Treasure ideas that aren't gold or magic

http://www.dndui.com/webcomic/13OzBow_web.php

There are things more valuable than gold pieces.

In most RPGs, there’s always a few gold pieces in that goblin’s pocket or hidden in a small alcove in the wizard’s tower.

But all that gold (and occasionally electrum and platinum and silver and whatever), can get a little boring.

It’s a lot more fun for everyone when they find something of value that isn’t something to throw in their pockets and spend at the next magic item shop they can find.

If you’re as bored of gold as we are, use these treasure ideas in your next game.

Art. When players open the treasure vault expecting bags of gold coins or piles of gold bricks, they find a collection of priceless art. A whole host of adventure threads will spill out when they try to figure out who the art was stolen from or where they can fence the items to get the gold they want. Or which ones they want to hang on their wall.

Property. The deed to an old fort or a wizard’s abandoned laboratory is way more exciting than another gold necklace worth 15 gp. What are you gonna do with it? Rehab the fort and make it your party’s hideout? Raid the wizard’s lab and find some magical wonderment within? 

Keys. Unlike some dungeon-delving video games, there aren’t enough keys when playing D&D. Maybe the key unlocks a special room in the dungeon or maybe it unlocks a completely different building or dungeon altogether.

Books. Adopt something from a favorite video game. In Skyrim, you’ll often find books on the shelves in dungeons and houses. They have lore about the Elder Scrolls world or are sometimes a short story. But every so often, you’ll read a book that gives you a bonus to a skill. You can drop books into homemade dungeons that give a player a permanent or temporary bonus if the spend rest time reading them.

Favors. When the king gives a quest, he often promises a monetary reward. But what if the kingdom is strapped for cash? The king can offer a favor. Accomplish a task, and he’ll owe you one. It will invest your players in the story, and it gives them a way to solve a future problem. Someday, they may find a foe that seems too tough to defeat, but they could call in a favor with the king for some help.

Disguised items. Maybe an expensive gem is hidden in the hilt of a plain-looking axe, or a magic scepter has been turned into a strange centerpiece on a banquet table. Or perhaps the magic sword you’ve been questing after has rusted over time.

People. Instead of a treasure room or a pile of gold, maybe players find a room full of imprisoned people bound for the slave trade. It could be fulfilling for players to free them plus they may gain a couple loyal followers in the process. We once found a friendly goblin imprisoned in a sewer lair, and he ended up helping out party on multiple occasions. He was more valuable than any masterwork dagger.

Something not from this world. Another fun idea is to drop anachronistic or simply otherworldly items into a medieval fantasy realm. What’s this motorcycle doing here and how does it work? What is this laser gun? 

Get more inspiration and adventure at Dungeoncrate.com

April Crate Overview

Photo by Justin Andrew Mason  http://www.pathstoadventure.com/

Is anything more satisfying that looting the throne room after defeating the big bad villain? Or sifting through the pile of treasure after slaying the evil dragon?

Every RPG hero - or at least the thieves and rogues among us - dreams of swimming through piles of treasure Scrooge McDuck-style.

This month’s Dungeon Crate brings a pile of gold, gems and treasure chests to your front door. The theme is treasure, and it’s full of a bunch of great stuff to drop into your games.

Bag of coins / Set of Ingots

Counting treasure on our character sheet isn’t nearly as fun as doing it with actual coinage. Having actual coins in the game helps things become a little more immersed in the game, and players care about the coins in their characters’ pockets when they have actual money. Some of you got a bag of coins while others got the set of character ingots from Rare Elements Foundry.

Treasure pile

When it’s time for your players to find some treasure, why not have them find some actual treasure. This pile of money from ReaperMiniatures is great. We have this miniature already, and (after slapping a little paint on there) it’s a great piece to display in the dungeon. It’ll go great with all our other Reaper pieces.

Treasure chest

Need a place to store all those coins, gems and other pieces? We absolutely love this wooden treasure chest from Elderwood Academy. It’s a cool little piece that’s been hand-assembled just for you and burned to get that smokey brown color. We’ve gotten comments on how people loved opening the box and getting a whiff of handcrafted wooden goodness. This treasure chest also works as a spot to keep your favorite set of dice. (That’s what we’re using ours for.)

 

Gem tokens

At some point, it becomes unwieldy to carry around all those coins. Adventurers who start packing in all kinds of gold will eventually exchange them for platinum. Once they have too much platinum, what do they do? This set of gem tokens, marked with denominations, will help you keep track of that treasure hoard. Advanced Deployment did a fantastic job with these.

RPG Accessories – How and when to use all the stuff from your dungeon crates

by Wayne Brekke

I started Dungeon Crate after a trip to GenCon 2015. I was enamored with the vendor floor and all the fun items to purchase that can be used for gaming. I wanted more. Since I couldn’t find a sub-box service that offered me all these cool items, I made one. Now I have access to more RPG accessories that I ever imagined.

As a Dungeon Crate subscriber, you also now should have a collection of gaming accessories like dice, coins, miniatures, adventures, dice trays, and other interesting treasures. In many cases, gamers have a set way of playing and I’ve found that many are now looking for ways to use all these items in their games.

Role Playing Styles

With so many playing styles out there, many have set ways of running the game table. Some use terrain and buildings, dungeon tiles, and handcrafted furnishings. Others use a standard battle map with wet erase pens and miniatures. Some don’t use anything but their character sheets and conversation (personally I shiver at this concept). So without cluttering up the table with a mass of cards, tokens, coins, terrain, dice trays, dice dungeons, and dungeon tiles, what’s the best way to use all the items you get in a Dungeon Crate?

Planning Game Accessories is Key

Every game session takes a lot of planning by the Dungeon Master. In my experience in running multiple gaming groups, I have found that each group has a different way of playing, which means they require different types of accessories that will complement their game.

For instance, my one group, we will call them the “Alpha” group tends to be more thoughtful and tactic oriented. In this case, while they like a full table set up with tiles and terrain, they tend to blow through the dungeons. I spent hours working on a full wizard tower for them to traverse with stacking levels and furnishings. It took a while to set up as well and the adventurers quickly fought their way through. The lesson learned was that this group is better suited for easy maps on an erasable battle map with little furnishings or embellishments. Small terrain items, tokens and light furnishings go a long way and make changing from one encounter to another fast and easy.

Then there’s my “Beta” group, which is a small group of close friends. We are very casual in our play as it’s also a time to catch up with some hilarious conversation, but we do manage to get some epic adventuring in. With this group, I’ve been able to incorporate more items as we kind of test out the use of some of the table top accessories to see how they play. They’re also much slower in traversing a dungeon than my other group. In this group we’ve used full size map printouts, dice towers, tokens, terrain, and whatever else I bring for test play.

Picking and Choosing Your Tabletop Accessories

I’ve found that even though I have more gaming accessories than I ever imagined I’d have, picking and choosing the items each game session is key to a more fun adventure. Using items that make sense for that particular encounter and not cluttering up the table makes for a smooth and entertaining game.

Some items we offer like the leather dice trays, tokens, coasters, minis, dice, etc. seem to be a constant at every game, but while the other items are fun, they can distract from the flow of the game if set up takes too long. So the best bet is to pick and choose, leaving the rest of your awesome accessories on display until they are needed. The concept seems like common sense, but sometimes the fun-bug hits and it’s hard not to use everything every time. Below are some ideas and guidelines for using all these accessories.

Coins:

While you may be a collector of coins, money doesn’t come up in every game. You can use coins and gem tokens as actual money in game if players are excited about real metal coins and the ability to carry their personal wealth. Players then can use the coins like they do in a Monopoly game and pay the Dungeon Master when they make purchases at the town or tavern. At the end of the session, when party treasure is divided up, it’s always fun to actually receive your share of the treasure in weighty, metal coins and gems.

Terrain:

Unless you are setting up a diorama where your players will spend most of the game session, setting up terrain can be an arduous process. Make it easy by selecting the terrain that best fits the encounter. You want enough to give an impressive scene, but not so much as to waste valuable game time tearing it down or setting up the next encounter terrain.

Many use simple battle mats for the dungeon crawl, then break out the terrain and dungeon tiles for a specific encounter, especially if the terrain offers options for tactics like cover and lines of sight.

Tokens:

There are tokens for just about anything. From character condition to inspiration, tokens can enhance gameplay if used with discretion. Figure out what you really need tokens for and only bring tokens that may be used in game and leave the others home.

Spells, poison, blood spatters, or markers for multiple enemies can be used in most every game. Others can be organized and kept in the box until needed. Players can also keep a collection of tokens for their characters as well, using tokens to show invisibility or spell effects. The trick is to have them organized and readily available when needed as sifting through a bin of random tokens can slow gameplay with little payoff when found.

Card Decks:

We’ve offered quite a few decks in Dungeon Crate. Dungeon decks, critical hit, critical fail, DM critical hit, and will have a couple more in the upcoming months. I’ve found that it takes a little effort to use decks and that since roleplaying isn’t really a tabletop game, cards have to be used with discretion. Some use spell cards and if there are multiple decks on a table, it can get confusing.

Use decks you find fun and shelve the others for later. Critical hits and fumbles are always fun to experience with decks and some Dungeon Masters let you choose between the deck and standard rules. Dungeon building decks or decks used by the DM are great if used when needed. This could be for one-off games, or when characters need a little side quest and nothing is prepared.

Other Accessories:

Even though I don’t use all the accessories in every game, it’s nice to have them available. Keeping everything organized is the key to being able to find and use them when needed, especially if you have to pack a lot of gear up to go play outside of your home base.

Sometimes I will write or download adventures based on the accessories I have. For example, a tavern encounter where players get to use their coins in gambling games. Maybe there is a trap-centric adventure where you would find condition markers extremely helpful.     

As far as everything else, you’ve got a great start on a gaming collection. Trade them, display them, or offer them to players. Dungeon Crate accessories can bring fun and excitement to many game nights and give you a collection of items that might just inspire some epic adventures.

For Dungeon Crate subscribers, you can hit up our Dungeon Crate Trading Post to trade or buy items from other subscribers so you maximize your subscription. 

Check out all the items we’ve offered HERE. 

Dungeon Crate for a Year

We put a lot into Dungeon Crate. We’re not just talking about the literal blood, sweat and tears (sorry if we got any on you!) we exude when assembling these things.

We have also put a whole lot of stuff into every box.

If you subscribed to us every month for a year, you’d have quite a bit of swag.

In fact, you’d have more than two dozen miniatures of various sizes and types, a host of tokens and markers to help run your games, card decks to add some excitement to your sessions, tons of tabletop terrain to expand those encounters into three dimensions, a bag full of coins for in-game transactions, tons of new dice (including a ginormous d20!), a bunch of stuff to accessorize your game bag and/or game room as well as a whole bunch of adventures to play.

It’s a lot.

Want to subscribe for a whole year? It’s the best deal you can get on Dungeon Crate. Check out our subscription plans on DungeonCrate.com.

The following list is what you’d have if you got a Dungeon Crate in your mailbox every month for the last year. Missed something? We may have extras in our online store.

 Miniatures

Large silver dragon from Reaper in white Bones plastic

Sultry seductress in unpainted white plastic and a painted goblin necromancer from Dungeon Crawler

Dungeon treasure items from Reaper in metal

Painted, flying raven from Dungeon Crawler

Rock/stone miniature bases from Elrik’s Hobbies

Ghost from Reaper in white Bones plastic

Giant undead skeleton from Dungeon Crawler

Water weird from Reaper in clear blue Bones plastic

Elementals (set of four) from Advanced Deployment

Elemental flat plastic miniatures (set of six) from ArcKnight

Vampire/werewolves flat plastic miniatures (set of six) from ArcKnight

Krampus from Reaper in metal

Dragon wyrmling miniatures (set of three) from Reaper in white Bones plastic

 Tokens

Spell effect and condition tokens from Broken Egg Games

D&D 5th edition-friendly condition tokens from Advanced Deployment

Inspiration, bless and bardic inspiration tokens from Advanced Deployment

Magic circle markers (set of three) from Advanced Deployment

Blood splatter tokens from Advanced Deployment

Dry-erasable tokens (set of three) from Advanced Deployment

Potion and heart tokens from Advanced Deployment

Breath weapon markers from Advanced Deployment

Dice

Dice from Chessex

Giant d20 from Koplow Games

Bones d6s from Koplow games

Set of miniature dice from Metallic Dice Games

Set of glow-in-the-dark dice from Metallic Dice Games

Coins

Joffrey Baratheon golden dragon coin from Shire Post Mint

King Conan copper 5p coin from Shire Post Mint

Harpy coin from Rare Elements Foundry

Shire penny from Shire Post Mint

Wraith coin from Rare Elements Foundry

Fire dragon coin from Rare Elements Foundry

Ki-Rin coin from Rare Elements Foundry

Daenerys Targaryen coin from Shire Post Mint

Terrain

Griffon Fountain from Advanced Deployment

Royal Throne from Knight Watch Games

Pillar of Good from Reaper in white Bones plastic

Graveyard scene from Advanced Deployment

Catapult from Elderwood Academy

Accessories

d20 laser cut coaster from Pigsey Art

d12 laser cut coaster from Pigsey Art

d10 laser cut coaster from Pigsey Art

Werewolf patch from JBM Press

Dice bag from Metallic Dice Games

Game master patch from JBM Press

Card caddy card deck protector from Narrows HIll Games

Game master coaster from RPG Coasters

d20 patch from JBM Press

Ornaments from Advanced Deployment

Yin-Yang d20 T-shirt from ArmorClass10

Dice Dungeon from Advanced Deployment

Leather dice tray from Binding Time

Dice cup from Koplow Games

Adventures

Greenskin Diplomacy adventure from Nord Games

A whole bunch of one-shot adventures from Adventure A Week

Card decks

Critical Hit deck for players from Nord Games

Critical Hit deck for GMs from Nord Games

Luck deck from Nord Games

Critical Fail deck from Nord Games

The Coolest Dragon Miniatures We’ve Ever Seen

Dragon of the Blood Moon

The battlemap is laid out. The players’ miniatures have reached the final room of the dungeon.

Is there anything more satisfying than plopping a big old dragon miniature on the table and watching them stare in awe?

Dropping a dragon (or two or three) on a party is pretty satisfying, and it’s even more so when the dragon mini you use is huge or gorgeous (or both).

We’ve seen some awesome dragon miniatures in our days, featured some in our Dungeon Crates and used them in our D&D games. We thought we’d share the love.

These are the baddest-ass, most fearsome dragon minis around.

Colossal Red Dragon

One time, a couple DMs ran concurrent games. Both parties were in the same world and the outcome of one table’s successes and defeats affected the other’s. What the players didn’t know was that both DMs planned to drop a massive red dragon on the table at the culmination of the campaign. The only survivors were those who ran.

This colossal-sized dragon is part of D&D’s Icons line of miniatures. It even has an attachable breath weapon in case you want to show your players exactly how you’re burning them to death.

Dragon of the Blood Moon

Dark Sword Miniatures sure makes some pretty pieces, but this black dragon is one of their best. He appears to be on the hunt, head on a swivel, looking for anything that might cross him. And every horn, scale and claw is in perfect detail. We want one.

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/shop/index.php/dragon-of-the-blood-moon.html

Ma’al Drakar, Dragon Tyrant

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/207/560/847397fd7e2ee4b78889364b3c40ced7_original.jpg

Mother of all that is holy, this thing is sure to strike terror into any group of players. It’s a five-headed dragon from Reaper Miniatures’ latest Kickstarter campaign (so it’s not quite available to the public), and is epic. At about two feet tall, there’s really nothing “miniature” about this amazing piece. If we had one, we’d paint it up like Tiamat and watch our players quiver in fear.

Pathfinder Red Dragon - Reaper

Pathfinder Red Dragon

Another one from Reaper, this dragon is a simple but perfect sculpt by Julie Guthrie. He stands on a ruin, wings wide open and ready to attack whatever is coming his way.

http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/dragon/latest/89001

Archangel

Made for Privateer Press’ Hordes. With stretched wings and armor plating, this winged beast appears to be a cross between a fallen angel and a dragon. It’s a gargantuan size mini, and it dwarfs just about anything in PP’s Hordes and Warmachine  lines.http://privateerpress.com/hordes/gallery/legion-of-everblight/gargantuans/archangel

Dreadlord on Black Dragon

There’s a long history of sorcerers and wizards riding fearsome dragons into battle, and a large amount of miniatures depict this. None are more flat-out frightening than Games Workshop’s piece, which comes with multiple dragon heads, riders and weapons. Pick one up and customize to your heart’s content. (They also have a similar vampire lord on a zombie dragon if you’re into that sort of thing, ya’ sicko.)

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Dark-Elf-Dreadlord-on-Black-Dragon

Dragon King

Archangel

This piece from Kingdom Death looks like he’d just as soon punch you to death than melt you with fire breath. Add in the monster’s wicked smile and strange chest cavity and you have something we never, ever want to encounter in a game. It’s that freaky.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/135034/kingdom-death-monster-dragon-king-expansion

Dracolich

Dragons are scary enough, but when they’ve become undead lich dragons? Yikes. This amazing sculpt from Gale Force 9’s D&D collector’s series is incredible. It actually looks like it’s rotting, and it looks like it’s going to eat you. A good combo, we say!

http://www.flamesofwar.com/DesktopModules/Store/Thumbnail.aspx?IP=~/Portals/0/all_images/GF9/Miniatures/71033.jpg&IW=710&IH=400