Creating Treasure Maps
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- Treasure maps combine all sorts of game play and story mechanics in one. History is replete with stories of lost hordes and buried riches that people search for to this day. Treasure maps also provide an excellent framework to develop the story-line and history of your world; they're usually artifacts from the recent or distant past, and the accumulation of a great treasure usually involves a whole chain of activities that are interwoven in that history.
What this points to is the appeal of searching for treasure beyond simply the game mechanic value of what it can buy. Part of this is the eternal attraction of getting something of great value simply by taking it, and part is the detective work involved; whether it's to decipher a map or set of clues and then to search for the right location. And the more difficult the task means potentially a greater treasure horde; if no one has yet deciphered the clues to its location or made their way through the traps and guardians, then no one has looted the treasure.
A geographic treasure map doesn't have to be on a piece of parchment; the classic tattoo map we see in pirate movies. Other types of documents and even verbal information that you can include under the heading of treasure map include scrolls and books that are a prose description of a treasure that gives directions to where to find it. You can also have a history of some event which gives clues on a treasure, or one that describes a great treasure, whether it's of a powerful figure, creature or group, or even one that describes the hiding of that treasure.
Another important distinction between treasures are those whose location is generally known and those where the location itself is an aspect of the treasure. In The Hobbit everyone knew where Smaug the dragon lived; in the Dwarven halls of Erebor. So taking these treasures is a heist as opposed to a mission of discovery, and any “map” to these treasures usually involves some kind of secret route inside or method to steal the treasure from under its owner.
So in order to create a lost or hidden treasure map, you want to answer a few questions before you start drawing. Why was the treasure hidden and/or forgotten? Who hid the treasure and why? Who created the map? Where is the treasure and what is the difficulty of retrieving it?
I talk about three basic forms of hidden treasure in this video: the horde, the tomb, and the accidental treasure. The horde is the classic treasure, whether buried in ancient times, the pirate era, or within the last hundred years. Often these hordes were hurriedly buried to prevent invaders or the authorities from taking them.
Tombs are much easier to document and find, because they are often architecturally impressive and well known. But for this reason they are usually looted fairly quickly. Most of the pyramids in Egypt had no treasure; but King Tut's burial chamber remained hidden until 1922, and it revealed an incredible treasure. So with a viable tomb treasure you either have a tomb that is so old it has crumbled away or been overrun by geography; whether through the effects of weather or earthquakes or plant growth. Or it is still hidden; it was constructed to evade tomb robbers.
The final category is the accidental treasure, and this usually, but not always, comes from a natural disaster. The most obvious example is the shipwreck. bit you can also have earthquakes and tsunamis that wipe out a settlement or keep or even a whole civilization; think of the legend of Atlantis. You can also have a plague which wipes out an area and leaves the area devastated such that no one can enter for a long period of time. I covered volcanic eruptions in an earlier video.
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Great video! I am a huge fan of treasure maps so I look forward to future installments.
Glad you liked it! I can't wait to create some.
Great Video!
Thanks!
I ran a treasure hunt based on Edgar Allan Poe's Gold Bug short story, challenging the PCs to travel to new places in the world. I used it to both deepen a PC's backstory, but also provide a lore item that the group are tracking down. Great fun. Maps and riddles and pirates. I even used clips from the audiobook as part of the 'oral history' around the treasure. I produced the document the characters in the story look at and sent it to my PCs in UK and Australia.
Great stuff here colpow11! Audio clips is a very cool idea. We all loved pirates as kids, and it never really goes away.
Hello Kevin, great video and great topic! In AD&D days, I think every adventure started with a map of some kind. This is why Rumors were so important. Gave you glues to the location entrance and it give you an idea of what your up against. Like the idea of underwater treasure, but it should be a watery trap. Let's say Three Hungry Giant Bass are guarding the treasure. The party keeps getting sprayed by different monsters, plants and traps in the dungeon, all acting like a Musk to attract the Bass at the end of the adventure. Nothing beats watching your companion get swallowed whole, lol! Looking forward to your next video.
Thanks Kevin you have a wonderful day!
You are right on the importance of maps in older editions Matt. I like the idea of giant bass: you can use the swallow rules given on the giant catfish but make them faster, ambush hunters!
Thanks for making this!
Glad you liked it!
Thanks Kevin.
Thanks back.
Another great video! I like your ideas about treasure maps. I should use them in my game more. I have one player whose character spends a lot of downtime hanging out in libraries doing research. I've been able to share a lot of lore that way and its been a great source of quest hooks. I think it may be time to have his character find a lost treasure map wedged into one of those dusty old tomes...
Great to hear from you Joel! Nothing better than a player who uses downtime to research. It gives you as the GM a chance to give out information in a logical way, and the player gets a leg up on rivals. Try the "two pages glued together" trope to give him that long lost treasure map!
@@DDHomebrew Ooh! I'm not familiar with that trope. Tell me more! Please :)
@@SonOfSofaman Here's one version: your research player finds a history of an expedition that claimed to have found a great treasure and buried it. Most of the group died before they could recover the treasure. The last member, let's call him Sam, wrote the history when he was an old man, and said in the preface that the key to finding the treasure lay between the islands of X and Y (you pick the names). Adventurers have searched the areas between these two islands for a hundred years, yet have found nothing. There are many copies of this legendary history, but of course only one original. First your player has to determine that this is the original, hand written by Sam himself. With no printing presses, the book is hand written on parchment, one page a side. When one reads the book, the Isle of X description is on page 129, while the Isle of Y description is on page 130. And pasted between these (on the back of page 129) is Sam's map, which shows the treasure in a location no where near island X or Y. And off they go!
@@DDHomebrew Oh, cool. A bit of a puzzle for the players to work out. Thank you! This is going to be fun.
I dont recommend running underwater adventures, it sounds good but it's not fun haha
They are way more complicated. But if you do it rarely and give them limited underwater breathing and movement magic it can work.