On Awarding Treasure

    I've been doing an overhaul of how Classes work in MARROW, and as I've done that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about LOOT, and larger rewards. I was thinking about how to most effectively distribute rewards during campaign-level (10+ sessions) play, and I've come to some conclusions I'd like to share about how to make treasure more meaningful to the players and get the maximum juice out of it.

Pull it back

    By far the simplest and easiest advice I have is to drastically pull back both how much you give and the quality/power of the treasure you give your players. Do it WAY more than you think you need to. Every game, pull it back further and further. At early levels, mundane equipment and silver coins should feel like an achievement, and a single magic item could define not only a character, but a group. The players have no property, no titles, just a desperation to stay alive.

    Why should you do this? For one, it makes your job as a DM easier. If the players are constantly behind the curve and struggling, you don't have to worry about making encounters or story beats challenging, because the fact of the matter is that your players are underprepared. The drama arises from overcoming this disadvantage with luck, skill, and creativity, one of the tenants of why we play RPGs.

    For two, it makes the characters feel better and more heroic when they DO get their hands on treasure. Imagine you were told you couldn't eat pizza for a year, then given a single slice- would it taste better than if you were given a whole pizza in ten minutes? It's the same with treasure. While it might be temporarily filling, the really meaningful experience comes from that yearning and release.

Diversify your treasure portfolio

    This one is a tricky mindset to get into, and it plays into my next thesis. Treasure isn't just magic items and coin. It's mundane items, it's property, it's a title, it's a tattoo carved into your skin, it's the benediction of a demon, it's the map to an ancient vault, it's the key to the temple. Put a lot of thought and focus into making rewards in your game as diverse as possible.

    The reason for this is rather simple. If you put too many eggs in a small number of baskets, for example (a problem I often see in new DMs) only distributing gold and magic items as treasure, then those become less satisfying over time. The law of diminishing returns is your worst enemy in treasure, and diversification, along with a HEAVY pullback, is the best way to fight it.

    If executed correctly, your midgame and endgame shouldn't look like roving murderhobos strapped to the gills with gems and glowing swords but with no home, but rather better-rounded characters with a place in the world and a variety of assets at their disposal- favors, property, wishes, and yes, trade goods and magic items. Experiment with new types of rewards, and find out what works best for you so you can build a portfolio for your players.

Mechanical rewards are boring

    I will make a bold claim, and will refrain from backing it up or explaining it now, but it's an important assumption as I go forward with this bullet. RPGs are what happen around the rules. If you're just following the rules of an RPG, you are playing a glorified board game- everything that happens outside of the rules is your RPG gameplay.

    So, by that metric, any reward that only affects the mechanics of the game, with no flexibility, is not a fitting reward for an RPG. Within your diversification, you'll want to make a shift away from items that are purely mechanical in nature. Give the players items that have handwavey effects. Give the players items that are simply quirky. A knife that you can use to carve a boat with an hour's work is a LOT more interesting than a +5 sword, even though the latter may technically be more mechanically powerful.

    When creating your rewards, pull away from mechanics as often as you can. However, that's not to say to abandon the mechanics entirely, but when you do have to cater to the mechanics...

Tie treasure into the story

    What I mean by this is that every reward should have a role in the unfolding narrative in the game. This is your secret weapon towards making what would be a mundane reward in a lesser game something remarkable and defining. Let's turn to an example, the +5 sword I was talking about above.

    First, where was the sword found? The Red Crypts of Azgarr, you say? Great. This is a powerful sword, so it would make sense if it were a relic of the Fallen Paladin Azgarr herself. Already, we have an intense narrative hook- this is no glowing sword, but a crumbling relic of the bygone era, rusted with the blood of heretics and wrapped in dragon leather. If we were on a time crunch, this would be sufficient to make a passable reward that the players would at the very least remember.

    But we have time and mental space, so we want to expand and deepen this sword's place in the story to even out the mechanical focus. Azgarr probably wouldn't like her property stolen, and since the bloody masses of flesh patrolling the Red Crypts are manifested of her anguish, they want to repossess the sword. Monsters always attack the player wielding the sword. Bam. With that simple addition, you deepen the narrative of the dungeon and the loot in one fell swoop, AND create interesting choices- is the +5 bonus enough to warrant a target on your back?

    Without even altering the mechanics or naming the damn thing (which is a dirty tactic that almost never fails), we've mortared the blade into the dungeon, and created interesting choices as often as room-by room all from this +5 sword. Imagine what you could do with that pirate ship, those diamonds, or even that grimoire macguffin. Let the story drive your prep in the most interesting way possible, and your treasure will have dividends.

Make rewards a result of good play

    Think about, at any given juncture, why you're giving out treasure. What did the players do to deserve it? Sometimes, it's "look for the secret room", and that's a reward for careful play, luck, time expenditure, or whatever mechanics you have in place for that sort of searching. Sometimes, it's "a good negotiation with the powerful entity", and that's a reward for adept roleplaying. Sometimes, it's "the plot mandates that this would be natural or necessary", and that's fine- after all, in a nautical game, your players kind of need a ship!

    A bad answer would be "because they are in this room". What do the players have to go through to get it? What trial or challenge did they have to overcome? This is especially bad if it's in a main path, or one that's necessary to get to the climactic encounter- there's no challenge in securing it, there's no choice made to get it, it doesn't have any major implications. It's just there for the sake of being there.

    If I can impart no other lesson, TREASURE SHOULD BE A REWARD. It's not a trophy for playing, it's a result of making good, smart choices. Even if those choices are sometimes obvious, or the challenges barring the treasure aren't difficult to overcome, they should exist, so that all treasure feels earned. That's the best advice I can possibly convey.

I hope this post made you think about rewards in a new way, or consider new ways to attack its distribution in your game! I know that these five bullets will motivate me and my treasure-distribution for my campaigns. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!