Lootsmeister
It’s been a while since this mess happened to me.
“Hey,” said I my to my partymates. “I just realized you can pin a post to the top of Facebook groups. Let’s throw the party loot into Google Sheets and leave it up there so we can all access it.”
“Let’s not,” said our self-appointed lootsmeister.
“But it would save us a lot of trouble if you aren’t at the session. Remember last time when you had to miss and we tried to go shopping?”
“Yeah. But look, my character was a quartermaster in Elf Army in her backstory. Keeping track of the loot is part of her RP.”
“That can still be part of the story. I just think this would be more convenient for the group.”
“But I like being lootsmeister!”
And we went ’round and ’round like this for a while before the confession. Turns out our lootsmeister was skimming a straight 10% off the top of the party stash. When asked why she thought that was a cool thing to do, it was the usual business about “what my character would do.” I guess she got dishonorably discharged from Elf Army for a reason, not that the rest of us (or the GM) were privy to that information.
The secret came out in-character as well, and I was obliged to come up with some justification for my charlatan PC to not to flip out over the whole affair. As memory serves, it was some malarkey about enjoying the conman game more than the prize. And yet, even if there is a lot to object to in the “interesting roleplay” of a thieving lootsmeister, I do have a kernel of sympathy. If you’re putting in the effort to count the beans and balance the books, it makes sense to receive some sort of benefit in return. Same deal if you’re the group’s map-maker, the dude who writes in-character session summaries, or if you put in the effort to paint everyone’s mini.
And so, rather than simply condemning loot thievery (which I think we can all agree on), I pose this daily discussion question. When somebody takes on a “for the good of the order” role, what’s a suitable reward? Bonus XP? First choice of pizza toppings? Maybe a +1 on roll-offs for loot? Tell us all about your own efforts to reward good and faithful service down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I hope they don’t need to go into marriage counselling already…
Maybe more of an exorcism/intervention, really, given the influence of her ‘ancestry’ and Goldie.
It can be difficult to find a good reward, and some of it depends a bit on the assumptions in use for a particular group/game.
Some of it’s boarder cultural, for instance in my corner of the world pizza comes in “dinner for one person”, so everyone orders their own with whatever topping they’d prefer making the whole playfight/argument about pizza toppings seem strange.
I think that XP rewards work better for point-buy games than level based ones (since then small amounts of XP can actually be spent on something instead of maybe meaning that the receiver will be one level higher once in a blue moon), and in systems/campaigns/groups where inter party balance is less important and where it’d be more OK for someone to just straight up have more XP than someone else.
Say if you are in a game where the assumption is that people get XP for being there instead of the group getting them, it works better than in the sort of games where it’d be a problem if Alice being sick one week with the big plot reward meant that she are no longer powerful enough to help you fight the next campaign boss.
Bennies/fate points/hero points/inspiration or other meta mechanics like that can also be a suitable reward.
Hackmaster had a really cool coupon system.
Every book had a sheet of coupons in the back tied to the theme of the book; obviously players would get their hands on the players handbook ones, but the DM would have all the ones from the other books. You were allowed to play one coupon per game session, and coupons varied from combat useful (a reroll, heal some hit points, bonus on a specific skill test), some that provided free perks (free riding horse, bag of gems, random magic item), or some with metagame benefits (bonus xp for that session, bonus share of the party loot, and my personal favourite “DM must buy the player a canned soft drink” – my DM always hated that one popping up). Sure, you could buy twelve copies of the PHB and be set for life, but you only got to use one a session, so there was no real reason to game the system. The main purpose was for an OOC reward; the DM was encouraged to hand them out for cool roleplay, campaign milestones, and OOC tasks performed by the players. For example, I would usually get one every couple of sessions as I was designated party map-maker (note for DM’s everywhere – if you let the Architect make accurate scaled maps, expect him to pipe up with things like “if we go through that door on the right, it shouls connect to the bottom of that other stair we saw earlier in the session”) and loot accountant, and others would get them for giving other players lifts to the session, ordering the pizza, and running down the cornershop to fetch some more drinks.
And on the side theme of the comic; as mentioned I was loot accountant, and I will confess my character slightly abused the agreement that he could take anything from the stash that was a spell component – the first time I used Wall Of Force, the party were a little miffed where I had got the powdered diamond from ;P
We mostly adapted to the system you suggested above. I generally track the loot, but I keep it in a group document, so everyone can see and edit if called for. Works out very well. I get the fun of tallying and organizing, and others can see it all, and occasionally step in to fill the role if they want. I just happen to like all the organizing and math, so they’re usually happy to leave me to it.
As for rewards for group roles, I like the idea of a reroll per session, which could be a fun experiment. But then we’d have to give the same courtesy to the GM…
And, that is why the party should always make the Paladin the one in charge of Group Loot. (assuming they are LG like a proper Paladin, that is)
Yes, the party then need not worry about the lootmeister skimming, as they would (should) suffer divine punishment if they do – even if no one else in the party finds out.
Party: “Where did all of our money go?”
Pally: “I’ve been donating 50% to orphanages, good churches, and kittens stuck in trees. You know, like I told you I was going to if you made me keep track of it?”
Party: “We thought you were joking!”
Wait the party expected paladin to have a sense of humor?
No, Ma’am. We at the Knights of Holy Judgement do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of.
“Just the facts, ma’am”
It hasn’t come up too often in my games yet—we’ve done party loot sheets, but it’s all in the open. If somebody wanted an extra reward, I’d probably say that they get first dibs on uneven splits.
Sure, it may usually only be the difference of a few gold pieces per dungeon most of the time, but having the authority to say “and I’ll take the extra healing potions” or having the tiebreaker vote in distribution can be a big deal sometimes.
You just have to make sure it doesn’t go to their head; nobody likes being told “I’ve got the tiebreaking vote, so the +3 sword goes to the guy with the +3 armor and the +3 shield, and you get the dagger of orange peeling.”
Eh, 10% is small enough that I’d probably find that amusing rather than being angry… it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had fellow party members who needed to be regularly turned upside down and shaken.
That said, it’s going to be made very clear that a character who gets caught stealing from the party doesn’t want to get caught twice.
Our rogue is our loot master… yeah, that’s right, the pirate and assassin is the one counting the coins. The things is, we actually keep track in a “public space” and he STILL takes a small extra when we divide the spoils!!!
Oh, but before anyone brings out the rope and talks of lynchings are to occur, it should be noted, we all know this and think it is fine. Also, the amount he takes “extra” is the literal fractions of coin that do not divide evenly into 7 people 🙂
He is also the one with the highest Investigation in the group (and after a number of level ups, has become the highest Perception and Insight too… skill monkey) so when looting bodies becomes an issue, he and our wizard (they were pirates together and she is also a thief!) go about consuming the goods that the corpses have left to give and sometimes a few items actively do not make it into the party pool.
Again, we all know. In character, we have no idea, but they have never been secretive about what they are doing out of character to the rest of the table. The first time it happened it was “I’m taking this bag of gems, and I’m not telling the rest of the party.” There was a moment of “Uh… ” from the collective table, but eventually, we just came to accept and move on. After all, it is not really hurting our bottom line as it were (we have so many magic items we have to choose what to attune to! What a great problem to have).
I think it is interesting, because I have been in the party where one player is the “this is what my character would do” specifically to justify being an asshole, and was the usual stealing from the party type, and that sucks, but ironically, I find it “okay” that the rogue in the group is doing a tiny bit of personal gain when the player doing it is literally telling us to our face “that 2 extra gold coins that don’t divide evenly? I’m taking that.”
I guess it is all a matter of perspective.
(side note: the bag of gems or other things that are not just a couple extra coins, have always gone to fund our spell caster’s VERY expensive habits. You know, spell costs (copying, materials and foci with gold costs) are high and we have 4 “main” casters in the group. Since it benefits the whole group, we don’t mind)
Traditionally, the note taker has has a most sacred role in our group, and their prize is something worth more than gold: the ability to tell the DM to back up, they need to do things differently, because because such and such NPC used to be a rogue, not a fighter.
This isnt necessarily a case of DMs being malicious so much as there being a boatload of NPCs and the DM’s heads being small. We can only remember so much stuff off hand, ya know? So in exchange for doing actual legwork, they get the honor of yelling at us when we get something wrong since we didnt do the work ourselves.
Wizard: “Don’t hiss that tongue at me, I know where it’s been!”
Hang on… She didn’t used to have a forked tongue before…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/powerful-ego
Well I mean, come on. Thief can’t alter the look of her eyes as a product of her particular fiendish heritage. It’s only fair that she gets an alternate option from her racial spellcasting:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/thaumaturgy
This is vital, canon information for the Patreon comic.
*Zarhon will remember this*
We had two lootmasters between different games. Our 3.5 veteran was the lootmaster for Pathfinder, and I was the lootmaster for Starfinder (as it was a system our old lootmaster was unfamiliar with and not too fond of).
For the Pathfinder games, they had the task of divvying up the gold split so we could do the shopping that came after it properly, a hefty task as time went on in the game and the loot hoards got increasingly difficult to manage in the official APs. The crafters had to do their own math on the side, where they were available. They got their ‘reward’ by occasionally claiming a few chunks of loot with priority, I think.
I’m not sure what system they used for the calculations, but we trusted them, and they oddly enough frequently witheld from their shares for RP or other reasons, or loaned out money to the ones who needed it more.
Meanwhile, in Starfinder, I had some troubles as lootmaster:
Learning the entire inventory/item types for a brand new ruleset, that whilst familiar from Pathfinder, was still wildly different enough to need a careful check…
Making a intricate google sheet to automatically calculate what selling all the equipment would be worth in credits (as equipment would be sold at 10% its price compared to the treasure) and calculating the split….
Reading every item’s description to learn what they were / what they costed and inputting them into the table… And there was ALWAYS a ton of loot to add (each humanoid enemy had at least three items: armor, a melee weapon, and a ranged weapon, and there was frequently 30 such enemies per dungeon)…
And finally, ‘nagging’ the party about actually using the loot – as the AP we played frequently gave us a reward of ‘5000 credits to spend on medicinals’ that the party was indecisive about or didn’t bother doing (we defaulted to just turning it into more credits for the split, mostly, instead of bothering with specific item rewards). Or they didn’t read the loot-sheet / item descriptions and would miss a potent upgrade for them in the loot to grab.
It was a mostly thankless job, but it helped our game in two ways: one, it convinced the Pathfinder lootmaster to use a google excel sheet to auto-calculate loot (making their job easier), and two, it let me learn the system in detail, learning a ton of the ‘basic’ equipment and rules through experience with the items.
To be fair, I was deliberately self-nerfing by skipping armour loot in favour of crafting at full price, and most of the gun loot wasn’t any use for me as a small arms specialist in an AP where everything is immune to their own weaponry’s damage type.
Felt like I ended up making a more efficient character than anyone else did. Aside from a few levels where the Mechanic had more class bonuses than I did, I had higher skill checks in every skill that didn’t run on charisma than the people that should have been specialists. I was more accurate as a 3/4 character than our Soldier, and did more damage on average as well. My mobility and complete refusal to let enemies get OAs on me gave me a lot of positioning options that outright invalidated a lot of enemy tactics.
For a while there, the only thing anyone had on me in combat was Nagna’s absurd KAC stat, but even that fell off when I finally saved up enough to craft the Zeizerer Diffractor IV and his loot drops didn’t outpace it much afterward. I had to deliberately avoid options that would let me heal or cast spells, because then K’zaz would have been mostly out of a job as well.
In short, Operative is kinda strong. Stronger than I expected it to be. Quick Trick was a mistake that blew the action economy wide open, as was letting them take-10 on their trick attack skill checks.
“When somebody takes on a ‘for the good of the order’ role, what’s a suitable reward?”
No reward needed. At least not for me. In my case, I chose that role. Partially because someone had to do it. And partially because I wanted to set up a cloud based inventory that anyone can view at any time (i.e. Google Sheet).
The odd part is I play the groups druid. So the nature loving wood elf who wants nothing to do with society and it’s trappings is ironically the quartermaster. 😉
Well, most of that stuff in our group is handled by the GMs due to the setup (we do have a google doc to track the community gear, and we also have one to track patron favour, matches participated in, and XP).
However, we do have a system in place to help GMs who run a lot of matches but don’t play in as many keep up. Thanks to using ABP, and our lack of gold and normally shopping stuff, gear isn’t so much of a problem, so GMs get 1/4 of the XP for matches they run, for a character of their choice.
My current party doesn’t have a formal treasurer: We have a document we can all edit as needed. We each get an equal share of loot, in addition to an equal share going to “Party expenses” so we don’t need to argue over who pays for resurrection diamonds, guard-bribes, Bag of Holdings for the party, etc. If you want bling we found for personal use it comes out of your gold-share.
Magic Items are divvied out according to who would be most effective with them.
Lootmaster skimming 10% off without telling at least the DM is not the character embezzling the other characters, it’s the player embezzling the other players. It’s denying players the opportunity to notice with a roll of dice and even worse it’s denying them the optimal choice in spending the loot and outfitting their characters.
It’s usually me who does the book work for the items while Paladins player keeps track of the coinage.
The rogues I play occasionally pocket small loot items without the other character’s noticing, but it’s aways open to the players and they can ask for a perception check to notice.
They stopped asking after it was clear that my rogues are not after the loot but after the „pocketing things unnoticed“ and lot acquired this way is filed regularly in the inventory for sale or redistribution.
My first campaign as a player left most of the loot hauling to the character I once described as “a dwarf Cleric who heals the party, carries loot, acts mildly sensible sometimes and complains.” That was mostly because she was a STR character (relative to everyone else), but she was also generally forthright and honest, so it was a good match.
Nowadays, all my campaigns are digital, so we have a #loot channel in the Discord server where I, the GM, can just put the loot in the public eye. In one game, a player has taken it upon themselves to edit a pinned comment listing which PC is carrying which items. In another, two PCs secretly sold off some loot and spent the money resurrecting an NPC the party had killed. I can’t wait for the eventual “let’s count up and sell the loot” section when the other players try to count that loot and I say “it’s not in the bag” and then they freak out.
As for record keeping… I am the official notetaker in every campaign I’m involved in (including the ones I GM), though one campaign has a secondary notetaker who writes things from his PC’s totally biased perspective. The primary reward is the fact that I have the record which I can consult, though as Kelthar said above, the power to be able to correct the GM is pretty sweet too. After all, he who tells the history controls the past, and through it the future…
I got fed up with having to make a neat and tidy loot list manually and started using G Sheets for it-I think I mentioned this. It’s been very successful, everyone likes it. Generally, I give people a week to claim anything we found.
In our group, whether I’m loot master or not, we’ve agreed that the loot master gets dibs on any item that is necessary for their character’s adventuring prowess. Since we have a highly cooperative group of players that aren’t backstabbing dinks, everyone is generally cool with this, and if there’s debate about an item, we have so far handled it by talking about things.
Additionally, we help out each other’s side projects, or if someone needs some small to moderate amount of gold, a lot of the time our group comes together to make it happen. And on top of that, after I divide the loot, I round it all down to the nearest 500. Whatever gets removed per share from that process goes into what I call ‘Party Gold,’ which is essentially our adventuring slush fund/petty cash.
In one game, I took ten grand out of that fund to pre pay for Luxury Accommodations (so a small keep + servants) for a year. It was an absolute waste of gold, and everyone celebrated it.
I’ve been in one game where the loot master skimmed off the top. I caught on that something was up given how much he was spending versus what I had in my wallet. Asked him about it and he split it with me to “keep me quiet”. The GM was in on it. At the end of the campaign we told the third player about the loot master’s scheme and the odd man out laughed about.
I’ve also GM’d for a party where the party quartermaster skimmed off the top. Except he set all of it aside as a party emergency fund. It came in handy when a gigantic red dragon showed up and demanded tribute. Without missing a beat, the halfling warlock pulled out a bag of holding and tossed it to him and kept on walking. Seeing as how dumbstruck I was as GM, I figured the dragon was too and let the party have their victory.
When I had the character who was pretty much the party magic item crafter, I just charged a percentage on top of the amount I could make them for, generally
I’d vary it depending on whether it was an item we needed as a party (often done at cost), vs just vanity stuff
As rulers of a pretty successful kingdom, most of the time the limit was more time for item crafting, rather than money, so it was generally more a case of first come first served to get a discount on stuff they wanted
With the extra money, my character got to build herself even more magic items to improve her stats and skills (also the party skill monkey and diplomancer), invest in kingdom projects and improve businesses (was a kingmaker game), as well as occasionally make frivilous items, like a necklace for the party’s mascot, Bourbon, which was originally a horse, but changed into a hippogriff or some such. Gave him the ability to talk. With the voice of Morgan Freeman. Bourbon Freeman
Also made that horse a Duke
There’s a lot of truth to images like the ‘Duckies Kingdom’ one
Why to steal when you can get the party to give you more loot:
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0129.html
You won’t believe how much that trick works je en if people know of it 😀
But skimming off the loot is half the fun of D&D. Anyway, it’s not stealing from the party if everyone else is too lazy to properly audit the funds and never notices.
You’re right. That’s not theft. It’s embezzlement.
Lazyness tax is how DMs call it when players forget to track inventory and lost things 😛
In my group we generally switch party roles fairly evenly.
One is quartermaster and takes care of the loot.
One takes names and interesting pieces of note in his book.
One takes care of the initiative(basically eases the DM’s burden)
And the fourth one, well we haven’t really gotten a job for him yet but I’m sure he’ll bind us in darkness and rule middle earth soon enough.
I recently began playing a game using the Aquisitions Incorporated book. Even though I know almost nothing about the show itself and I think things could have been made a little more evenly (Arcana gets used a bit too much and other skills not at all), I like the idea of each character (and thus player) having some kind of job that is usually a metagame job or a chore everyone has to do.
In this method it means there’s no real need for a “reward” because the perks are built into taking on that role and everyone has one (more or less). And it also means if the quartermaster skims off the top and is caught, everyone else already has the tools for proper in game payback.
I don’t know much about the AQ books… Though AQ was my first actual play. I get that faux corporate adventuring could lend itself to this sort of thing though. What are the metagame jobs? What are the rewards?
There’s Cartographer, Decisionist, Documancer, Hoardsperson, Loremonger, Obviator, Occultant, and Secretarian.
They’re all more or less either about meta-game tasks the party needs to do or dealing with issues/finding out information for the group.
The rewards for each are built in because each basically gets some features at various ranks (which has its own sort of progress bar thing separate from xp), some of which include magic items that get better as you gain rank. All of which give you more tools to do your job’s thing.
I suggest checking it out sometime. It’s not a ton of reading and you’ll get a better understanding of it than my short attempt at explaining it.
I have to recommend obsidian portal to help handle this kind of thing, its a wiki, i currently use it for in game books, and our plethora of house rules/2nd party content, but I know a lot of people also put the party loot on there too. Currently we are using google sheets for it, since we like having auto-calculating formulas for keeping track of things like our loot bidding.
“…put in the effort to paint everyone’s mini.” Man, you have some wonderful people around you.
I really warmed to the concepts in the Acquisitions Inc. book over time. The roles (jobs?) you assign to your players are now part of the game, with actual mechanics and rewards in form of unique items and abilities.
Cartographer (make maps, find shortcuts, gain non-magical Teleport), Decisionist (break voting ties, get DM nudges, gain secret compartment and non-magical Charm Person), Documancer (note party progress, solve puzzles, get special scrolls), Hoardsperson (hoard party loot, get special living bag of holding that levels up to Leomund’s Tiny Chest and a portable hole) etc. (they do repeat themselves quite a few times though, of the eight jobs they describe, at least four gain a variant of non-magical Augury).
I find this integration to be the best possible solution. The sillier elements of “The Office” meets “D&D”can be easily painted over with a change of terminology (Paymaster instead of Hoardsperson etc.).
Nice! I guess I was vaguely aware they’d put out a book, but this is the first actual piece of content I’ve heard about. Sounds like exactly the sort of of goofy meta shenanigans that I would enjoy.
Yeah, I didn’t see a review of it anywhere I usually read up on D&D, such as Tribality or PowerScoreRPG. But it promised new Backgrounds, Spells and mechanics in form of these “jobs”, so I just bought it.
The included adventure is kinda meh, I guess I would’ve enjoyed it more if I were a massive Acq. Inc fan. It introduces a new race, which unfortunately is also kinda meh (some sort of mutating goblinoid, but not in the cool way the description makes it sound). But it was the first book (I think) that introduced vehicle rules and presented some outrageously cool concepts for said vehicles such as the Battle Baloon (cross between a Fire Nation airship and an enormous sled) or a mechanical beholder.
A few backgrounds can be easily transplanted (such as Scion of Famous Adventurers) and the entire section on how to build up and develop your own franchise, as well as the section detailing the various “jobs”, is easily worth the price. My usual game store has a section where customers can sell used books, so my copy was about 16$ (when converted). Maybe there’s a store near you which offers something similar.
Man… I remember game stores. You used to go inside of them and there’d be all kinds of cool gamer merch just waiting. Those were the days. 🙁
Yeah… made myself sad. I think a majority of them has this Call&Collect thing going, but it’s really not the same.
Officially not sad anymore! My local game store recently had its first post- (or inter-) COVID19 MtG tournament. We can have D&D rounds again!
And many happy returns!
Stay safe out there with your masks and your vaccines and your brooches of shielding!
My buddies and I have been hitting the local shop for our ongoing Mordheim game…
https://giga-bitescafe.com/
…But it turns out one of their wives is newly pregnant. Back to home gaming for a while due to the ensuing lowered immune systems. But hey, the campaign continues anyway!
In my main campaign, most players acquire and track wealth entirely independently of each other, so this issue doesn’t really come up. That said, in a traveller game I play in, I take the role of quartermaster as well as ship’s captain in our tiny crew, handling negotiations and gathering money for us. I then proceed to provide the rest of the players and himself with a regular wage plus expenses, whilst the rest goes into a ship-fund to pay for repairs, fuel, ect. To my mind, that’s the way to do it: D&D parties are in essence mercenary organizations, and therefore should have contracts or unspoken agreements regarding who gives out the money. Not everyone needs to be paid equally; indeed, maybe the wizard who can reshape reality is valued more highly by the enterprise than the easily-replaceable swinging-a-stick-man. This was something we also did in my first ever D&D game: our little band distributed roles to people and paid them accordingly. I’m not sure I still have the written contract, but I believe our quartermaster got an additional 3%, whilst the sorcerer got 10% extra but had to pay expenses for any collateral damage he caused (if we were challenged on it,) and so on and so forth.
Out-of-character, I generally think that doing these things are their own rewards, speaking as somebody who is always the group note-taker and often also does a campaign diary, mapping and inventory-management.
My reward for acting as the party lootmeister was nearly getting the entire party killed.
So I was playing as a warlock. He was the only party member with the ability to identify magic items. This meant that he was tasked with identifying any magic loot we found and making sure that it wound up in the hands of whoever could best use it. One day, the druid came up to me with a pearl necklace. I identified it as a Necklace of Waterbreathing. However, the DM would tell me what the item was first, then leave it up to me to inform the player of what they had. I decided to play a little prank on the druid and told them that it was a Necklace of Fireballs, and that if we were ever in trouble she should throw it at the enemies to annihilate them. She put the necklace into her bag.
A year passes. My warlock wriggles out of his pact by simultaneously cashing in all of his favors from other party members to pull off the greatest long term scheme I have ever enacted, and he leaves the party. I make a new character and we keep adventuring. One dark and stormy night, we find ourselves in a pitched battle against a horde of mummified sabre tooth tigers who are wiping the floor with us. All seems lost when the druid is struck by a flash of inspiration.
“The necklace!” She shouts. “I can throw a 9th level fireball at these things! And because they’re mummies, it will do double damage!” I had completely forgotten about my old prank, and I cheered with the other players. The druid pulled out her necklace, threw it into the center of the tigers, and we all braced ourselves for the heat.
The DM just burst out laughing. We all stared at him in fear. He turned to me and asked, “Do you remember that prank you pulled early in the campaign!” I went pale as I realized that my new character was about to pay the price for the sins of my old one, and I knew that somewhere out there, a former warlock turned tailor was busy dying of laughter.