Treasure in Knave

We interrupt our regularly scheduled dungeon delve...

I was going to start putting the dungeon together this week, and I still plan to do so. I’m postponing that not because I don’t want to share my incredibly poor map drawing skills. Well, not just because of that. Rather, if I’m going to build a dungeon, I’m going to need some treasure. Now, Knave has some great tables for coming up with treasure, but precious little advice on placing and pricing said treasure. So I’m going to take a crack at that here.

Some Assumptions

Let’s start from the basic premise of treasure in adventure games: risk and reward are inversely proportional. You’re not going get a lot of treasure off a lone orc. You have to find where he and his mates hole up and then raid that. Treasure can be secreted away, it can be jealously guarded, it can be hideously trapped, but if you want the good stuff, you’re going to have to work for it.

I’m also going to take Knave’s design principles of simplicity and ease of use to heart. ‘What do we find in the chest?’ should be a quick and fun question to answer. I don’t want to reference and cross-check a bunch of different tables.

Finally, Ben states the following in his design notes: ‘The ability to purchase expensive things like buildings, ships, and so on will likely not come from collecting piles of coins from dungeons but from finding unique treasures that can be traded to rich NPCs’ (p. 74). This means that a Knave treasure is not usually coin. Coins are what you are paid when you bring treasure to the surface.

With those thoughts in mind, let’s make a treasure table.

Treasure

When through exploration, subterfuge, combat or some other method, the party discovers something worth selling, use the following table to determine type and value.

Found Treasure: Treasure found through exploration should require time or resources to both discover and recover. Roll a number of times on the table equal to the level of the dungeon. By default, treasure found through overland exploration is considered Dungeon Level 1, but the GM may adjust this as appropriate.

Guarded Treasure: A monster receives a number of rolls on the table equal to its hit dice. For groups of monsters, total their hit dice and divide by 4. If the monster would not normally carry or guard significant treasure, or if it is far from its lair, the GM should roll half the number of hit dice or none. Remember that monster parts are often valuable in and of themselves.

Value: For determining the value of an item, the table provides a simple formula: choose one of the results rolled in determining the item and multiply the result by the given amount. So if the item is a Card (Miscellaneous Items, result 09) that is Painted (Item Traits, Result 69), the DM should choose one result (either 9 or 69) and multiply the result by 5, making the card worth either 45 or 345 coin.

Selling Treasure: the coin values given in the table represent standard rates from a fence or pawnbroker in a large city. Should a party desire to seek out a specific buyer, they may do so at the cost of downtime. Each sale requires d12 days of footwork and negotiation to arrange the sale. Each party member who assists in this work reduces the time required by 1 day, to a minimum of 1. Should the sale be arranged, the GM may recalculate the value of the item by using the best result from the original rolls, or multiply the original value by 10, whichever makes most sense. Note that NPCs who often buy treasure from the party may become patrons. Use the NPC tables to determine names, personalities, and other details as appropriate (pp. 53-59).

Roll d8

1. Coin [Roll d100 X Level (HD or Dungeon Level)]

2. ]Tools] p. 39 Value is 5/20/100c depending on rarity (should the GM be unsure, roll d3)

3. [Miscellaneous Items] [Item Traits] pp. 39, 43 Value is result x5

4. [Books] [Item Traits] p. 40, 43 Value is result x5

5. [Clothing] [Fabrics] [Decorations] pp. 40-41 Value is result x5

6. [Treasure] [Materials] p. 42 Value is result x10

7. [Weapons] [Item Traits] p. 43 Value is result x5

8. [Potion], [Relic], or [Spellbook] pp. 27, 33, 35 Use the relevant tables to determine each.

Notes

This is a preliminary design and needs rigorous play testing. Please let me know the results if you implement it at your table. That said, I might urge you to actually make the rolls during the session instead of doing so in advance. Allowing players to roll their own treasure makes them more invested in the results.

A small note on value: Knave seems to assume a technology level roughly equivalent to seventeenth century Earth. This means the printing press has reduced the price of books, but clothing still sharply divides rich and poor. Thus, I think it appropriate that clothing will on average be more valuable than books (as there are three results to choose from, rather than two).

Thank you for reading.