Oct 14
Remember when monsters used to be assigned letters for treasure types, back in the BECMI boxed sets? I think it was treasure type H that had the largest variety of quality gems, magic items and jewelry pieces. Mostly only dragons had them. I recall thinking that it was strange that Diamonds were not the most expensive piece of gemstone in those tables. Rather that belonged to Jacinths.
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In FG news, there was a slight problem with the servers on Wednesday. The site was down for most of the day and I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong.
Gygax, et al, referred to medieval literature for their treasure tables. Diamonds were not well known in Europe in those times. Colored stones were generally larger and more precious than what the Indians knew to be diamonds, and they were often called jacinths, which were gems and not stones. Even now the most precious stones are large flawless sapphires, rubies, and emeralds, which are rarer than equally sized white diamonds. Colored diamonds are the exception because they are very rare.
Actually, the rarity of diamonds is a sham.