I have already expressed my views on the non-problem there being 2000 copper pieces in a nest of Giant Rats [Abstract of that post: D&D is a game of abstractions]. 1-8 silver pieces in the purse of Goblin, on the other hand...
I spent a part of Friday[1] converting U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh[2] for use as an intro game for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. I'm still not sure whether I'll invite the players to roll up first level characters, which are pretty powerful compared to classic D&D first levellers, or whether I'll use it as a 'funnel'. A group of townsfolk investigate the haunted house - what could be a better funnel than that? [3] And, never mind the fact that the rest of the U series provides possibilities for future adventure, should the players so choose, U1 itself has the zero-level funnel - The Haunted House - and the first test of the surviving first-level characters - The Sea Ghost.
Converting an [A]D&D adventure to DCC RPG is a piece of cake[4], for the most part. Monsters can be statted up very simply and straightforwardly, and without the 'compulsion' to make every person a properly levelled character so can NPCs, using the examples in the book as a quick rule of thumb. Treasure is not so straightforward. U1, like many AD&D modules, hands out a fair bit of treasure, and more than a few magical items. This runs counter to the intended tone of my game, which, while it does not adhere entirely to the principles the in DCC RPG that magical items are exceptionally rare and unique and that no-one is lugging tens of thousands of gold coins about the place, does try to keep close to that flavour.
The DCC RPG fanzine Crawl! #2 has a pretty nifty treasure generation system (which pretty much makes magic items an incredibly rare random possibility - but there is nothing to stop you putting one there as a Judge), and Chris Hogan of Vaults of Nagoh has a couple of useful thoughts on treasure [Simplified Corpse Robbing, Corpses as Treasure], and I could always use the random treasure generators from Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e or WFRP1e (yup, there is one), all of which would provide more appropriate loot than the hundreds upon hundreds of GP on offer in U1. Of course, first I would have to scale back the reward from the Saltmarsh Council - 500GP per person is the sort of money that could hire an army of professional soldiers in AD&D.
Anyway, I did not mean for the big treasures to be the point of this post, but some of the smallest. So, there's some Goblins, see. And they're each carrying 1-8 SP in their coin purses. If you are going to get flustered by Giant Rats and their 2000CP, you damn well ought be annoyed by this. Why? Because Goblins carrying currency that the PCs can spend raises far more (interesting) questions about the way the game world works than does a pile of treasure in a rats' nest. Does the Goblin economy rely on human currency for exchange? In the default AD&D setting, I'd guess not. Do Goblins regularly trade with human settlements? In the default AD&D setting, I'd guess not. Maybe rarely, when a tribal chieftain carries a strong box full of stolen loot down the crossroads at midnight, to trade with an arms dealer (yes, I know where U are going...). So there is a case for coins in a goblin lair, but 1-8 SP of walking around money...? What are they going to spend it on? Now, despite what is written in U1 (and nearly every other [A]D&D module), in which the Goblin's personal treasure is a handful of coins, perhaps, in fact, they have (silver) jewellery worth 1-8 SP.
Or, perhaps Goblins do engage in inter-humanoid trade a little more regularly than the default AD&D setting suggests. Perhaps the rules imply a setting that is a bit more Blacksand! than Greyhawk?
They might love their job, but they still want to get paid.
Of course - D&D is a game of abstractions, stupid [5]. Don't break the fun!
[1] The game didn't happen as everything got delayed and delayed until it was too late to begin, so we played a boardgame instead. Kids, eh? This week though...
[2] Eight pound odd for .pdfs of the complete U series is good value. The scans from dndclassics.com, however, are far from brilliant - nothing like the quality of the free teaser, B1. The whole thing looks shoddy, not least because there are missing characters down the edge of some of the pages. The characters can be easily inferred, but still, it is far short of what I had been expecting.
[3] Well, actually, I'd actually like to see - maybe I'll write - a zero-level funnel in which the players are the mob, pitchforks and all, storming Frankenstein's castle. That's 'Frankensteen', by the way.
[4] Though, we will still have to see how this cake actually tastes.
[5] I'm not saying that it breaks the fun, but if you want the abstractions to make sense - at least relative to each other - then you can do a lot worse than Adventurer, Conqueror, King System (ACKS), which is up there with LotFP as a clean, efficient version of classic D&D.
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