A simple treasure table system

Here's a classic problem: The characters find some treasure – let's say diadems, gilt-framed paintings, jade figurines, and various other art objects. The GM describes them so that the players can write them down. The objects may not be sold for many sessions, before which many other treasures will be acquired from various sources, including different modules and the GM's improvisation.

The characters shouldn't generally know how much the art objects are worth when they find them. That should be GM-facing information. On the other hand, the GM shouldn't have to remember where every item came from, or transcribe each one and then try to hunt for it on the big list when the characters eventually try to sell it.

The typical solution is usually to bite the bullet: give out sale values along with treasure, or make it a hassle for the GM. Or perhaps compromise by giving out an indication of a treasure's worth and then rolling randomly based on the indication at the time it is appraised or sold.

 

A better solution:

I'm proposing a system which I've never seen in a TTRPG before, but it's so obvious that I bet I'm reinventing the wheel. It's similar to how item values work in the video game Dwarf Fortress.

We express all our treasures as a {class, descriptors} tuple or phrase, where class is a type of item with a base monetary value, and descriptor is an adjective with a multiplicative value modifier. These values are on big lists that are privileged GM information.

So the GM has a list of item classes coupled with base values that looks something like

Amulet   2 gold

Beads    1 silver

Cutlery  5 silver

Diadem   20 gold

Ewer     12 gold

Figurine 4 gold 

...

Then there's a list of descriptors, or possibly separate lists of positive and negative descriptors, each with a fractional modifier. Perhaps

Antique     ×5

Cracked     ×3/4

Gold        ×12

Half-rotten ×1/4

Jade        ×2

Large       ×3 

Rusty       ×9/10

Shattered   ×1/20

...

These are tables that would be at the GM's fingertips. They are lookup tables, but of course if you did have a nice number like 20 or 66 or 100 entries, they could pull double duty as dice tables for treasure generation.

Illustration by Zed Nope

 

How do we use the tables?

A zillion sessions ago, the GM let the players know that they found an antique gold diadem and a large cracked jade figurine.

Perhaps they were described more fully (what does the figurine depict?) in context, but the GM made sure to communicate which were the key words, so that's what the players wrote down. The players weren't told the value, just the description.

Now time has come to sell these art objects. The GM doesn't need to remember anything about the treasure – where in the world it was found; what published adventure it came from or whether it was rolled or improvised; what rough-and-ready valuation the characters were given by a passing tinker.

The GM only has to do a couple of table lookups.

Diadem: Base price of 20 gold pieces. Antique: ×5. Gold: ×12. Actual value: 1200 gp. 

Figurine: Base price of 4 gold pieces. Large: ×3. Cracked: ×3/4. Jade: ×2. Actual value: 18 gp.

The lookups are trivially easy; they're in alphabetical order and fit on one piece of paper. The maths ain't hard. It really is that simple.

 

Joseph Gandy (1771-1843)

 

The benefits:

There are seriously so many.

1. Hidden information stays hidden.

Players don't get information on value which should be secret. If they've found something made of 'ebonshell' and they've heard in passing that ebonshell is valuable, the word is a descriptor on the table and the players won't find out if that means "buy another round" or "buy a castle" until they seek out a valuation in-world.

Prior valuations stay consistent, too. If the GM allows a skill check for valuation, they can look up the true value, give an approximation (or a false answer if the check fails), and then completely forget they've given out that information whether or not the players go on to sell the item.

2. Descriptions correlate nicely with values.

Assuming you have a good set of tables, you're buying extra verisimilitude. The "cloudy garnet ring" you find in one dungeon and the "dull garnet necklace" you find two dungeons later have similar values, both are vastly less valuable than the "hundred-faceted ruby amulet", and that's exactly what players will expect.

Things that would otherwise 'just' be flavour start to matter more to the players. We can only take so much stuff back with us. Is the one-of-a-kind altarpiece cracked or just chipped? What's our best guess about how that compares to this sack of obsolete silver coins? Speaking of which,

3. There are learning opportunities.

We're all big fans of rewarding player skill, right? With this system, attentive players can begin to infer what words matter most for treasure values. This reflects the learning their characters would be doing.

On the other hand, the tables are

4. Easily reset.

If you want to start fresh in a new universe, or with new characters, or change GMs, it's trivially easy to just cross out a bunch of values for base items and modifiers and write in slightly different ones.

Players no longer know what to expect but the whole thing stays internally consistent, because you only tweaked the values. For the same reason, it's

5. Easily customisable.

Let's say you decided in this world, jade has mystic properties which make it worth more than gold. Cool, change ×2 to ×15 in the table and you're done. Any treasure you've already put out there is immediately converted.

If you're using treasure from a publication, when you go to convert an item you'll notice that it's described as "jade", check "jade" in the table, be reminded of your modification, and decide whether this particular thing is massively more valuable or whether you'll keep the value and change the material.

It's easy, because in general, this whole system is

6. Compatible with published treasures.

It's not much effort to start with treasures described by value and work backwards to create the descriptive {class, descriptors} phrase.

Suppose an adventure says "the bag contains three opals worth 300 gp each". What does that convert to? Well, you start by finding the "opal" class base value (or maybe "gemstone" is a class and "opal" is a descriptor), then flick around looking for more descriptors that will get you to 300 gp.

Maybe huge + dazzling + round + opal = 300 gp? Perfect. You've acquired more information about what the treasure is actually like. Or maybe it doesn't fit that they're "huge" so you try a few other descriptors and find that small + flawless + fashionable + opal = 320 gp? Close enough.

7. Simple calculations.

It's easy to price something up. We can put both decimals and fractions in the tables, so that people who are less proficient at mental maths can use a calculator. It wouldn't be hard to make a spreadsheet or online tool that calculates values very quickly.

8. Adaptive.

This single framework should work for most systems and settings. Only the tables will need to change.

Once published, individual GMs could hack further as they pleased. Have as many or few base object classes and modifiers as you want. It's easy to simplify or expand, because

9. You can hang stuff off the system. 

Let's say a character comes from a clothier background, and makes alterations to a "silk sash". Now it's a "tailored silk sash" and its value changes accordingly. A fighter is able to repair the "ragged rusted mail hauberk" enough that she can wear it, and now it's a "patched mail hauberk".

Want to get more out of jewellery and gemstones? Have a subsystem for inset jewels, which might add to or multiply an item's value.

Want to get into the fine detail of setting-specific fine arts? Add a whole extra table of modifiers referring to specific artists and times and trends and students and suspected forgeries.

Want collectors to be interested in specific things? Express that as custom modifiers. The antiquarian pays ×7 instead of ×5 for the "antique" descriptor. The archivist ignores penalties from "old" or "repaired" on books. The vizier only wants jewellery in good condition (paying double for any items without any negative modifiers, half otherwise).

Have item valuation and haggling skill systems? This framework just establishes the ground truth / base price, so those should sit neatly on top of this.

10. No tracking.

It really bears repeating that the GM doesn't need to track any extra information, or resort to improvisation when they can't find the item they gave out months ago.

Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-1874)

So there's my idea! Do something cool with it. I've added "make a whole little book for this stuff and possible extensions" to the ideas pile.