The Temple of the Blood Moth

By Jacob Butcher
Abrasax Press
OSR/5e
Levels 3-5

A science-fantasy horror dungeon for Old School versions of Dungeons & Dragons. You stare into the face of planetary death. Fight or drown.

What’s that little Timmy? Lassie is trapped in the well? Errr, I mean, people are bitching that a 24 page adventure is $8 without a preview? Well, obviously then, I have no common sense and will buy it.

This 24 page digest-sized adventure details four levels of a cult temple over about six pages, with about 31 rooms total .. and a few extra unnumbered/empty rooms thrown in on the map. Resembling those Psychedelic Fantasy adventures, it is ripe with unique monsters and treasure. Combined with evocative writing, it makes a great OD&D weird-ass adventure … without, I think, going in to gonzo territory. It’s a good adventure.

The writing here is short and bursting with evocative bits. “1: Sun-Lit Chapel. Rows of pews. Tall stained glass windows depict the Sun-God and moths at each stage of their life-cycle. Yarrow Bren the cultist can be found praying to the Blood Moth for power, offering everflowing blood in return.” That is a rock fucking solid description. 1. Sun-Lit Chapel. Not Room 1. Not Room 1 Chapel. It gives the room a name, Chapel, and then also adds a descriptor word to it, Sun-Lit. Thus, immediately, we get the sense of this room. It doesn’t do this consistently, for every  Feeding Pit there are three Courtyards, Shrines, and Stairwells, but when it does it it’s great. Note also the brief flashes of evocative imagery. Rows of pews. Tall stained glass. Combined with the Sun-Lit we get a perfect mental image of the chapel. Sun streaming in through those tall stained glass windows, rows of pews with a solitary figure praying at one end. That is EXACTLY what evocative writing should do. The creature in the room is doing something, praying, with aspects of his personality and additional “action” relayed in his request and offering. This is exactly the sort of writing that I’m looking for. It makes an impact. “Cistern: Unlit torch sconces. Vaulted brick ceilings. Filled to your shins with dark, lukewarm water.” Nice.

And it does it while also being terse. That’s not a requirement, but it IS generally an easier way to make an adventure usable at the table. The longer the writing then the more thought has to go in to editing, layout, and the use of whitespace and organization to make it scannable at the table. Or you can just keep the writing terse. Both work. 

It’s full of creepy imagery, like a stained glass porthole in the floor, heavy leaden glass, almost covered in dirt … and you can see something moving on the other side. Nice. 

Magic treasure is unique. It’s all new and weird … like “pearl snails” that turn blood in to water over an hour. And then there’s more conventional magic treasure also, like arrows and needle knives. But no generic +1 swords, thank Vecna. Imagine that, a designer adding original content to their game. Almost like value .. hmmm.. May be something in that … Anyway, monsters are unique also, which I always like. Keeps the players guessing. I should note that the conversion notes from OSR to 5e are essentially “find a similar monster and stat it that way.” A little loose for many in the 5e crowd, but ok in my book … mostly because I’d just do it on the fly.

Wanderers table has then engaged in some activity and is arranged progressively, with deeper levels getting a d8, d10, d12 wanderer die all on the same table, reusing the lower level entries while adding new entries. I’ve always loved the elegance of that mechanic, when it’s appropriate to use it, like it is here. AT least one of the hooks is ok, with the party sent to find/kill/etc someone in a village … only to find everyone has disappeared. It’s not ground-breaking, but it adds a complication to an otherwise generic quest.

It could be better. Monetary treasure is VERY light for an OSR game. Gold=XP and there ain’t no coin XP to speak of in here, which is a hyperbolic way of saying treasure or the non-magical variety is VERY light indeed. There’s a stinker here and there in the room descriptions. Room 28: Golden Altar is described as “he High Priest performs rituals and sacrifices here in order to progress the eventual coming of the BLOOD MOTH.” Well, ok, that’s a mega-lame description, especially in light of the others present in the adventure. There’s also a place or two where sound or light should have been noted on the map or in other room descriptions. In one area, in particular, a giant larvae bashes itself against the door. That’s something you need to know BEFOE The party reaches the room, to communicate to the party in previous rooms or as they approach. Sometimes its important to know things before people reach an area. That can be done in the text or much more elegantly via the map for sound/light, etc. 

This is a good adventure. Creepy. Evocative. Usable. A great journeyman adventure for whipping out to play. The way EVERY adventure should be.

This is $8 at DriveThru. This appears to be a part of the ZineQuest Kickstarter thing, with the designer having a blog, Flowers for the Titan Corpse. It appears to have some ties to the art side of the RPG world, with a Thank You to the Fall 2018 Simulation Art class. No doubt the designer labours under the impression that people should get paid for their work. Of course, writing is even less appreciated than art, the barrier being far lower. The resulting flooded marketplace makes it challenging to price anything above $0. For self-published work a PWYW structure may be best, reserving payment to work-for-hire. I’d pay $8 for this, knowing what I know now. But a $8 blind buy is a thing indeed, given that at least 99% of everything on DriveThru is crap. I’d guess the price is related to the kickstarter pledges. But, anyway, no preview.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/282346/The-Temple-of-the-Blood-Moth?1892600

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44 Responses to The Temple of the Blood Moth

  1. DangerousPuhson says:

    “Monetary treasure is VERY light for an OSR game. Gold=XP and there ain’t no coin XP to speak of in here, which is a hyperbolic way of saying treasure or the non-magical variety is VERY light indeed.”

    This is my biggest gripe with OSR systems – I find gold = XP to be an incredibly silly mechanic.

    “Ooh, I found a platinum water jug in the pile of dung! Well, I guess I can cast better spells now!”

    So weird. I mean, I guess the original case is that it’s supposed to mean that gold you find can be used to pay someone to train you to be a better fighter or whatever, but by now aren’t we all operating under the impression that character improvement comes from within? Maybe someone can explain the appeal?

    • Bryce Lynch says:

      You’re making a simulationist/pretext argument. Given OSR combat balance, it encourages a game play style that focuses on something other than plot and killing. Besides, how you gonna keep up your domain?

      Perhaps there’s some Rolemaster/heartbreaker in your future?
      😉

      • DangerousPuhson says:

        Focused on something other than plot and killing? But that’s what the game literally is – plots, and killing things. Are treasures not their own rewards (like, literally by definition)? Would not there be a need to seek it out for domain-building if it weren’t tied to XP?

        • Bryce Lynch says:

          That’s what’s every game version is that doesn’t have Gold=XP. Without it you get DM plot and the need to kill or succeed at the meta-plot to go up. “XP is a pacing issue” bullshit. With it, everything becomes a caper.

          High level D&D sucks. Everyone knows that. No one has figured it out. Except Gygax. It’s less about dungeons and more about roleplaying & logistics. IE: the domain game.

          • DangerousPuhson says:

            Well that’s a hard disagree from me then. If the party only wants to find gold (and apparently magic things, the ultimate form of treasure, is useless for this, wtf?) then you’re not playing D&D – you’re playing “let’s figure out how to move 800lbs of coins out of this dungeon”.

            Gary had visions of men fighting valiantly against dragons and heroically stopping tyrannical giants from stomping villagers into the ground, not making a glorified bunch of Indiana Jones gold-idol hunters.

            Gold has it’s place, but having it be tied to skills and strength and fighting abilities? It just sounds all too flimsy. You motivate players to not stomp every little goblin into the ground by making compelling, interesting, endearing or narratively relevant goblins. You encourage them to think laterally about encounters by making encounters unwise in a straight up fight, or creating interesting scenarios around them, not by saying “there’s no coins in this room, so obviously don’t bother wasting HP fighting this ogre”.

            Am I the only one seeing this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills over here.

          • Slick says:

            DP, you have this weird habit of claiming adherence to Old School values, then vehemently holding opinions that directly contradict them and acting surprised when you get a bunch of responses saying, ‘yeah, no it’s actually supposed to be that way, that’s why we find it fun’.

            GP=XP is one of the core principles of the playstyle, and the way it’s tied to character progression is abstracted the same way many old-school mechanics are, like Hit Points. It steers player attitudes towards greed and rogue-ish behavior, and it steers the focus of the game towards dungeon crawls and general “murderhoboness”. And that’s kind of the point because that’s generally the tone most old school fans are going for. Not everybody likes it, it comes across as bizarre and nonsensical maybe, but I guess that’s why the OSR is a separate community from “mainstream” D&D in the first place.

            “Gary had visions of men fighting valiantly against dragons and heroically stopping tyrannical giants from stomping villagers into the ground, not making a glorified bunch of Indiana Jones gold-idol hunters.”

            Uh, you should read more Conan.

    • Melan says:

      Honestly, I really do believe you should read the old D&D rulebooks one day. Not browse, not “I have already done that 20 years ago”, not “I know what D&D should be”. Read, with an open mind and good faith. (I would add Philotomy’s musings, too.) Because your argument goes against the thrust of the game as written and intended.

      D&D is very much the “let’s figure out how to move 800lbs of coins out of this dungeon” game, where the heroic and foolhardy die horribly, and the shrewd and cautious thrive. If XP = gp did not make it clear, measuring encumbrance in gold pieces should. You can of course use the system for other purposes – it is pretty versatile. But at its core, that’s what it is. It is not a bug; it is the whole freaking point!

      • DangerousPuhson says:

        I understand the workings of it; what I’m failing to grasp is the appeal of it, or its insistence that GP = XP is somehow a *better* system than XP = XP…

        Yes, I understand that OSR-style play revolves more around logistics than combat encounters, and the appeal of such a thing. But if we take 5e D&D for example, it’s hardly fair to say it doesn’t likewise exist in the game – it’s not like a DM says “there’s 10,000 gold pieces in the dragon hoard” and player’s are going to say “nah let’s leave it behind, we got our XP for killing the dragon anyway”. The same complications and considerations are present in both systems.

        My confusion/confliction arises from tying player ability to collected gold when really there’s no direct link between the two. Jackie Chan can kick ass because he had a lot of fights – I doubt Warren Buffet could take him on simply because he has more money.

        Bryce already argued that I’m looking at this from a simulationist perspective; that GP = XP is simply a meta-balance mechanic. I can kinda see the skew there, but when he likewise complains that the adventure doesn’t give enough XP because there’s not enough gold in it, I have to point out the absurdity of the system and say “yes, the players had a long journey and did some amazing things; why the hell shouldn’t they come out of that with more experience, simply because there weren’t enough ruby rings and bags of platinum littered around the place?” That’s where the system falls apart for me, and why I can’t see its merit.

        • PK says:

          Warren Buffet didn’t get his gold through adventuring. Only gold gained through adventure levels you up.

          The main benefit is that it’s objective, based on how much gold the enemy was able to collect- as a general rule, stronger enemies can horde more gold, but only certain types of enemies collect loot. This allows players to deduce what kinds of activities gain more XP. If the GM is handing out XP for generally doing stuff, there’s no in-game way to deduce which tasks are better than other tasks, it tends to just result in getting XP for showing up and playing, which adds nothing to the game and you might as well just use arbitrary Milestone leveling at that point. And don’t get me started on combat xp, it encourages absolutely nothing good.

          If a player hears a rumor of a Dragon, they KNOW that Dragon has a horde, and can make cost/benefit analysis of taking it on, or rather, of avoiding taking it on and stealing it’s horde from under it’s toes. Yes, they can make the same decisions about potential loot in 5E with no gold for xp in play, but there’s less reason to when those decisions don’t control your progression, but rather how many health potions you can buy. That’s a far less compelling reason to risk it all stealing from a dragon at level 1.

          The 5E party will take the gold if they kill the dragon, sure. The OSR party will go out of their way to take the gold *without* killing the dragon, when they’re guaranteed to be killed in a single breath. The former promotes safe and boring play, The latter promotes serious risk taking and edge of your seat adventure. And death. But death the party knew they were risking.

          So if an adventure doesn’t have enough treasure in it, that doesn’t mean the system is bad, it means the adventure isn’t taking full advantage of the OSR gold to xp system. Ultimately, to be blunt, who cares about the amazing things they did? That’s subjective. What’s objective is, did they make the decisions that lead to the high grade payouts? If they did, they deserve to level up, and if the adventure doesn’t allow for those decisions then it has (slight) weaknesses as an OSR adventure.

          • DangerousPuhson says:

            I’m starting to half-see your point here, using gold as incentive for crafty playing. I can see how that kinda pans out in a roundabout way (maybe, I mean I don’t see how it’s the ideal situation though).

            However, you can’t really say “… who cares about the amazing things they did? That’s subjective.” and also say that GP = XP “…promotes serious risk taking and edge of your seat adventure.” Those are contradictory statements.

            XP = XP promotes risk taking and adventure just as much as GP = XP play does. Especially because in normal D&D, the idea is that you expect characters not to be disposable like they are in OSR. Losing a character in normal D&D hits much harder than OSR, so you’re probably less likely to charge headlong into a dragon (unless you’ve got a party of stupid; you just can’t fix stupid).

            Also, you’ve kinda falsely concluded that the sneaking a horde out from under the nose of an enemy is somehow off the table to normal D&D players. I assure you, my own players in many a group have been very crafty and combat-averse in adventures past. In return, standard practice is to award XP for obstacles overcome, which is much more desirable than a straight up fight because it doesn’t hurt the characters. So players still scheme and make daring plans, knowing that they payoff for success is also XP even if the goal isn’t necessarily gold (like, say, sneaking into the King’s Royal Wedding or something). Basically in the situation an OSR player would be *discouraged* from anything that doesn’t pay off, and so can only ever be motivated by gold. That would be fine if we were playing “build the hoard” instead of Dungeons & Dragons, but we aren’t, so again I stand confused as to the appeal.

            I get that it was the original spirit of the game, that all monsters had gold hoarded (what the hell kind of market can a monster spend money at anyway?), but Gygaxian D&D has changed (Gygaxian ecology is a laughable joke even in the OSR community, after all). So why still cling to this weird vestigial ruleset, especially if you have to know-how to circumvent the problems it supposedly solves?

      • squeen says:

        Another point I think is worth emphasizing—I’m not sure levelling-up should really be the goal anyway. As Bryce points out, high-level play is difficult and weird. It’s OK to have a boat-load of adventure in which the XP haul (through combat) is minimal. Also consider the XP curves: combat XP is more significant/sufficient for low-level characters.

        Low XP is actually a plus in my book. Ever once in a will the party manages to strike it rich and their social status changes. It’s the adventure-writer’s/DM’s job to make sure that only happens with through herculean effort. If your group isn’t having fun playing at low-levels, I think they might be missing the point. Yes, every PC wants to accumulate “abilities”, but that doesn’t mean the game should accommodate their selfish/game-destructive desires (yeah, looking at your 3rd ed.).

        Also, don’t fall into the trap of “this isn’t realistic”. OD&D is not a simulation—it’s just a game-system (that works) to create fun.

        • DangerousPuhson says:

          This just falls to sloppy DMing, not the system.

          If a DM throws nothing but combat at players, players are going to level up fast. It’s not the fault of the XP = XP style that a DM can’t pace himself. And when DM keep throwing encounters at parties, they develop a thirst for leveling up that, if not met, fosters in them bad murder-hobo behaviors. Just as in an GP = XP system eventually forces players to pry out every gold filling and scape every piece of filigree they can to scour the whole dungeon at a snail’s pace.

          • The Middle Finger Of Vecna says:

            It may be sloppy DMing to you, but not for everybody. There are many ways to play this game and have fun. Not all players turn into the characters in Knights of the Dinner Table.

    • Planet Algol says:

      Gold for XP drives the game in that it makes players, and their characters, GREEDY, with resultant hijinks.

  2. Gnarley Bones says:

    Anyone have a link to the referenced blog? My searches result in endless pages about the corpse bloom flower. ?

  3. Anonymous says:

    Glad you liked it for the most part! Thanks for the review. 🙂

  4. Lord Mark says:

    XP=GP is a mechanic, maybe it’s not the best mechanic for player advancement … but it’s the best one we know of for an open world/location based/dungeon crawl game. It doesn’t encourage a specific kind of play (you can murder stuff for its pelt, cut deals to exchange ancient treasure for gaudy trash, sneak and grab gems, or solve the puzzles to win a golden idol) it’s not particular. It also doesn’t judge the moral valiance or goals of the PCs – gold is useful for dastards and saints almost equally and can be acquired through cruelty and oppression or saving the deserving and righting wrongs – even if the first tends to offer more.

    At some point the GM may have to include ‘unrealistic’ hoards of absurd wealth that if recovered would break the economy of any realistic medieval society or cause skyrocketing inflation in the early modern era. You know what else is unrealistic? The entire premise of D&D – yeah all the damn dragons and wizards and shit. GP=XP has a lot of functional advantages for the sort of game a module like The Temple of the Blood Moth seems to be aiming for, besides being a standard for that kind of play. The adventure should either follow GP=XP principles or offer up an alternative. No one is going to complain if your Path of Wyrms scene based 4E fight fest doesn’t provide sufficient treasure to level via GP=XP, but for a classic designer it’s a valid critique because it creates extra work for the GM who will need to understand and revise or otherwise grapple with the adventure’s lack.

    • DangerousPuhson says:

      For the record, I have always been an advocate for milestone XP systems (more so than XP = XP) because I feel they would be better suited for almost any situation – they don’t dictate the style of game, they don’t break the immersiveness of a gold-flooded economy or make us question what a giant spider is doing with a diamond ring, and the DM has a greater control over the power creep of his players.

      Just putting that out there, so you don’t all think I’m just some guy giving the finger to OSR with one hand while jerking off 5e with the other.

      • Chomy says:

        Well, coming up with an answer for questions like what a giant spider is doing with a diamond ring actually makes adventures more interesting than regular ones, where a giant spider is just a giant spider. IMO.

        • DangerousPuhson says:

          It always reminds me of the Final Fantasy series.

          Yes, we don’t know what this random wolf is doing with 2,300gil and a ring of fire protection. It will forever be a mystery.

          • Chomy says:

            I agree it is hard to come up with something good on the fly, e. g. when you are using random treasure during actual game. When you are prepping, however, this kind of mechanism may force you to come up with nonconventional situations. Which is mostly good in my book.

            That ring might be there for boring and evident reasons – a past property of a victim of the spider. (Guess this is why beasts have their magic rings and treasure in their lairs, huh?) Or maybe that spider was a cursed elf princess, the ring bearing her family sigil. And if it is, why don’t we add a few more details to that spider, as a hint for players? Like, blond hair on its back and a horrid but somewhat feminine face?

            Sure, you do not have to go this extra mile, not even with random treasure tables and gold = xp, but without this ‘silly’ and archaic mechanism, you most probably wouldn’t even think of it, and that spider would be just a spider.

      • Lord Mark says:

        Milestone XP? TTRPGs as a game of “guess what the GM wants the player to do.”

        Milestone doesn’t favor any one style of play, it favors a style of meta-play – make the GM happy, plod through the predetermined adventure and complete the proper challenges. Obviously it’s not always that bad, a good GM might give the players a little lease, but fundamentally it’s like playing a narrative form of cards against humanity, trying to guess what the dealer likes the best.

        I suppose that’s even okay, for a game that isn’t trying to be a sandbox/location based adventure/faction rich one. It makes perfect sense for scene based games – but where one wants player choice above the individual encounter level it’s sub optimal.

  5. John Gorkowski says:

    One XP per GP, ahh the good old days. Easy to understand, easy to implement, and fun to play. The original DMG explained the logic well; it’s not the gold per se that’s enabling advancement, it’s what players did to get it. Therefore, the volume of gold at hand had to be commensurate with the challenge, and magic items had an associated XP value.

  6. Ron says:

    Bryce you need to put these XP posts together for some sort of old school tutorial. I dig reading them, both the pros and the cons!

    • squeen says:

      This is a very insightful debate and I agree with Ron capturing it solely inside the comments of this particular adventure is a bit difficult to find—bu…oh well.

      I just want to re-emphasize that my experiences are very different. YES, I think GP=XP is a fine mechanism to drive play (better than story-point which as Bryce points out is a dangerous rail-roading mechanism)…but, NO, I absolutely don’t think it turns every PC into murder-hobos.

      Why? Because the fundamental argument that PC are only driven to action by level-gain is false. At the lowest levels, (1-2?) you need to get beyond “one sword-blow can kill me” or “all I can cast is sleep”, but after that they get hooked into the world a bit more and are motivated by the desire to accomplish internal goals. These may be situational responses (rescue the princess and receive adoration, etc.) or otherwise (making new magics, gain social status, etc.).

      The sweet spot for OD&D is, in my opinion Levels 3-6, and if the Temple of the Blood Moth is good fun and can be linked into a campaign in a meaningful way (i.e. a solid adventure hook), then who cares if it doesn’t deliver much in terms of XP?

      Also, finding magic items/gadgets is often a faster (and better) route to power than level-gain—and just as big a motivator. What PC doesn’t like accumulating toys?

      In line with the GP+XP != murderhobo argument, Anthony Huso has a nice post over at the Blue Bard about how his party(s) ultimate stay “lawful/good” and the downside of departing from that model. As another case-in-point, when Rob Knutz’s Roblier character turned evil, it kinda borked Gygax’s home game too.

      Honestly, it’s not a real problem. We are not all victims of market-forces. The game works.

      • squeen says:

        Sorry. A bit more.

        What I fond more challenging as a DM is finding good ways to encourage the PCs to use up all of their money.

        • squeen says:

          Yikes.

          “What I fond more…”.

          Makes me sound like Foghorn Leghorn.

        • Shuffling Wombat says:

          One thing to remember is that PCs had to pay mentors for training in order to progress to the next level in 1e, until they achieved “name level”. That was a drain on cash. Moreover if you wanted to consult sages, possibly for keywords to activate magic items, that was a costly enterprise.

          I agree this is an enjoyable thread.

          • Ron says:

            Yes! While I’ve always been a DM who leaned pro-player 🙂 , I did enforce resource management. It wasn’t ever DM vs. Players, but there was an aspect of Players vs. resources. You want to play humans because you didn’t like demi-human level limits, when then you’ll need torches for dungeon delving! How many torches you had would mean how long you could delve – and the cost of the torches, and who’d carry them, etc. You want to continue on with less than 6HPs and no more cure spells or potions?? And (as mentioned above) how are you getting those 36,589 gps from the dungeon to town safely? All good stuff, I wouldn’t force role playing of the donkey and cart hiring, but I’d want to know in general what you were doing, and check to make sure the local roving band of goblins didn’t find out about your windfall. Once you kill the dragon plaguing the land, word spreads and everyone wants a piece of the winnings or a piece of the winners. 😀

            T’is a good thread!

          • squeen says:

            I do use training costs—but I can’t remember what reference I used for the values. I may have just winged it.

            What became much harder as the PC progressed in level was finding anyone (locally) at a experienced enough to train them. The “civilized world” is fairly mundane where they are right now.

            I also let higher level PCs train some of the lower level NPCs. That was probably a mistake.

          • Gnarley Bones says:

            The easiest way to make PCs get rid of loot is to use the Encumbrance Rules. 😉

  7. John Gorkowski says:

    Level training cost was explained in the 1e DMG. It was something like 1,500 gold/per level times the SCORE (1 through 4) assigned by the referee for quality of play by that character. That mechanism devoured income and encouraged reasonable play. The training mechanism could also be interpreted in different ways and even used as an adventure hook. “In order to master the next skill set you must first acquire the dozens of dinosaur claws (worth 1,000s of gp) required as spell components to be consumed in practice.”

    Encumbrance was a factor in limiting loot until someone acquired a portable hole.

    Anyway, the thrill of capturing a treasure hoard (by hook or by crook) recalled Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories – as Gary intended.

    • squeen says:

      I ignored the SCORE multiplier, because it seemed too arbitrary. I am going to rethink that now after seeing the loot start to pile up.

      Also, I stopped worrying every tinderbox and dagger, but I use encumbrance for the major stuff like main weapons, armor, and those (egg-sized?) 0.1-lb coins. Its a nice feedback mechanism to force a party to give up their hobo ways and find a well-guarded home base to stash loot.

      No portable holes yet, but one of the players attached a rope and bag to the floating head in Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom and now drags it along behind him like a poor man’s Tenser’s Disc.

  8. John Gorkowski says:

    Yes, Tenser’s Disc was another fix I had forgotten.

    I can see we’ve reached a point where some old time religion might be insightful. So like any good Vancian mage in his manse, I shall don my lenses and crack open my dusty libram (the 1e DMG) to recall the arcane musings of the first sage. And I quote…

    “The judgement factor is inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure. You must weigh the level of challenge – be it thinking or fighting – versus the level of experience of the players(s) who gained it.” (Experience, Adjustment and Division of Experience Points, page 84)

    “Players who balk at equating gold pieces to experience points should be gently but firmly reminded that in a game certain compromises must be made. While it is more “realistic” for clerics to study holy writings, pray, chant, practice self-discipline, etc., to gain experience, it would not make a playable game roll along.” (Experience, Experience Value of Treasure Taken, page 85)

    It’s always fun to treat these moments with a little more seriousness than they really deserve; helps keep the rest of life in perspective.

    • squeen says:

      I am going to have to look in my DMG, but are we conflating two things here?—a SCORE multiplier for XP gained (I think I will always be inclined keep that low to keep party-level low) and a multiplier for the training cost after you have leveled-up?

      • John Gorkowski says:

        My 9:50 PM post refers to the multiplier for training costs in order to level up.

        There is a separate fractional modifier to XP gained for characters whose level significantly exceeds that of the HD of a monster defeated.

        My 11:44 pm post is just citing 1970s wisdom on the subject of XP in general.

  9. squeen says:

    Understood. Thanks.

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