Treasure Maps In OSR

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The Greater Risks Comes Greater Rewards

One of the things I've heard over on YouTube was Daniel Norton of Bandits Keep is introducing a way to reward players and by guiding them to the next adventure. After watching the video it made sense and it would make exploring the referee's campaign in search of the magic item that one player seeks. Lately, I've built this rut during solo play new ways of motivating myself to create an exciting adventure without wasting time. So I have a few tools to do so and at some point in time they never lived up to their use long-term. 

So rather than spending money on things I didn't need. I needed that inspiration to come up with an adventure to later build a campaign from that initial dungeon. The solution is treasure maps.

Exploring Is How We Find it

the main reason exploration in D&D and RPGs that handle rules for traveling in the wilderness is the treasure that is left behind in the world the referee makes. Obviously if you play narrative then that's a whole different style of play that changes somewhat. D&D was built around finding the pile of gold coins or the +2 Sword vs Magic-Users as a means for character progression. If the game never had these aspects and was just role-playing our characters. The game itself and play-style would change drastically. Which is completely fine for some that like this, but not using it is rather the strange part about it. 

While it could be said Treasure Maps could be used in both a sandbox campaign or mega-dungeon. the latter is done only by a handful of people and everyone else wants to build the world they envision. Multiple sessions and using treasure maps in different ways could help add motivation or I should say player agency as Daniel mentions. Giving the treasure maps to your players as a quest giver is probably not the best thing, however. 

How To Build An Adventure

This might be more suited for solo gaming since player agency is not present in the campaigns and/or adventures. Though it might be helpful if it ever comes up that you run a group game for the first time or returning to it. 

  1. Decide The Monster Lair: When it comes to the dungeon envision what kind of location are you wanting to explore and pick the appropriate monsters that fit the theme of the dungeon.
  2. Determine The Scenario: While this makes more sense as the first step. If you try to build a plot for your adventure that affects the game later on it becomes counter-productive to give the lore of your location and it's inhabitants motivations. Of course, a true role-playing game will do just fine since it doesn't focus on the mechanics of a game and instead narrative.
  3. Drawing The Map (Optional): This is the very tedious step to building an adventure if you aren't much of a drawer. Especially that nowadays most people will use Dysonlogos and DonJon's Dungeon Generation. You should use these mentioned to make your life easier and know you aren't forced to
  4. Creating The Treasure: Let's say for example we built a Orc lair and referring to Pits & Perils. They have treasure type B/II. If you had a head count of 11 plus the orc clan leader you would roll 11D6x10 gold pieces and figure out magic items depending on your system. Lastly you'd want to place your treasure map alongside the treasure horde to sort of hint to the players the next adventure without knowing what's next. 

Overall, I think adding treasure maps to your campaign really give you more control of your campaign. This helps give players the choice where to go next. While this is more of a preference that groups have it is fun to change it up a bit as this was present in OD&D to AD&D's history. Stay Tuned for more!  


       


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