Small but flavorful/fun treasures in adventures

[Togath]

One thing I thought of trying while revising expedition to castle ravenloft was adding small flavorful and/or fun treasures in some encounters, in order to make them seem more interesting, and to give the PCs a minor reward, how well do you think this idea would/will work?
A few examples I've come up with so far are about 20gp and 2-4 weapons with costs of 2gp or less hidden in an overturned cart, or a small belt pouch containing a few gold on a slain villager, and similar small treasures, such as valuable books(values of 1-10gp) in some part of the castle, which can be indentified with knowledge checks or bardic knowledge, or even a few useless, but interesting things, such as extra descriptions of parts of rooms or encounter areas describing any interesting plants or unusual architecture for if PCs want to search around encounter areas.

[Thurbane]

If you can get your hands on Mother of all Treasure Tables (http://www.kenzerco.com/free_files/moatt_preview.pdf), it's brilliant for things like this. It has customised, quirky treasures from the lowest amounts right up to the hugest dragon hoards. One of the handiest 3rd party books I ever bought. :smallbiggrin:

[inexorabletruth]

I think these are great setups. I like the way the "treasure scene" comes with it's own subplot. Discovering treasure is always fun, but discovering an overturned cart is worth examining, especially if there's a dead villager underneath it. It begs all sorts of questions that a PC may want to skill check their way through.

I like giving treasures that add up to a story line later. It lets you keep a slowly growing plot on reserve until your PCs are done with the current story line... or for just in case you run out of material.

For instance:
At session one, level one, I gave an innocuous magical item to the PC that did the best on their exam (see my sig) that worked kind of like the Guidance as a reward for her outstanding display of skill/leadership ability. I named it Malleus Dilluvium (since at the time I didn't know there were English to Draconic translators out there, so Latin was my go-to for all things magical sounding) and it looked like an amulet with a tiny glass hammer.

Later attempts at Detect Magic would reveal that it was an Artifact, but for some reason, a really lame one. However, when paired with Glacies Clavum, an item that was even smaller than the tiny hammer and shaped roughly like a spike or fang (an item found, in their case, around level 5 I think) it became suddenly much more powerful and capable of more than simply giving a tiny luck bonus. It was by the time the second item was won off of a much more powerful boss that I started revealing relevant hints about the nature of the two Artifacts.

The campaign never made it to the 3rd artifact, but I planned on having the third item be Carnis Speculum, which looked like an elegant glass figuring which stood about 12 inches tall. By itself, the 3rd artifact had no real power other than an it was indestructible by natural means and bound to a single possessor kind of like a cursed item. But when paired with the hammer and spike (each item slides into a hand slot created to fit the hammer and chisel), it becomes a magical summoning device that grew to 40 feet tall and imprisoned an Elder Water Elemental that was at the command of the wielder, similar to a Golem. Unlike a Golem, however, the Elemental maintained it's intelligence, ability scores, so on.

Of course, it sounds like a collect-all-the-items-of-power-before-the-bad-guys-do quest, but the truth is, this never served as a primary quest. In fact, for the most part, the players never knew it was any kind of quest at all, or that other people were looking for these artifacts. But it did round out the world, because it gave plans and ambitions to NPCs that hadn't even been introduced to the PCs. And since this doesn't ultimately become a super epic game-ending artifact, it could be introduced at mid to low levels in the game to spice things up if the story started going stale.

What I enjoy most about treasure like this, is the possibilities for story arcs.
Perhaps a secret society sworn to protect the items exists. Or maybe there are 3 part artifacts for every type of Elemental, and a particularly dastardly Sorcerer or what-have-you has sent his/her minions out to find them (which creates interesting random encounters that don't have to be as random as they appear on the surface). Or maybe these are stolen top secret military projects that some growing evil empire was working on but intended to use to create an army of Smart Golems to conquer the world with. This could put the PCs in an elaborate cross-fire between the rebel forces who think the PCs are gathering these artifacts to give back to the empire, and the imperial forces who think the PCs are from another nation striving to get the technology first to use it against the empire in an ironic turning-of-the-tides.

And you can do this with almost any mundane treasure. It could be a goblet, a particularly bejeweled dagger that isn't really suitable for combat , a weird looking mask, or an unusual ancient coin, etc.