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Monday, August 26, 2024

Why so stingy for selling monster bits?

Last session, my players had their characters drag home a dead young chimera/stone bull hybrid to try to sell it in town as a curio. It did not sell, and they were forced to dump it.

In generally, monster bits are a tertiary form of loot in DF, behind actual found money and cashing in empties - selling weapons and armor.

Why is that?

First off, it's in the books that way.

The DF books highlight the valuable monster bits that can be sold. There are not a lot of them, and they rarely sell for much. A few monsters have very valuable bits - dragons, for example - but most have nothing especially valuable and a few have some moderate value.

So suddenly turning every monster into a pile of bits requires either a generic ruling about value, or assigning specific values to each and every monster. Then, logically, I'd have to apply a percentage off of that based on type and amount of damage. If you reduced the Baby Mira to -8xHP (for example), with -5xHP being auto-death and -10xHP being total destruction, that's going to reduce the value. But what about it dying right away at -1xHP due to a failed HT roll, but, say, you killed it with fire? I could just wave that away, sure, or apply broad-strokes rulings, but again, I'd need to generate a value system for monster corpses.

The next bit is that it would change the game. It would go from "Finding the monsters and kill them, and hopefully find loot!" to "Harvest the latest crop of monsters." The goal goes from exploring a huge dungeon at great risk for wealth and to fight evil, to find any monster and kill it in the most corpse-preserving fashion possible and probably leave enough to repop for next time because they're valuable. I know the arguments about how people used all the bits of whatever animal, and animal tails and furs are useful commodities, and so on . . . but this doesn't sound fun.

Additionally, it would result in a lot of mechanical logistical annoyance. Kill the monster, have a specific weight for it, figure out how to carry it out, and repeat. On top of that, people who wanted to maximize the value might just take the valuable bits - surely the meat of an owlbear is not as valuable as its pelt, and does anyone really want the beak? If not, now we're looking at a system for that, too - how much does the skin weigh, how much time to get it off, which bits are worth which amount, etc.

I talk not from some abstract theory of what would happen, but what has happened repeately in my games even in the face of failure. Even knowing - being flat-out told - it's unlikely anyone would want anything that isn't already highlighted in the books as especially valuable, players tend to try to eke out just a bit more loot with dragged home monster bits not known to be valuable.

So, in my experience, allowing monster bits to be sold as a matter of course would add headache to my end as the GM, and change the nature of the game from "Get rich and fight evil!" to "Farm monsters." And I don't want to play the latter, so I skew the rules to the former even if that annoys players who know real-world people buy bits of dead animals all the time.



So for now, and for all time, 95 to 99 times out of 100, dragging whole monsters home isn't going to pan out. The 1-5%? Live ones, intact, and the special bits called out. If the rules - mine or published - don't say it's valauble, it's not, and no Merchant rolls, Charisma levels, or whatever will change that. Leave the dead lie and keep looking for gold.

10 comments:

  1. Quite so. I believe your experience and agree with your logic. I have had similar discussions with players in the past. Perhaps not to the same extent, and I certainly haven't calculated the numbers to the detail you have here, but that certainly all rings true to me.

    I could see a scenario in which a powerful NPC says, "bring me the gizzard of the gazebo," or whatever, but that would be an exception rather than the rule. At least for me. And I can also see that for the availability of certain elixirs, then X alchemists need Y monster bits to make Z potions, but again unless the game is meant to be about the party doing that, then it should be assumed that NPCs do that and not PCs. Which can be argued from a verisimilitude perspective with the assumption that the returns are marginal unless you are an expert setup to do just that; not some random group of adventurers trying (and failing) to make a quick extra buck on the side. In any event, while I might employ either of these hypotheticals, they are not necessarily what Felltower is about, so your ruling makes sense for your table.

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  2. I recently had a bunch of low level (75pt) characters get paid by a sage specializing in undead lore for bringing in an intact wight and a horde zombie. (they had themselves hired a 125pt necromancer with 2 zombies to stuff the wight in a barrel) but this only happened once and that client now wants a vampire and or a werewolf.

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  3. I just treat it as "slightly more valuable" trash... err scrap. So it goes for 1dx10/100lbs. Because someone might just pay for owlbear meat even if it's because it's cheaper than buying beef...

    As for "logistics"... it's no worse than anything you're likely already doing, do they have wagons and horses? Bringing crowbars and oil and lockpicks? On a long mission if they want to haul preservatives that's less space they have to haul other things... After all you're already figuring out artworks and other "rare or unique" treasures, so the occasional rare or unique animal bit (which is harder to ensure remains undamaged) I find is amusing. It's a couple of extra rolls and some handwaves, so it's not any more than I'd be doing otherwise. (Granted I'm also not awarding exp base on treasure brought home, so the PCs aren't as //dedicated// to eking out every copper penny they can, but that's your campaign's premise, so this behavior is what you expected.)

    Also I played a PC witch (Wizard/Druid) who's whole personality was shaped around being constantly hungry and eating what they killed... (and bringing home the more valuable bits for sale). Of course the Character was a troll, which isn't something you're going to run into in your group.

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    1. Scrap prices occurred to me, but then I still need to deal with:

      - knowing the weight of every monster

      - people wanting to roll against a skill to know which of the pounds are the most valuable pounds so they can just bring those bits home.

      It would also, like I said, make the game into "farm monsters" instead of "fight them if you can't get your loot any other way." They go from obstacles to, "Look, we're low on loot and it's getting late, let's go find something to kill and sell for the coins and hope we get lucky." I don't want to run that game.

      Folks wanting to kill and eat monsters, fine. I'm the one that pushed for appropriate perks in DF15 for that. But not to kill and sell.

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  4. I usually have a law against selling monster bits. Monster bit markets lead to literal monster ranching which is ... disruptive.

    A few fancy mage bois skirt this law but they don't advertise about it and usually only do oddly phrased bounties to skirt this law. "Kill me the athatch on the grey hill and bring it's pancreas back as proof."

    Dragon bits are often a special exception though.

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    1. I like the idea of a law being behind it. Especially since that's how I justify all sorts of stuff, like a lack of taxes on loot or legal consequences for murder and such in the dungeon. But also prevent people from using "in town" time for questionable activities, like questioning prisoners or assassinations.

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    2. Town is safe ... until you start doing super unsafe stuff there. Then it's not safe.

      "Oh, noes! The consequences of my actions!"

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    3. Yeah, exactly. But since the campaign isn't mobile, I just say no instead of letting someone break town for the whole game.

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  5. For what it's worth, even as a player I'm 100% behind this. I super would rather deal with real loot even than cart surplus swords, shields, armor, etc back. I mean, weapons and armor are valuable but not terribly FUN. Gold, jewels, precious rarities, and of course magic items? Way more fun.

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    1. Feedback from my actual players is very much appreciated!

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