So here's something that I've come into a bit of an issue with occasionally. Whenever my PCs enter somewhere, like say a palace, a laboratory, or a college, I like to put a believable amount of things in there that make sense. For instance, if they're in the lair of a bad guy that happens to be a scholar, I'll usually have a big bookshelf somewhere in some room of his filled with books. The only thing about this is, my characters love to loot (which they should). So once they've defeated the villain in question, they have no issue taking all of the books on the bookshelf, especially since he may have been researching something useful. They then put the dozens of books into their Bag of Holding and hold on to them to look through later.
I love their way of thinking and interacting with everything possible, but a lot of times, I intend these books to be more like the scenery of the room they are in. It's great for them to take it and add them to their inventory, but then I feel the need to fill in the gaps when they look through the books and have an explanation about the titles and information found in each and every one of these dozens of books. The same thing happens when they enter an armory and ask me to tell them about each weapon on the wall, or an alchemist's lab and they start pocketing all the different vials of liquid laying about.
I've taken to sort of coming up with a list of names of things to throw in in random situations based on what fits, grabbing 2 or 3 things from that list, and then giving a vague description of the rest of the loot while saying, "but none of the rest of it seems particularly noteworthy or useful to you." They usually keep the handful of things that I mentioned then pawn the rest of the stuff off. This works well, but it still bothers me that most of these books and other things essentially end up being just money coupons when in reality they would be real robust things that you could read through. Does anybody else have an issue with this? How do you handle coming up with ideas for items when your players take just about everything that isn't bolted to the walls?
I had the same issue with my players. Whenever they defeated a bunch of goblins, they wanted to take their equipment. And also books lying around and so on. However, im solving this a bit rough, they dont have a bag of holding so the capacity they can bring is limited. Also the crappy equipment from mobs is usually well used or worse. So shops didn't want to buy them.
In your case, with these books. lets say the scholar cursed his library, so if they left his home they would be destroyed. With the armory, its no need to have it filled with all sorts of weapons. And if the players need to know every single weapon because they can sell them, they got the bag of holding a bit early. At later levels you can say they find a few better weapons and the rest is bunch of crappy swords, they can eihter take them becouse they need crafting material. Or sell all of them for a round number of gold. Instead of killing the DM with details. If you dont enjoy it, if so keep up the good work.
In my experience, this often happens when the party acquire a Bag of Holding (or similar device) for carrying large amounts of loot, without considering the weight of it.
Equipment from most monsters, like orcs & goblins - as BrightLuminous says, traditionally D&D declares such creatures to have non-valuable (and non-useable) equipment, unless it's rolled as part of their treasure.
Having players that pay attention to your room descriptions and what's in them is great news - far better than players who just ignore what you're saying and don't interact with the "scenery" - I strongly recommend not punishing them for this behaviour, but I can understand how it can become a little wearisome detailing a dozen tomes that are largely irrelevant to the plot. :)
You could use them to provide information or plot hooks. Imagine getting them to roll an Arcana and then state something like, "after a quick perusal, you determine that the books are largely incorrect or out-of-date." then maybe an Insight roll to follow up with, "It seems that they went to some trouble to acquire a number of books with suitable aesthetics for a research area,, but without the actual content. Enough to fool someone without your knowledge, into thinking this was actually ongoing research." - you've now set-up that the Wizard was actually pretending to research, but why? Who were they trying to fool? Were they working for someone?
There are many ways you can turn your players' obsession into a great story-telling tool!
I wouldn't chastise your players for their methods, but I would maybe explain to them that you can't tell them absolutely everything about each and every thing they grab. It's perfectly okay to loot the crap out of everything, but if your players' social compact leads them to expect such gratuitous and constant detail from you, them maybe just telling them you're not planning that much detail will allow them to accept a less engrossing answers. If that hurts their level of immersion, maybe lead them a little. Instead of making descriptions for several books for them, ask them if there's a specific kind of book or certain information they're looking for. It makes there focus less vague for you to drum up an answer to.
As far as the looting everything for money, I agree with the other voices saying most enemy gear is worthless for sale or use. That said, there's nothing wrong with once in a while saying this hobgoblin had a couple decent daggers you could nick. For the most part, though, a shop keeper doesn't want leather armor that still smells like the goblin that made it. A seamstress may plain just want nothing to do with the cultist robes you bring her. Only very few niche scholars will care for the tomes and research that necromancer was collecting. If you condition your players to expect their random plunder to be worth little or nothing, in time they'll lose the drive without losing the illusion of reality. And if it does disconnect them, i'd say that's them making mountains out of moleholes compared to the other more engaging aspects of the game they could gripe about. I'm sure they'll be more understanding then that, though. Most are.
100% what StormKnight said. Take it and run with it =D
Honestly, though, it seems like you're already doing great as far as fleshing things out for your players- especially if they're already inclined to explore the nooks of the world you're makin' for them. Having a couple book titles, and maybe a few vague summaries of what a few of those books are about, is more than good enough. Think of it like painting leaves on a tree- the paintings that look good are usually just relatively abstract approximations of the masses of leaves, with a few details sprinkled in- drawing every last leaf is going to look cluttered and busy and unappealing.
Usually having a good, abstract description ("You pull book after book off the shelves, kicking up a cloud of dust. She had quite the.... eclectic collection- some are newer and pristine with carefully printed penmanship, while others are much, much older. You can shovel as many as you want into your Bag of Holding.") with a few unique details ("One of the books, which looks like it hasn't been touched in decades, is untitled but has the image of a blossoming flower embossed on the cover. It's just a collection of old poems and folk songs, illustrated with florid, cartoon pictures of rabbits and deer. Flowers were once pressed in-between the pages to dry; once the book is opened, ancient violets and daisies crumble into dust." or "You find a weathered old leather book, embossed with "Field Guide to the Underdark" on the bent cover. The writing starts off methodical and neat, with precise drawings, but as you read further, it gets more jagged and rushed, and it's harder to understand what the author was trying to say. It seems like it ends a little abruptly.") will be perfect for making your players feel like they're interacting with a cartload of books without needing an inventoried list. "None of the rest seem particularly interesting or noteworthy" is perfectly fine- I'd say preferential to getting off on a tangent describing multiple sets of encyclopedias or "A Sheep-Farmer's Almanac: Spring-Fall Year 512" or "Mapmaker's Guide to Tediously Precise Measurements" or "Honey for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free: Poultry and Bee Keeping for Novice Peasants". Mostly because, if every detail is expounded on, then none of the details stand out, and they won't remember any of them.
Maybe when they explore deeper into the wizard's home, they find a magically-locked door with a relief image of a blossoming flower and a line that feels like a riddle. Trying to solve it as a riddle would just be a headache, but if they made the connection between the flower on the wall and the book they found in the library, they could find out that it's not a puzzle, but a line of an old folk poem- and the next line is the phrase that unlocks the door. Maybe the next time they venture into the Underdark, the player who thumbed through the Field Guide can make an intelligence check to realize that the tracks they see across the stone are Quaggoth tracks- and warn the party that where there are Quaggoths, there are normally Drow. Or heck, maybe just by clearing the books off the shelves they expose a hidden switch that opens a secret cache in the wall. There are tons of ways to make the books feel like more than just money tokens- but it's also fine for most of them to be just that. The ones that do catch the players' eyes should do so because they are special- it's totally appropriate for the uninteresting ones to fade into the background.
I like to not only be "realistic" with how much stuff is in a place, but also "realistic" with what other people perceive the worth of it to be - by which I mean that most things found are viewed as next to useless by most people, so they aren't willing to buy them.
The exceptions come from finding the right buyer, which often takes a significant amount of effort - you don't just walk into the nearest town and get a pile of coins for your bag-full of random this-and-that.
As a result, my players have started to only take things that have a clear value whether it is because of broad appeal or because they know a potential buyer, rather than taking everything that wasn't bolted down like they did when I first took over as their DM.
Killed a panther? Skin it (leather, a fur coat, or a rug), declaw and defang it (caltrops, jewelry, or spikes on a wooden weapon), cook the meat (dinner, breakfast, lunch, and jerky), take the bones (bonemeal (fertilizer) and bone marrow (food), soup, needles, more caltrops, and/or arrowheads), clean out the guts (bags, pouches, or primitive balloons), preserve the eyes and brain (food, intimidation, or raven treats), and use the smell of the meat cooking to lure in more animals to kill. Better hope someone has Nature, Survival, or a good excuse, though, or all you get is 50 XP and one less thing trying to kill you.
I enjoy using books-as-loot as a way to give the PCs access to more skills/tools/languages/spells/rituals/trivia, but that works better in a system like GURPS, where I can say things like, "This book is titled Basic Algebra by Afar es-Jahad. It includes an unusually large number of grammatical errors, but, if you spend 200 hours studying it, roll English-2, meet the prerequisites for the Algebra skill, and have no prior training in it, you get one character point in Algebra." GURPS in a nutshell, right there. That specific example doesn't work in (GURPS) 4th edition, though.
Okay, that probably isn't very helpful, but it was fun to write.
Haha yeah I typically don't like to punish my players for anything that I think would be reasonable and believable in world, which I think looting is. They never really go too overboard either, it's mostly just that one of the PCs is a scholar so she likes holding on to just about any research material she can find.
It's definitely true about too much information leading to none of it seeming important or interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind with these stockpiles from now on.
I also never really thought of shopkeepers not being willing to buy stuff. Mostly because I've been so influenced by video game RPGs where the one shopkeeper in town will literally buy anything from you as long as it isn't a Key Item. But that does sound like a great way to encourage critical analysis on what's worth looting.
As for my players, they're only level 4, but they got their hands on a Bag of Holding really early. One of the characters is an Artifacer, so she got to make a wondrous item at level 2, haha.
Well, first off, throwing a dozen books off of one shelf, and throwing an entire library's worth of knowledge into a BoH are two very different tasks. Anything over around 50 books is a tough ask, and if they are keeping weapons and armor in there aswell, then make sure to keep them honest.
That being said here are some methods to deal with it:
1) Condense each book down to a single line. An excerpt. Something that the character retains after reading the book. Hand sheets and sheets of these one sentence "treasures" to your player... AND BE SURE TO INCLUDE USEFUL STUFF IN THERE TOO, mixed in with the proper time of year to plant corn and the proper name for a scourge of vampires. The more pages your scholar aquires in this way, the more she will need to a) invest her own time out of game distilling your notes down to her notes, or b) become slowly overwhelmed with papers, or C) become convinced that she can't ever part with a single book (because you take the pages away, if she throws out the book) her character has to remember! (unless she takes that one feat) imo, any of the responses are valid.
2) Roll a D% and use that to decide if she learns anything 01 and 00 are both "tome of unrivaled (insert stat here)" Maybe a 95-99 is a tome of proficiency. Anything else and you just say you learn some interesting stuff. You especially like the one about "jimmy punchy-face." He's a rat-man who took over the harbor district by beating people to a bloody pulp.
3) Slow down her reading. Sure, she can loot a dozen books, but she can only read one. Make up some actual books. One about the subterranean dwarven city of dunglest, one about The rise and fall of Tiamat, one about the life of the dark wizard kemlar, etc, and let her choose. Any time she studies one of the books, she learns something on that topic.
4) Put actual things in the lab that a studious scholar might find. Plans for some kind of mechanism to rip one's soul from one's body, or a letter from a lord, commissioning the wizard to steal the macguffin from his nephew, the king. Make the Scholar the Star of the show!
Take look at RPGnow's website for system neutral PDF's that deal with background details, there's quite a few that have been published on there over the years, those kinds of lists are a godsend for DM's dressing up their games, Dragon+ have featured a few such lists, and the later Paizo produced Dungeon Magazines had some articles that helped DM's make interesting treasures and locations as well, some of which are still available in PDF from from Pazio!
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So here's something that I've come into a bit of an issue with occasionally. Whenever my PCs enter somewhere, like say a palace, a laboratory, or a college, I like to put a believable amount of things in there that make sense. For instance, if they're in the lair of a bad guy that happens to be a scholar, I'll usually have a big bookshelf somewhere in some room of his filled with books. The only thing about this is, my characters love to loot (which they should). So once they've defeated the villain in question, they have no issue taking all of the books on the bookshelf, especially since he may have been researching something useful. They then put the dozens of books into their Bag of Holding and hold on to them to look through later.
I love their way of thinking and interacting with everything possible, but a lot of times, I intend these books to be more like the scenery of the room they are in. It's great for them to take it and add them to their inventory, but then I feel the need to fill in the gaps when they look through the books and have an explanation about the titles and information found in each and every one of these dozens of books. The same thing happens when they enter an armory and ask me to tell them about each weapon on the wall, or an alchemist's lab and they start pocketing all the different vials of liquid laying about.
I've taken to sort of coming up with a list of names of things to throw in in random situations based on what fits, grabbing 2 or 3 things from that list, and then giving a vague description of the rest of the loot while saying, "but none of the rest of it seems particularly noteworthy or useful to you." They usually keep the handful of things that I mentioned then pawn the rest of the stuff off. This works well, but it still bothers me that most of these books and other things essentially end up being just money coupons when in reality they would be real robust things that you could read through. Does anybody else have an issue with this? How do you handle coming up with ideas for items when your players take just about everything that isn't bolted to the walls?
I had the same issue with my players. Whenever they defeated a bunch of goblins, they wanted to take their equipment. And also books lying around and so on. However, im solving this a bit rough, they dont have a bag of holding so the capacity they can bring is limited. Also the crappy equipment from mobs is usually well used or worse. So shops didn't want to buy them.
In your case, with these books. lets say the scholar cursed his library, so if they left his home they would be destroyed. With the armory, its no need to have it filled with all sorts of weapons. And if the players need to know every single weapon because they can sell them, they got the bag of holding a bit early. At later levels you can say they find a few better weapons and the rest is bunch of crappy swords, they can eihter take them becouse they need crafting material. Or sell all of them for a round number of gold. Instead of killing the DM with details. If you dont enjoy it, if so keep up the good work.
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D&D Beyond FoundersIn my experience, this often happens when the party acquire a Bag of Holding (or similar device) for carrying large amounts of loot, without considering the weight of it.
Equipment from most monsters, like orcs & goblins - as BrightLuminous says, traditionally D&D declares such creatures to have non-valuable (and non-useable) equipment, unless it's rolled as part of their treasure.
Having players that pay attention to your room descriptions and what's in them is great news - far better than players who just ignore what you're saying and don't interact with the "scenery" - I strongly recommend not punishing them for this behaviour, but I can understand how it can become a little wearisome detailing a dozen tomes that are largely irrelevant to the plot. :)
You could use them to provide information or plot hooks. Imagine getting them to roll an Arcana and then state something like, "after a quick perusal, you determine that the books are largely incorrect or out-of-date." then maybe an Insight roll to follow up with, "It seems that they went to some trouble to acquire a number of books with suitable aesthetics for a research area,, but without the actual content. Enough to fool someone without your knowledge, into thinking this was actually ongoing research." - you've now set-up that the Wizard was actually pretending to research, but why? Who were they trying to fool? Were they working for someone?
There are many ways you can turn your players' obsession into a great story-telling tool!
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I wouldn't chastise your players for their methods, but I would maybe explain to them that you can't tell them absolutely everything about each and every thing they grab. It's perfectly okay to loot the crap out of everything, but if your players' social compact leads them to expect such gratuitous and constant detail from you, them maybe just telling them you're not planning that much detail will allow them to accept a less engrossing answers. If that hurts their level of immersion, maybe lead them a little. Instead of making descriptions for several books for them, ask them if there's a specific kind of book or certain information they're looking for. It makes there focus less vague for you to drum up an answer to.
As far as the looting everything for money, I agree with the other voices saying most enemy gear is worthless for sale or use. That said, there's nothing wrong with once in a while saying this hobgoblin had a couple decent daggers you could nick. For the most part, though, a shop keeper doesn't want leather armor that still smells like the goblin that made it. A seamstress may plain just want nothing to do with the cultist robes you bring her. Only very few niche scholars will care for the tomes and research that necromancer was collecting. If you condition your players to expect their random plunder to be worth little or nothing, in time they'll lose the drive without losing the illusion of reality. And if it does disconnect them, i'd say that's them making mountains out of moleholes compared to the other more engaging aspects of the game they could gripe about. I'm sure they'll be more understanding then that, though. Most are.
#OpenDnD. #DnDBegone
100% what StormKnight said. Take it and run with it =D
Honestly, though, it seems like you're already doing great as far as fleshing things out for your players- especially if they're already inclined to explore the nooks of the world you're makin' for them. Having a couple book titles, and maybe a few vague summaries of what a few of those books are about, is more than good enough. Think of it like painting leaves on a tree- the paintings that look good are usually just relatively abstract approximations of the masses of leaves, with a few details sprinkled in- drawing every last leaf is going to look cluttered and busy and unappealing.
Usually having a good, abstract description ("You pull book after book off the shelves, kicking up a cloud of dust. She had quite the.... eclectic collection- some are newer and pristine with carefully printed penmanship, while others are much, much older. You can shovel as many as you want into your Bag of Holding.") with a few unique details ("One of the books, which looks like it hasn't been touched in decades, is untitled but has the image of a blossoming flower embossed on the cover. It's just a collection of old poems and folk songs, illustrated with florid, cartoon pictures of rabbits and deer. Flowers were once pressed in-between the pages to dry; once the book is opened, ancient violets and daisies crumble into dust." or "You find a weathered old leather book, embossed with "Field Guide to the Underdark" on the bent cover. The writing starts off methodical and neat, with precise drawings, but as you read further, it gets more jagged and rushed, and it's harder to understand what the author was trying to say. It seems like it ends a little abruptly.") will be perfect for making your players feel like they're interacting with a cartload of books without needing an inventoried list. "None of the rest seem particularly interesting or noteworthy" is perfectly fine- I'd say preferential to getting off on a tangent describing multiple sets of encyclopedias or "A Sheep-Farmer's Almanac: Spring-Fall Year 512" or "Mapmaker's Guide to Tediously Precise Measurements" or "Honey for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free: Poultry and Bee Keeping for Novice Peasants". Mostly because, if every detail is expounded on, then none of the details stand out, and they won't remember any of them.
Maybe when they explore deeper into the wizard's home, they find a magically-locked door with a relief image of a blossoming flower and a line that feels like a riddle. Trying to solve it as a riddle would just be a headache, but if they made the connection between the flower on the wall and the book they found in the library, they could find out that it's not a puzzle, but a line of an old folk poem- and the next line is the phrase that unlocks the door. Maybe the next time they venture into the Underdark, the player who thumbed through the Field Guide can make an intelligence check to realize that the tracks they see across the stone are Quaggoth tracks- and warn the party that where there are Quaggoths, there are normally Drow. Or heck, maybe just by clearing the books off the shelves they expose a hidden switch that opens a secret cache in the wall. There are tons of ways to make the books feel like more than just money tokens- but it's also fine for most of them to be just that. The ones that do catch the players' eyes should do so because they are special- it's totally appropriate for the uninteresting ones to fade into the background.
I like to not only be "realistic" with how much stuff is in a place, but also "realistic" with what other people perceive the worth of it to be - by which I mean that most things found are viewed as next to useless by most people, so they aren't willing to buy them.
The exceptions come from finding the right buyer, which often takes a significant amount of effort - you don't just walk into the nearest town and get a pile of coins for your bag-full of random this-and-that.
As a result, my players have started to only take things that have a clear value whether it is because of broad appeal or because they know a potential buyer, rather than taking everything that wasn't bolted down like they did when I first took over as their DM.
I like resourceful players.
Killed a panther? Skin it (leather, a fur coat, or a rug), declaw and defang it (caltrops, jewelry, or spikes on a wooden weapon), cook the meat (dinner, breakfast, lunch, and jerky), take the bones (bonemeal (fertilizer) and bone marrow (food), soup, needles, more caltrops, and/or arrowheads), clean out the guts (bags, pouches, or primitive balloons), preserve the eyes and brain (food, intimidation, or raven treats), and use the smell of the meat cooking to lure in more animals to kill. Better hope someone has Nature, Survival, or a good excuse, though, or all you get is 50 XP and one less thing trying to kill you.
I enjoy using books-as-loot as a way to give the PCs access to more skills/tools/languages/spells/rituals/trivia, but that works better in a system like GURPS, where I can say things like, "This book is titled Basic Algebra by Afar es-Jahad. It includes an unusually large number of grammatical errors, but, if you spend 200 hours studying it, roll English-2, meet the prerequisites for the Algebra skill, and have no prior training in it, you get one character point in Algebra." GURPS in a nutshell, right there. That specific example doesn't work in (GURPS) 4th edition, though.
Okay, that probably isn't very helpful, but it was fun to write.
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Haha yeah I typically don't like to punish my players for anything that I think would be reasonable and believable in world, which I think looting is. They never really go too overboard either, it's mostly just that one of the PCs is a scholar so she likes holding on to just about any research material she can find.
It's definitely true about too much information leading to none of it seeming important or interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind with these stockpiles from now on.
I also never really thought of shopkeepers not being willing to buy stuff. Mostly because I've been so influenced by video game RPGs where the one shopkeeper in town will literally buy anything from you as long as it isn't a Key Item. But that does sound like a great way to encourage critical analysis on what's worth looting.
As for my players, they're only level 4, but they got their hands on a Bag of Holding really early. One of the characters is an Artifacer, so she got to make a wondrous item at level 2, haha.
You could use Sly Flourish's secrets. I like this mechanic for use of libraries.
Well, first off, throwing a dozen books off of one shelf, and throwing an entire library's worth of knowledge into a BoH are two very different tasks. Anything over around 50 books is a tough ask, and if they are keeping weapons and armor in there aswell, then make sure to keep them honest.
That being said here are some methods to deal with it:
1) Condense each book down to a single line. An excerpt. Something that the character retains after reading the book. Hand sheets and sheets of these one sentence "treasures" to your player... AND BE SURE TO INCLUDE USEFUL STUFF IN THERE TOO, mixed in with the proper time of year to plant corn and the proper name for a scourge of vampires. The more pages your scholar aquires in this way, the more she will need to a) invest her own time out of game distilling your notes down to her notes, or b) become slowly overwhelmed with papers, or C) become convinced that she can't ever part with a single book (because you take the pages away, if she throws out the book) her character has to remember! (unless she takes that one feat) imo, any of the responses are valid.
2) Roll a D% and use that to decide if she learns anything 01 and 00 are both "tome of unrivaled (insert stat here)" Maybe a 95-99 is a tome of proficiency. Anything else and you just say you learn some interesting stuff. You especially like the one about "jimmy punchy-face." He's a rat-man who took over the harbor district by beating people to a bloody pulp.
3) Slow down her reading. Sure, she can loot a dozen books, but she can only read one. Make up some actual books. One about the subterranean dwarven city of dunglest, one about The rise and fall of Tiamat, one about the life of the dark wizard kemlar, etc, and let her choose. Any time she studies one of the books, she learns something on that topic.
4) Put actual things in the lab that a studious scholar might find. Plans for some kind of mechanism to rip one's soul from one's body, or a letter from a lord, commissioning the wizard to steal the macguffin from his nephew, the king. Make the Scholar the Star of the show!
Take look at RPGnow's website for system neutral PDF's that deal with background details, there's quite a few that have been published on there over the years, those kinds of lists are a godsend for DM's dressing up their games, Dragon+ have featured a few such lists, and the later Paizo produced Dungeon Magazines had some articles that helped DM's make interesting treasures and locations as well, some of which are still available in PDF from from Pazio!
"I am The Ancient, I am The Land"