Procedure for Knick Knack and Furniture Value

I always have regrets about the values I assign to treasure like silk gloves, a silk bag, or mahogany shelves. I want a consistent procedure for doing this.

Here’s one I just wrote. I don’t like it.

What do you do?

Procedure to determine the value of treasure that isn’t gems, magic, or coins

Estimate the value of the base item (perhaps using the Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium) if buying the most generic version you might find. Then choose dice to roll 2 of to create a bell curve whose standard result is close to the value of the generic item.

Multipliers

• X10 if fancy
• x2 if antique
• x2 if it belonged to an esteemed figure

Before you roll, check to see if you would accept the highest result as reasonable. If so, roll. If the result is equal to or less than a generically priced item, add 1gp to the result.

Example

I need a value for old silk gloves found in an old castle.

The Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium lists:

• gloves (7sp)
• fur lined gloves (4gp)

The multiplier for antique silk (therefore fancy) gloves which did not belong to an esteemed figure would be x20 (10x2=20.)

I could consider fur-lined gloves to be fancy already and just add a few gp to estimate the value for silk, or I could use the 7sp value for regular gloves and use the fancy multiplier. I’ll use 7gp and drop the fancy multiplier. Now the multiplier is just x2.

To approximate 7gp while creating a bell curve, I’d roll 2d8. 2d8 x 2 has a high result of 16gp and a normal result of 8 gp.

I need to price old silk gloves that aren’t rotten.

BF Equipment Emporium prices for gloves:

• regular 7sp
• fur lined 4gp
• mittens 3sp

Silk is more expensive than a bit of undecorative fur, so I’ll add 3 GP to the base price for silk gloves, just because 3 more seems reasonable. That’s 7gp for silk gloves.

Then I’ll multiply by 1d6+1 (we don’t want an unchanged value) for the antique nature of these gloves.

Resulting value is a range of 14gp to 49gp. That seems okay.

Sarainy’s idea

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- Large Geometric Carpet = 3d6 gp
- Large Stained Geometric Carpet = 2d6 gp
- Large Luxiourous Geometric Carpet = 1d6 * 3d6

This reminded me of a similar idea from a city-building kit by an RPG person whom I’d rather not summon by name.

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- 5 for basic equipment
- 10 for specialized equipment
- 25 for luxury objects
- 100 for very dangerous things```

And here's another method by John Bell.

https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-procedure-for-fast-random-treasure.html