In Praise of Acquisitiveness

 I want to describe an aspect of some games that I really like, and I want to give a bit of advice about how to play into it. I don't want to make a formal argument for why I think it's good and I certainly don't want to argue it's the exclusively best way to play. If I get emphatic, take it to be part of the spell I'm casting so that you might be as enchanted as I am.

Matt Morrow

In many old-school games, experience points are awarded for gold and other treasures pilfered from the dungeon. I've played with some people who don't really vibe with this. They're not greedy people in real life, and often all to aware of the connection between wealth and the cruelty often deployed to keep it. They're not motivated by in-game rewards, preferring the intrinsic reward of enjoyable conversation, or problem-solving, or other (perhaps even more central) goals of play. 

"What is there to even spend all this gold on?" they say.

Dog, you are so valid. But I really think you're missing out if you aren't aware of how fun it is to go gold-mad, greedy of gain, ready to risk your PC's life for the chance that they might be rich beyond their wildest dreams. What if the mechanical incentive of getting to the next level was matched with the emotional incentive of acquiring that ruby, shining luridly in the torchlight?  What if every financial step towards achieving your goals was as sweet as anything you ever felt? 

In the real world, a windfall feels weighty-- it conjures anxiety over how it is spent or kept, exhilaration at what can be done with it, the sense of total miracle as your most pressing concerns now seem solvable. The right mindset can realize those feelings in your play. 

Personally, in mainline dungeon games I think almost every PC should be on a scale between reasonably acquisitive to unreasonable acquisitive. They don't even need to be greedy. But they should have goals they can address with funds, and should be hungry to do so. Do not be afraid of being rich in this fictional world. Wealth cannot corrupt nearly so easily in the game as it can in real life. Money is power-- it does what you tell it to-- it is your vote in the absolute democracy that is the warring market. 

Food, shelter, clothing, dignity, warmth, friends, games, pets, homes, the starving masses, vengeance, vengeance, blood-thirsting vengeance, finery, honor, scholasticism, patronage, passing on good luck, risk, ruin, political change, proximity to power, fine mounts, the means to seek truth, the means to collect disparate information, to prevent what happened before from happening again, big hats. What do you, the player, care about in this game? Use gold pieces to expand how you can interact with it. What do you, the character, care about in this game? Use gold pieces to expand how you can interact with it. And when you care about what money can do, try to care a little bit about money itself. Let it be a token, then a totem, then a fetish. If you want to level up, you already want power. Seek power in money!

Dungeon masters who use gold-for-XP systems should conversely be ready to allow for means to address broad problems with cash, to see all those thousands of silver pieces spent on constructions, formation of a company, uniforms, swag, and everything else that can be done, responsibly or irresponsibly, by chancers. 

Here I formally poo-poo those who require PCs to spend their gold on training or carousing in order to level up. If there's some way to spend gold for extra XP, that's okay, but the players shouldn't be making a trade-off between normal advancement and extrachartal advancement. If you do that, they're sure to spend at least some of the XP on normal leveling up, which is way less cool than the incorporation, research, and in-world advancement they could be doing with that cash. 

Furthermore, it should never be the job of the DM to separate the PCs from their treasure by contriving stupid taxes and similar means to ensure that money spent has minimal impact. If you want to use financial travails as yet another gameplay obstacle, that's perfectly virtuous. It's just the bass-ackwards problem of giving the PCs too much money and then taking it away that I find unmeritorious.

"But Phlox," you say, "my heart simply does not ache for gold and silver. I see how it can bring me to the thoughtful caterpillar and the prancing springbok, all my heart desires, but I cannot choose to love what I do not."

Gentle reader, I had no idea you felt so keenly, nor that you were so open to a change that must to you seem so alien and distant. To change a heart, you cannot reason with it. You must nourish it with fine words, and give it time.

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

   I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;

   I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— 

   Came out with a fortune last fall,— 

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

   And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

   It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

   To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it;

   Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it

   For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

   You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

   And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning;

   It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it’s been since the beginning;

   It seems it will be to the end.

- Robert Service, The Spell of the Yukon (excerpt)

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Here is a poem by a player in Loch's Ashes to Ashes game:

Dead cities are like chestnuts,

Crack them open! Crack their shells!

Slurp out their golden darics,

And forgotten lores as well!

Send scouts out before you!

Keep the linkboys close behind!

Spring the bolts and jump the pits,

And valuables you’ll find!

Heft the shining blades and

Gleaming treasures of the past!

Give tongue to long dead magic words,

That long to writhe at last!

Break the traps that guard them!

Break immortal guardsmen too!

I came here to enrich myself,

There’s no riches left for you!

What gods are looking on here,

At what merry sport we make,

Of their temples and their grave goods?

That we nab, acquire, take?

Well you idols, keep on looking!

To that old god we heed!

Sanctifying our ablutions,

To that giddy god called Greed!

“Transgression”? “Violation”?

These are just words to me!

I’ll buy the corpse-king’s entire stock,

For the low, low price of free!

Emerald, ruby, sapphire!

Jade and jasper, myrrh!

Diamond, mithril, osseum!

Silver perfect, pure!

Chip the golden filigree!

Pilfer princely prizes!

Be a buzzard growing fat,

From ghoulish enterprises!

When I, myself, am dead and gone,

Crack the coffin! Crack the lid!

I’ll make it worth your time, my friend,

You’ll be so glad you did!

- Regalia, Song of the Tomb Robbers