The Goblin Chieftain lies dead at my feet, because I used good tactics, managed my resources well, and pulled a couple of lucky dice rolls. I loot the body and find 13 electrum pieces and a +1 stabby stick because... the GM said so?
If I have to roll To Hit vs. Armor Class, why don't I have to roll Adventuring Acumen vs. the adventure's Profitability Resistance? When I level up and get a feat, why don't I have to choose between Great Cleave and Enhanced Return on Investment?
Comments
XP and gold/items are the reward for play. Why would you want to have players roll dice to see if the system rewards them for the dice-rolling they did to get to the point of being rewarded in the first place?
(And what an addictive game that is...)
I think the reason you don't see "find more money" feats (aside from maybe a higher search skill in some games, although this requires there to have been hidden treasure and many GMs will be nice and just give such things to you regardless of skill). Well, on the one hand it doesn't make sense for there to be more treasure someplace just because you have a feat... (unless you're in a CRPG or an MMO).
I have seen some games with "mercantile" skills that let you maximize loot selling profits and open up more merchandise in shops, so it's not completely unheard of. I personally don't find those feats very fun (and their use often ties into people spending a lot of time playing "Accountants and Actuaries" which is frowned upon in many circles).
As for a fix, maybe you could make the loot based on effort (which would require you to not care about simulating anything), make a skill to better get money ("take the teeth! I know a guy who'll buy em' for 4 silvers each!"), or just skip loot and if you still want that get better stuff feel have maybe some alternate system besides looting corpses (maybe an employer regularly supplies better weapons, or the existing equipment of the players unlocks new powers, or whatever).
Clinton Nixon's Donjon puts treasure decisions in the players' hands by allowing them to specify one thing per point of victory.
But if you insist on playing with a GM, it's your fault for putting up with it. Just grab the GM's Guide and help yourself to all the treasure you like. That's what I'd do.
Donjon has a great system for this. You roll the level of the baddie you just defeated vs. the level of the thing you want to loot. So, tougher monster = more likely to find something powerful. Nice and elegant.
Crossposted with Steve, who was close, but no cigar.
I should mention that I find fiddly tactical combat somewhat tedious in a table-top RPG context. CRPG/MMOs making it fun by having the computer crunch the numbers for you in real time and provide cute little avatars and graphics. However, that's not how they make the economic-aspects fun. Usually, the economic item hunting is lengthy, tedious, fiddly and full wiff moments. I was discussing this with a psycho major and they figured the reason 'grinding' doesn't derail the whole game is built as a very intense positive feedback loop, not unlike slot machines.
If you can exploit the thrill of risk-taking and gambling, as mentioned above, in your design as well as the comfortable hording and intellectual exercise of "Accountants and Actuaries" then you could make it as fun, if not more so.
As an aside: my understanding of EVE Online, having never played it, is MS Excel: The MMO. Tru fax?
But money? Other that first level where you're trying to scrounge up enough copper pieces to afford another dozen arrows or some trail rations, it just seemed like another number to keep track of. Oh, man, I'd totally forgotten that Donjon did that! I've never played it, but I've read through it numerous times. I guess I'll have to look into it again, thanks. I don't see why not. If you see stats as just representing a character's physical and mental traits, then no, but if you think of the character's stats as indicators of the likelihood of given events happening to the character in the shared fiction then it seems just as logical to have a stat that makes you more likely to find treasure as it is to have one that makes you more likely to hit monsters.
You know, it really was. That whole mini-campaign restored my faith in D&D. I want to try it again soon.
A way I can see incorporating this concept into a rpg would be to use it as something of a player controlled 'difficulty' level. They can request specific or better loot from the GM, but the counter part is that they indeed have to TAKE said loot from the monsters who should incorporate it into their tactics. A couple goblin archers on the other side of a crevase may not be too concerning, but if on of them were 'upgraded' to a mage with a staff that flings fireballs and a necklace that deflects missiles attacking him and his minions, that little encounter could lay out a serious hurting.
I remember back in our high school AD&D game the one thing guaranteed to send pangs of anguish through the entire party....the sight of an enemy drinking a potion. "Stop him! He's destroying our treasure!", we'd cry, and the DM would take malicious delight in describing how many empty potion vials we'd find when we searched the bodies afterwards.
Permanent items, on the other hand, were always fun for everyone. We'd all dogpile the bad guy with the glowing sword, because by rights that sword belonged in the hands of our fighter. That wizard who just cast an amazing spell? Take him down fast, and for god's sake, make sure you get his spellbook! Did anyone see if that one was wearing a ring before he went invisible? Because I could really use a ring of invisibility...
I'm writing a game based on the idea of battlefield looters, called Vultures.
It's a tactical game about "taking their stuff". It plays using decks of cards and some other components that are fuzzy to me right now.
You get to loot bodies, fend off other looters, barter, and learn about the war (which helps you improve set-up positions for the next raid).
It is directly inspired by this thread.
It's short.
I'd like to send it as a christmas present to whoever wants it.
Whisper me if you'd like it, and list your email address.
To me, it breaks verisimilitude to have part of the surroundings be so malleable and dependent on a dice roll, especially something as important to the game as treasure.
As a corollary, the better GMs of this style are either good at making snap decisions if you veer off in an unexpected direction, or are good at hiding their random determinations. (I know other types of games handle this differenly, I'm just sayin'.)
I've got some more comments to make on the topic, but they will have to wait for later.
DM: So what do you guys want to do now?
PC: I want to track down the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd.
DM: Uh... okay. How are you going to do that?
PC: Is there a sage in town? Maybe he has some information.
DM: (thinking quick) There is, but he's mysteriously disappeared!
PC: Oh noes! I will have to track him down.
etc.
So that's sort of the macro approach: make "and take their stuff" feed back in to ongoing gameplay. You can do this in many ways. A few that come to mind:
-- searching the habitation of the defeated foe to find all of the treasure therein
-- transporting items back to civilization for sale
-- trial and error discovery of an item's powers
-- finding an appropriate buyer
-- finding an appropriate barter if the item is too precious to be sold for mere money
-- finding someone who knows how to activate a magic item
These can all be ongoing campaign fodder. Even discovery of an item's powers can be ongoing. I once had an item that I used for well over a real-time year before I discovered its last power (which came as a bit of a surprise when it happened). "Finding an appropriate buyer" is often more interesting if the PCs' varying skills feed in to this (ie, the dwarf is more likely to know someone who might want gems or jewelry, ...).
So the macro approach involves taking "and take their stuff" and stretching it out into further adventures. The micro approach is makes stuff-taking into a minigame that is resolved at the time the treasure is found, or one that determines when and how treasure is found (as in Dungeon Construction Kit). DCK has 2 kinds of treasure cards: Final Item Cards and Treasure Cards. You get Treasure Cards after each encounter. Some will be monetary treasure; they are immediately cashed in. Others have "magic item points." If you collect enough points, you can buy a magic item of your choice. After earning enough Treasure Cards, you can activate the Final Encounter (which will award you the Final Item if you succeed). Some players seem to really dig this minigame, and the treasure cards as a physical representation of the treasure that they are acquiring. The game's original prototype, in DnD 3.5, used the Appraisal skill and craft and profession skills to help govern how much money you could get for certain pieces of loot. I sort of wish I still had those to work with in 4E. In 4E, Skill Challenges could certainly be used to detemine how much cash the group might get for a major piece of loot that doesn't have a ready market.