No Cents

If you read my game reports on Tales of the Templars, you will note that I make no mention of treasure. That’s because I really hate worrying about money in my games. I want to play epic heroic fantasy, not Monopoly. When did you ever read about Aragorn, Galahad, or other epic heroes rifling through the pockets of their defeated enemies looking for spare change? Money is not what heroism is about.

Furthermore, once a game begins to track treasure, then it has to introduce things to purchase. Usually this involves better equipment to allow the characters become more powerful. This creates a vicious cycle; in order to get more powerful the characters need to adventure to get more money. The game shifts from being heroes to naked acquisition.

I understand that there are gritty “heroes” like Conan who are concerned with money, but these characters are not my gaming role models. Unfortunately, most games are very much plugged into this go out and get more mentality, but this is not my style.

Solo gaming has allowed me to break away from acquisition. Instead, my characters are part of an international organization (the Temple) that will provide for their basic needs in exchange for service. I don’t have to track revenue and expenses, I can just adventure. However, I now have a dilemma as I am designing my dungeon crawl game. While I may not like acquiring things in games, my wife is an ardent collector of stuff (at least when it comes to games). I think I'll need to cater to her preference in some manner.