A few days ago I talked about Unusual Rewards in the Sandbox, and figured I’d respond to some of the comments I’d received.
I agree that it is a good idea to assign nominal monetary value to the various rewards. Experience points in many old school games are primarily driven by acquiring treasure. If I take that away that relationship than level advancement will slow to a crawl. On that basis alone it is worth assigning monetary value to the ‘unusual rewards’, and thus have them provide experience points.
It also gives me a gauge I can use to judge the value of otherwise intangible benefits. How much is the good will of a duke worth? What is the value of a month’s service of a mercenary company? If the emperor’s vizier owes you a favor, why should it not have measurable value?
There was also a suggestion that I assign gold value to information. This may be more appropriate to the Seekers of Lore campaign I think since that campaign rather specifically considers acquiring knowledge as the goal. I think it might be too difficult for me to let go of wanting to have the PCs ‘sell’ the knowledge to get the monetary reward.
Perhaps I will roll with this. I think perhaps having most ‘treasure’ being intangible can be helpful to the campaign as a whole. Go ahead and loot places, but it’s only money, not experience points. It’s useful for buying things, but not the things that matter if you are anchored in the world.
I think this could work out well. Assigning specific monetary value to what would otherwise be intangible rewards makes it easier for see how valuable they are. It does reduce the utility as treasure, since it might be constrained in its use as money, but since I find there’s little use now that’s hardly a loss.
Thanks for the suggestions, this should work out pretty well.