Reconsidering a Holmesian Dungeon

As someone who regularly suffers from Gamer ADD, I am occasionally reminded about how many projects I have left fallow over the years. One such reminder came  yesterday when Rob Conley of Bat in the Attic Games posted a set of S&W compatible rules  as a prelude for a project he is working on. In contemplating all the various things I have not managed to finish, the one I am most disappointed with is my version of Averoigne and its megadungeon, the Chateau des Faussesflammes. One of the reasons for this was that I ran into a problem of how to stock and handle what I envisioned as a dynamic and constantly changing dungeon.

As I have mentioned many times before, historically, I am actually more of a war gamer than a role-player. Recently, I have spent more time at the gaming table playing board games than RPGs. As a consequence, I was inspired to look at my version of the Chateau as if it were a board game rather than an RPG dungeon. What I came up with is a rather intriguing idea and I wanted to see if it was scalable.

Here is my thinking: the mega-dungeon in Holmes strongly suggests the Mythic Underground that many bloggers over the years have described when re-reading older versions of D&D; however, as I mentioned in this post on Holmes on Traps, the biggest danger in this Holmesian Mythic Underground is wandering monsters. My conundrum for years has been how to marry the best ideas of classic dungeons that have factions with the Mythic Underground with the dynamism of a dungeon whose main threat is wandering monsters. My answer was to make all the monsters a kind of wandering monster by turning the dungeon into a kind of board game for the Referee.

Let's begin with a really big dungeon. This is from Dyson Logos and he calls it The Deep Halls:

I haven't counted carefully, but I estimate that this beauty has about 150 rooms. According to older iterations of the game, approximately one third of these rooms will have monster encounters or 50.

In order to make this work like a board game I need to have it look like a board game, so I added a hex-grid:

This grid provides almost 200 spaces. The idea here is to place tokens on this board that represent monster encounters. They exist on a grid so that they can move during the adventure from one hex to the next, with each hex being about 30 feet per side and thus easily moved through by just about every monster that might inhabit a dungeon. In order to give myself enough room to maneuver these tokens, I arbitrarily decided to place one token in about every four hexes:

This provides 45 monster encounters. This is close enough to the traditional 50 to leave it at that, or one could have five set-piece encounters that exist in specific rooms that never move. Now, here is where things get interesting. Forty-five divides nicely by 3 giving us the ability to divide the monster encounters into three different factions:

When stocking a dungeon this way, one really doesn't have to stock the dungeon at all. Sure, you have to make notes about room characteristics and various kinds of traps, but there really is no need to place any monsters at all (again, unless you are married to the idea of set-piece encounters and then you only have to do up to five). What you do need is three lists of 15 monster encounters representing the three factions and a wandering monster list.

So here is how it works:

Every time a wandering monster check is triggered (either by a loud noise like combat or simply time spent in the dungeon), roll your favorite type of die to check if a wander monster shows up. For the purposes of this example, let us use a d6:

• On a '1' move one blue token one hex.
• On a '2' move one red toke one hex.
• On a '3' move one green token one hex.
• On a '6' a wandering monster rolled up on the WMT appears in the hex the players are currently in.

Alternatively, a 1-3 indicates how many tokens to move one hex. Regardless, which token to move and where is entirely up to the whim of the Referee. For example, in the middle of the second row there are a blue and green token in the same room. I would most likely move those closer to each other at the first opportunity.

This leads us to one of the more interesting facets of this idea: when two tokens of different factions end up in the same hex, they get to fight. This leads to a noise encounter that the PCs get to investigate or ignore at their leisure. In the meantime, one your tokens comes off the board and you make a note about bodies being strewn about the floor.

Here is the part I personally like best: when the PCs enter a hex with a token or tokens, they get to have a monster encounter. At this point one of the 15 monster encounters can be randomly assigned to that token. In other words, every monster encounter is as much a surprise for you as it is for your players. If the players prevail, that encounter is marked off the list and the token is removed.

Once the players have wrecked havoc,  you have a very tangible and tactile way to restock the dungeon: place new tokens according to the way the dungeon currently looks. New factions can suddenly make their move to gain territory or one faction can bolster their territory as they have been left unscathed by the activity of your PCs. Or whatever.

While this may seem to be a bit of a headache at the table, I don't believe it to be overly complicated and it incentivizes wandering monster checks, something I know I am guilty of not doing enough (partly because nothing happens most of the time). Using this idea, something happens most of the time, even if the PCs are unawares.

What really attracts me to this idea, however, is the level of danger that gets placed on every wandering monster check. Not only could a monster get spawned from the WMT, but one of the regular monster encounters of the dungeon could come investigating the noise being made by the fighter trying to open that locked door.

A Holmes Inspired Megadungeon: Under Portown

Ever since I started down the path of trying to combine Holmes and Cook, I have been trying to create a megadungeon that would tick off all the boxes I see suggested in a Holmes-style game. To a certain extent, I have accomplished much of what I wanted with my version of the Chateau des Faussesflammes, but the result has been, well, really complex.

As my Gamer ADD has recently returned to Holmes, I have been working on taking some of the ideas I put into practice with the Chateau, but in a much simpler format in order to flesh out the Sample Dungeon found in Holmes. 

Here is the basic concept: The dungeon beneath Portown is part of the Mythic Underground. Therefore, it is an NPC unto itself. One of the great dangers of the Mythic Underground is that as an environment, it is hostile to adventurers (as is evidenced by the fact that doors easily open for monsters, but PCs must use Thief Skills, spells or Strength). One way that hostility can express itself is by actually changing.

Under Portown, there are six elements of the dungeon that do not change. One is the entrance and there are five special areas which all play a major part in the backstory of the dungeon itself. I've drawn these up here:

The idea here is that the spaces around these six elements can change on a whim. For my part, I am imagining various factions vying for control of the dungeon. Each faction controls a different version of the dungeon. As each faction's power waxes and wanes, the Mythic Underground exposes different versions of itself to the surface world.

Thus, I can take a piece of tracing paper and draw out different "levels" and place them over my six static elements. Here is a version where I took pieces and parts of the Sample Dungeon of Holmes:

Alternately, I can do this electronically. I purposely used geomorphs to create the five main elements of the dungeon so that it would be possible to create something in Dave's Mapper to drop my main elements into with little effort on my part:

The result is an ever-changing megadungeon with an unlimited number of rooms; however, PCs will always have anchor points of familiarity if they can find those unchanging elements of each version of the dungeon. If they can figure out part of the mechanism of when the dungeon changes, they can also begin to have some control over which version of the dungeon they explore.

Saintly Saturday: Holy Saturday

Today is Holy Saturday according to the Orthodox Calendar. We Orthodox Christians do a funny thing this week. We are so eager to celebrate Pascha (aka Easter) that we turn the clock ahead 12 hours this week. All the morning services happen the night before and all the evening services happen in the morning. Thus, we actually celebrate the Vesperal Liturgy of the Resurrection this morning and will celebrate the morning Divine Liturgy tonight at midnight.

As a result, this hymn was sung this morning:

Today, Hades groans and cries out, "My authority has been destroyed. I took One who died, as though He were mortal, but I am powerless to contain Him. Along with Him I lose all those, over whom I had ruled. I had held the dead from all ages, but behold, He raises them all." Glory to Your Cross and Your Resurrection, O Lord!

I have meditated before on the idea that Christ turns the classic hero story on its head. Normally, the hero descends into the Mythic Underground in order to gain something lost or something that they need in order to defeat whatever nemesis they happen to need to get rid of. As can be seen by this hymn, Christ goes into Hades (aka Sheol aka the Mythic Underground) to conquer it.

Thus, the classic trope of the megadungeon that is always restocking itself, morphing and reacting to the PCs as they delve deeper into its bowels also gets turned on its ear. It occurred to me that a previous post might give an interesting answer as to how to reconcile the Christ-as-hero story with the classic D&D megadungeon.

Awhile ago, I blogged about something I called The Gnomic Highway, which I equated to the idea of a kind of faerie road that could shorten the distance between two given points, but which would also be far more dangerous than a normal road. Subsequently, I came across the idea of the gnomic will which suggests a deliberate choice away from a path that results in the fulfillment of one’s being.

Thus, in a Christian context, it would be possible for PCs to defeat a megadungeon — that once cleared or once a particular goal has been met, that megadungeon ceases to exist in the normal sense; however, one can still find it on the Gnomic Highway — where one can deliberately choose to enter into the Mythic Underground and all its subsequent dangers even though it has ceased to exist as a normal part of the world.

Meditating on The Mythic Underground

One of the more interesting aspects of OD&D, as interpreted by various corners of the OSR, is its portrayal of the Dungeon as the Mythic Underworld. For those unfamiliar with this particular theme I suggest Philotomy’s musings on the subject here. I, myself, have played with this interpretation in my own musings about the Holmes Basic Edition here and here.

In the classic mythological trope, the hero finds it necessary to descend into the Underworld in order to obtain something vital in order to achieve their overall quest. This could be information, an item, a skill or even a person. The hero emerges, changed and readied to take on the rest of their quest.

D&D (particularly in its B/X form) emulates this trope very well. The early levels of character development occur primarily in the Dungeon, where they obtain magic items, maps and experience. Once they reach 4th level or so, the characters emerge ready to take on the rest of their quest — explore and tame the Wilderness in order to build a stronghold.

I mention this, especially my own musing on the Holmesian version of the Dungeon (an ever-changing and unconquerable place that is almost a character unto itself), because Christianity takes this classic tale of the hero and turns it on its ear. Christ — the hero figure of the Christian story — does not descend into the Underworld in order to gain some special object or skill. He descends into the Underworld in order to conquer.

Greek Shorthand for Christ Conquers

For He crushed the gates of bronze and shattered the bars of iron — Psalm 107:16 (cf. Isaiah 45:2) 

For as Jonah remained in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of man be in the heart of the earth for three day and three nights. — Matthew 20:14 

In the body He was put to death, in the spirit he was raised to life, and, in the spirit, he went to preach to the spirits in prison. — 1Peter 3:18-19

In other words, the implied pattern of dungeon-delving in context of the Christian story is not just exploration, but restoration. This flies in the face of the Mythic Underground as understood by Philotomy and my own understanding of the Dungeon in Holmes.

Given that I am very interested in a Holmesian Underworld as well as playing in a Christian context, I have been trying to meditate on how to reconcile these two divergent views of the Hero and the Underworld. Part of my thinking in this direction is inspired by the general move that the OSR has made in recent months toward the Weird.

In a world where the Dungeon is a semi-intelligent and ever-changing NPC (Holmes), it makes sense to understand that part of this change can be imposed. What if, when a level or a sub-level of a dungeon were cleared (and thus restored) or otherwise "rescued" that it physically moved from the underworld to the surface world? In context of a dungeon beneath a city, these dungeon levels could be additional neighborhoods that spring up. In context of a dungeon in the wilderness, the levels could be ruins restored to full functionality. The more of the dungeon that is restored, the more Civilization takes root and the more Wilderness (whether on the surface or in the underworld) retreats.

The Dungeon would then change in response to the foray by the adventurers. Either the next level could "move up" or another level or sub-level could spring up in its place. Thus, the semi-intelligent and ever-changing Dungeon of Holmes can actually play a vital role in the context of the Christian hero story.

Saintly Saturday: St. Macarius the Great of Egypt

Today is the feast of St. Macarius the Great of Egypt. He lived during the 4th century when monasticism flowered and was a disciple St. Anthony the Great — who many Christians hold up to be the father of monasticism. There are extant fifty homilies attributed to him.

As with many of the desert fathers, St. Macarius focuses on the internal struggles that are central in a Christian lifestyle. As such, he lays bare one of the primary challenges that Christianity poses to RPGs, especially the kill the monster and take the loot kind of games such as D&D. Historically, the ideal Christian hero is the contemplative who spends most of their life in prayer, dealing with the internal struggles that St. Macarius writes about. This does not lend itself well to the kind of adventures that one expects when playing an RPG.

Thus, from a strictly simulationtionist point of view, doing a Christian RPG or playing an RPG to simulate a Christian campaign world is nigh impossible; however, Scripture and the writings of the Fathers are full of allegory, simile and metaphor, which gives us RPGers a bit of wiggle room. For example, take a look at this meditation on the relationship between the soul and sin by St. Macarius:

The precious vessel of the soul is of great depth, as it says in a certain place, He seeks out the deep, and the heart (Sirach 42:18). When man swerved from the commandment, and came under sentence of wrath, sin took him for her subject; and being herself like a great deep of bitterness in subtlety and depth, she entered within and possession of the rages of the soul even to the deepest inner chambers of it. In such fashion, as this let us liken the soul and sin when mixed with it, as if there should be a great big tree with many branches and it has roots in the deepest parts of the earth. So the sin which had come in, taking possession of the ranges of the deepest chambers of the soul, came to be customary and to have the first say, growing up with each man from infancy, and going up and down with him, and instructing him evil things. — Homily 41

If we take St. Macarius’ description of the internal struggle of the Christian and make it external using the very words that he uses we end up with the megadungeon.

The Greek word for “deep” in Sirach 42:18 is actually “abyss” and has the connotation of being bottomless (signifying that there are always going to be new levels of the megadungeon to explore). Sin has infected the deepest chambers of the earth — where monsters are sin personified. The megadungeon, as suggested by the image of a tree whose branches reach down into the soul, is itself a living thing that grows, changes and actively works against those who are trying to cleanse the dungeon of sin (monsters). The deeper one goes, the harder the megadungeon tries to repel invaders (the monsters get bigger HD the deeper the dungeon level).

This is very suggestive of what I mused about when exploring a Homlesian vision of the Dungeon and of Philotomy’s Mythic Underground (which sadly appears to be offline). It also strongly supports the idea that the megadungeon is always going to be an underground wilderness that is always filled with monsters — in a fallen world, sin will always be pervasive (this, BTW runs counter to the way I have run my games where PCs are capable of recovering sections of dungeons).

Treasure, therefore, becomes the mechanism by which a character’s progression toward their potential is measured. The gold, jewels and magic found within the megadungeon is akin to finding the inborn beauty that is the human soul. In other words, the recovery that I normally allow to play out as PCs cleansing a section of dungeon and making it safe, occurs not in the dungeon but the characters themselves. This treasure, in turn, is used to buy better equipment (to better the chances against greater and greater sin) and ultimately to build a stronghold where others come to improve themselves under the tutelage of one who has fulfilled their potential. Again, the recovery of the world from sin is measured in persons rather than geography.

As someone who grew up assuming the naturalism of Gygax and Arneson (and who, frankly, still uses it on a regular basis), I find this vision of the dungeon fascinating. The campaigns that would naturally arise from these non-naturalistic assumptions would be far more abstract or specifically game-oriented. Cities exist, not due to political reasons, but because of their proximity to dungeon entrances. In a world where G+ is emerging as a primary way for a lot of people to play, one could imagine a city of portals that lead to a variety of “dungeon worlds” where the rules of the universe change slightly (as reflected by the whims and quirks of different DMs/GMs/Labyrinth Lords/Referees). Expeditions are organized by inhabitants of the City of Portals (aka FLAILSNAILS?) into one or more of these dungeon worlds as game sessions arise and are played, all the while trying to fulfill their own potential by seeking out the externalized depths of the soul and rooting out the externalized sin that infects it.

Insanity Rules for SWL & My Mash-Up

I am in the midst of typesetting my 4-page SF+SWL Mash-Up and realized that I have no real intention for this game to go beyond 3rd level because I don’t have Erik Tenkar’s luxury of saying, “For advancement beyond 3rd level, please refer to the Sword & Wizardry: Complete rules.”

This got me thinking about how to make it possible to have a long-running campaign with SWL without going on to S&W:Complete and by extension how to do the same with my SF+SWL mash-up. In reviewing my monster list, I was reminded of how much influence H.P. Lovecraft has on the way I build RPG worlds, regardless of which system or genre. This, in turn, got me thinking about the insanity rules of Call of Cthulhu and I think I have a fun little means of extending the life of a rules-light RPG campaign that only goes to third level.

I’m Too Old for This Crap!

Delving into the Mythic Underground, going to the edge of the Outer Darkness and fighting the strange monsters that spew forth from these places can and does do damage to anyone’s sanity. Therefore, after each successful adventure, players are required to make a “Sanity Check” for their character:

Roll a d20 and add the character’s level and the number of successive adventures the player has used the character in the current campaign. If the total is ≥ 20, then the character has seen too much and needs to take a break from active adventuring. Roll a d4 (or other die type agreed upon by the player and referee). The result is the number of sessions that character has to sit out before being mentally stable enough to return. The player then creates a new character to use in the next session.

The long-term result is that each player will have a cache of characters that they can play with. Depending on which character is recuperating and what the player feels like, they have the freedom to come to the table with different characters. In turn, this gives the Referee the freedom to plan a longer term campaign that doesn’t have an automatic cut-off date when characters get to 3rd level. Indeed, it can add a bit of spiciness to the table, especially for Referees and Players who don’t mind using a random table of insanities to add to their character’s growing number of quirks.

Turning Reskinned

Let me start by saying that this post will fly in the face of today’s perceived dichotomy between Christianity and science; however, as I have stated many times, this is a false dichotomy. Not only have Church Fathers throughout the ages supported scientific study and a cultivation of the mind, but modern science and the scientific method are children of the Christian world view — one needs the orderly universe created by the Trinitarian God that is not full of divine beings in order to believe that it can be predictable and reliable enough to observe and test.

It is only when one tries to answer such questions as Who is God? and What is the meaning of life? with science that one runs into a conflict. Such questions are rightly left to theology because science cannot answer them without abandoning the scientific method and becoming a faith unto itself.

With that preamble, let me call your attention to this video, which is rare footage of an oarfish in the wild (fast forward to about the 3:30 mark to get a good look):

Although this deep water fish looks tiny in the video, the reality is that these fish can be anywhere from 15-56 feet long. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that the oarfish is the source of various sea serpent stories from times of yore. As can be seen from the video, the reality is much less frightening than humanity’s ability to imagine the monstrous.

This got me thinking about a way to re-skin the concept of Turning. While the origin of the mechanic is the image of Van Helsing keeping Dracula at bay with a cross, another way of understanding the mechanic is akin to the video above — stripping away the monstrous imagining of humanity to reveal the mundane reality.

I come to this from the perspective of both the classic D&D trope of the (Chaotic) Wilderness vs. (Lawful) Civilization as well as the idea that monsters are sin personified. In a world where sin becomes manifest as all the dark imaginings of humanity from myth and story, the Christian (as the champion of Lawful Civilization) becomes the mechanism by which the Chaotic Wilderness is tamed by revealing the mundane by stripping away the demonic.

Thus, when a party encounters a group of zombies which are successfully Turned by the party’s cleric, the supposed undead (rather than running away) are revealed to merely be dead bodies, carvings on a wall or an unusual shadow cast by torch light; however, lower level clerics are unable to completely convince or control the dark and fallen imagination of either themselves or their party members. Thus, the zombies will eventually return until such time that the cleric can “destroy” them by having faith in the God who declared His creation very good.

The cleric, in other words, becomes the video camera that reveals that ancient seas serpents are actually oarfish.

One interesting consequence of this re-skinning is the possibility with such a set-up that the Mythic Underground and the Dungeon-as-semi-intelligent-NPC are actually creations of our own making — manifestations of our own sins and fears.

Saintly Saturday: St. John Climacus

Today is the feast of St. John Climacus, aka St. John of the Ladder. He lived during the seventh century, became a monk at the age of 16 and died in A.D. 649 as the abbot of St. Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai.

His moniker comes from his most famous work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Even though it is intended as an instruction manual for monastics, it is still one of the most popular books among Orthodox Christians, especially now during Lent (our Easter, more properly called Pascha, isn’t celebrated until May this year).

The book posits thirty steps toward reaching the Heavenly Kingdom. This work, as well as St. John, is also commemorated on the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent. Associated with both the work and the Fourth Sunday is one of my favorite icons:

Note the people being pulled off the ladder by demons — some of them are wearing the vestments of priests and bishops. It is a reminder that we are all merely human, especially those who have been ordained. We all sin, but this sin only speaks to our human frailty not to the Christian faith or Christ Himself. Hypocrites we may all be, but Christ went to the Cross for us all anyway. As St. John more aptly puts it:

God belongs to all free beings. He is the life of all, the salvation of all—faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust, pious and impious, passionate and dispassionate, monks and seculars, wise and simple, healthy and sick, young and old—just as the diffusion of light, the sight of the sun, and the changes of the weather are for all alike

I have often seen the monastic life as a metaphor by which Christianity can speak to D&D. Player Characters are invariably those members of society that exist on the edges of Civilization doing things which allow Civilization to continue to exist, but which are not normally acceptable within Civilization itself.

I, therefore, find it interesting that the first step that St. John describes in The Ladder is the renunciation of the world — monks leave Civilization behind to wander into the Wilderness to fight the demons where they live. This is not far from what a normal D&D PC does in context of delving into the Mythic Underground to fight Evil and Chaos where it lives.

St. John notes that there are three types of people who renounce the world:

All who have willingly left the things of the world, have certainly done so either for the sake of the future Kingdom, or because of the multitude of their sins, or for love of God. If they were not moved by any of these reasons their withdrawal from the world was unreasonable.

Of these three, the second most accurately describes the typical D&D PC — sinners who no longer totally belong to Civilization. I also find St. John’s advice for the sinner quite interesting:

The man who has withdrawn from the world in order to shake off his own burden of sins, should imitate those who sit outside the city amongst the tombs

The tomb, of course, being one of the classic D&D adventure tropes.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the metaphor of the ladder quite aptly describes the experience level system used in D&D (although I have never even approached getting to the 30th level either in life or as a player).

Saintly Saturday: St. Apollonia the Virginmartyr

Today is the Feast of the Virginmartyr Apollonia. She was an elderly deaconess of Alexandria whose martyrdom is described in an extant letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria. According to the letter, the persecution of Emperor Decius (A.D. 249-251) began a full year earlier in Alexandria than the rest of the empire and St. Apollonia was one of its victims.

The letter describes a “prophet of evil” who stirs up the masses against the Christians. Mobs backed by the government started to assault the homes of known Christians. St. Apollonia was pulled from her home, beaten about the face until her teeth were knocked out and drug outside the city to a fire the mob had built. They threatened to throw her in should she not worship the idols. She asked for a moment to pray. Understanding that she would be raped before she was killed, she took her chance to preserve her virginity and lept into the flames where she was consumed.

Due to the nature of her torture, she is sometimes depicted with a golden tooth around her neck or holding a pincer with a tooth.

There are several accounts of virginmartyrs who throw themselves to their own death rather than risk being raped. One might legitimately ask why these women aren’t damned for committing suicide instead of being celebrated as saints.

Suicide is the deliberate destruction of God’s gift of life as an act of spite. It is the ultimate act of turning away from God and a denial of God and His Kingdom. In contrast, these women are already dead — their fate is sealed. Rather than taking their life in spite of God, they not only offer themselves up as sacrifice, but also their virginity. Only in these extreme circumstances is such an act deemed acceptable.

Due to the fact that this whole episode sounds strange to the modern ear, I suppose this invites a discussion about what is valuable. Traditional D&D places value upon treasure and the death of monsters by equating both with experience points, with treasure being more valuable than the death of a monster.

This, of course, rewards certain kinds of behavior. Others have spoken about how this dynamic changes in other iterations of the game where treasure is less valuable than killing monsters or even setting off traps. Thus, I am not as interested in going over the same ground, but rather interested in how things besides the traditional D&D values might shape the assumed culture of a game. For example:

• Artifacts from an ancient civilization — this cleaves close enough to traditional D&D to co-exist; however, it emphasizes the post-apocalyptic culture of D&D and is likely to place the assumed culture in some distant future rather than a medieval analog.
• Freed Slaves — this, intriguingly, does not limit a culture to any sort of time frame. Rather, it assumes a far more politically developed reality. Traditional D&D takes place on the edge of the Wilderness. A campaign which values the freedom of slaves would take place on the edge of a twisted version of Civilization. This type of campaign would also emphasize the problem of extraction as part of the adventure — how do you get what is valuable out of the adventure area?
• New Species — this assumes a culture that values exploration and a context where it is expected that strange new lands (or planets) are going to have an alien ecosphere. This also emphasizes the problem of extraction — how does one treat/prove the new discovery?

I mention these in context of the discussion about the dungeon-as-adventure. I love the Mythic Underground understanding of the dungeon and (as a player) it is my favorite way to play the game; however, I understand that there are many people who actually find that sort of thing boring. Wilderness and city adventures hold much more allure; however, in my experience what is valuable in the dungeon (treasure) makes for a far more morally ambiguous gaming experience outside the dungeon— especially in context of a city. Placing value on things other than treasure could possibly make for a far more interesting campaign in these cases.

It would be interesting to experiment with a campaign structure that placed different values on different things according to the level of a character. We see a nascent version of this with the notion that higher level characters get less experience for killing monsters lower than their own HD. What if there where a three-tier system of values where levels 1-3 get experience for different things than levels 4-6 and yet different things than 7+?

***

The Teeth of the Virginmartyr

These rare items appear as human teeth made out of gold. While valuable for the gold from which they are made, they also radiate of magic. Should one wear a tooth on a necklace, the bearer would feel warm and comfortable regardless of the actual temperature and can get restful sleep regardless of the situation. Should one replace their own tooth with the magical tooth, the bearer would also gain the effects of a permanent Resist Fire spell.