Saturday, October 13, 2012

Piles and Piles of Loot

Pile of coin have been in the gaming buzz on the ol'-blog-o-sphere lately and there are a few good point on loot here at the 9and 30 kingdoms on coins. I feel part of the problem with things like having a pile of 2000 c.p. in a room guarded by a pair of goblins or some giant rats comes from a lack of common descriptive terms and picky precision drawn from counting encumbrance by the coin.

Some common and loose terms sounds like the way to go: a couple coins, a handful of coins (also a less easy to gather scattering), a purse, a pouch, a small sack, a large sack (also a pile of coin). How many coins that actually is can vary from game to game and table to table. Loosen up folks enjoy some descriptive variety.

How long does it take to count those coins? A handful in but a moment, a round or two to count out a coin purse, three or more rounds to count out a pouch, a full turn to count a small sack, three whole turns to count out a large sack or a pile sounds about right. If folks don't want to risk their skins counting out the coins they heft the sacks and worry about the accounting later.



4 comments:

  1. You can speed up the counting, though, if more than one person is counting.

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  2. I suppose a party could also hire a scribe or accountant.

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  3. Sounds as if there may be a need to invent a spell. I could see a low level M-U NPC in a village close to a dungeon with a spell that counts coins, kind of a hedge wizard thing.

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