Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 38 - Handling Rewards and Loot

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

Seems simple, doesn't it?  Your players' characters do something amazing and you give them something for it.  Players, your characters slay the beast and stare at a huge pile of stuff.  However, when mishandled, players can feel like they're getting shafted when it comes to loot and this can cause hurt feelings, rifts in the party, and even cause players to leave your game.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to episode 38 of the Taking20 podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how we handle rewards and loot. I'm getting a few emails every now and then to feedback at taking20podcast.com saying they like this, they don't like that, and making some suggestions for future episodes. If you have any feedback or you'd like to suggest a future episode, please send me an email. Feedback at Taking20Podcast.com. That's 20-2-0. This week's sponsor, giraffes. Did you know the name of the animal comes from the Latin for, wow, you're tall, do you play basketball?

So rewards, loot, treasure hordes, whatever you want to call them. This is actually a surprisingly contentious topic. I've actually seen gaming groups split over how loot was handled. While this episode will be mostly for players, there are some DM tips at the end, so stay with me. Treasure or loot or rewards come in a huge variety of types. Coins in some fashion, or whatever your system uses for coins. Bills, credits, DM bucks, whatever. Gems, works of art like statues and paintings, jewelry, mundane items, trade goods, useful items like magical items, high-tech, high-value items. Loot lists can be very complicated. Here's a sample loot list from a 5th edition treasure hoard I recently DM'd. The party receives 2400 copper pieces, 1500 silver pieces,

90 gold pieces, a chalcedony gem worth 150 gold pieces, a tiger's eye agate worth 100 gold pieces, a citrine gem worth 50 gold pieces, a moonstone worth 50 gold pieces, a quartz worth 25 gold pieces, two sardonyx gems worth 50 gold pieces each, a spell scroll worth 250 gold pieces, a potion of climbing worth 25 gold pieces, and two potions of healing worth 100 gold pieces each. Splitting this can get very complicated, and certain types of loot are easier to split than others, so let's talk about the value and types of loot that parties may have to split. Let's start easy. Cash. Most groups that I've ever seen and ever adventured with treat cash as automatically splittable. They don't track treasure down to

the individual coin level. Okay guys, our current inventory is that we have 27 platinum pieces, 478 gold pieces, 32 electrum pieces, 889 silver pieces, and 2,147 copper pieces. You could keep inventory to this level, but the accounting gets complicated very quickly. You have to make decisions like every time you buy something, what mix of coins you're paying with. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not here to play dungeons and cost point accounting. An example of what not tracking things to this level looks like, four adventurers clear out a bandit den and get 150 gold pieces worth of coins.

150 doesn't split evenly with four adventurers, so 150 divided by 4 is 37.5 gold pieces each. So 37 gold pieces and 50 silver pieces each. But what if the total treasure only contains gold pieces and the party doesn't have enough silver or copper pieces to exchange to make the split even? With most groups, the assumption is that the money is split evenly and the 50 silver pieces would be split out, paid, and realistically they'd buy something and get 50 silver pieces and silver pieces would be exchanged to make everything equal. The payoff happens, you just don't track the exact moment that it does. It makes things a lot easier, and players, talk to your DMs about treating cash this way. The verdict on cash is that it's the easiest thing in the game

to split, no problem there. But suppose the party has a lot of common items. How do you handle mundane items after an adventure? Suppose the party clears out a dungeon and they have a list of 149 various and sundry mundane items to sell, each one with a unique value. Do you divide it up by item count? Do you sell it all then split? Do you have some sort of weird drafting process? In most game systems, you can't sell most items for the full purchase price. Otherwise, how the heck would merchants be around? Sometimes you can sell it for 50% of the purchase price, and I think in Starfinder it's 10%. Don't be a space pirate in Starfinder unless you can get good treasure out of it. My recommendation? Players should sell it all and then split the proceeds. And when valuing

items, treat them in the treasure hoard as being worth what you could sell it for, not the purchase price. Say the party comes out with 10 bags of beans that if you went to a merchant and tried to buy, it would be 20 gold pieces for the 10 bags of beans. But you can only sell it at 50% value. You could sell the 10 bags for 10 gold pieces total. So treat them like 10 gold pieces with the coins and split that way. Verdict, lots of common items like this, fairly easy to split. Now let's talk about when things really start getting tricky. Single items of high value. How are goods like costly gems, art, jewelry, fine cutlery, goblets, etc. treated in your party?

Single items of high value, you can't chop up a piece of art nine ways. The party comes out of an adventure with a sealed jeroboam of sword coast brandy worth 2,300 gold. Are you going to break the seal and pour out the brandy in equal measures? It probably would lower the overall value. That'd be silly. Why would you do that? Suppose the party loots a post-war building and finds 66 credits in cred sticks and the Mona Lisa, which is valued at 1,850 credits. Everyone gets one-fifth of a painting. Get the sword. No, that would be dumb. Your party does need to discuss how they would split items like this

before you ever find the first one, ideally before you roll your first die. My recommendation is that the best negotiator in the party sells items like this and then splits the proceeds with the rest of the party. Verdict, still not all that difficult, you just need to trust the person that's selling. Sometimes treasure is bulk items and trade goods. Imagine your party raids a war caravan and they have two carts full of loot. One has 211 spears, which we could sell for 105 gold pieces and 50 silver pieces. The other has 78 light crossbows and 1,500 bolts, which we could sell for 9 gold pieces and 50 silver pieces. The other has 78 light crossbows and 1,500 bolts,

which we could sell for 975 gold for the crossbows and about 37.5 gold pieces for all those bolts. So it's 1,012.5 gold pieces in total. But Jeremy, those could be useful to an adventuring party. Okay, fine. The party raids a caravan, and there's 1,213 bars of lavender-scented soap to sell. Heh, use that one on an adventure.

Oh, look, there's a small hamlet two miles up the road. Well, they're about to be the cleanest motherfuckers on the planet if they buy all this soap. Great, but what if this village has 75 people in it, and they don't need 1,213 bars of soap? Wait, 1,210 bars, the barbarian just ate three of them. Oh, wait, now the bard's in the river scrubbing his- Oh, come on, we can't sell that bar anymore. 1,209 bars. Point being, we have a shit ton of soap, and we need to sell it. At this point is when I ask a question to DMs.

How important is verisimilitude or realism in your game? If it's not important at all, then that tiny town merchant buys all the soap, confident he can sell it for a profit. But if realism is important, think about the situation reasonably. If you were a merchant in a small town of 75 people, and a group of murder hobos showed up with 1,200 and now 3 bars of soap, put that down. How would you possibly sell that many bars? How long would it take? Hell, with modern manufacturing techniques, bars of soap go bad after about three years. So how long would they last in your world? Most game systems have a limit as to how much PCs can sell in a town. Maximum number of gold pieces, maximum credits, etc. If you want absolute realism in your world,

consider limiting the number of items merchants will buy given what they think they can sell. But if that's not important, lots of soap for that small hamlet. Okay, let's get to the heart of the episode now, however many minutes in. Methodologies to actually split loot. I'm going to talk about seven different methodologies or seven different strategies to think about when your party is splitting loot. One, everyone gets approximately the same amount or as close as you can get. You sum up the value of the coins plus the treasure plus the art items plus the magical or useful items, and everyone gets about the same amount. For example, a party of four

kills a monster that has 40,000 gold pieces worth of stuff. It splits evenly. Everyone gets about 10,000 gold pieces. What about when items get in the way? Suppose that 40,000 gold piece hoard consists of 31,000 gold in jewels and coins and a gun worth 9,000 gold pieces. Okay, well, three people get 10,000 gold pieces worth of loot, and one person gets the gun and 1,000 gold pieces worth of loot. Simple, clean, easy. Except, what if one item's value is more than a share? Instead of 31,000 and 9,000 gold pieces, suppose it's 25,000 gold pieces and a 15,000 gold piece gun. Now is when feelings can get hurt. Does the person who got the gun, and therefore the larger share, owe the party because she got that oversized share? I used to recommend this method,

but a few things changed as I've gotten older and adventured for longer. I noticed people would forget that they owed the party and sometimes feelings would get hurt. The person who got the really nice item would continue to claim nice items, going theoretically further and further into debt to the party but not caring because gun. It became a pain to keep track that the druid owes the party 750 gold pieces while the arbalest owes us 2,000 gold pieces and the fighter still owes us 1,350 gold pieces from a year ago. I realized my happiness in roleplaying wasn't tied to the amount of stuff that I had, and I adopted more of a utilitarian view on gaming. More on that shortly. 2. Coins are split evenly, then remaining items are split in some fashion.

In the previous example with the 31,000 gold pieces and the 9,000 gold piece gun, 31,000 gold pieces split among four of you is 7,750 gold pieces each and someone gets the gun. Three, items could be split by drafting. Someone is selected to pick first and they pick one item, then second person picks an item, then the third person picks an item, then a fourth person picks an item, and so forth. The most fair way to do this by the way is what's called serpentine pick order where if you picked last in the first round you pick first in the second round. A picks then B then C then D so round one's over so round two starts D picks then C then B then A round three goes back to A B C D and so forth. So whoever gets the first pick doesn't pick again until the eighth item. It feels fair. Another way you can do it is the order

shifts each round. A, B, C, D, and then round two, B, C, D, A, and then round three, C, D, A, B, and so forth. Another way you can do it is just same order each round. This loot split I pick first, next loot split I won't. That simple. Four, split your items by usefulness. This has become my preference as I've gotten older. Items are given to the individual who can get the most use out of it right now. None of this, well, maybe someday I'll become proficient in long rifles, so I'd like that

snipe. No, uh-uh. Who can use it right now to the party's benefit? This way, the mage gets that staff of fireballs that pays immediate dividends to the party, or maybe the fighter gets an upgrade to her longsword in the next treasure hoard. 5. Roll-offs when more than one character wants an item or can get equal usefulness out of it. Theoretically, the split evens out over time, but some players that just have bad luck may continually miss out on items. Six, tracking the value of split items. Tracking the fact that the fighter got the nice gun the last time, so she's getting a lesser share. What if there's a nicer gun in the next treasure hoard and she wants that too? So that one has a little bit of problems. Or seven, your party can be damn adults about it and negotiate each collection of loot. Remember

who hasn't gotten nice stuff for a while and then give them a share. While we're at it, how do you handle items bought that benefit the entire party? Wands of healing, servant robots, vehicles, what have you. I've played a cleric in a party one time where the expectation was that I would purchase the healing wands and med kits and that kind of thing. It puts undue strain on your healer. My recommendation is that when there are items that need to be purchased or items that are found in treasure hordes that the whole party can use, set those aside and those are not counted at loot split. Or if you have to purchase them, set money aside from the treasure hordes to pay for them later. Another method is the whole party contributes to the item when it's

purchased. Okay guys, that's 800 gold pieces for the healing. I contributed my 200. I need 200 gold pieces from the three of you. All right, so specific tips for players. One, and this is the most important thing, if you get nothing else out of this episode, pay attention to this. Agree on a loot split methodology before you make your first die roll. It saves a ton of heartache later on. You and your fellow players need to agree on this and everyone needs to be on board. It's easy to make this decision and come to an agreement now when you don't have that really valuable item staring you in the face. Tip number two for players, don't be a dick. Just because you open the chest doesn't mean everything in it is

yours. By screaming, mine, all you're doing is making it harder for your teammates. Three, don't try to palm an expensive item just to keep it from the rest of the party. Some players do it to try to give their character some future advantage. It's what my character would do. No, you're an asshole, plain and simple. Four, similarly, don't lie about what you sold an item for. Give everyone their equal share and move on. Trying to cheat your fellow party members gains you little and could cost you a lot in the end. 5. Don't lay claim to an expensive piece of loot someone else can use just because it's your pick.

Hey, that staff of kick-ass magic is worth a lot of coin, but you can't do crap with it, except sell it in the next town. Leave that for the wizard. Take the nice short sword instead. I've been very lucky that just about every group I've ever played in has been mature about loot. I might get the short end of the loot stick today, but tomorrow I might get a really nice share. The campaign I'm in right now didn't have a lot of loot for fighters for a long time, and I'm running a frontline fighter. The rest of the party was decked out while I looked like the hobo kid who was just tagging along for a ride. But recent loot had some celestial plate mail, which the party gave to me and boy did that make up for it. Yep, flying and dropping

the hammer, lot of fun. We freely share the loot we collect with each other. We split loot by total value, but freely loan each other money if needed. Oh, you need another hundred gold pieces to get this really nice piece of armor? Yeah, no problem. Oh, you need a thousand gold pieces to ascribe that scroll into your spell book? Here you go. Knock yourself out. We do that except for the monk. He's bad with cash and a shit negotiator, so we don't loan him money anymore. So DMs and GMs, what tips would I have for you? Consider rounding up to the gold piece when appropriate. Let's see, there are 39 gold pieces, 982 silver pieces valued at one-tenth of a gold each, and 6,623 copper pieces valued at one-one-hundredth of a gold each. That totals to, uh, 203.43 gold pieces is what's in the loot.

Round that up to 204 gold, split four ways, that's 51 gold pieces each. That makes it so much easier. Same holds whether you're talking about gold pieces, cred sticks, loot gems, dollary do's, whatever. DMs, give guidelines or suggestions to the players about dividing the loot, and then shut up. The players have to work this out for themselves. If you mandate, you and they are going to have a bad time, because whoever gets the short end of the stick may think that you're playing favorites. Let them determine the best way to split the loot. Another tip, make selling items unrealistically easy.

Another tip, make selling items unrealistically easy. Unless your party has a, sorry for this, a fetish for negotiations where they sit around haggling down to the copper piece and making hundreds of negotiation checks, assume it took X hours for the party to sell all the stuff and they get a flat percentage and be done with it. If you have a party that want to try to haggle and want to try to get a better price, give them one roll or maybe just a couple rolls for it and adjust the value slightly on the fly. DMs, treat gems, jewelry, and other items that sell as 100% value like coins. I mean, it really just makes sense.

If this bar of gold is worth 200 gold pieces and a merchant would pay 200 gold pieces for it and it has a 200 gold piece value, treat it as if it were 200 individual gold pieces and a merchant would pay two hundred gold pieces for it and it has a two hundred gold piece value treated as if it were two hundred individual gold pieces. In my games I don't track encumbrance unless the party's being completely unreasonable. I usually say be reasonable is my usual watchword. You want to pick up a thousand arrows? Now we're going to start tracking encumbrance. My assumption is that the party exchanges their money for lightweight items of equal value. They have ten thousand copper pieces pieces that they turn into a 100 gold piece gem that weighs almost nothing. Now you may be thinking, Jeremy, that's not realistic. Now you're right.

Neither are two-headed giants who argue with each other, or the ability to travel faster than light through something called the void. But here we are. But I want to get to the sword swinging parts. I deal with spreadsheets and shit too much at my regular job. That being said, if you and your party want to track things to that level in your game, have fun. Loot and treasure should be a fun part of the game and shouldn't cause strife or discontent. Players, just agree on how you're going to split the filthy

filthy lucre ahead of time. And DMss allow the players to decide how they'll split, but make it easy on them. This has been episode 38, Handling Rewards and Loot. I once again want to thank our sponsor, Giraffes. Did you know adult giraffes can't make a noise, but baby giraffes can? Look it up! My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.