The Worm's Economy

"How much treasure should I be giving out in His Majesty the Worm?" I get this question sometimes, and wanted to address it in a blog post I could link to for posterity.

Admittedly, the book addresses this only very briefly to say that boom and bust cycles are both acceptable, and that it wasn't something to worry too much about. I did not mean to be obscure about this. It's probably just a result of how my brain works--I know its an economy that I control instead of, like, danger levels of a monster which are wildly different based on party composition and player strategy. Because I control it, I don't worry about it. But I should definitely broadcast my intentions here!

A game like OD&D cares more about a budget for treasure in a dungeon than it strictly does about monsters because treasure is how you level up. In future editions, this consideration is mostly inverted.

In His Majesty the Worm, both your treasure and monster budget can be a little messy. Characters can (should) have lean times and surplus times. Characters can (should) have hard fights and easy fights. Player choice and strategy will matter a lot here.

Guiding principles

Ideally, characters should get a lot of treasure, go back to the City, spend all of it, and go back into the dungeon broke and penniless. This parallels the lifecycles of stories like Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, who regularly win fabulous riches and begin most stories with empty pockets. A lot of mechanics are there to enforce this genre convention. 

Creating a budget

Imagine you are going to rate your adventurers from rank F to rank S. In rank F, players don't engage with anything in the dungeon, run from room to room, don't explore, never solve any puzzles, never press their luck. In rank S, they essentially clear the dungeon level, find every secret door, loot every chest, kick every monster's ass. Now, take your average party. For me, it's about 6 players. In a 30 room dungeon, the average party might go back to the City once, maybe twice. Because S rank should be rewarded with luxurious upkeep, that's a budget of 200 gold for S rank. For each time they visit the City, the players should have some small amount of extra gold for actions like Commission Craft, Research, and Training. For S rank players, maybe its 100g per City Phase. Don't forget taxes. Double your gold that you've earmarked because half of it is going away as soon as you step into the City. So 6 players x 2 (taxes) x (100 gold (upkeep) + 100 gold (extras)) x 2 (average City Phase visits per dungeon level) = a budget of 4,800 gold per dungeon level hidden in every nook and cranny. Assuming players, in general, don't find every cache, every secret, every hidden door, every monster hoard, it basically boils down to "just scraping by." This is back of the napkin math. It is not exact.

The diminishing returns of dungoneering

Caveat 1:  Don't "solve" money problems

One of the big risks for Worm games is messing too much with the essential assumptions of the game. Don't solve "fighting monsters" by giving players a magic sword that kills every monster. Don't solve "tracking food" by giving players a magic lunchbox that infinitely burps out rations. Don't solve "getting broke" by giving players too much treasure. Players who want to set up shop and game the VERY BASIC treasure economy should press pause on their Worm game and start playing a different game instead (I really encourage you to play lots of games!). It's kind of easy to break if you let it be easy to break. 

If players want to buy a house in the City to try and avoid paying for Upkeep...well, don't let them. You bought a house? Sure, you're not sleeping in the inn anymore! Fine! But now you have a mortgage. Some of the City actions are essentially there to just buy doll houses and doll clothes for your dolls. They're not supposed to reflect anything close to a "real economy." 

It is better for the experience that the game is trying to achieve to give players too little money than too much.

Caveat 2: Don't restock treasure (maybe)

Treasure is one of the things that should have diminishing returns as the dungeon restocks. As treasure is stripped away, players are incentivized to delve deeper and deeper to afford their adventuring lifestyle. Elsewise, players will often just linger in the uppermost reaches of the Underworld, and long-term megadungeon campaign play can grow stagnate. As with everything, let your taste and good sense guide you here.

By the way

Have you been keeping up with my course Designing Dungeons: How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less? Chapter 8: Running and Resting (on boss monsters and empty rooms) just released! Come build a dungeon with me, step by step.