Inventory

Our rogue, slightly oddly, is a little bit poorer than everyone else in the party.  

Our rogue never sells her gems.  She keeps every single one.  

This affectation suits her character well, since our "evil" rogue isn't very evil.  She gets along well, more or less, with the good and neutral party members.  She rarely kills people for kicks or giggles.  But if you told her that you hid a gem inside one of these 101 cute dalmatian puppies, you'd suddenly find yourself knee deep in puppy guts.  (And if you suddenly went all Cruella De Vile and decided to make a coat, I wouldn't bother, I'm sure the skins would be missing.  They are valuable after all.)

I can easily imagine her opening up her gem bag next to the fire, staring at the shiny rocks inside, her heart speeding up... all of her coldness to people being burned away by the firelight reflecting in her most prized possessions.

So that's not surprising.  What is surprising is what's happening with the player.  She keeps her inventory in a little notebook, and she has a page just for her gems.  I'm absolutely sure that if that notebook went missing, she'd be just as upset as if she'd lost the real gems.  (Also, since we play with Lego, if I put an actual lego gem down on the table, and she "finds" it, then she keeps it.)

Anyway.  I don't track inventory for my players.  And I don't really care about inventory much in our Lego game.  I don't care about it, because we aren't playing DnD as a survival game.  I think there's a lot of axis that you can plot types of DnD games on.  Wargame vs Interactive Storytelling, Railroading vs Sandbox, etc... but a big one is Grand Adventure vs Survival.  Our Lego game is definitely far, far into the grand adventure trope.  A small group of adventurers trying to save the world from certain doom.  It's them vs the world, so I want them to feel, and have, a lot of resources.  That's why it's okay that our barbarian has 15 swords and maces and spears.  She can't sit down, but whatever monster comes around the corner, she feels like she's prepared.  

Contrast this with a survival game.  In a survival game I'd care a lot about inventory.  And about loot.  In a survival game, every little decision has to matter, and careful preparation has to be key.  This puts a burden on me as a GM though too.  For one, I have to enforce that stuff.  Or at least make sure my players know I want it self-enforced.  But more importantly, I have to make an appropriate challenge.  The stakes may be huge, but the road the adventurer's travel has to be narrow.  

The full moon came out.  One of your companions is a werewolf.  Run.  Hide.  Survive.

The world will end in 4 days unless this object is placed in the center of this dungeon maze.  

In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and Aragorn were on an adventure.  Frodo and Sam were surviving.  "Go here, destroy the ring.  You have 4 lemba loaves, 2 daggers, and an elven chainmail vest.  Good luck."

The new Chima line has some pretty cool weapons.  My greedy loot hungry players claimed them (without even knowig what they were) as soon as I set the minis down on the map.