
The Mother of All Treasure Tables PDF just landed on DriveThruRPG.com.
What is it?
I wrote a substantial chunk of it, so I’m biased, but in a nutshell it’s the largest, niftiest collection of non-magical fantasy treasure ever assembled.
The Book
The Mother of All Treasure Tables weighs in at 162 pages and contains nearly 700 treasures. Each treasure entry includes a variety of non-magical items, and is written to match a specific gold piece value (ranging from piddling to very, very large).
Update: I didn’t catch this right away, but there’s a free 6-page PDF preview available. It’s got the obnoxious DTRPG watermark on every page, but it’s still a darned good sample.
The idea is that when you want to give the PCs, say, 1,000 gp in treasure, you can pick (or roll) from the 1,000 gp section of Mother of All Treasure Tables.
Instead of giving the party a sack with 1,000 gold in it, you might give them this:
In the box [cabinet] you find eight yellow clay cups without handles [5 sp ea.], a pair of small open-toed doeskin sandals with gold buckles [5 gp], a silver box small enough to fit into your palm, containing tiny white crystals [salt, box and salt 3 gp] and a hen and six baby chicks of clay, carefully painted in lifelike colors [2 gp]. A soft oiled leather box holds picks, files, tiny pliers and tweezers [thieves’ tools, 30 gp]. A narrow polished wooden box beside it slides open
to reveal jewelry. In it is a pendant, two rings, a bracelet and a necklace. The pendant is a clear crystal like a large drop of water [rock crystal 100 gp] on a complex thin gold chain [50 gp]. One ring is a signet ring with a crest [a flaming sword or …pewter, 20 gp], the other is a thin platinum ring with a sparkling green gem [ring 300 gp, green spinel 100 gp]. The bracelet is a series of pieces simple hammered gold, each long as cuff and half as wide, linked together with hinges [120 gp]. The necklace is thick, polished copper supporting 12 carefully matched and cut pieces of hematite [hematite 10 gp/necklace with stones 180 gp]. A fat clay pig [3 sp] with a slit in the top rattles with coins. [Pig holds 66 gp, 175 sp 142 cp but they cannot be easily removed without breaking it].”
(That sample came from the Necromancer forums last year, and might not actually be in the book — but it gives you a good idea of what will be in the book.)
The treasures are things the party might want to keep simply because they’re interesting. And, especially in the case of the larger hoards, they often contain items that could be used as jumping-off points for future adventures.
The Backstory
Necromancer Games commissioned Tabletop Adventures to write Mother of All Treasure Tables, and as one of TTA’s regular freelancers I was tapped to write part of it. Back in July and August of 2005, I wrote 11,000 words worth of different treasure hoards for this book, and it was an absolute blast.
The print version won’t be out until August or September of 2006, but Necromancer decided to make the PDF available right away. If it sounds good and you like PDFs, you can snag The Mother of All Treasure Tables for under $20.
Myself, I’ll be waiting for the print version. I can’t wait to hold a copy of this puppy in my hands.
One last tidbit: This book is one of the reasons why I called this site Treasure Tables.
TT went live on July 11, 2005, right after I’d started writing my portion of Mother of All Treasure Tables. My head was full of thoughts about, well, treasure tables — which are one of my favorite parts of any fantasy RPG.
When you roll on a treasure table, you never know exactly what you’re going to get (except that it’ll be treasure) — but you know it’ll be good. That’s what I aim for here on TT, as well.
Wah! I’ve been waiting for this to come out! A definite on my list of the next few GMing tools to buy.
I remember that you had a post on it in the last few months here on TT (or was it the forums?). I thought it sounded cool. So, having forgotten all about it in the meantime, I saw this link on EN World for “The Mother of all Treasure Tables.” I thought to myself that this sounded familiar, but I thought it wasn’t due out until, like, 2007. I checked the writer credits, and sure enough, there was Martin’s name. Memory returned.
I’m glad I was wrong about the date. I scarfed up the PDF immediately.
I can’t wait to take a look! I may have to buy the hardcopy too. Time will tell…
I hope you’ll both drop back by and let me know how it turned out, and what you think of it. 🙂
I haven’t seen a copy yet, so apart from my 50ish out of 700ish hoards, I don’t know what’s in there. 😉
I just downloaded it from DTRPG and it’s excellent. I’m going to be using it tonight in my weekly game 🙂
Well done, Martin!
Lehi: Thanks, but it wasn’t just me by a long shot! It was like 1/14th me, and 13/14ths lots of other very cool freelancers. 🙂
If you get a chance to stop back by and let us know how it worked out in-game, I’d be much obliged.
We actually had 10 major writers on this, plus another half a dozen people who wrote smaller amounts. With all that creativity in it, you know it has to be great. However I will say that of all the hundreds of pieces I read for that book, it was one of Martin’s that made me want to drop what I was doing and go play D&D!
So far, I can personally speak for whoever wrote #35 in the 5K gp section… Quite good, and everyone loves the flavor text.
I think that this will become a staple for me.
A thank you to all of the writers of the book.
Cassandra: You’re such a tease — I have no idea which one that would be! I’m going to lose sleep over this if you don’t spill the beans… 😉
Martin: I haven’t been called that in a long time! 😉 I posted the press release about this over in the RPG Open forum, and a little about that piece that was so cool. I don’t want to give everything away, after all!
I’m not sure I quite understand how this book works. (and the PDF doesn’t help as it shows no actual examples) Is it a list of pre-generated hordes complete with descriptions or is it endless lists of tables so that I roll first on the container table, then on the item type table, then on the item material table, etc… etc… etc…
On the one hand it seems as though it would be a lot of work, on the other it seems like it would only be useful for a certain amount of uses before your players start saying “Gee. This horde looks really familiar. Where was it… Oh yeah! We found a horde exactly like this three weeks ago in the lair of that basilisk. what’s up with that?”
Martin?
Cassandra: Hey, I remember writing that! 😉
Rick: It’s pretty much what you described in your first example.
For each of the values shown in the table of contents (50 gp, 1,000 gp, etc.), there’s a table of pre-generated hoards that match that value.
So a 1,000 gp hoard might include a masterwork sword, some gems, a sack of coins and a small ivory chest with jewelery in it. They’d all be described in full, and there’d be a value for each item (including containers).
Very low effort for the GM, in other words. 😉
I think I understand now. I’ve read the links you posted. My question then becomes: isn’t this of limited value? Yes, there are 700 treasure hordes in the book, but they’re spaced out over various gold values some (depending on campaign) more prevalent than others, meaning that they’d get exhausted pretty quickly.
It’s pretty clear given the description of how to roll in the freebee section that the first 6 categories are d100 and the last 4 are d20 or d10. Ish. I’m assuming based on the freebee pages and martin’s “700ish treasures” above.
If I put a tick mark next to each treasure as I use it, in another year am I going to have used up all the 100gp treasures for example?
My fear, and it may be anal retentive, is that some day I’m going to open the book mid game, toss out a treasure and have my players say “We got the same statue from that lich we fought when we were 10th level. Remember that? Who IS this guy that we keep finding statues of him?”
However, my interest is definately peaked. I’m definately going to at least browse a copy at my local hobby shop and show it to my wife. It’s hard to make a decision on the value of this w/o seeing more than the previews available and it’s hard for a publisher to sell a PDF they’ve previewed half of.
Rick – You raise some valid questions here. Obviously no finite list of treasure is going to supply every treasure you’ll need for the rest of your gaming career. In putting together this book, we had to keep telling ourselves that the GMs who would be using it were intelligent, creative people themselves and would be able to deal with little issues that come up.
Used that sword once already? Change the garnet on the handle to an amethyst, and the guard from twisted metal to plain, or braided. Put the coins in a green leather pouch with a faded crest instead of a sack. Yes, that’s more work than just using a treasure straight from the book, but probably less than making one up from scratch, especially since you already know what the total will be unless you make major changes. (Replacing the garnet with a diamond, for instance.)
In the case you suggest of the duplicate statues, that sounds to me like a plot hook in the making. As long as the GM doesn’t groan and smack himself in the forehead in front of the players, everything’s cool. By the time the characters actually try to find the information, the GM will have time to come up with an explanation. Maybe that was a powerful king, or a wealthy philanthropist. Maybe it was a candidate for a new deity, and his followers went around putting up statues of him everywhere for a couple years. Maybe they were a matched set that adorned some fancy garden, and now the adventurers have them both, lucky folks!
Don’t let the fact that the book is inevitably finite keep you from making use of its resources.