Have you ever played in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons or similar material that didn't follow any wealth by level...

Have you ever played in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons or similar material that didn't follow any wealth by level guidelines?
I'm interested in seeing how people play in a campaign where they get powerful, but circumstances can keep them from becoming particularly wealthy, or even just straight up keeping them poor sometimes. Anyone have experience in low-wealth campaigns?

>Have you ever played in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons or similar material that didn't follow any wealth by level guidelines?
Yeah, it's called "the editions before 3rd Edition".

If you get lucky and play it smart, you can get VERY wealthy at low levels.

Well, I meant for it to go in the opposite direction.

Yes. Multiple. They all sucked. D&D relies heavily on player wealth, although the degree of which varies by edition.

Also, being poor isn't very fun.

I think It's about the setting, not the system, user

One that started as us being prisoners and naked in a brutal dictatorship prison.

Like one said, not very fun when you don't have much resources to fall back on and everything is stretched until breaking point. Campaign ends in TPK despite best effort.

Thanks for the input. I thought it would be fun to see how players get out of situations when they can't rely on near limitless wealth and/or magic items all the time at high levels, and I also enjoyed the aesthetic of kind of poor travelling band taking on odd jobs to make money, but if people wouldn't have fun with it there's no point.
I think it would also have to do with the GM though as well, whether or not the players felt deprived.

well, it always depends on the people playing, once me and some friends played a game like that, we where a group of deserters from a defeated army that had to survive in enemy lands. At first we where dirt poor and had to sell most of our armor, then we became bandits, and slowly started to get some wealth, in the end we formed like a mafia based around the slave trade and prostitution and we where awfully rich, it all came down when we decided to help in a conspiracy against the local king, the conspiracy failed, all the involved noblemen where executed and the king's army started hunting us down everywhere, in the end it all came back to where we started, as a dirty band of deserters in a foreign land

>I think It's about the setting, not the system, user
Memes aside, if you're playing AD&D with RAW and you manage to kill a fairly powerful monster, the DM can roll on the treasure table listed for that monster, and you might end up finding piles of precious gems or something. "Treasure type" is something that's baked into the AD&D rules. Obviously the DM can ignore it, but if you're going by the book, it's very possible.

This was my default when I first DM'd 3e years ago. It was fun. There was less coinage and more interesting treasure (ie, a castle that could be secured and made into a home base). They weren't short on money, but they didn't have enough to buy every magic item they wanted.

Then the players found the wealth by level table and complained. Once I started dropping more gold and letting them buy magic items, the game quickly turned into a goofy anime (ie, they bought a folding boat and dropped it on a group of enemies).

I think you can't keep up the "band of penniless vagabonds" phase of the game for too long, unless you're in a setting where treasure just isn't a real element (ie, a prehistoric game where your standing in the tribe matters more than material possessions).

After 3rd ed, you get commonplace magic items that effectively end the logistics and resource management part of the game (infinite light, infinite food, infinite portable shelter, bags of holding, etc). Once they get that stuff, it's really a different game entirely, and you should be moving on to more domain play and kingdom building, with occasional dungeon forays.

You could try rewarding wasteful carousing by allowing players to convert gold to XP at some ratio. The players will be falling all over themselves to piss away every last silver piece.

no because my dm unwittingly gave me like, some triple digit amount of gemstones that he didn't realize were as valuable as they were so now my ape with no concept of money has like half a million gold in gemstones

>I think you can't keep up the "band of penniless vagabonds" phase of the game for too long
this, always allow the players to grow like:

Yeah, played 4e with inherent bonuses.

Also, 5e where we were wealthy, but there wasn't anything to spend the money on.

>There was less coinage and more interesting treasure (ie, a castle that could be secured and made into a home base).
>Then the players found the wealth by level table and complained.
Surely a fucking castle is worth something?

The problem is that D&D specifically is designed around player wealth, and no money makes the disparity between martials and casters even more pronounced. Also just pure HP bloat and enemy abilities in D&D require players to have magic items. Unless you run a game where you have 12th level character stabbing peasants and the like then they'll need the gear.

That being said other systems can replicate this powerful but poor adventure group fairly well. Savage Worlds comes to mind, along with GURPS for generic systems.

I had a campaign where we got exiled to a subterranean prison colony. By eleventh level, the best weapon we had between the five of us, belonging to a ranger, was an bog standard battleaxe that would cost 10gp.


Granted, the monsters that were thrown at us were weaker than what I was used to seeing by level, but there was a lot more running and hiding and relying on NPCs than I was used to in DnD.

Only if you can find someone to buy it.

I wonder why goblins and orcs don't simply put their caves up on the medieval real estate market and buy some nice cottages in town with the profits?

One campaign I was involved in about five years ago was like this.

We started at 1st Level in a large trading city, and were working odd jobs and investigating things on our own. Unfortunately, we didn't have much money, so we wound up squatting in an old abandoned church.

The lack of wealth in those first few levels kept things interesting and made things seem more dangerous, since we lacked the typical protections of adventurers for our level, combat was slightly more dangerous, despite us being able to dish out lots of damage.

It was actually really fun, as frustrating as it was.

Only in 3.pf

Every other edition assumes that magic items are not available on the open market (except perhaps by fiat, ie "you are approached by a dwarf who wants to sell you a mummified monkey's paw").

So you could be cash poor and still have a magic sword, magic armor, and a cloak of invisibility, because that shit isn't for sale at the corner shop for any price.

Your GM is shit. How the fuck can you expect to get any experience this way if you have to fight weakass monsters because you have no gear?

Maybe he adjusted the XP rewards? Or for some crazy reason, awarded XP for something besides grinding mobs?

Have you tried not playing 3.pf?

Dark Sun back in 2e was explicitly a world where you can't get anything better than bone swords and if you find a +1 sword it's probably cursed to end the world some way or another. System works fine like that.

5e can work gear-light as well, although some of the bosses will be a bit tough. Considering that +3 is the highest bonus a sword can give and you're swinging d20's, though, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Yes, I played a 3.5e game where I and the other PCs were low class in a setting with zero upward mobility. Also it was low-magic, meaning even the lowly Sword+1 was a rare and wonderous thing and all the core casters were banned for character creation.

Most of our adventures were sorting out problems of others either caused by or ignored by the nobility.

Mechanically it was harder because we didn't have casters and endless trove of potions, wands, etc. I found that at times it was annoying and other times it really forced me to think outside the box which led to some interesting moments (like figuring out how to kill a wight if no one had magic weapons).

My main DM barely awards wealth or magic items in the 5 years we've played with him. At lvl 11 the most gold we've ever been awarded per person was around 200gp. Potions are a prized commodity we hesitate to use up when we do find them.

I actually don't mind it that much. It's better than the flipside of getting a fuckton of astral diamonds and so many magic items that the game utterly breaks down at how OP we all are

Yeah, all my D&D games. Wealth and money comes just by nature of the beast. Wealth guide lines are wholly unneeded.

4e, asumming inherent bonuses, functions fine without any awarded wealth. Magic items are underpowered specifically so they don't change the game balance much at all.
5e is balanced without wealth/magic items factored in. As long as you have the basic gear you'll never need anything else to deal with the majority of challenges

I've played in a game where our wealth was low and our primary concerns were regional politics. Battle was terrifying, the system assumes a certain level character has a certain amount of wealth in gear.

I remember killing a troll as a level 3 fighter (got fucking lucky, the damn bastard took out the thief and cleric like fucking butter) and got some pretty shit from the troll. Well, it was a +1 ring of protection, but that's fucking amazing for a level 3 fighter. I loved that dude, died horribly to an ancient red dragon when he was level 12 though.

Playing at level 15 while only possessing 15K worth of equipment is one of the most horrible combat experiences I have ever had in a tabletop game. The problem was not money, we had about 1.1 million in the bank, the DM just wouldn't let us buy anything with it. It resulted in the same formula every single battle:
>We fight.
>Half of us die.
>Some NPC saves us.
>We use our cash to get a diamond and rez people.
>Sometimes we find an NPC cleric when it was our cleric who died.

I had a huge argument with the DM so he let us get more stuff. 50k worth of stuff each.
Not enough, we still lose someone to a CR7 monster in two turns. Granted, it got a crit, but we're not playing Dark Sun here, death should not be this cheap. A lot of D&D is pretty wealth based unless your DM knows how to tweak the balance.

I play in a 3.5 campaign where we are basically famous hobos. Our GM doesn't know anything about WBL despite saying he's been "GMing for years". Even though we have a base, followers and fame in the lands around us, we're always completely broke.

We've explored terribly long dungeons, fought giant creatures and met legendary beings, but we only get POORER as things go. Some time ago we had all our gear melt because evil ooze or something, and STILL haven't recovered the most basic pieces from that. One of our guys has nothing on him other than his cotton vest and have been like that for some sessions. The most impressive thing a player has is a +1 weapon.

It's basically hell and the game finally broke down into a hiatus. At least the players are fun.

We're lv 11 btw. It was that bad.

Do people usually play like there's Ye Magic Item Shope all over the fuck?

Well, apparently, it's baked into D&D. TTRPG, WoW edition.
Why couldn't you just get money using your base and followers?

Did you kill it with fire?

My players spend a lot of time in the major population centers, so they can reliably find typical stuff like +1 weapons, and based on rolls, perhaps more rare items. They have to go to specific, famous locations and pay exorbitant fees to get very rare magic items, however.

Or they can find them adventuring!

Because "Money itself can't buy much when the things you want aren't for sale". Basically there was no economy for anything of value. IN THE DALELANDS.

Our followers also wouldn't work for us to get us money. They follow us because we're famous, but won't make money because the DM doesn't like to do math.

Also, special materials like Mithril, Blue Ice and Deepcrystal aren't available because they're "rare materials". Adamantine is "ultra rare and nearly unobtainable". Magic is "mysterious" and magic items are few and far between. Over half the party consisted of casters and partial casters.

>Also, being poor isn't very fun.

Nah, I don't think it was those games that sucked, I think it's just your materialistic attitude toward the game.

Being poor is fun, because then it makes money/valuables actually valuable.

"Oh, what's this? Another gem stone? Bah, I already have a hundred of this kind *tosses it away*"

About as boring and shallow of a fucking RPG as I could ever imagine. I hope to god I never RP with you.

>Have you ever played in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons or similar material that didn't follow any wealth by level guidelines?
Yeah, I played 5e.

>"Oh, what's this? Another gem stone? Bah, I already have a hundred of this kind *tosses it away*"
Oh, what's this? Another dollar bill? Bah, my bank account says I have like fifty of those already *tosses it away*

To a degree, but I stand by that if they stop by a magic shop they're not leaving unless all they have left is enough for maybe a few days of food/board.

So instead they just rely on their near limitless spells and magic spells all the time at high levels.

Found the rollplayer.

If your character concept is so dull that you can't find any pleasure in playing it without magical items X, Y and Z, maybe try playing a more interesting character, in a more interesting setting, with better rules than DnD.

>very poor strawman attempt? bah, lets make it even dumber! *throws in real life equivalent that isn't an equivalent*

Firstly, only having 50 dollars would make you poor. Thus, you're creating the illusion of defeating his argument by trying to make it ridiculous, even though you failed at defeating his argument because that wasn't his argument.

Here, allow me:
>Oh, what's this? Another dollar bill? Bah, my bank account says I have like fifty million of those already *tosses it away*"

And now, YOUR argument looks completely fucking ridiculous.

Good day, xir.

My very first game ever was OotA in 5e, and my wizard was pretty poor until the very end of the game. Because I was unaware wizards got two free spells in their spellbook every level, I spent all of my money buying new spells. Granted, it felt like I was really earning my spells.

Now that I mostly DM, my two main games have gone in extremely different directions; one party is 4 level level 13s with 55,000g and a lot of magic items, and the other is 6 level 12s with ~4,000g total and few magic items.

Party one got the money through some serious luck, but they constantly argue over how to use it (one player gets mad at the other for a unilateral deciding by the party treasurer to give 500g to a father who had lost his home). They've had the money for over half the game and have yet to do anything big with it yet (partially because I don't have any big magic items shops for them to dump money into).

Party two is more interesting, since they tried to get the money, and succeeded, but willingly gave it up to the evil past version of a still evil but cute/friendly lich the party is friends with, even though they could have defeated it easily. They complain about not having enough money, though the group almost always decides to go on the missions that result in little to no monetary gain.

Played a gladiator campaign in Dark Sun where that happened. But in AD&D, wealth becomes meaningless pretty fast anyhow. Unless your players want to build strongholds, there stops being anything to spend it on.
>I buy a galleon
>Why?
>The fuck else was I gonna do with 50k?

I have. It's a shit show in d&d.

It works fine in d20 Conan.

>Magic is "mysterious" and magic items are few and far between. Over half the party consisted of casters and partial casters.

This sounds like a self-solving problem. Why haven't you cornered the magic item market?

>Unless your players want to build strongholds

Your players want to build strongholds. They're fantastic wealth sinks if your party ends up like the poor scab above that can't spend a million.

>cute/friendly lich
>cute

I'm not sure I've ever played one that did, to be honest. Certainly never ran one (but I never got deep into 3.X/PF or 4e in any case, so that's not a terrible surprise).
There are a few systems I'd really love to play that have something *like* wealth by level, but more interesting and personal. Namely, Legend and Fantasy Craft.

>Anyone have experience in low-wealth campaigns?
I definitely wouldn't describe it as 'low wealth' but no matter what I'm running I try and run things so the characters are always a liiiitle bit hungry. Never to the point where things don't function that need to, but so they have more specific smaller goals alongside the party's agenda and plot.
What each character wants, how they try to get it, and who they work with along the way to try and get that thing done: for me those are important building blocks for an interesting adventure that engages the players and encourages actual character arcs, almost as important as the overarching plot. Their resources feel more personal, and more things have a story behind them.

Now a friend of mine? He LOVES having the players be as impoverished as possible. Like, far past the point of dysfunction. He's gotten better over time, but that sort of struggle can still be quite exaggerated when he's behind the screen.

I've never played a game with a wealth guide before (unless you count the money you physically need to level up in osr material of which i have never played a full campaign in), and regularly enjoy doing just the opposite as you describe.

Players, particularly powerful ones are going to be able to acquire money if they want it, unless you as the gm actively keep them poor. Which can be done tastefully if the plot is right mind you, but can be tricky especially if you have creative players.

Limitations on magic especially in a d&d game is your go to for feeling like the underdogs. All you have to do is just not have any magicmarts lying about. It can be rather interesting to see what players will try and do with literal carts full of coinage where there aren't magic baubles to burn it on.

Another alternative is to have multiple currencies that cannot be properly converted into one another. Say silver coins and crystallized flakes of ancient dragon blood. It should go without saying that you're not buying anything magic with silver. However most people who deal in silver (basically all non-pcs or mages or some such) have no use for the dragon dust and neither the will or means to try and barter with it. Suppose you could technically convert the 2, but having heaps of silver isn't useful to the kind of folks that want dragon dust, so you'd still need to convert, potentially in batches if you limit the supply of the dust enough. Rates should be swingy as fuck due to the horrific supply and demand circumstances we're fabricating, but should still cost a ton of silver at their most favorable.

You're not going to be cash for if you find an extremely wealthy and non-cunty buyer for any of those things though. Which may or may not be a challenge in and of itself. That and the ever looming thought that you could have gotten more.

I've been on both sides of the coin, unhappily.

Let me tell you how it went down:

>Poor campaign.
We were promised piracy and high seas adventure. We got a rigidly scheduled work day and corporal punishment as of we were members of the British navy during the age of sail, except our boat was a secret paddle boat, which meant the rigging and masts and sails we were working on effectively did nothing.

Over the course of 9 sessions, we:
>We're all chained together and thrown overboard by the captain. This was a team building exercise, and there was no calls for a swim check.
>Were presented with a mystery which was complicated by the fact that none of the other crew members apparently had names. Or descriptions. Or any personality aside from "asshole". So, the GMPC gunslinger solved our problem by putting a guy on a lifeboat and blowing it up.
>Attacked by drow pirates. Their equipment all melted in sunlight, so there was no treasure. Also, by the battle map, our ship which has a crew of 30 is apparently 40' long, with one level.
>After capturing the drow pirate ship, we were tasked with taking it with a skeleton crew to another port on the far side of a continent. The GM insisted we go by rail. Because *trains* existed during the age of piracy. And paddle wheel ships. Disguised as sailboats.
Also, boats fit on trains.
Anyway, after being derailed by a giant triceratops, and infiltrated by a drow spy who smelled exactly like another player character... I lead a player revolt.
We had been *literally* railroaded and had 0 reward, or pay for any of the crap.
The GM seemed surprised, and then hurriedly gave us all 500 gold.
Fine, except we hadn't seen civilization in weeks, so, a pouch of coin had effectively 0 value. Last session of that game.

>Rich campaign.

At level 1, the GM handed us a chest filled with 1 million gold. I was playing a Barbarian, so, money didn't really matter to me. I boxed it. *Other* players, however, immediately bought +10 weapons and armor and literally everything else they could afford.

So, what followed? Brewster's Millions the RPG. Literally every NPC, every encounter, every step of the game involved someone asking for or demanding money from us. Getting on a boat involved buying tickets (at grossly inflated prices), bribing a customs agent (for more money than he should amke in a year.), Tipping the porters (for standing around while I carried my own sack.) Buying food... I have e never played in such a nickle-and-dime campaign, in my entire life... But the worst part was: we stayed at level 1. So, the monk, for example, had brass knuckles that could hit for 10d6 damage, but only had 1d8 HP.

>If you don't want to get slaughtered by a level appropriate encounter, you're a minmaxer
>You're a terrible person if you want your character to be competent at what they do
>You're not allowed to have anything nice, you have to scrounge around in the mud for enough copper for rations so you don't starve to death. Again.

Yeah, okay.

I play 3.5 edition D&D and regularly give my characters magic items way above their level. Usually just one item each character, and I do it gradually for sure and most of the time they don't realize how powerful the item actually is in comparison to their level, so instead of trying to sell it, they will attempt to utilize it (poorly). Even if they did sell it I would give them way less money than what the item is actually worth so either way, wealth vs power is fun to play around with

Playing a monk right now with a vow of poverty. When his unarmed damage got to d6s he gave his staff away, and now he only owns the clothes he's wearing.

>half a gorillion