Pet peeves: sensible loot

Or lack thereof, to be more precise.

Consider: My mighty Warrior (from any fantasy RPG of your choice) starts his day by strapping on a w_i_d_e array of armor that includes components for arm, leg, head, torso, and family jewels protection. Next he straps on an assortment of weapons for up-close combat as well as long range deathdealing. Since the world as of yet has not developed ATMs, most of my available cash, consisting of umpty-hundred gold, silver, and copper pieces is placed in a miniature Bag of Holding coin purse. Lastly, I grab up a backpack that contains all of my other worldly possessions. Fully accoutered, I sally forth to face the world. Only to have an evil archmage skewer me with a Death spell of some sort, making me keel over without a scratch on me.

Now, the question I have in mind is: What kind of loot would you expect a scavenger to find on my corpse? If loot-finding works for NPCs the same way it does for player characters, the answer is, "Hardly anything at all."

Just think back over the last dozen RPGs that you've played. After devastating a variety of opponents, what kind of loot did you usually find on the vanquished? Using Dragon Age: Origins as an example, the scavenging efforts usually turn up nothing at all for a significant percentage of the deceased. For another significant percentage you will find just some coins, amounting to just a couple gold pieces at most. And for the majority of those that remains you may find, at most, ONE weapon and/or ONE piece of armor. (And have you ever noticed that you never find just ONE usable boot or glove? Those only seem to appear in pairs.)

Anybody out there ever do some Real World archaeology? In particular, excavation at some historically significant ancient battlefield. How much in the way of weapons and armor did you find? For those that have NOT had such an experience, the answer is "next to nothing". Why is that? That is because in the vast majority of cases, the victors and scavengers collect 99+% of whatever the casualties had in the way of usable possessions. The few weapons and armor found at ancient battlefields were usually items lost in the underbrush or whatever, left to be found by some modern metal detector. About the only places where weapons and armor can be found aplenty are on sea bottoms below where naval engagements occurred and where the scavengers couldn't get to them.

There is a VERY simple reason why items were so thoroughly scavenged: Prior to the rise of nationalism, there were actually very few uniform military units. Most units were comprised of men drawn from tight-knit communities. And, most importantly, most warriors were responsible for providing their own weapons and equipment. And the cheapest way to upgrade your equipment was to take items off of the losers' corpses. (Which is why "control of the battlefield" was a primary objective to armies everywhere.) Even if a soldier found gear inferior to his own, he would still snarf it up as there would undoubtedly be others in his unit that saw it as an improvement on what they currently possessed.

"But," you rightly ask, "wouldn't a scavenger quickly be overloaded by his loot?" In a word, yes. Which means he needed to be fairly selective about what he kept and what he discarded. High on the list of discards would be broken and seriously damaged weapons and equipment. However, discards usually became "donations" to the unit's Quartermaster. Even damaged stuff is useful for cheap repairs and/or cannibalizing parts. Besides, the victors really, really, really disliked leaving repairable gear lying about where the serfs and peasants could get their hands on it. (Can we say, "Peasant Revolt"?) So whatever the troops didn't snarf up at first blush usually got collected by a work detail.

So, what does all this have to do with a fantasy? Well, dammit, I want to see a more accurate representation of wealth-gathering! And here "wealth" is defined as "ANYTHING that can be used or sold for any amount at all."

Understandably, if there was indeed a more "realistic" representation of the spoils of war, then the packrats amongst us would try to snarf up e_v_e_r_y_t_h_i_n_g. That's primarily because nearly all RPGs reward kleptomania; players have become Pavlovized to some large extent. So, in order to curtail such packratting, it would become necessary to invoke encumbrance rules: "Sorry, but trying to lug around that second set of full plate armor WILL totally incapacitate you. No, you will NOT be able to creep along at 1/4 speed. Make the hard decision as to what you will keep and what you will abandon to the scavengers that follow in your wake." And I will freely admit that I would see encumbrance rules as a Good Thing. If anything, it might actually put a damper on the kleptomania. (I always found it peculiar how even Lawful Good characters would automatically snarf up anything that wasn't nailed down.)

I can understand that designers fear that players would obsess with item accumulation. AND undoubtedly there would be those that whine about being forced to abandon valuable loot. AND _all_ of that takes the player away from the brilliant storyline that the designers have created. AND it would increase the number of in-game items by several orders of magnitude. AND, "Heck," say the designers, "NOT doing it the way suggested has been the norm for practically forever; why should we change that now?"

Why should games be made to be more "realistic"? Because the more realistic a game is, the more immersive it becomes. There is less demand on Suspension of Disbelief. Doing so would make an RPG more ROLEplaying than ROLLplaying. I have no doubt that probably the VAST majority of players really don't care about how unrealistic a game is. Most probably even feel that the streamlining provided by the status quo of games is just fine, as that is what they are already used to. Well, fine; I have no argument with "Different strokes for different folks." I just would be pleased to see at least ONE occasion where the "make it more realistic" segment of players get stroked for a change.