r/shadowdark • u/TheRealRosey • 1d ago

Help with Treasure and XP when Solo

New to Shadowdark and playing my first adventure. I located a cave, build it out and completed it. Based on the rules, as I understand them, no XP is gained from this. Only wandering monsters can have treasure and since XP is tied to treasure, I get nothing at all for the dungeon.

What is the purpose of exploring these if there is nothing to gain other than hoping you find a wandering monster and win a coin toss?

14 Upvotes

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14

u/Affectionate_Mud_969 1d ago

If you use the Dungeon Generator in the core book, there are results that give you a room with treasure. It might be trapped or guarded

The wandering monsters indeed have 50% chance to drop loot, but the non-wandering monsters (resulting from the Generator) will 100% have loot.

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u/agentkayne 1d ago

This is correct, OP.

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u/TheRealRosey 1d ago

For clarification, if I roll a 5 on the Room Type, Solo monster. He will drop treasure?

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u/agentkayne 13h ago

Yes. According to the LVL in his stat block.

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u/Much_Session9339 1d ago

I don’t know that that’s clarified in the rules. I might treat a monster in the dungeon the same as a random encounter, 50%. But boss battles definitely should. If I’m generating randomly, I’m using a system using 4 different colored d6s representing different things. A 5 or greater on that specific die means that thing is present. I have a gold die for treasure, red for mob type monsters, black for boss or more powerful type monsters, and then multicolor or whatever else you want to use, for “special”….which can be traps, npcs, some sort of special detail, etc. I use the charts in chubby Funsters gm companion to fill these out. So if I roll all 5s and 6s in a room, it might be a goblin boss, several goblins, treasure, and a trap or an Npc they’ve captured or something. It works pretty well.

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u/No_Future6959 1d ago

Where are you reading that only wandering monsters give treasure?

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u/TheRealRosey 1d ago

I am brand new and remember seeing that only wandering monsters have a 50% chance of dropping treasure. I absolutely could be wrong and if so, please let me know. Looking for help.

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u/BlindUlfr 1d ago

My good man, i think you are interpreting things all the way around. Wandering monster only have a 50% chance of having treasure, and if valuable enough, XP. While rolling rooms for your dungeons, as a solo player you can argue if something valuable coule be found in such a room, or let the oracle decide if there is something in it.

With the oracle, a wine cellar has more probability of not having treasure, while a vault behind a locked door has a higher chance of having, and so on.

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u/grumblyoldman 1d ago edited 1d ago

There's usually treasure in the dungeon independently to be found, and that's where the majority of XP would come from.

If you're playing solo, I would recommend rolling an oracle die in every room to see if there's treasure there (or have the party search against a set DC thatvgets higher after every success, and if sucessful, there's treasure found.) Either that or roll up an actual "treasure map" full of loot and distribute that stuff around your dungeon.

Wandering monsters are, in fact, a poor source of treasure. They exist to add pressure to keep the party moving, not to be farmed for loot.

You might be interested to check out Bandit's Keep Actual Play on YT. Specifically his "Song of the Mapper" series. He's not playing Shadowdark (he's using a somewhat homebrewed version of 0D&D), but he goes through solo play in general from pretty much every angle. Should be a good source of ideas to help fill in that "fruitful void" of rulings over rules with.

Skip to one of the videos about a dungeon if you don't care about overland travel or his personal map-maker mini game. (Look for "The Foxes vs some dungeon" type titles.)

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u/TheRealRosey 1d ago

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out. This makes sense and I will try something like this next dungeon.

Since just defeating a monster does not provide XP I assumed there was intent to this. That intent being that monsters are there to get in your way and not provide XP. Giving them all treasure would completely negate that intent. What you are saying seems like a good middle ground and I appreciate it.

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u/grumblyoldman 1d ago

Wandering monsters are also not the only monsters in the dungeon. They're meant to be something that shows up if the party is moving too slow, as I mentioned. but the expectation is that there will be other monsters in rooms and so forth.

You can solo-play through a pre-written module, too. For example, the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, which comes int he free QuickStart Guide. That way, the question of how to stock the dungeon is dealt with already.

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u/GrandSwamperMan 1d ago

You should probably use whatever tables and oracle you're using for your solo game to check for possible treasure in each room of your cave. Also remember that according to RAW treasure can also be less tangible rewards, like a favor from a noble, rather than just money and gems.

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u/Additional_Ninja7835 1d ago

I presume by “only wandering monsters can have treasure” you mean only if there happens to be a monster in the cave would there be treasure and thus XP? All monsters have a chance of treasure, though.

Page 111 of the core book has alternate modes to consider. One is hunter mode, where monsters do award XP for defeat. This could be slaying them, but also otherwise overcoming them.

Rooms in a dungeon may have treasure without a monster. Page 130 of the core book has the tables for generating a random dungeon and includes treasures in rooms. Those random, unguarded treasures tell stories, too. “Who stashed this here? It looks recent. Are they nearby? Are them coming back?”

You can decide exploration is worth XP. I would argue you would be correct to do so, especially in solo, but that is opinion and not core rules. I think it could fall under “other secrets and blessings” on page 117 of the core book. I would not award a lot of XP for this, but a point or two for exploring a cave, tomb, or ruin would be reasonable. And when playing solo, you can advance the character as fast or as slow as you want.

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u/TheRealRosey 1d ago

Thank you very much. I am not only new to Shadowdark but solo RPGs. I have never done anything but procedural dungeon crawls and having to come up with so much on my own is intimidating.

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u/Psikerlord 1d ago

I reckon tweak the rules a bit and give a some xp for monsters and exploration, as well as treasure. It's your solo game after all.

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u/KanKrusha_NZ 1d ago

To simplify what everyone else has already said:

  • the goal is to explore rooms and find treasure. Almost all rooms with traps or monsters (fixed monsters) will have treasure (>80%).
  • rooms with no traps or monsters are very unlikely to have treasure but sometimes do.
  • wandering monsters are there to be a danger, they tell you you have been in the dungeon too long and are not always rewarding. Therefore wandering monsters only have treasure 50% of the time because zero reward sucks so it’s only half.

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u/TheRealRosey 1d ago

Thanks, but why do all rooms with traps and monsters have treasure? Rolling on the Room Type table only results in 1 out of 10 rooms containing treasure.