Loot-O-Matic

The Loot-O-Matic from Grimtooth Industries

Some people ponder the big questions. Why are we here? Where are we going?
What would happen if I taped a piece of toast to a cats back butter-side up and dropped it? Not me though, I'm pondering how my solitaire adventures through Trollworld compare to other peoples and, given a choice which random treasure generator would you use?

There are a lot of fine choices out there. From the bog standard generators that come with the rules (which we'll be focusing on in this post), on-line generators, generators from other systems that you can convert to Tunnels and Trolls, your own homebrew creations that best represent your own vision of Trollworld and, of course the fine generators that can be found in Elder Tunnels.

Personally given a choice between 5.5 and 7.5, I prefer the generator in the latter. Not that there's anything wrong with the 5.5 generator.. It's just not as interesting. It produces coins, jewels and, jeweled items. That's it!

7.5 however can produce all of that (in greater variation) plus weapons, armor, potions and, other magical bits and bobs. Which sounds great, in theory. The only problem is that it can go a bit (and for a bit, read WAY) overboard in the net worth of the treasure it dishes out, in one case handing a 1st level character a necklace worth in excess of 23,000... Yeah.. Just a "bit" overboard.

Other than it's Mad Hatter nature though, it's a good generator, so what to do? Enter homebrewing to fix an error that should have frankly been glaringly obvious from the word get go, the first table.

The first table in the 7.5 rulebook makes it just as likely that you'll roll jewels as coins, with a separate entry for jeweled items, meaning that it is now four times more likely that you'll find jewels of some description when compared to 5.5 and, twice as likely that you'll find jewels instead of coins.. Which common sense would tell you just isn't right.

My solution

Replace the first table in the book with the following one:

2D6 DARO

2-7: Money [See Money Table]

8-12: Weapon [See Weapon Table]

13-16: Armor [See Armor Table]

17-19: Jewels [See Jewels Table]

20-21: Jewelry [See Jewelery Table]

22+: Potion [See Potion Table]

Admittedly it's only a start but it I feel it goes a long way towards "fixing" the generator. Given time I will probably end up modifying all of the 7.5 tables along the same lines and, maybe introduce a few other McGuffins such as mundane items and a more robust et of tables for generating magical items.