GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

We opened the chest
To find coin bearing The Mark
But gold is gold, right?

— A cursed man

The essence of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is slaying monsters and taking their stuff. Until now, though, the monsters (lurking in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 and 2) have filled more supplements than the loot (stashed in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables). We can't have that! That's why we're kicking off the new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures series.

The inaugural volume, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes, offers the GM a wealth of new ways to tempt adventurers with cash, going into great detail on the composition, size, and appearance of not just coins made from precious metals but also nearly anything else that might count as money – including some things that don't look the part. As well, it expands on what Treasure Tables has to say about costly fabrics, remarkable materials, decorative motifs, and cultures of origin. In short, it transforms a pile of plunder from a $ value and a collection of generic items into a find that requires a little thought (and possibly an adventure!) to count, spend, or sell. And some of these valuables are better kept than traded, whether because they're intrinsically useful or because they're magical, while others are best left where they were found . . .

Everybody loves a good haul of booty! Drop some of your real-world coin on Glittering Prizes and you won't be disappointed.

—

Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0332

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

This sounds really cool and sounds like something I might be interested in.

I dunno if this is the appropriate place to put it, but one other thing I'd kinda like to see in future installments is guidance for potentially mapping the tables to slightly higher tech levels (for Victorian/Steampunk treasure, and lowish tech guns especially, since Dungeon Fantasy sits on the border of TL3/4 apparently) But from just the short description it sounds like this one answers a lot of the popular economics lore questions I've seen and heard.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Since higher TLs have progressively more and more stuff than lower ones, that'd be a pretty long book. Having said that, just about everything DF8 and this new book have to say about decoration and embellishment can be applied with little or no modification to higher-tech goods.

As I've suggested elsewhere, DF is TL Olden Times. That is, it doesn't fit into the regular GURPS TL progression. Rather, it's a particular popular conception of pre-industrial technology, the sort of romantic thinking that has knights in shining plate armor all over the landscape but not even a hint of the most primitive guns [1].

To be clear, it deals with money as an object for adventurers to examine and manipulate and for GMs to set up as window-dressing for the campaign. It doesn't get into economics at all. In DF, money is how adventurers keep score, but economics is something that happens to other people.

I leave you, then, with the theme song I've selected for this book.



1. Well, sort of. There's a Pyramid issue which has not one but two takes on gunpowder-using characters in DF.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

That certainly gets the series creator's seal of approval! Dungeon Fantasy merges everything from fur armor and stone axes, through the shiny bronze of Classical mythology, onward through sword-and-sandal gear, further to the Middle Ages, and finally to the Renaissance – with side trips for exotica like obsidian- and shark-tooth-edged "swords," and even a few modern-day items in drag – all while kicking guns and other inconvenient truths to the curb. Doing so lets hide-clad barbarians with big clubs, knights in full plate harness, swashbucklers with smallswords and powdered wigs, and so on adventure together, and makes room for artificers with clockpunkish inventions. GURPS tech levels break trying to deal with this, so Dungeon Fantasy just tosses them in the bin. That's why none of the skills or gear in the series have a TL on them.

If I could pick a study that characterizes this volume, it would be numismatics, not economics.

Oh, let's advertise our handiwork! That's Pyramid #3/36: Dungeon Fantasy.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

As someone who keeps popping up in the threads here about coins, I really really love this book :)

So, some thoughts, which is sort of a disorganized review:
I love the various tables and charts for making up coins and etc, either once at the start of your campaign to make up some generic coins everyone uses (with flavor!), or to make a unique horde that's potentially quite annoying for players to spend. I'm happy to see non-coin money (like paper money, shells, and rai) in the book. Great for characters from That Foreign Place (you know the one, the one were all the weird PCs come from).

The magical and cursed coins are cute, as well as the weaponized coins and coin-based gadgets :) I like the rogues tool of the sharpened coin making it into the book.

I think the Hell Money box could be adapted in general to interesting money sacrifice tricks for PCs, which could make for equally interesting dungeon puzzles.

"Details, Details" overrides or expands on the similar parts of DF8. I really loved the details and embellishments sections of DF8, and if you did too, you're in for a treat. I'm also left wanting to make one of the particularly annoying monsters a sources of exotic fluorescent yellow dye, or something like that. Who's the natural market for day-glow colours in the DF universe?

"Implausible Materials", to me, is an extension on Details, but it's a particularly fun and exotic take on the idea. Adding more Implausible materials, with some small game impacting details? Totally awesome loot ahoy!

Despite being focused very much on the shiny sparkly decorative bits of treasure, Matt managed to shoehorn some weapon modifiers and a gadget in the back. The gadget appeals greatly to my old-school roots :D

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

What I would call "mild disappointments" except that's much too harsh:

1) Length. Only 22 pages, and that's counting index and cover and so forth. It's not that I felt things were lacking, I just want more because I love treasure stuff.
I don't feel like I'm being over-charged for the length - I just want more of the same.
So publish more in this series ASAP so I can keep giving you my money!

2) I have a retro-fondness for the old treasure type tables, or even D&D 3e and 4e's "treasure for level" and "treasure parcel" tables. I have no idea how you'd do something like that for GURPS, but I want it.
I can't say I was set up to think this was in Glittering Prizes, but a big book on coins sorta feels like a good place to put things like "bandit pocket change tables" or some sort of guideline on how big the dragon horde should be[1]. Regardless, I'd love to see that in a Pyramid article or in another book in the series.


[1] Possibly taking into account the horribleness of the dragon, but I think even pointing out less meta and more practical things like "You will need $2 000 000 in gold coins regardless of size to make a Smaug-like bed for a SM X dragon".

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Do any of these game impacting details have anything to do with hard crafting?Maybe it's covered in another book, but myself not being a master seamstress nor fashion designer, nor armor expert, I had a situation where one of my players said they wanted to craft a nice set of clothes out of some mink furs they discovered. And I had no idea what to do; didn't know how long it'd take a character to design, cut, sew, fit, and what kinda penalties to assess, or how much it would cost to farm out the work, so I pulled numbers out of a black hole, which worked, but felt a little short of the detail I hoped for.

Though... thinking about it, I think I heard something like this being covered somewhere once, but specifically armor. Though, that would probably be a good launching point to extrapolate easy to believe numbers.


Oh, and one other idea, if it's ok to spit something like that out here...

Some guidance for ensuring (or at least increasing the probability) higher quality loot when drawing from the table in circumstances where it seems like the players deserve something awesome. I think I read a small blurb suggesting just adding a small modifier or something to dice rolls, but does that actually necessarily improve odds? I can kinda wing it for example by saying, "a weapon that someone in this party can use with at least one enchantment, with a divine background origin story," but if there is a way to extrapolate "Do these modifications to get lower-on-average tier items and these ones to get higher-on-average tier items" that'd be real nifty.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

No, that would be Low-Tech Companion 3.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Ah cool! This sounds like something I need like tens times over. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I think there's room in DF for a system which quantifies "level" as a general measurement of hostility of environment, like BAD in Action, and could similarly serve as the basis of monster threat levels and available treasure. There's already a bit of work out there which could be used as part of that (IIRC, Ravenpenny did a Pyramid article on quantifying how much of a threat monsters are), but it'd probably need to be its own book.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Since I use BAD in my DF game... I'd use any product designed to go hand in hand with it.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I have a DF book nearly written that brings CERs, treasure, etc. into a single usable whole. "GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeoncraft" if you will. I just have to be allowed to write/submit it. Currently, I cannot.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Non-Forest elves, cat-folk and other beastmen (as hair dye to make the character FurAffinity-compatible ;3), Bards, and other adventurers in roughly that order I'd guess.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Use the AD&D ones, make your rolls, and first convert all money to gold pieces. Then say that 1 AD&D gp = 1 GURPS $, and distribute to copper/silver/gold according to your desired preference, like 60/30/10 (might be best to do by weight for that, not worth). Roll up gems and jewelry as normal in DF8; that's where most of the worth in OD&D/AD&D/BD&D treasure is anyways.

For 3e-style, instead square the CER, multiply by IQ, and divide by 100 (or whatever suits your taste). Make that total horde worth. Apportion as you like.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Related to this, I'm taken with your Making History section. I know this is DF, but this is a great realistic section.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Like he said, this has no economics whatsoever. Here's your economics:

Take the wealth level of the settlement. If you don't know or don't care. it's Struggling for a market village or smaller and Average for a town or bigger. Make it for the TL; assume TL 3 for DF (lower are barbarians, see end of graf), so Average wealth is $1,000. Divide it by 10 (that's the average monthly net after cost of living), multiply it by population (if you don't have this handy, assume 50 for a hamlet, 200 for a village, 600 for a market village, 2,000 for a town, 20,000 for a city). That's the most money you can get in that settlement for everything you sell. Halve this for a barbarian settlement (which won't be more than a market village anyways).

Now, take the Status of the richest person in the settlement (again, if you don't know, it's Status 2 for a hamlet, 3 for a village, 4 for a market village, 5 for a town, 6 for a city, 7 for a capital). Find the wealth level associated with that (Status 2 $5,000; 3 $20,000; 4 $100,000; 5 $1,000,000; 6 $10,000,000; 7 $100,000,000). For most goods, 10% (again, a month's net for that person) of that represents the highest priced good available for sale.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Is it your girlfriend again? She needs to stop wanting to see you and stuff... we have gaming stuff to get! :p

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I enjoyed the CER article, and look forward to this.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

So suppose there was a magicratic civilization that used materialized FP as currency. How much would 1 FP be worth?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Nah, she helps in most cases. Heck, she was the one who said "Just write it while the ideas are fresh and do whatever with it later." Her comments on "It's a Threat!" really made that article shine after the rest of the reviewers had helped to beat it into shape. Having a significant other who enjoys gaming as much as you do isn't a requirement, but it sure does make things easier. :-)

Thanks. I hope I can get it out the gate one day. I think it would be useful to DF GMs everywhere, until then I continue to refine my methods by testing them on my poor unsuspecting...errr, ah, gamers. Yes, my gamers. >__>

Honestly, I'd just assume that 1 FP = 1 energy point for enchantments. so each FP could cost $20. But that raises in interesting thought, if money equals magical energy could you use it to tap for spells. Hmmm.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

The upper limit on FP as currency in DF is $5, because that's what it costs to put 1 FP in your power item (DF 1, p. 28). The $1/point for Quick and Dirty enchantment (DF 1, p. 30) is lower, but that's discounted for "invested in this one item for one purpose." I'd call $5 the going rate for "goes anywhere, does anything" FP.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Since this is DF, I would charge $5/FP, same as recharging a Power Item. Now, that's probably too generous for creating enchantments, and also dispenses with the need to have an expensive item to use as a power item. This means that you might either make them more expensive, or more inconvenient than standard power items.

One solution would be to have the civilization learn a secret to make transferable power items, so you either need an appropriate item to hold the energy (at standard power item prices), and trade the energy plus item, or require users of the currency to have big enough "wallets" (their own power itema) to store the energy.

Another solution would be to make the energy inert until transfered to a power item, so it can be traded freely, but to actually use it as energy is not that easy. Make the process require a Thaumatology roll, and take 1 hour per point to make it inconvenient enough.

The last idea is to trade in "essences" as described in The Material Difference, from Pyramid #3/66, and follow the guidance there to set the price. In my games, I make raw essence worth $40/point, and refined essence worth $50/point.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Most excellent! Thank you very much! I'll treasure this...

Cheers!

Onkl

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

So I looked up Paut because I suddenly remembered its existence and it's priced at $135 for 4 FP, or $33 per FP. How come Paut is so expensive if the upper limit is $5/FP?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Because you can carry it around with you and top up even when you aren't in town. It isn't the equivalent of an instrument on the currency market, subject to exchange rates and arbitrage. It's closer to a gold coin with "FIVE D" ($5) marked on the front that contains a quarter-ounce of gold and sells for hundreds of dollars. That is, it's a commodity or even a curiosity, not currency. If town is leveled by a dragon tomorrow and I'm left wandering the Shadow Plane, my paut still works.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

So, looks like we've got $1/FP for "Bound into a magic item to power it," $5/FP for "Bound into a single item belonging to the character, usable for anything," and $33/FP for "Restores lost FP."

These could be simplified into "Enchantment, non-portable," "Item Recovery, non-portable," and "Personal Recovery, portable." What's missing, then, would be "Enchantment, Portable" (loot that can replace FP for Quick and Dirty casting), "Item Recovery, Portable" (an item that can recharge your Power Item in the field), "Personal Recovery, Non-Portable" (results in effects similar to a Very High Mana zone, but without increased Critical Failures - you can cast, instantly recover, cast, instantly recover, and so forth, but only within the temple or whatever), "General Use, Non-Portable" (you can use money entirely for powering a spell, but only within the temple or whatever), and "General Use, Portable" (an item that can be sacrificed in place of FP to power a spell). There might also be a Single Use type (where you can sacrifice money in a temple or an item in the field to cast, say, Fireball, but not another spell) and/or a Single College type (as Single Use, but any spell from the Fire College).
Filling in the chart would be a challenge, but useful. There may already be some options - note I've filled in "Enchantment, Portable" by using the suggestion from The Material Difference (Pyramid #3/66).

EDIT: I've split this tangent into its own thread to avoid potentially cluttering this one.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I wrote a review you can read here. Short version: Great for the detail-oriented GM, but starts poaching in Low-Tech's territory. Not for every Dungeon Fantasy lover, but definitely something for those of us who don't play DF completely by the book.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

Thanks for the review! It's always good to see GURPS books get a thoughtful evaluation.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I thought Power Items contained and released ER, not FP?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

DF has always referred to the energy stored in Power Items as FP. It's ultimately just semantics - it's energy that can be used in place of FP/ER for casting spells.

Also, just went through the book. It's got some pretty good stuff, particularly all the historical information on coinage. The bit on fasteners was interesting as well, and of course Doublehard Glass is a welcome addition. In fact, more artifacts from the Translucent City would be interesting, such as armor-grade Tempered Glass (and of course the Doublehard treatment could result in something akin to Hardened Steel or Duplex Plate).

One minor thing I'll note - organic currencies aren't quite as implausible as the book indicates. From what I've read in the past, cacao beans were used as currency in the Aztec and Mayan empires.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

I disagree. FP can be used for physical Extra Effort, and for long-distance travel such as h*king or swimming, and for the effects of various forms of deprivation such as food, sleep or hydration, as well as for powering most supernatural abilities (some may be Limied to ER only).

For this reason, ER is distinct from FP, although I agree with the reasoning of the RAW ruling for why ER shouldn't be cheaper than FP.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

The energy stored in Power Items is described as being FP that can only be used for spells, so I suppose in that regard it would be more appropriate to call it ER. As ER wasn't introduced into the DF line until DF3 while Power Items date to DF1, however, it started out being called FP, and continuing to call it such isn't really any more inaccurate than calling it ER (particularly as one can argue ER is just a special case of FP). It's ultimately just energy used to cast spells, regardless of if you refer to it as FP, ER, MP, energy, essence, or flombattery.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes
 

From the description of Energy Reserve: "Each level of Energy Reserve (ER) gives 1 FP that you can only spend to cast spells of one type." It's an advantage that holds FP and applies special conditions to those FP; it doesn't establish a new, separate currency called "ER." When you spend energy points, they're FP whether you take them from your FP stat, your power item (which canonically "holds extra FP for casting spells"), or your ER. It's just that each source has different rules for how the FP it contains are spent, drained, and recharged. It's like comparing financial instruments: They might differ in how they're treated for the purpose of taxes, IRAs, offshore banking, etc. and have very different degrees of liquidity and portability, but they're all still measured in dollars, pounds, euros, or whatever, and can often be combined for specific purposes.