On Treasure in Holes

-

 


It is a truth universally acknowledged that a destitute adventurer, in possession of a sharp blade, must be in want of a hole. Holes are after all where the treasures live, guarded by orcs and worse. Of course, in modern parlance, we like to call these holes "Dungeons", and if we want to get real fancy, they're "The Mythic Underworld".

This is because, indeed, it does not make sense that one would store that much treasure in what is, essentially, a hole in the ground. Even at the best of times, going underground is a scary prospect, untold tonnes of earth and stone hanging over your head, ready to collapse at any moment if not properly secured, burying you with your treasure for all eternity. Sensible people build castles, it's less work. Maybe a little basement underneath, but none of this deep cave stuff. That's delving too deep, too greedily.

This means that normal people don't put their treasures in big dungeons deep underground. People with lots of dosh usually pay the less wealthy to get treasure out of holes in the ground. Just visit any mine: all the people going into the hole are poor folks, extracting the treasures of the Earth and enriching some fat cat who would never himself set foot in the mine. At best, they will have a basement with a safe, and that calls for a heist, not a delve. If they do have a dungeon, it's for torturing prisoners, or for sex. Not so much delving to do there, unless you're looking for whips and screaming people.

Why then, would treasure end up in dungeons, these deep, uncomfortable holes? Something inhuman must have put it there, or someone really weird or desperate, I guess.

A pirate captain will bury their treasure, but usually not themselves along with it, it takes something more to drive a wealthy man underground. Perhaps the persecuted would go underground, avoiding those who would try to destroy them, but these types are usually not the most treasure-laden of folks.

The treasures in the Mythic Underworld must therefore be just that, Mythic. Long lost golden hoards from ages past, enchanted artefacts of legendary craftsmen, the bones of unimaginable beasts, and the blood of angels and demons, not of this world.

When putting treasure in your hole, think bigger. Why would there be base currency a mile underground? Put something weird, fantastic, mythical.  A treasure fit for an underworld, not something you could find in the bank, the least mythical of places.

And remember, the deeper in the hole, the weirder the treasure, because nobody normal would want to be down there. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Toppling the pillars of the OSR: against lethality

-
Image
  One of the accepted wisdoms in the OSR (as codified in e.g. the Principia Apocrypha ), as well at the NSR (as defined by Yochai Gal or Pandatheist) is that lethality is good, and a core component of OSR/NSR play, because it means that player choice has real consequence. I do not entirely disagree with this, but I also do not entirely agree. My opinion aligns more with Pandatheist's follow-up post , arguing that "consequential" would be a better term. Perhaps my brain is poisoned with modern "trad" ideology, but when playing longer campaigns rather than one-shots, I find that the characters tend to evolve beyond vehicle's for the players' problem solving, developing interesting quirks and personalities that it would be a shame to lose because of an unlucky dice-roll (because that is one OSR tenet I do still believe in - the sanctity of the dice result). A dramatic death because of calculated risk gone wrong, or a heroic last stand against an ogre whil...
Read more

A method for condensed worldbuilding

-
Image
  An important part of playing role-playing games is a shared understanding of the fictional world. A common assumption is that the game master knows everything there is to know about the world, and the players know some subset of this. Of course, what the players know, and what their characters know might not always fully overlap, which can cause issues in the game. What happens when my diplomat character wants to talk about the different empires he has visited in his travels, but I, the player have forgotten, or worse, haven't been told about them? A common way of countering this problem is shared worldbuilding on the fly, having the GM share their power of "just making something up" with the players. However, this may not always be a satisfactory solution. Sometimes it is just nice to have a shared foundation to build on from the start, not having to nail it together while we are actually in the middle of some other encounter. Having a pre-existing idea of the world ca...
Read more

Touched by the Fay: 20 Advancements for Cairn and other Fantasy Games

-
Image
Liden Gunver og Havmanden , 1841, Edvard Lehmann Like all good recipe bloggers, I have added a big preamble about why I wrote this, and my thoughts on Cairn 2e backgrounds. If you just want the advancements, scroll down! I have been reading the Cairn 2e books (more on that in a later blogpost), and something about Cairn that has always been frustrating me a bit is the lack of special traits or similar to make characters unique, rather than blank slates defined only by their items and a handful of stats, and whatever the player puts into them. For a long time, people have told me, "Cairn 2e backgrounds fixes this", and I have stubbornly told them, "I will read that when I get my box set, then." Lo and behold, my box arrived a few weeks ago, and indeed, some of the backgrounds contains what I want. But only a few of them, and often just as one or two entries on the roll table. Many backgrounds contains the kind of abilities or traits I want, but tie them to items with...
Read more