Treasures and hoards

[Niki]

Hi everybody.

I'm from Italy and I played RQ III for long time. Now I'm a Gamemaster with MRQ. I would like to ask you what do you do with treasures. There are no infos about treasures and monsters on the Core and Companion book. Do you have any advice or references I could use to build my own treasures in my MRQ adventures?

Thanks everybody for your help.

 

[Puck]

I imagine that would have a lot to do with your game setting.

1. Of course some form of currency or two would work. It is fun to have several different forms of currency coined by different city-states or empires or maybe even from different times and eras...something like old Latin coins surviving into Medieval times. Different types of coin seems to always add to the realism. I loved the idea of clacks, lunars, wheels and bolgs.

2. The chapter on equipment in the basic RQ book has some good stuff. I do not have the book handy as I am at work but I think this chapter has stuff on magic crystals.

3. The Arms and Equipment book has a lot of good ideas for specialty items.

3. Runes of course.

4. Fabulously crafted mundane items like drinking horns, jewelry, cool things for characters to wear etc.

5. My favorite is valuable trade items that may be heavy, but great use for barter: Urns, boxes and casks filled with stuff like dye, incense, wine, various spices like salt (preservatives), aloe or similar ingredients for healing potions, tea, nuts other non-perishable foods, tobacco, furs, paper, cocoa, rum, rice, tar, sugar, silk, iron or copper ingots, metal weapons (possibly supplying a rebellion). Books or scrolls are also incredibly high priced items as well as various parts of legendary animals. Getting rid of these items, especially if they are hot or smuggled, can produce whole adventures on its own.

I wish lists of training and spell costs would be included in the rules as in RQ II even though many worlds may use a barter system and bargain for prices. It kind of gave GM’s and players alike a general idea of the value of things.

 

[Magistus]

Also check out this older post http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24469&highlight=treasure

 

[ned_plants]

What do you want your players to have? Remembering that they will use thier assets, what would thier opponents have? This works for any game.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Armor and weapons are a treasure in itself, if they can be used or sold on the black market. In an old issue of Tradetalk you will find a lot of good reasons to prevent your PCs to sell them, but if you do not want to enforce them then your opponents' weaponry is treasure. Monster hide is worth something, too, if you use the rules given in Arms & Equipment to make armor from it. But I think some craft test is needed to skin the beasts after you kill them.

Enemy spellcasters usually have some magic point storage device. Unfortunately, in MRQ user conditions do not cost POW to enchant, so a crafted device is likely to be usable only by its creator, just to prevent thievery or unauthorized use. But if the device is a dead crystal, then it is free loot if you are tough enough to kill the magician. Plus you risk getting some runes if the poor fella was a runecaster.

The rest is left to your imagination.

Finally, most broos carry wonderful jewelry and other valuables on them. But you do not want to loot their bodies. Honest.

 

[TRose]

Also many animal parts might also bring money. for example bearskins and claws, rhino horns, tiger bones ect. And there always of course the meat. In the right area you could have your players start out as fur trappers even.

 

[Niki]

Thank you everybody for your advices. I think I'll use almost all of them.

You know, I like to create my own treasures and special and magic items...I was looking for some rules about it just to make my GM work quickly when I prepare my adventures.
I think I'll use the RQ II table for some of the treasures.

Thanks again!

 

[soltakss]

Use RQ2 Trasure factors, but take the silly limits off.

If you want to give Runelevels more treasure, don't use the top ends of skill levels when working out TFs.

When you have your TF for the group, rather than rolling once if the TF is over 100, do the following:
1. Roll on the TF table
2. Subtract 100 from the TF and roll that number on the table, add it to the first result.
3. Repeat stage 2 until you have a TF below 100.

That gives you more treasure and makes it more reasonable.

Then, work out how much treasure is in coin, how much in gems/jewellry, how much in equipment, how much in magic items.

If you are rolling for magic items, then expand the tables to include things from RQ3 or RQM. Change the tables if needs be.

Ignore silly rolls, or perhaps include the Ancient Scroll or Heirloom Jewellry to annoy the players when your Lhankor Mhy NPC offers to take it off their hands for 1000SP.

Split the loot up accordingly. Most people won't let Power Storage Crystals lie around in a chest, for example, but will have them on their person.

Be funny. Give trolls a great treasure in bolgs that the PCs have to carry in a cart. Have an expensive but useless magic item that they want but don't want. The example in our campaign was an ENC 50 boulder with a Detect Mountain matrix, range 10m. Of course, the PCs found a use for it later on and pissed off the GM.

Use the tables as guidelines. Don't rigidly follow them or you will end up with 100 Speedart matrices on slings.