Treasure Trails, Part 1

Similar to quests, treasure trails in RuneScape are an open-ended narrative activity, but which happen in the background of the main plot. Like quests, they have a wide geographic spread, discrete beginnings and endings, varied prerequisites, and so on. But unlike quests, they are inexhaustible: each trail of one to eight clues ends only in finding a cache of weapons and treasure, regardless of what other story is implied in the process.

A treasure trail reward, glitched.

I think a tabletop implementation of this system needs to do three things:

1. The players need to know that the clues represent an ongoing side-plot and not the next big adventure. One way to do this might be to give the “solutions” a time component:

   Meet me by the fountain in the market square.

   becomes

   Meet me by the fountain in the market square the morning after the full moon.

   This way, the plot is still in motion, but the players know that it can take a back seat. With other types of clue, this could be difficult, and it may be easier to be up-front with your players about this prioritization.

2. To an extent, these suffer from many classic complaints about puzzles. They test player skill as a proxy for character skill. Not every player will enjoy them. They might hold up the game. There are puzzles that avoid this, but I think the procedural nature of a treasure trail precludes the careful construction of an OSR-style puzzle. Again, the players will need to be on-board with a certain degree of extra-textual thinking, and it’s probably easiest to ask for that directly.

3. I would really play up the conspiracy angle. In RuneScape, treasure trails are littered with odd code phrases, double-agents, and secret stashes. But in an open-ended, unbounded MMO, the conspiracy can never be “solved.” I want to outline some broad cold-war plot to be uncovered slowly. Perhaps the party is being brought in as unwitting agents or chosen to receive leaked information.

One difficulty here is that, like random events, treasure trails quickly begin to imply things about the world. I’m outlining a possible system here, but it will take some finagling to drop into an existing setting. It’s also true that given enough use, the system will start to repeat itself. This is OK: the first solutions are problems of difficulty, but later solutions are problems of logistics.

Some cryptic clues, glitched.

Starting a Treasure Trail

Whenever a body is searched or a chest is opened, there is a baseline 1% chance to find a clue scroll. (RuneScape limits you to one scroll of each difficulty level, but I see no reason to enforce that here.) Perhaps the campaign involves fewer body-searches and chest-openings than expected, and then this could be changed. Perhaps this replaces the “blue gears” random event.

What’s it say?

Roll 1d6 + the number of previous clues in the trail:

1. Compromised Handoff
2. Quid Pro Quo
3. Combat
4. Riddle
5. Handoff
6. Anagram
7. Intel (reward)
8. Loot (reward)

Anagram

“Speak…

1. ‘I hear the circus is in town.’
2. ‘No fruits grow here.’
3. ‘The magpie sues for peace, but the raven urges war.’
4. ‘How many eggs are in an omelet?’
5. ‘By some miracle, we have no food.’
6. ‘The wolf blames the fox, but the fox blames the hare.’

…to…

1. MEAT QUART.”

   Marquetta, a butcher
2. SPRY EEL.”

   Presley, a fisher
3. AIR OIL.”

   Ilario, a silversmith
4. HER TORN.”

   Therron, a cooper
5. LENTEN MICE.”

   Clementine, a tailor
6. TARN CREEP.”

   Carpenter, a baker

It’s not critical that the players have met the target NPCs yet, but they should be able to find them by reputation and they shouldn’t move around too much. Merchants, bureaucrats, captains, and so on. Adapting to an existing setting, I would need to pre-generate plausible anagrams of their names and ensure they had a wide geographic distribution.

Without a code phrase,¹ the target will not elaborate on or acknowledge their participation in this system, and watching them will not reveal anything further.

Handoff

“Meet me…

1. behind the silk-seller’s stall
2. outside the old city walls
3. at the peak of the mountain
4. in the courthouse conference room
5. on the steps of the temple
6. at the windswept inn

…

1. at midnight after the new moon.
2. when the snow is melting.
3. while the priests are at the festival.
4. at midday, midweek.
5. the day after the big arrest.
6. before the next caravan leaves.

I will know you by your…

1. red
2. pink
3. green
4. gleaming
5. indigo
6. floral

…

1. hat
2. cloak
3. staff
4. gloves
5. skirt
6. boots

…and your…

1. merry jig.”
2. costume jewels.”
3. coin tricks.”
4. open weeping.”
5. conspicuous generosity.”
6. humble begging.”

That looks like a lot of dice-rolling! ²

Handoffs are made by Henry, a nondescript bureaucratic man with a knack for appearing and disappearing. He takes the clue scroll and returns a briefcase and a code phrase before vanishing:

1. “Even a loss can be a victory.”
2. “You can’t hide from your spouse.”
3. “Death helps the old man carry wood.”
4. “The donkey’s long ears betray him.”
5. “Though the saucepan has legs, it cannot walk.”
6. “For fifteen reasons we could not comply.”

Combat

“The…

1. goblin
2. bridge troll
3. guard
4. bear
5. farmer
6. dragon

…has it.”

The nearest creature of that type has the next clue scroll, whether the players fight for it or obtain it more subtly.

Riddles

Straightforward. Each riddle points to a location.

1. Fleas were we on rippling skin
   Our host’s blood we now rest in
   Daily still its heartbeat felt
   Batters us with salt and drought

   A beached shipwreck.
2. Proud I stand across the lane
   My patron’s virtues I proclaim
   Fierce of will and wise in force
   So gracious I’ll not stop your course

   A triumphal arch.
3. White column advances sea to sea
   Far from home, retreating leaves me
   Goliath to my buried corps
   I stand where sun and shower pour

   A glacial erratic.
4. Earth’s rich grains, cut to refine
   Brilliant harvest none outshine
   Now I lie fallow, barren, untilled
   My farmer’s purpose long fulfilled

   An abandoned mine shaft.
5. Assassin I, of oldest kings
   Now I rule on reaching wings
   Unsure reign with hollow heart
   My loyal soldiers downward dart

   A banyan tree.
6. Lethargic charges I accrue
   Warm mother to cold-blooded brood
   With crystal clarity I defend
   My wards from you, and you from them

   The reptile house.

It may ease the solution greatly if the existence of these locations in the game world is a known or knowable fact, or if the riddles are substituted for better ones.

Quid Pro Quo

These look like anagrams, but unscrambled. The agents, however, will need something in return.

“Speak…

1. ‘More geese.’
2. ‘We have found where the dog is buried.’
3. ‘If I knew how to read, I should not buy spectacles.’
4. ‘The weasel’s flower revives the dead.’
5. ‘The harrow will need two to carry it.’
6. ‘Rats have devoured the silver.’

…to…

1. Rowland.” A shop clerk. “I can’t keep doing this, my boss will find out. At least buy something!”
2. Firman.” An unattended child. “Mommy and Daddy are out right now, but I know where they keep it. Help me with my homework and I’ll show you.” Use any of the problems from this book, starting on page 9.
3. Orma.” A wizard. “As agreed, it is yours in exchange for the materials I require.” He needs a random material spell component. You could use a generator like this one, but I might make a smaller table first to more easily control where this might send the party.
4. Solomon.” A scout. “So that’s the code? It’s about time. Go light the signal fire atop that mountain and toss these herbs in it.”
5. Dixie.” A hermit. “I seem to have misplaced it. Could you return these books to the library for me? I’ll look around the place while you do.”
6. Schroeder.” A toll collector. “It’s not going anywhere, and I’m not going anywhere, why don’t you help me with this?” They’re keeping busy with a crossword, any answer will do.

Compromised Handoff

As a normal handoff clue, but with an added “Be cautious!” Attempting to make the handoff will draw the attention of an assassin, who attacks once and then attempts to flee.

Intel (reward)

Intel is an opportunity to explore the conspiracy behind the treasure trails in a way that it would be infeasible in RuneScape proper. Because I have no campaign in mind, I will outline this conspiracy in broad strokes as an example. Let’s say that the primary agency behind the clue scrolls is a formican cult. Their goals are threefold:

1. Establish new colonies (independent cells).
2. Avoid discovery.
3. Fight cthonoid incursions (perhaps by analogy to cordyceps).

Each piece of intel is then awarded in sequence, and can be mapped to one of these three goals:

1. A detailed dossier on a dungeon’s faction politics. (Establish new colonies—directly courting the PCs.)
2. Evidence that a council member is being manipulated. Sensational, criminal, irrefutable, valuable. (Fight incursions.)
3. A map of useful hidden tunnels in a major city. (Avoid detection.)
4. Evidence that a popular artist is themselves a cthonoid, with notes on their recent habits and movements. (Fight incursions.)
5. Information discrediting a local hero who has recently become suspicious of this conspiracy. Is the PCs information true? Is the hero on to something? (Avoid detection.)
6. A short list of contacts and code phrases, a fresh suspicion about the cthonoids. The PCs have the opportunity to start their own cell. (Establish new colonies.)

Loot (reward)

A quick, functional approach here is to map the final clue roll to the Treasure Tables in the 5e DMG.³

Roll	Hoard CR
8	0-4
9	5-10
10	11-16
11+	17+

But the way items are valued in RuneScape is very different from D&D, so it’s possible that I’d restructure these tables completely if I were taking more cues from RuneScape (instead of using this as a drop-in system). Perhaps create some unique rewards and award them in sequence, similar to intel. As intel is slightly less common than loot, I’d swap the two in this case.

A treasure trail reward, glitched.

The images in this post were “glitched” by compositing many images together using ImageMagick’s ‘ModulusAdd’ method.

In Part 2, I examine the math underlying this system more closely.

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1. I have included “code phrases” with several types of clue. The players may be required to give them or may be given them with their next steps. As bumbling interlopers in a vast conspiracy, the PCs aren’t expected to give any responses; they’re just flavor text.↩︎

2. Generator thanks to Spwack’s generator generator.↩︎

3. It might be odd to fit such large caches into the fiction. Was a goblin really carrying all that? In RuneScape, this is solved by the use of promissory notes, which might not mesh cleanly with the rest of your fiction. It could also be possible to design a table of more compact treasures.↩︎

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