I love the treasure type tables in the back of the AD&D Monster Manual (a feature also still present in many OSR products). I would spend endless hours in my room, statting out wilderness areas and dungeons full of monsters and threats. There was a magic to letting the dice decide what treasures were there. Which encounters had a rich payoff and which ones were sparse? Where was the magic sword? Who had potions? If an adventurer were brave enough to climb up to the Roc’s nest, what might they find?
Art by David Trampier
A reasoned consideration of treasure types
A treasure type table is a table of random possible treasures, organized into different types that represent different types of monsters. For example, in AD&D, type A was reserved for human-like encounters. Type H was reserved for large hoards, as in a Dragon hoard. Other types were reserved for specific types of coins, gems, or magic items. And others were for more exotic monsters, like Raksasha or Demons.
The Maps or Magic section is particularly neat, as it makes it clear what kind of magic different types of creatures might have in your world.
Treasure types from AD&D
I’m not wearing nostalgia-colored glasses when it comes to treasure types. Randomness can create a pack of boondoggles for every magic moment. Fighting a band of tough, organized Bugbears for a few measly electrum pieces is pretty frustrating. And a big hoard isn’t so much fun when most of it is in copper pieces. But Treasure Tables do have some valid uses.
Also, treasure types are very much an artifact of the “hit things and candy falls out” style of play, where killing monsters is the goal and their stuff is the reward. That’s fine, in its place, but I don’t really want that to be the core of my game.
Also, treasure types are an interesting piece of world building. By selecting a range of possibilities for a specific type of encounter, you’re creating a measure of consistency and telling us something about your world, like Goblins often have silver pieces, but rarely have potions, and never have platinum. But the randomness also adds an element of surprise.
Also, I think rolling on random tables is just plain fun. I did, after all, make an entire game about it.
So, to summarize, here’s what I like about treasure types:
Makes the world feel more real
Adds an element of generative randomness
Creates surprise
It’s a fun activity
Things I don’t like about treasure types:
Randomness isn’t fun in every situation
Reinforces the “kill people and take their stuff” idiom
Treasure types in Isotope
In Isotope, treasure types will typically be reserved for looting certain types of environments or locations, random environmental encounters, or rewards for specific keyed locations. In some cases (like Treasure Type D for Drone), types will be associated with a certain type of encounter. But in others (like Treasure Type L for Laboratory), they will be specific to an environment or situation.
Isotope also supports a style of play I call “zoom-in, zoom-out”. In this style of play, you may alternate between exploring a single room, or crawling an ancient installation with traversing large environments or travelling through entire ruined cities. So, for example, if you’re crossing the Great Traffic Jam, and you decide to stop and so some searching, you can roll on the table Treasure Type V for Vehicles.
Here is an example, Treasure Type A for Appliances:
This table appears in the Suburbia sourcebook I’m currently working on. Many of the items discovered can be disassembled for tins (the main resource currency of Isotope) or salvaged for a specific useful part. Rolling on this table usually requires you find and explore an entire house, so the treasures are actually quite good (10 tins is a good load of treasure for your average Ranger). A few are particularly interesting or weird, and the 00 result is something memorable and fun.
Closing thoughts
So, what do you think about treasure types? How do you assign treasure in your adventure-crawl type games? Do you just eyeball it? What’s a memorable random treasure you once gave out or found?