Realistic loot

But yea, the devs have said that treasure chests in dungeons will be populated with loot lost from players to the world. How do you think this happens if monsters don't take your items when you die?

 

If you find good gear you would have to decided to maybe drop soemthing you already have. Provided it is better.
I would not consider going to town every time.
Right now I am playing Wasteland 2. There is encumbrance used. When I defeat an enemy and loot him I decide whether it is worth taking the things with me or not, maybe dropping some older gear my party has. I don't have to take everything with me. And I go to town when I am near one.

 

Wolf kills dude with sword in scab. Drags body to den...wolf has sword

plate mail and such <shrug> I'm sitting at a desk watching TV and playing on my computer. If I can suspend reality that far, accepting I didn't get the plate is not that much more of a stretch. Also, I would not be surprised to find a warrior in platemail also has an axe, that is realistic.

 

The sword might be in the wolf's den, but the wolf wouldn't be carrying the sword around. And I think Darkmoon is more worried about the question of what happens to the plate mail and the two handed sword than he is about where the axe comes from.

 

The axe came from his belt, or strapped across his back or it fell from his horse as it bolted away.

As to the wolf. It has long been an assumption that when one kills a mob, one hunts down his den/cave/lair etc....
Back when I started playing AD&D (1978) my first DM always made us hunt down the mobs lair. Kill a dragon, great...here's your XP. Oh, you want his treasure haul, you have to find his lair. After a few sessions of that nonsense there was a revolt. Since then every game I played (no matter the DM or if it was at CON) it was an assumption that we tracked down the lair and got the goodies. Now if the DM wasn't prepared he'd torture us with the lair hunt and wing it.

 

So you cared more about goodies than storytelling?

 

no, we cared about storytelling more. That's why we didn't want to get distracted by wasting all that time looking for the treasure. The dragon hoard was one of the few that was part of the story. But the rest was just wasting time.

Getting a few copper off a wolf is hardly "story" worthy. Now if they dropped an artifact level vorpal blade, that would be story killing.

 

You don't need to get anything off the wolf, though. Its just a wolf.

 

Lets be honest here that wolf definitely had gold on him

 

Take the wolf tooth and make a magic amulet :>

 

It's never "just a wolf". And please follow the conversation.

Wolves will drag things back to their den, for pups and other assorted reasons. If that meat happens to come attached to a body then there will be whatever was on the body, also as you're tracking to the den you can find things that may have fallen off the body as it was being dragged.....
Thus finding the den can be beneficial.
Also stuff gets matted into a wolves fur, so light items can be found with the wolves carcass.
Also, dogs eat stuff and sometimes they swallow stuff the vet has to fish out. This goes for wolves as well.

 

I'm following. There's no reason wolves have to drag things back to their den, either. And if they do, there's no rule that you have to look for it. (ie dont blame the DM)

Though in most cases, if someone in your party has decent tracking skill (ranger), I can't imagine it would be hard to find the den or much of an adventure.

 

No one cares where the axe came from. He's wondering what happened to the plate mail and the sword.

And that second bit might have long been the assumption with your group. It hasn't been with mine. I've played a grand total of one campaign where that assumption was made. P&P games are much more fun when the players are made to find the den and choose whether or not they want to enter and explore. The trick for the DM is to make it a fun experience instead of something petty. I pinky promise it can be done. Sounds like your first DM was just terrible. Like redfish says, if someone in your party has decent Tracking skill, finding a den (especially for a dragon) isn't hard.

 

@Trenyc,

A for-hire NPC ranger could have always been available. It also seems pretty believable that some people in the towns would have heard stories about where the dragon came from. :/

 

I've had many excellent DMs and I've DM/GM'd a few times myself. It really depends on what you're doing, when I'm working through something that has a detailed storyline where the minor stuff comes from is irrelevant. You may find it exciting adding unnecessary tedium into a game but that's never been the case in the games I've been involved in. "hey lets go spend an hour looking for a few copper and a dagger"...zzzzzz

 

This is sort of a silly line of conversation anyway, since we aren't really talking about DnD here. But I suppose we're both right. It's up to the DM, and different groups will have different preferences.

 

And I wasn't speaking just of D&D. Every game PNP and online pretty much labor under the same assumption.

 

That's a big assumption for online games. I'd sooner assume that wolves dropping gold and weapons is a convention meant to reward players for fighting wolves, which otherwise might be ignored completely. As for pen and paper, I wouldn't know. DnD and Warhammer are the only PnP games I've played, and wolves aren't really a concern in Warhammer. As for DnD, well just have to agree to disagree. I know some DMs chose to play the way you describe, but I don't agree that way is better or that it's the "right" way.

 

Well there is one point I'll agree. If I'm fighting someone I definitely don't like it when I kill them and that cool sword they were using is no where to be found. I think that should be something the dev's code into the game. Now they could make it beyond repair or something like that, but it still should be there. Maybe even allow me to make a pattern out of it so I can reproduce it.

as to "I'd sooner assume that wolves dropping gold and weapons is a convention meant to reward players for fighting wolves, which otherwise might be ignored completely. "

That statement could be applied to D&D or any game, including this one.

 

Right, but there's no reason to try to justify a convention for convenience's sake with lore-friendly explanations. So what if the wolf has a sword? It's done that way so you don't end up with 50,000 people camping Orc Younglings because those do drop swords.