treasure

[saltmarsh]

Hi all I'm new on the boards been reading the main rules and am a little confused about how to deal with treasure and the costs of living can anyone help

[zedturtle]

Whoa buddy, that's a lot in a little package. I'd suggest looking through some of the recent threads, there's been quite a few discussions on it.

Treasure seems to work best when it is kept as an abstract thing that makes the difference between living at a frugal/martial level and a prosperous/rich one. One point of Treasure is enough to make the difference for one month (up to Prosperous).

Standard of Living is similarly abstract; I tend to say that both frugal character and rich characters have pocket change. It's just that frugal characters have a few coppers, rich characters have a few gold pieces.

[Rich H]

Hi all I'm new on the boards been reading the main rules and am a little confused about how to deal with treasure and the costs of living can anyone help

Like zedturtle says above that's an extremely open-ended question which could result in people just quoting vast sections of text from the rules (if we were allowed to)!

As a starting point, each player character culture has it's own Standard of Living which doesn't cost anything to maintain at that level as it's assumed each hero has some form of income, or otherwise, to keep it at such a level; so, for instance the Standard of Living for a Elf of Mirkwood is Martial and will always remain so unless something happens* in the game to change it. * That 'something' is generally the character spending Treasure to raise their standard of living to a specific level as per the rules on page 198/199. Standard of Living determines what a character can or can't purchase as per the guidelines on pages 119-121 as well as other places scattered throughout the book.

With that said, what is that is specifically causing you an issue?

[beckett]

Keying into the abstract nature of Treasure that Zed mentioned in his reply, here is an easy example of how it applies in-game. Let's say your company want to purchase ponies or boats prior to their journey. How do you know if they can afford such a purchase? Look to the Standard of Living of each player-hero.

In this example, see page 160 of the Revised Core Book for the table that tells you who can afford to buy ponies or boats based on their Standard of Living.

Hope that helped.

[saltmarsh]

Hi thanks for the replies I guess what's giving me the most problem is how finding treasure effects character wealth.
As there are no listed prices for anything or how much money they might find how do you know when there loot is all spent.
For example if a party finds a troll treasure hoard how will that effect there standard of living and for how long

[Stormcrow]

Just finding treasure doesn't change your standard of living. Spending 1 treasure point puts you at Prosperous standard of living (if you didn't already have it) for one month; 2 points lets you be Rich for a month. See pp.134–135 of The One Ring Roleplaying Game or p.117 of the Adventurer's Book.

You don't have to find prices of goods; you just have to decide what standard of living you have to be at to pay for something. This magnificent boat is too expensive even for someone Prosperous; only someone Rich could afford it. There are a couple of benchmarks: see the table on p.160 of the revised rules or p.156 of the AB for a table that shows how high your standard of living has to be to afford a pony or a boat.

See also the treasure table on p.135 of the revised rules (p.116 of the AB) for an idea of how much each point of treasure is worth.

The Lake-town book has a section (p.13) that converts treasure points to actual coinage, and includes a very simple price list of animals and weregilds. I consider these rules to be experimental.

[Rich H]

Hi thanks for the replies I guess what's giving me the most problem is how finding treasure effects character wealth.
As there are no listed prices for anything or how much money they might find how do you know when there loot is all spent.
For example if a party finds a troll treasure hoard how will that effect there standard of living and for how long

My previous post has the relevant information for you then - ie, you have to spend treasure to increase a character's Standard of Living (and for that matter Standing). If you don't they remain at their initial values. And the information relating to Standards of Living give guidelines to what your characters can afford and what they own. GMs need to play fast and loose with it and apply a bit of common sense in their adjudications.

The cost of items and the like aren't defined as a price list (although I have created one as well as expanding the rules around them); such stuff isn't considered an important factor in telling stories set in Middle Earth, using the TOR system, so they are abstract in nature rather than a more explicit price-list based system.

[saltmarsh]

Thanks that helps a lot so if a company of 5 characters spends 10 treasure points they can all count as rich for a month and make purchases accordingly.
Is that right ?
I'm still very new to the one ring system but like it a lot it's very different from what I normally play

[Stormcrow]

Is that right ?

Exactly right.

[zedturtle]

Thanks that helps a lot so if a company of 5 characters spends 10 treasure points they can all count as rich for a month and make purchases accordingly.
Is that right ?
I'm still very new to the one ring system but like it a lot it's very different from what I normally play

Right.

The main things in the core rules to spend Treasure on is Standard of Living (to make purchases) and Standing (to wield influence). It is very different from games that take a more literal approach to money.

Incidentally, here is a thread where I played around with the idea of converting Treasure over to a sort of Wealth value, sort of like how Diaspora and some other games work. It takes a different approach to Standard of Living and Treasure, and might be useful (at least in contrast, so that by seeing what I changed, you might see the actual rules more clearly).

In any case, it sounds like you've got a handle on it, so have fun!