Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 57 of my series of looks at OD&D, with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2 and that will finish this book.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Let us finish up Book 2 today with Treasure - Precious Metals, Gems & Jewelry:
This is the money that we started off with in OD&D. Gold is also the standard of weight with massive coins where 10 Gold Pieces is a pound and that is used throughout. Even in 1975 I knew that historically no coins that were used regularly were anything close to that size using coins of that size, gold was not very valuable in terms of what it would buy. But in college I chose not to worry about it and we just went with it. Later on I changed it up several different times. In the PbP that I am preparing to run over at The Ruins of Murkhill (forum) I am now currently using this:
During the first year I did not use Electrum or Platinum in the game, after the first year I did introduce them. I used Electrum as work half the value of Gold, as (when I did some research) I found out Electrum occurs naturally as a alloy of Gold and Silver and historically it was used. Just one of thousands of historical things you learning from your reading as you play OD&D that were left out of the history books.
For the current game I am running I am leaving this alone and having gems to be rare and massively valuable. so no changes to how I ran it in 1975 except they are now more valuable.
Yes, to get a 500,000 GP Gem you have to roll 6 - ones in a row. So yeah pretty rare. Bitd I changed this to run a d8 and on each roll of a 1 or 2 it indicates the gem is of the next higher category. I did that for the 1st four rolls and if I got that far then I rolled the d6 and on a 1 it would advance to 100,000 and on a another 1 it would advance to 500,000 GP.
I followed the initial roll with a roll of a d6 and on a 1 the value doubled. If I rolled a second 1 it doubled again. If I rolled a third 1 it doubled again. If I rolled a fourth 1 it doubled again. If I rolled a fifth t doubled again. That gave a maximum value of 320,000 GP.
I used the 10% and I applied this to Jewelry too. So Fire had a 10% chance of destroying any Gems present in the Jewelry and would devalue it by 25% plus the possible loss of any Gems. Lightning on the other hand would destroy any Gems present in the Jewelry and would devalue it by 25% plus the certain loss of any Gems.
That finishes up Book Two - Monsters & Treasure. Tomorrow we start on The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.
Today is Part 57 of my series of looks at OD&D, with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2 and that will finish this book.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
This is the money that we started off with in OD&D. Gold is also the standard of weight with massive coins where 10 Gold Pieces is a pound and that is used throughout. Even in 1975 I knew that historically no coins that were used regularly were anything close to that size using coins of that size, gold was not very valuable in terms of what it would buy. But in college I chose not to worry about it and we just went with it. Later on I changed it up several different times. In the PbP that I am preparing to run over at The Ruins of Murkhill (forum) I am now currently using this:
1 GP = 75 SP = 7500 CP 1 SP = 100 CP
Prices of items are as noted in Silver, Copper and Gold. The game runs on a Silver Standard. There are 200 Silver coins to a pound, 150 Copper Coins to a pound and 100 Gold Coins to a pound.
During the first year I did not use Electrum or Platinum in the game, after the first year I did introduce them. I used Electrum as work half the value of Gold, as (when I did some research) I found out Electrum occurs naturally as a alloy of Gold and Silver and historically it was used. Just one of thousands of historical things you learning from your reading as you play OD&D that were left out of the history books.
For my PBP:
1 PP = 5 GP and 1 GP = 2 EP =37 SP & 50 CP
There are 100 Platinum Coins to a pound (in reality Platinum is slightly over 11% heavier than Gold, but I choose to ignore that for the game as I did for all of the metals, all are rounded off). There are 150 Electrum Coins to a pound.
For the current game I am running I am leaving this alone and having gems to be rare and massively valuable. so no changes to how I ran it in 1975 except they are now more valuable.
Yes, to get a 500,000 GP Gem you have to roll 6 - ones in a row. So yeah pretty rare. Bitd I changed this to run a d8 and on each roll of a 1 or 2 it indicates the gem is of the next higher category. I did that for the 1st four rolls and if I got that far then I rolled the d6 and on a 1 it would advance to 100,000 and on a another 1 it would advance to 500,000 GP.
I used the 10% and I applied this to Jewelry too. So Fire had a 10% chance of destroying any Gems present in the Jewelry and would devalue it by 25% plus the possible loss of any Gems. Lightning on the other hand would destroy any Gems present in the Jewelry and would devalue it by 25% plus the certain loss of any Gems.
That finishes up Book Two - Monsters & Treasure. Tomorrow we start on The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.
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