D&D -> DFRPG: Gold to $

[beaushinkle]

In dripton's castle whiterock conversion, they used 1 gp = $1. I'm pretty sure this went on to influence Charles Saeger's gold conversions here. The aim of this post is to analyze that conversion.

That same castle whiterock conversion notes that each level of D&D character growth feels about like getting 25 points in DFRPG, and a level 1 D&D (3.5) character feels about as strong as a 125 point DFRPG character. This means that a 250 point starting DFRPG character is roughly equivalent to a level 6 3.5e character.

Here's the wealth table from the 3.5e DMG:

| Level | Wealth   | Level | Wealth  |
| ----- | -------- | ----- | ------- |
| 1     | starting | 11    | 66,000  |
| 2     | 900      | 12    | 88,000  |
| 3     | 2,700    | 13    | 110,000 |
| 4     | 5,400    | 14    | 150,000 |
| 5     | 9,000    | 15    | 200,000 |
| 6     | 13,000   | 16    | 260,000 |
| 7     | 19,000   | 17    | 340,000 |
| 8     | 27,000   | 18    | 440,000 |
| 9     | 36,000   | 19    | 580,000 |
| 10    | 49,000   | 20    | 760,000 |

If we use a 1g -> 1$ conversion and play through an adventure, a character that adventures from 125 points up to 250 points will be 13x times wealthier than a character that gets created at 250 points, or 1.6x as wealthy as a character who spends 20 points in the Wealthy advantage, and 5 quirk points in extra starting money for the maximum starting wealth of $8k.

Additionally, we can see that an adventure suitable for 250 point characters (6th level) would generate $6k in wealth for each character. Not loot - wealth; meaning either coinage, stuff they'll actually use, or stuff they can sell at a discount to get to $6k. For instance, say there's 4 party members. That means that over the next 25 character points, we would expect to award $24k worth of character wealth. Say that 1/3 of this is coins ($8k in coins: 5g 225s 1500c), $8k in usable equipment, and $20k more in sellable goods (luxuries, art, gems, etc). That way when they sell the $20k at 40%, they get $8k. They split everything 4 ways and each character gets $6k in wealth.

What is the Buying Power of $6k?
This one is pretty simple: it'll buy you +1 Accuracy on your weapon and +1 Fortify on your armor if you're a martial. It's 37 scrolls of 8 HP Universal Uncharged Major Healing. For a magic user, it brings a $1000, 8 FP power item to 20 FP. It buys a horse, wagon, and 10 weeks of a 125-pt hireling to guard it.

How does this stack up to Published Adventures?

• I Smell a Rat has ~$5,800 worth of loot after liquidating
• Mirror of the Fire Demon is hard to do the accounting for. None of the wandering monsters or NPCs have treasure included or any guidance for how much wealth they ought to have. The Hidden Fortress has treasure listed, so we can use that. Total: $30252
• Hall of Judgment (ignoring wilderness travel random encounters): $220586

As an aside, I find it frustrating that none of these adventures provide information about how much an item is worth if you misidentify it. For instance, I Smell A Rat mentions: "The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead (12 lbs.) worth $500* on the open market. Requires a Religious Ritual roll to evaluate." How much is it worth if the player fails their Religious Ritual roll? More legwork for the GM on each item.

At any rate, after splitting the treasure, the adventurers would come out of I Smell a Rat with $1.4k each (though probably not 25 character points), MotFD with $7.6k each, and HoJ with $55k each.

I Smell a Rat seems miserly, MotFD seems like a fun amount of money, and HoJ feels like it makes the characters have far too much wealth and now the the GM is on the hook to try to find a way to take this away in order to continue challenging players (otherwise the characters can buy huge stockpiles of charged scrolls, tons of hirelings, very nice armor, etc).

This happens in HoJ for two main reasons: the characters are given two extremely expensive magic weapons ($34k sword at the beginning, $25k sword from the warden at Logiheimli), and the characters are able to loot Logiheimli after cleansing it (96 alcoves each of which has a 24% chance of containing ~210 silver for an expected value of $97k in coinage from looting graves).

Conclusion
1g -> 1$ holds up surprisingly well. It gives module writers some benchmarks to aim for and balance around with regards to buying power. If the author thinks that the adventure will run ~7 sessions (~3 points each), and then award ~5 bonus points at the end, and the adventure is aimed at 250-point characters? Endeavor to give out $24k in character wealth for 4 players. Think it'll run ~4 sessions (for a total of 17 points), and it's being published for 300-point characters? Amortize: 17/25 * 9000 * 4 = $24k.

This also gives us some sane by-session numbers to keep in mind as GMs. If your players do something unexpected for a session and you need to make up some loot for a party of 325-pointers, it's appropriate to give them 13000*3/25*4 = ~$6240 in wealth.

An alternate Character Points system
Finally, this lets us create AD&D treasure => character points systems if we'd like. Rather than rewarding character growth for exploring, roleplaying, avoiding traps, defeating monsters, or some hazy by-session metric, we can make it a function of current character points and treasure earned.

For instance! The above chart says that a 300 point (level 8) character ought to have $27k wealth, and that a 325 point (level 9) character ought to have #36k wealth. Thus, 5x 300 point characters would need to accumulate a total of 45k wealth before they reached 325 points. Diving by 25 yields means that every $1800 the party earns, each character gets a point.

Played a session and ya'll discovered $7200 worth of treasure? Everyone gets 4 character points. Now everyone knows what the goal is (earn treasure), and can align play behind that goal. The higher character power you get, the more treasure you need. Have a party of different character powers? This will serve as a catch up mechanic.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

As an aside, I find it frustrating that none of these adventures provide information about how much an item is worth if you misidentify it. For instance, I Smell A Rat mentions: "The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead (12 lbs.) worth $500* on the open market. Requires a Religious Ritual roll to evaluate." How much is it worth if the player fails their Religious Ritual roll? More legwork for the GM on each item.

Exploits has rules for selling junk on pp. 16-17.

[beaushinkle]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Exploits has rules for selling junk on pp. 16-17.

If the implication here is that everything misidentified counts that scrap, and sells at an average of $350/1000lb, or $0.35/lb, then that's extremely swingy. The aforementioned Book goes from $500 to $4.2 on a missed religious ritual roll. Giant Spider Silk Light Armor goes from $15000 to $6.3 on a missed Connoisseur (Weapons). Merle's Signet Ring goes from $775 to $0.007 on a missed Merchant roll.

Not a fan of that!

[dcarson]

Penalty of what they miss the identify by to the Merchant skill to sell it? You do have real life cases of rare first edition bought at garage sale for $2 also.

[ravenfish]

For objects with value only from cultural significance and not from materials, it makes sense that they're basically worthless if the cultural significance isn't recognized. A rare postage stamp could be worth millions to collectors but would fetch only a tiny fraction of a penny to someone trying to sell it for scrap paper.


[From a game point of view, it might seem unsporting to gate significant treasure value behind a single roll to recognize the treasure, but, in genre, there's a tradition of valuable hidden loot that is effectively gated behind a roll to find it, so it's not without precedent. Plus, if the players are worried, they can always hire an agent back in town to go through their scrap and see if they've missed anything valuable.]

EDIT: For some of the examples beaushinkle gave, I would rule as a GM that Giant Spider Silk Light Armor, on a failed roll, would be mistaken for ordinary cloth armor rather than worthless junk, and jewelry is almost always obvious as jewelry (and therefore probably worth taking to an appraiser) even if the character has no idea of its actual value.

[beaushinkle]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

For objects with value only from cultural significance and not from materials, it makes sense that they're basically worthless if the cultural significance isn't recognized. A rare postage stamp could be worth millions to collectors but would fetch only a tiny fraction of a penny to someone trying to sell it for scrap paper.


[From a game point of view, it might seem unsporting to gate significant treasure value behind a single roll to recognize the treasure, but, in genre, there's a tradition of valuable hidden loot that is effectively gated behind a roll to find it, so it's not without precedent. Plus, if the players are worried, they can always hire an agent back in town to go through their scrap and see if they've missed anything valuable.]

EDIT: For some of the examples beaushinkle gave, I would rule as a GM that Giant Spider Silk Light Armor, on a failed roll, would be mistaken for ordinary cloth armor rather than worthless junk, and jewelry is almost always obvious as jewelry (and therefore probably worth taking to an appraiser) even if the character has no idea of its actual value.

I really don't want to derail this thread on this aside: but this is mostly what I'm getting at. Say that you take the jewelry to the appraiser. How much is it worth, or what does the appraiser charge?

I think that letting them fail from gaint spider silk light armor to light armor is pretty brutal. I think failing to ornate+2 or ornate+3 light armor, or fine light armor would also be reasonable - it's clearly not just regular light armor. The problem is there's no official guidance on how this happens, and it's for every single case. For a big haul at the end of a dungeon, this could look like making up the failure rolls of dozens of items in advance.

Say you find a big portrait of a king. You know it's clearly some sort of fancy art and the portrait weighs 30 lbs. If you fail your roll do you count it as scrap? $10.5? In actual play, this might be the difference between a $12,000 piece of precious historical art being reduced to $10.5 because they failed a secret Connoisseur roll. If not, you need to tell them how much it's worth if they fail. By and large, module authors don't do this, and that's definitely extra legwork for the GM.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Conclusion
1g -> 1$ holds up surprisingly well. It gives module writers some benchmarks to aim for and balance around with regards to buying power. If the author thinks that the adventure will run ~7 sessions (~3 points each), and then award ~5 bonus points at the end, and the adventure is aimed at 250-point characters? Endeavor to give out $24k in character wealth for 4 players. Think it'll run ~4 sessions (for a total of 17 points), and it's being published for 300-point characters? Amortize: 17/25 * 9000 * 4 = $24k.

This also gives us some sane by-session numbers to keep in mind as GMs. If your players do something unexpected for a session and you need to make up some loot for a party of 325-pointers, it's appropriate to give them 13000*3/25*4 = ~$6240 in wealth.

An alternate Character Points system
Finally, this lets us create AD&D treasure => character points systems if we'd like. Rather than rewarding character growth for exploring, roleplaying, avoiding traps, defeating monsters, or some hazy by-session metric, we can make it a function of current character points and treasure earned.

For instance! The above chart says that a 300 point (level 8) character ought to have $27k wealth, and that a 325 point (level 9) character ought to have #36k wealth. Thus, 5x 300 point characters would need to accumulate a total of 45k wealth before they reached 325 points. Diving by 25 yields means that every $1800 the party earns, each character gets a point.

Played a session and ya'll discovered $7200 worth of treasure? Everyone gets 4 character points. Now everyone knows what the goal is (earn treasure), and can align play behind that goal. The higher character power you get, the more treasure you need. Have a party of different character powers? This will serve as a catch up mechanic.

After seeing how this thread has drifted far afield I went back and really tried to figure out what I might have missed in the original post.


I figure my disconnect is with the assumption that loot is the major driver of an RPG, either in the acquisition or disposition phase.

I ran I smell a rat and didn't really pay any attention to loot that didn't get found. I had to go back and look at the adventure again, I didn't remember there being loot.
I took Mirror of the Fire Demon and used it as a jumping off point for a new story line introducing a "bad guy" in a years long campaign. I didn't look at or assess the loot at all. As I recall, I had removed or modified more than half of what I used, and added a chunk of my own stuff re: encounters/loot.
I don't have the Hall of Judgement, so I can't comment on that one.

Your point system tries to bring back something to GURPS that I have labored to remove from my RPG play, the idea that the pursuit of wealth equals development of character.

It wouldn't even begin to function in 95% of my 'one shot' type games, and 100% of my campaigns would have little to no progression. Can PCs with professions progress just by working, I mean they are making money?

The other point I would make re: RAW making something feel wrong to you... don't use it. Rule Zero.
You are not required to make a PC think a $10,000 book is only worth $80, your not even required to know the answer on the spot. I dunno, it sure looks expensive but you have never seen anything like it.

You know what your table likes, that should be your guiding answer. It would be a complete wrong answer for me, and I feel like most players I know would feel weird progressing based purely on the value of loot. I mean not even DFRPG is that simplistic.

[beaushinkle]

After seeing how this thread has drifted far afield I went back and really tried to figure out what I might have missed in the original post.

Thanks for coming back to engage! Happy to talk about it :D

I figure my disconnect is with the assumption that loot is the major driver of an RPG, either in the acquisition or disposition phase.

I don't think loot is the driver of a RPG (RPGs are so much broader than D&D), and loot definitely isn't the driver of any versions of D&D after 3.0 and beyond: rather it's one of the two progression systems. I'm going to use historical D&D here because I hope we agree that's definitely the grandfather of GURPS DF and DFRPG.

In D&D Basic and Expert, loot was definitely the primary driver. Check out how folks used to earn XP.

Treasure that PCs bring back from an adventure is the primary means by which they gain XP—usually accounting for ¾ or more of the total XP earned.

Non-magical treasure: Characters gain 1 XP per 1 gold piece (gp) value of the treasure.

Magical treasure: Does not grant XP.

This system persisted in D&D2e (but was optional), but was eventually dropped in D&D3e and later versions. There's two main ways that a character can gain power.

1. They can level up
2. They can get better stuff (equipment, hirelings, etc)

The same progression systems also exists in virtually all MMORPGS on the market. The interesting part about making it so that the main way to get XP is to get treasure is that it solves two big game design problems at once:

1. How do we make it so that players have a choice about how to approach a dungeon?
2. How do we make sure that players have an appropriate amount of wealth for their level?

The first problem is really apparent in later versions of D&D. Consider: you walk into a room, and you see a demon guarding a treasure chest. You can (for example)

(1) try to sneak by the demon to grab the treasure
(2) kill the demon and take the treasure
(3) negotiate with the demon to give you the treasure

Later versions of D&D make option (2) optimal in almost all circumstances; killing the demon awards XP, sneaking by it and negotiating with it doesn't. If you "miss the fight" with the demon, you might be level 5 at some point in the future in a tough fight when you could have been level 6. You should "farm" the demon for XP.

Have similar situations crop up a hundred times across a hundred tables and before you realize it, players are always turning to fighting without being consciously aware of why it's happening.

But, if the main way to get XP is just by getting the treasure itself, then (1), (2), and (3) are all equally rewarding. The players are free to pick the one they think has the best chance of success, or is the most fun at the table, rather than feeling shackled by XP optimization.

At the same time, games like D&D also provide extensive bestiaries and encounter recommendations. Those recommendations will be incorrect if your parties do not have an appropriate amount of wealth, which is baked into the math. As in, if your 6th level adventurers are still in starting equipment, then all of the book's recommendations for challenges will be too difficult. A GM trying to run a pre-written adventure will have to rebalance all of the encounters, since those were also balanced/playtested (hopefully) against characters with appropriate amounts of wealth.

Similarly, if you give your 6th level adventurers too much gear, then the book's recommendations for challenges will be too easy. The same thing happens with the encounters in pre-written adventures as above.

So, in order for a module writer to create a balanced encounter, they need to be able to make assumptions about character power (which decomposes into character level/build and wealth). Balanced encounters are important because those are the only ones where characters have actual agency in combat. As in, in a well-balanced encounter, if the players make poor decisions, the encounter will tend toward going poorly and they might lose many resources or risk death. If the players make mediocre decisions, the encounter will tend toward going okay, and they might lose a few resources. If the players make good decisions, the encounter will tend toward going well, and they might lose resources if they're unlucky. If the players make great decisions, the encounter will tend toward going great and the players lose very little.

In unbalanced encounters, the odds are overwhelming for one side. If the players are way too powerful, then even if they make poor decisions, they still win without losing resources, just like if they make great decisions; ie their decisions didn't affect the outcome. If the monsters are way too powerful then even if the players make great decisions, the players are still getting crushed, same as if they made poor decisions, so the quality of their decisions didn't matter.

There's a whole school of thought that disregards attempts at balancing encounters; instead believing that encounters are what they are and ought to follow the fiction ("how many orcs would be here realisitically?") vs following good game design. This turns the pre-encounter into a puzzle, where solving the puzzle incorrectly leads to an unbalanced encounter where you're probably getting wrecked. This is fun sometimes, but doesn't fully solve the problem; you'd still like to be able to sometimes include an intentionally balanced encounter, and if you lack the tools to do so (because you can't make assumptions about character power or character wealth), that's a problem.

So!

Rewarding players for treasure gives them freedom and lets GMs and module writers make better assumptions about character strength, which leads to higher quality modules.

These aren't the only way to solve the problems: using milestone leveling (the GM just decides when folks level up; like at some dramatic moment), or session-based leveling (everyone always levels up after 4 sessions) both solve the freedom problem I was talking about.

Making sure that players have appropriate amounts of wealth can be alternatively described the way that you mentioned you do it: keep track of how much wealth they have, and if they have too much, decrease how much they're getting in the future until they have the right amount again. The wealth-by-level tables in D&D and Pathfinder2e help GMs do exactly this.

For instance, if you notice that your 8th level PF2e character have 2000g each instead of 1,100g, you can cool the jets a bit; they have wealth appropriate for ~10th level characters. But, if they only have 450g each, you can make the next dungeon especially juicy.

As mentioned, I don't like playing this way because it removes player agency. I want to make sure that the dungeons I create have a more-than-appropriate amount of loot if they make good decisions, an appropriate amount of loot if they make mediocre decisions, and a less-than-appropriate amount of loot if they make bad decisions. If they find themselves at level 5 and are over-looted, it's because they've been engaging well with the at-table descriptions and really searching the rooms. If they are under-looted, it's because they made poor decisions, either the party wasn't well-balanced at character creation or they ignored clues to loot.

If the GM manages how much loot the party has, then the opposite happens. When the party isn't well-balanced and they ignore clues to loot, the GM fills the next dungeon with extra loot to compensate. When the party is well-balance and they follow the clues to loot, the GM makes the next dungeon sparse. No matter what, the players end up with the amount of loot the GM has pre-ordained for them to have (within a rough band).

I think a lot of GMs and players are totally fine with that! Again, no such thing as wrongfun, it just isn't my jam.

And again, it's totally what I would do and recommend for short-session-count style games. The meaning of magic items and wealth (and characters) completely change when they're only going to be around for 2-8 hours total.

[beaushinkle]

You are not required to make a PC think a $10,000 book is only worth $80, your not even required to know the answer on the spot. I dunno, it sure looks expensive but you have never seen anything like it.

If this is circling back to the legwork comment; yeah, I get it. No where in the RAW do I have to say a $10,000 book is only $80; but it does say that the GM should lie about the value, and this does make sense. If the player asks how much they think the book is worth and I tell them they don't know, I haven't reduced the amount of work I have to do as the GM, I've actually just added book-keeping for myself. As in, multiple sessions later they're going to try to sell that book in town, and they're going to ask me how much they get for it. If i didn't write down what book they failed to identify, I might say "what book?", and the player might respond "the one I didn't know the value of..I think we found it in the library of that cult; it's the one with the blue cover?".

Here, the GM still has to make a decision about how much the book sells for, it's just they're making it sessions later instead of when the players found it. The players can't sell an item for $"i don't know", they have to sell it for something, so the GM eventually has to come up with a number. More reasonable lies are better than ridiculous lies, and less book-keeping is better than more book-keeping.

This is why I was talking about legwork. The module author can save the GM from this for every item by including a misidentified price for all the things that need to be identified. A GM writing their own campaign doesn't save any work; they either choose to improvise this during the session, or prepare the number in advance.

The difference between the module author and the GM in this case is that the author doing the work once reduces the overhead for however many GMs use the module. Hence, the idea that the module author is able to save the GM from legwork.

It's similar (but less extreme) to a module author providing an encounter with statted out creatures vs telling a GM "there will be a goblin encounter here; pick some appropriate amount and make up the stats". The author doing the legwork saves all of the GMs from doing the same, which is one of the core purposes of a module, in my opinion.

Finally, different folks interact with modules differently. A lot of the folks buying Paizo's modules, for example, aren't playing them, and are instead reading them as a mystery/adventure novel. Other folks use modules (like it appears you do) as an idea-spring board, mostly taking the content as a source of inspiration rather than something you want to run directly.

I want to be able to actually run the module they're selling me. As is. I've never seen a module attempt to advertise itself as being just an idea springboard, but for some vast majority of modules, this is the only way to use them. So when I criticize a module in the context of "this lacks something that would make it smoother for playing directly", that's where I'm coming from. Other folks, who aren't actually running the module, or analyzing it in that context might not care at all, but I do. I believe that's what's being sold, and that's how it should be evaluated. If we want to evaluate it on it's inspirational merit, or fictional/fun-to-read merit, I think that's a whole different matter; I'm talking purely about "running the module as written".

Nope. My inspiration was from Peter Dell'Orto's conversions and from experience in play.

Roger! Cool that they both (and you) arrived at the same place :D

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by bocephus

I ran I smell a rat and didn't really pay any attention to loot that didn't get found. I had to go back and look at the adventure again, I didn't remember there being loot.

The best loot my players found IIRC was the Marilith's (peshkali's) six scimitars. I think they were like $3000.

I can't remember offhand if the Marilith was written with scimitars originally or if that was my change to make it deadlier, but the point is, I don't remember much loot either. Two books worth about $900, plus a silver flask in a room my players never even entered.

One of my issues with the 1 gp = $1 standard is that it can seem a bit unrealistic when a dead enemy warrior has only $2d6 on his body. Evil warrior dude can't even afford a few good meals, let alone a replacement dagger! C'mon, really?

So there's a tension between what my intuition says is good for the game's pacing (1gp = $1 is fine) and what feels right for the game's realism (1gp = $10 seems plausible for evil warrior dude).

Gems and jewels are a similar case.

As I write this I am realizing that I could just use a different conversion rate for pocket change, and another for jewelry/gems, and keep the $1 rate as a fallback for stereotypical random treasure hoards with no logical reason to be there.