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Over the weekend, Campaign Mastery was described by the very flattering term, “one of the best Treasure Troves for a DM”. Aside from feeling very chuffed at the compliment, my mind immediately started to think about Treasure Troves. This article is the result.

The Map

So, how do you find a treasure trove? The two obvious answers are “Look in a dungeon” and “Follow a treasure map”. I’ll talk about the first of these in a little bit, but let’s start with the Treasure Map that somehow finds its way into the hands of the party.

The most important question about treasure and anything to do with it, as implied by the title of the article, is always “How did that get here!?” So, how did it come about that the treasure map was available for the PCs to get their hands on it? Answer that with any plausibility and the whole campaign’s credibility is enhanced and reinforced; fail to do so, and the credibility of everything else is threatened and undermined.

This is important because if you have a reputation for credibility, players will forgive or overlook the occasional lapse, whereas if they have to fight tooth and nail for anything even smelling of justifiably, their first reaction to anything will be frustration and “here we go again” – neither of which are conducive to having fun in most cases.

It’s not necessary to construct an entire backstory for the map (though it does leave you ready for just about anything); some hints that there is such a backstory is usually enough to “sell” the credibility of the map, which convinces the players to invest the time and effort into following it, which in turn gets the adventure moving forwards instead of having them sit around stirring up mischief and getting themselves in trouble.

It’s too easy for a GM to misapply the principle of ‘letting the players decide their own fates and make their own decisions’ into being completely passive. That just doesn’t work. You need to dangle opportunities for adventure in front of them until they decide which one to follow next. Life is full of stuff that just happens, why should a fantasy life be any different? Only the type of “stuff” should vary.

In practical terms, there are only two – perhaps three – parts of that backstory that matter.

1. The Immediate

Who did the PCs get the map from and is it credible that they had it to lose? I’m never particularly interested in identities when it comes to answering this question; generic labels tend to expose any issues more quickly. “Rufus Dowdrop owns the map and will use it in collateral in a game of Starsdrop” is not as informative as “An ex-military lowlife possesses the map and will use it as collateral in a game of Starsdrop”. Or it could be “A street punk”, or “A wealthy local”. Of those three answers, only the last needs no further elaboration or justification; but the other two are suggestive of two entirely different answers.

One more tip: there’s a very strong temptation to employ the past tense when thinking about these things; in the GM’s mind, the map is already in the hands of the PCs. DON’T DO IT. Using the future tense, as I have above, makes a huge psychological difference to the GM – instead of thinking about the map as a static thing, it suddenly becomes the key to unlocking a plot, the beating heart of an adventure. Instead of writing a heavy background sequence, you are immediately more engaged in finding ways to get the PCs into the story. Such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference.

2. Origins

Who drew the map in the first place? Again, generics are less work and more quickly reveal problems and inadequacies in the credibility department.

3. In-Betweeners

Is it a serious contention that no-one has ever tried following the map before? If so, this needs explanation in the context of the “handover” to the PCs: “I’ve held onto this map for years. It’s the last valuable thing I own; I always hoped that one day I’d be able to mount an expedition to find the fabulous treasures that must lie at the end of the trail. But I never could. Now it’s come to this…” Three sentences, but they carry a barge-load of credibility in selling the map to the PCs.

On the other hand, every time someone has tried to follow the map and failed, you have two further things that need explanation: how the map was returned to “Civilization”, and what happened to those other adventurers – at least in legend.

The Destination

The second major thing that the GM needs to consider – and the “origins” question above will play directly into the decision – is what will (in generic terms) be found at the end of the map, and is that credible?

Most maps either don’t meet the “treasure map” trope, or they are to a military cache or emplacement (if into relatively ‘known’ lands) or to a mine that has not been rediscovered (if into relatively ‘unexplored’ lands).

Everything else is simply a mark on a normal map, 99% of the time. It would take an expert eye – or long and close examination – to pick out the one marking on the map that doesn’t correspond with something well known, and that therefore might be worth exploring. “Wait, I don’t remember an [x] between Longhop Marsh and Little Bigstrap,” where [x] might be an inn, or a monastery, or a temple, or whatever, “but there’s one marked on this map. We have to check it out!” – and the adventure is off and running. But unless you spoon-feed the discovery to the players, it might take them weeks or months to notice it, because there’s no good reason for it to be marked any differently to any of the other locations on the map.

“Treasure maps” – maps with a notable and obvious “X” marking the spot (visible or otherwise) get past this problem immediately. There may or may not be a route marked; there may or may not be good reason for retracing that route if there is one, and the players may or may not have access to the information they need to make an informed choice. This is such a concatenation of improbabilities that in most cases, the players will have to make blind choices about how they are going to get to X. They might find that there’s good reason for following the trail – it’s the only viable route, for example, or that it’s the least dangerous approach (which is why it was used in the first place). Or they might have to just muddle through on their own.

The “lost mine” is problematic for the campaign, in the long run, unless it was mined out (but the players don’t know and can’t find out about this). Legend can have it be stuffed full of gold ore, or silver, or gemstones. Such things tend to grow in the retelling. But it makes a natural “dungeon”.

Outnumbering such by at least 100-to-1 would be the alternative – military caches or installations, especially ones that were set up by lost expeditions or long-past military junkets.

What’s in the Treasure Trove?

The “book” – interpreted in one specific way – says that PCs of a given character level will typically have ‘one of these at +x and one of those at +y’ – and the GM therefore, in the minds of some players, has an obligation to make those magic items available to the players – which means putting them in hoards or Treasure Troves.

Forget the book.

Using this as a guide to treasure emplacement is a short-term band-aid that will do long-term damage to the campaign.

What gets emplaced in a hoard or treasure trove should always make sense in terms of the nature of the location.

Let’s say we’re talking about a military cache. What would be there? Well, ordinary swords break from time to time; so there would be some of those. Daggers are utility devices as much as weapons, and likely to blunt over time; while they can be resharpened, that takes time and makes some noise. So letting them get blunt and having replacements on hand makes sense. Preserved food and water? Quite plausible. Other cooking supplies: salt and spices? Possibly, but these are frequently expensive. Still, the amounts needed are relatively small, so it’s not entirely implausible. Replacement tents and tent-pegs and bedrolls and blankets and other consumables like fresh uniforms? Absolutely.

Now drop in a +3 sword of Giant-slaying, or whatever. It sticks out like a sore thumb – who has enough such magic items that they can afford to leave on in a cache? Only someone in a campaign that gives away such items like a politician’s promises. It makes no sense, has zero credibility – and damages the credibility of the rest of the campaign.

An elite unit might have +1 or +2 swords. Especially if they are foreign – Elvish or Dwarfish or whatever.

Something I remembered in table conversation on Saturday: In the second campaign I ever played in, characters were 3rd level before they even got their hands on a (non-magical) long-sword as opposed to the short-swords that were ubiquitous. Three fighter-types came to blows over which of them most deserved to have this powerful weapon, and the extra damage that it could inflict.

So forget what the book says. Don’t sacrifice your credibility so cheaply. Instead of a +3 sword of Dragon-slaying, emplace three or four +1 weapons.

The Fumanor Solution

I spent almost twenty years thinking about such things before the Fumanor campaign got off the ground. That’s one reason why it (and its sequels) lasted for so long – 13 years (and still unfinished, but in hiatus at the moment).

It’s strange, but even with everything the players knew about me and my GMing style, they were still blind to some things and never discovered them in all the years they spent in that campaign.

For example, they bitched about the low level of magic floating around the campaign despite the existence of various ways to buff the plus of items within the campaign, and ways to take two +1 swords for example and create a single +2 weapon out of them. Two +2s could make a +3, and so on. Embedding a ‘special ability’ of some sort consumed as many pluses as the rating of the ability “Vorpal” was a +5 equivalent, so a +5 weapon with “Vorpal” was a “Vorpal Sword +0”. One of those plus a straight +5 gets you a “Vorpal Sword +1”. And so on.

But no sword can hold more than a +5 bonus unless the extra is consumed in special abilities. So to get from a Vorpal Sword +1 to a VS +2, you need two +5s, and two mages of equal ability (4 levels per magical plus) casting simultaneously. To get from a VS +2, you need four +5s, and four mages, and so on.

In a similar way, there were methods for embedding those “special abilities” into a sword.

Think of the typical dungeon as the bottom level of a pyramid scheme. To ascend to the next rank up, you need more people at the bottom. Or in this case, swords.

Directions Of Adventure

There’s one exception to the rule of thumb: when you’re using treasure hoards as a carrot to lead the players in the direction of the adventure after the current one. It only stands to reason that confronting, say, Giants, would be a lot more intimidating if you had only standard equipment than if you had a sword of Giant-slaying in your kit. So, when the Seneschal of the throne comes to you with a paying quest into the Giant-lands, while you could always say ‘no’, it’s far less defensible to do so if so equipped – and because of the perceived advantage, you would be more likely to say ‘yes’.

In A Dungeon?

There have been players and GMs who have tried to tell me that things should be different in a dungeon. To which I say, ‘maybe’.

You can think of a dungeon as a pyramid scheme, with the parties attempting to clear the dungeon getting a certain depth into the dungeon based on their levels and equipment. There would be – or at least, should be – more parties with +1 equipment than those with +2, and so on.

That gives a distribution model like the one to the left. This is a dungeon which has defeated one party with +4 weapons and another with +5 weapons, both of which are therefore present to be found – maybe – but you’re almost 1/3 of the way through it before you find even a +1 weapon.

When magic levels are low, it makes character levels more important. Magic is the great equalizer – until it falls into the hands of those characters most capable of taking it off a lesser character, and then it becomes a geometric or even exponential boost to their general combat effectiveness.

Goodies will stay wherever the characters who previously attempted to clear the dungeon fell (not necessarily the same thing as how deeply they got, they may have turned back but been too weak to fight off a lesser threat on their way out) – unless someone moves those goodies. Anyone who knows what a weapon is should be expected to recognize a good one. Anyone who tries to live in anything approaching a civilized way is likely to clean up the mess. If there’s a weapon or magic item, they particularly don’t like being around, they are likely to find a hole and drop it – where it then ends up is anyone’s guess. It’s also likely that some of the goodies from within will be traded with outside forces for things that the residents want more.

Sentient beings will apply whatever they’ve got in the way of smarts to any situation, in other words, and that will impact on where things will be found.

Now, it’s not necessary to compile a complete history of every item in the dungeon; that would become an onerous task very quickly. But you do need to think about things a little and give some positive indication that you have thought about them in your descriptions of areas and encounters, and especially, placement of treasures.

The Believability of Characters

Credibility has one more demand to make. If there’s a +5 weapon in the dungeon, how credible is it that a PC can retrieve it using nothing better than a +1 or +2 or whatever?

This usually works the other way around – if the dungeon is such that characters of the PCs calibers can get through it, why would anyone better equipped have failed to do so?

There are ways of explaining and justifying these situations – the most obvious is that the better-equipped characters have “softened the residents up” for the PCs. But if that’s the case, it should again manifest within encounters, and a notable absence of treasures to be found – they’ve all been scooped up by the better-equipped characters, with the only exceptions being something they didn’t find or something that was so worthless they didn’t bother taking it.

It must also be remembered that the PCs won’t know what the NPCs “ahead of them” are equipped with. At best they may find a hint or two – the corpses of a couple of creatures that the PCs would have been troubled by, for example.

In a nutshell

When you’re the GM of an RPG, you’re engaged in the processes of telling, and facilitating the telling, of stories. If those stories are full of holes, they won’t be very good. If the plot elements, including treasure placement, that you feed to the players are good, they facilitate the spinning of ripping good yarns and enhance the credibility and gravitas that you can command as a storyteller. If they are not so good, you damage your credibility as a storyteller and damage the stories that can be told using the raw materials that you are providing.

And it doesn’t matter what the genre of game is, or what the nature of the rewards are – the basic principle holds true. It could be tech or intelligence in Star Wars or a mystic amulet in Call Of Cthulhu, just as much as it is true for gold and magic in D&D/d20 or it’s many variations. The core commodities of story and credibility are just as unyielding and essential, no matter the genre.

When you put it that way, it seems to be an easy decision to make, doesn’t it?