Gems & Jewellery Headaches

I was just discussing an impromptu survey of D&D players through twitter and social media, answering the question, "What would you like to see on an equipment table that isn't usually there?"  The reply came back overwhelmingly, jewellery.

Okay, so this is an enormous headache.  There are several resources in the original DMG that have plagued me since I began running the game ... and since I'm deep into equipment, now's a good time to talk about them.  Let me reproduce the relevant sections of pp.25-26 first, then a piece of p.219:

Wow, did I waste a lot of time with these tables!

While we can handwave ourselves through gaming by randomly rolling a goblet, arbitrarily determining that it's made of gold, with gems, and that it's worth 5,000 g.p., there are considerable issues with this system.  Given that the average roll for jewellery is 2,910 g.p., that's awfully high for any party less than 6th level; it doesn't tell us what gems the goblet has, so these have to be assigned.  The table doesn't tell us how much of the value is gold and how much is gems, or what gems there are or how many.  Yes, we can arbitrarily assign these things, but if we're left having to arbitrarily assign most of the details, how are we aided by having the dice assign one detail and an outrageous total g.p.?  Why is it more than six times as likely to find jewellery worth more than 1,000 g.p. than pieces of that amount and less?

Yet in my infancy I used this table for more than a decade, willfully rolling the amounts and then arbitrarily adjusting them as needed, until finally I grew up and recognized that it was easier to assign every detail and screw the die rolling.  Which I hated.  But then I built a trading system and pricing table that would allow me to exactly define the cost of the gold by weight, the cost of the 18 amber gems set into it, using specific gravity to define the weight vs. the size of the gems and the cup, etcetera.

Not that this helped me one damn bit.

Start with the variety of gems shown.  Gygax includes 54 varieties of gemstone.  My pricing system has 65, counting all the varieties I've stumbled across that are worth including.  Each has a unique value, as they come from places scattered across the globe, which for my system defines the price of the gem based on its relative type (ornamental, fancy, semi-precious, lesser precious and greater precious).  On top of this, because my system isn't random, gems come in 8 general sizes:  pea, marble, cherry, almond, walnut, plum, peach and apple, each size corresponding to the number of cubic inches associated with an object the size of a pea, marble, cherry and so on.  If you're interested:

• pea-sized: 0.016 cub.in.
• marble-sized: 0.061 cub.in.
• cherry-sized: 0.251 cub.in.
• almond-sized: 0.655 cub.in.
• walnut-sized: 1.031 cub.in.
• plum-sized: 2.015 cub.in.
• peach-sized: 3.936 cub.in.
• apple-sized: 8.646 cub.in.

The comparative objects were picked to offer familiarity of proportion, and the cubic inches determined by researching the number of cubic inches in a pea, standard marble, cherry and so on.  It's difficult to picture a diamond weighing 56 carats; quick, tell me what that is on the list above.  That's an awfully big diamond.  The Hope Diamond is 45.52 carats.  A diamond is 3,510 carats per cubic inch.  A diamond that's 56 carats would be the size of a pea.  That's all.  An almond-sized diamond, the sort that's often depicted in the movies, such as the one in Titanic, would be 2,317 carats, 2/3rds as large as the biggest UNCUT diamond that's ever been found, the Cullinan diamond.  Cut diamonds are never that big.

But forget the digression.  For a fantasy game, we can easily propose a diamond as large as a walnut.  Poof, one exists.  The bigger issue is that the varying sizes of gemstone means that not only are we picking the type and the number to go on our goblet, we're picking the size too.  Not to mention that we're also free to decide if the gold is 14K, 18K or 24K, each deciding the amount of actual gold in the metal—though if we want to use the cup, 24K is too soft.

Very well, if we want four types of gems in our cup, for colour you understand, and large and small sizes, and 14 carat gold, we'll still need a volume of gold for the goblet itself.  A 6 inch tall glass goblet weighs half a pound, or 0.23 kg.  However, glass has a specific gravity of 2.8 grams/cub.cm; 14K gold is much denser than that, so our goblet weighs 2.48 lbs.  Of course, that's arbitrary too: what about a goblet 7 inches high, or 8 inches?  What about a wider goblet, or one where the gold is thicker?  Are we going to built tables for that?

Finally, all this is entirely academic.  This one goblet of this one size and material, with this one collection of gems, is just ONE POSSIBLE object of an infinite combination of various things a jeweller, lapidary or metalsmith might make.  Any list of jewellery created for an equipment list (which is where we started), couldn't possibly account for all the jewellery possibilities a character may wish to advantage.  Suppose, for arguments sake, we want to take each object on the jewellery and items list described: 35 items.  We make each object in copper, pewter, silver, gold and white gold.  We're up to 170 items.  Let's say we make versions with gems and without gems: 340 now.  And let's say we make versions with gems of the five orders: ornamental, fancy and so on.  That's 1,700 jewellery items ... and in toto, only six of those are "earrings."  That's it.  You want a ring, you have six choices.

In fact, we could easily fill a splatbook (well, it wouldn't be "easy," it would be brain-crushing repetitive work, but ignore that) with all the types of jewellery a player might buy, with 3 columns of 30-50 items (some would need more than one line) over 200 pages, with 24,000 items, and players still wouldn't feel they had enough choice.  What, there's no silver tiara here encrusted with black coral?  THIS BOOK IS SHIT!

As such, jewellery lists don't exist because it's a hole that produces no value.

Ideally, I'd like to build a list the players could use to make their own jewellery.  A sort of plug-and-play arrangement.  And still it is sort of arbitrary to do this in a universal equipment list, such as the poster, we might as well say the jewellery is a gold tiara "with gems" worth 1800 g.p. and have done with it.  Realistically, for most game worlds, jewellery will always be known by its price tag and not its substance, which is sad, don't you think?  I prefer a system that defines the object completely, and leave the players to wonder how valuable it really is, like a sort of D&D road show.  Knowing the price tag ruins that experience.

Pity.