two cases, the chances of finding each and the quantities found are the same for any given treasure type. They are just combined into one column to save space.

There are two broad categories of treasure in relation to quantities of gems or jewelry in the trove: standard quantities (in the 1 to 3 dice range) vs. generous quantities (either 6d6, 1d100, or 1 die x10.) Gems/jewelry collected by bandits and other large bands of humans are generous, as are dragon hoards. All others are in standard quantities.

[There’s a similar distinction for gold possessed by pirates, dwarves, or dragons (generous) vs. all other treasures (standard,) which when combined with gems and jewelry gives us four categories: standard, generous gold, generous gems, and doubly generous.]

Vowels in gem and jewelry codes should be used to represent base values of each item, rather than the multipliers we use for coins:

i for inferior gems (10 coins base value)
a for average gems (20 coins)
e for excellent gems (50 coins)
ee = 100 coins
o = 500 coins
y = 5,000 coins
u = 50,000 coins

Most of the standard gem values are represented here, with a few extra. If the base type is y or u, don’t roll a d6 for the number of gems, but instead assume it’s a single gem (or, for example, 5 gems if the code is 5 gy, etc.) Jewelry will normally just be joo, but the value can go up or down for either gems or jewelry.

Each piece of jewelry, gem, or group of 5 or 10 gems of the same value, gets a d6 roll on the value adjustment table:

d6 roll	Gem Value	Jewelry Value
1	half normal	3d6/10 x base
2-5	normal	1d6 x base
6	doubled	2d6 x base

This is a simplification of the way gems and jewelry are handled in Monsters && Treasure.

As for suffixes, most of the time there won’t be one. If you really want to specify different kinds of gems, you could use codes like r(ed), g(reen), b(lue), and y(ellow), or p for pearls. But probably the most useful suffixes would be those indicating size.

gyl is a large gem (10x normal size, about the size of someone’s fist)
gyh is a huge gem (100x normal, about the size of someone’s head)
gyt is a titanic gem (1000x normal, about the size of someone’s torso)

The size multiplier doesn’t affect the base value, but it affects the space it takes up in a bag, sack or pack. You can’t fit a titanic gem into a large sack, but 1 to 3 huge gems could fit. These size codes would be especially useful if we added another code, F, for fancy items like vases, urns, paintings and other decorations.

Next up: maps and magic items.

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Treasure Codes: How Coins Work

At some point, I plan to do a conversion table for OD&D treasure types to the treasure codes I wrote about last week. But that’s going to take a while to assemble, so in the short term, I’ll try to explain some of the thinking behind the codes, with an eye towards things I might change in the future.

First topic: coins in treasure troves.

The original treasure tables had separate rolls for three kinds of coins: copper, silver, and gold. Later official versions of the treasure table often include new columns for electrum and/or platinum. I decided it makes more sense to use relative coin values. This has a couple advantages:

• It keeps the number of rolls low.
  The full AD&D treasure table would require five rolls just for coins. This way, there’s only three rolls in most cases.
• It allows adjustments for GMs who use the silver standard.
  This is a pretty common house rule that interprets equipment prices in silver pieces instead of gold pieces. There are rarer variant house rules for a copper standard or other alternatives.
• It allows temporary shifts for unusual treasure troves.
  Even if using the silver standard, a GM could change the common coin type for a dwarven hoard to “gold” to make it much more valuable.

In the previous write-up, I used the codes

C (common coin, in bags of 300 coins each)
Cl (low-value coin, bags of 300 coins each)
Cr (rare coin, bags of 300 coins each) and
L (loose coin, in smaller quantities)

Plus optional suffixes to specify other types. Re-thinking this, I’ve decided that it’s easier to just use C + vowel + suffix. Suffixes are up to individual GMs – they are mnemonics, after all – but my own suggestions, based on stuff I’ve seen, are:

c for copper
s for silver
l for electrum
g for gold
p for platinum
m for mithril
j for junk (any coin less valuable than copper, frex iron)
double or triple letters for larger coins, small bars, etc.

The missing element to these mnemonic codes, of course, is the vowels, which I defined as quantities. My original approach was to pick some of the most common quantities and assign them to vowels, but now I’m thinking that, if the die-type is constant (1d6) and we use numeric prefixes to indicate how many dice to roll (3 cig = 3d6 gold coins,) all we really need to use the vowel for is the multiplier (base number of coins.) So here’s a rewrite:

a for average (x20)
e for extra (x50)
o for overflowing (x300)
i for individual (x1)

These multipliers are based on container sizes in Men & Magic: 20 coins in a pouch, 50 coins in a small bag, 300 coins in a large sack. Which means that the first three vowels can be read as those container types. So:

2 cag = 2d6 pouches of gold pieces, or 40 to 240 gp
5 cog = 5d6 sacks of 300 gold each, or 1,500 to 9,000 gp

Double vowels, or vowel combinations, add the multiples together before multiplying: coog is twice as many sacks of coins as cog.

The missing vowels, y and u, can be redefined as needed, but by default. u is “unique” (no die roll, just a single item) and y is an abbreviation for “two sacks and two bags”, a x700 multiplier. This makes it easy to get the original quantities of coins in the treasure table with the oy combo (x1000).

Next up: gems and jewelry.

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Treasure Type Links

One thing I may not have made clear in the treasure codes article is that I’ve thought a lot about treasure types and written about them in the past. Lots of analysis, most of which we can probably ignore. But for the curious, these specific posts might be useful.

• Probably the most useful thing I’ve done with the treasure types is to create a list of monsters sorted by treasure type.
• I rewrote and tweaked the treasure types many times for my clone project, including these thoughts about treasure types.
• At least a tiny bit of that work resurfaced when I wrote about restocking dungeons.

Delta’s D&D Hotspot has some relevant articles as well, at least one of which was around the same time as I was writing about it. These are much more math-intensive than anything I ever did.

• Expected Treasure
• Expected Treasure and XP
• Dungeon Treasure Revisited

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