ThurlRavenscrof
2017-04-27, 04:52 PM
My second main hobby is running D&D but my first main hobby is watching documentaries. Something I love about combining these hobbies is that my campaigns can be new and interesting and different while still being totally reasonable.
Something I recently learned is that gems are infinitely more complicated and enigmatic than I thought. For example:
Almost all gems can be a huge variety of different colors - because of this it's almost impossible to tell what type of gem you have just by looking at it
Certain gems can only be found in certain environments - emeralds are scraped out of mountains, sapphires are sifted out of sediment in a mine, opals are almost exclusively found in Australia, etc
Gems have no objective value. This is partially because certain societies value certain gems differently. (Like we value diamonds very highly but rubies are actually much more rare)
In general gems are not as rare as gold (they are worth more for a variety of reasons, but out in the wild, you're more likely to find a gem than gold)
Now obviously, I wouldn't incorporate this into my campaigns by making my players do a million "gem identification" checks or rolling for a unique value for every gem they come across any other book keeping. BUT I do think it would be cool to have this information inform my world building.
Like maybe when the party goes into a dungeon carved into a mountainside, many of the inhabitants have emeralds but as they go deeper down they find only sapphires.
Maybe a Xorn is more drawn to a PC carrying a ruby since they are more rare (and more delicious?)
Maybe the party finds a gem they think is a sapphire only to later find out later that its a priceless blue diamond
Maybe when the party teleports to another continent, all of their valuable gems of a certain type are worthless (like jade outside of China)
Just some ideas I had - let me know what you think or if you have ideas of your own!
Something I recently learned is that gems are infinitely more complicated and enigmatic than I thought. For example:
Almost all gems can be a huge variety of different colors - because of this it's almost impossible to tell what type of gem you have just by looking at it
Certain gems can only be found in certain environments - emeralds are scraped out of mountains, sapphires are sifted out of sediment in a mine, opals are almost exclusively found in Australia, etc
Gems have no objective value. This is partially because certain societies value certain gems differently. (Like we value diamonds very highly but rubies are actually much more rare)
In general gems are not as rare as gold (they are worth more for a variety of reasons, but out in the wild, you're more likely to find a gem than gold)
Now obviously, I wouldn't incorporate this into my campaigns by making my players do a million "gem identification" checks or rolling for a unique value for every gem they come across any other book keeping. BUT I do think it would be cool to have this information inform my world building.
Like maybe when the party goes into a dungeon carved into a mountainside, many of the inhabitants have emeralds but as they go deeper down they find only sapphires.
Maybe a Xorn is more drawn to a PC carrying a ruby since they are more rare (and more delicious?)
Maybe the party finds a gem they think is a sapphire only to later find out later that its a priceless blue diamond
Maybe when the party teleports to another continent, all of their valuable gems of a certain type are worthless (like jade outside of China)
Just some ideas I had - let me know what you think or if you have ideas of your own!