Monday, October 10, 2011

On Expected Treasure and XP


Arneson's OD&D





Moldvay's B/X





Treasure in the Dungeon














(Photo by Falashad, under CC2.)


  1. Since the treasure section of 0d&d was areneson's work, it would be illustrative to check what the FFC says on dungeon stocking.

  2. Also XP from magic items counts as treasure, any number crunching that doesnt include this will be misleading

  3. There's an AD&D rule that the treasure type values are for the maximum number of monsters, and if you meet fewer monsters, then the treasure type should be proportionally smaller.

    Suppose we take that suggestion and use it with the Moldvay rule to take the treasure type for the monster for in-dungeon encounters -- in other words, in the dungeon, you meet 6 orcs, they'll have 1/10 of a full type D treasure. You meet 3 orcs, they'll have 1/20th of a full type D.

  4. One other factor that most folks have missed over the years is that, while Moldvay's base numbers on group encounters in the dungeon were reduced by a factor of 10 on the "No. Encountered" line, he says in the intro to the monster section that, "Monster lairs in wilderness will usually be 5 times the number normally met in dungeons." (pg. B30)

    So the treasure figures for Men are not quite that skewed.

  5. Fascinating Dan thanks for doing this! Objection though to the "Gygaxian OD&D" label in this context. As I and others have pointed out before, the economics of OD&D is almost completely Arneson and Blackmoor. The prices, costs, expenses, taxes and so forth are straight from Dave. Off the top of my head, the only thing I know of that Gygax significantly altered in terms of expenses were the costs of making magic items. Thus your statement;

    "•Gygax probably didn't plan out any statistics like this in advance for the original system. In fact, he probably never actually used random treasure tables at all in his games. (I'd say that he's notorious for not actually using the published rules; and the vagueness of dungeon numbers and treasure speaks to the lack of any specific system for that in the first place.)"

    is probably true for Gary. Its also worth noting that in Arnesons conception of the XP award system, a great deal is made of "Prizes", that is the magic items recovered, thus several hundred xp for potions and several thousand for magic swords, etc.

  6. Thanks for the comments, guys.

    UWS Guy/ DHBoggs: I'll trust you guys that the OD&D treasure stuff was Arneson's work and revise the blog (appreciate it!)

    However, there aren't any XP awards for magic in any of the editions mentioned here (OD&D, Holmes, Moldvay B/X, etc.) If you're saying that's in FFC, then that's intriguing.

  7. Glaurung_Quena said: "There's an AD&D rule that the treasure type values are for the maximum number of monsters..."

    Actually, what I see in the 1E MM is, "treasure types are based upon the occurrence of a mean number of monsters... adjustment upwards might be called for if the actual number of monsters encountered is greatly in excess of the mean." [p. 5]

    So that's the same as what I assumed in the analysis here. Maybe that language was revised in the MMII, as I recall?

  8. Re: "the overly-generous and contradictory Moldvay rule" about treasures generated during random stocking.

    Not sure it's a contradictory rule. Check out the example of random treasure generation for room 4 on page B56. He does use the treasure type in the monster description, but also scales it down based on the proportion of hobgoblins in the room relative to the minimum hobgoblin lair size.

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    Great point (and matches what Glaurung_Quena suggested above). Of course, that isn't included in any of the text instructions elsewhere in the book.

  11. I'd argue it's simply a natural consequence of using the two particular passages together. The B45 passage informs you about *how* to use a monster's treasure type, and the B52 passage informs you about *when* to use it.

  12. Unfortunately with Arneson, XP for magic items is mostly anecdotal, without specific crunch attached. Magic Swords were his first major treasures back in ’71 which cost a base 1000 GP. Gygax, in the FAQ does give crunch for XP as 1000 for a +1 sword, scroll of spells at 500 points + 100 for 6th level spell, and “ a potion is worth between 250 and 500 points.”
    These are pretty close to the cost of making or buying these items. So the principle in operation here seems to be that of awarding the GP value of a magic item as XP. Might be worth doing a separate analysis under that assumption to see how it works out.
    Just to be clear, I wouldn’t make the claim that the OD&D treasure tables are precisely as he gave them to Gary, as its entirely possible that Gary fiddled with them, or maybe he didn’t (but I bet he did). I know that Arneson had another version of these tables in his unpublished OD&D revision.

  13. Well 0d&d clearly states that a dungeon will have 33% of the rooms with monsters, but 50% of the rooms will have treasure.

    More importantly, xp from monsters slain is divided equally between pc and npc hirelings and henchmen, but treasure is massively squewed towards PC's. I break down the numbers in the thread over at 0dd74.

  14. UWS Guy: I see very different numbers for room content. OD&D Vol-3 (p. 7) gives treasure 3-in-6 (50%) for rooms with monsters; it's only 1-in-6 for other rooms (17%). Total would be 5/18 = 27.8% rooms with treasure.

  15. Woops, don't know how I missed that. That will lessen treasure, though preceeding paragraphs to say to place "several" important treasure (with or without monsters guarding it), how much is of course up to the referee.