History Main / MontyHaul

* Dungeon Siege encouraged this by adding pack mules and Traggs, creatures with above normal carrying capacity, but minimal fighting capabilty. Naturally it's a trade off between combat power and hauling size.
* Fable, while in itself the game isn't a MontyHaul, if you spend an hour or two doing a job to afford some real estate, the returns on the investment are used to buy more real estate (which pays you every five minutes) eventually become so huge that you have so much money you have no idea what to do with it all.

** [[MontyHaul This trope]] cannot be described in absolute terms, but is entirely relative to the expectations of the game.

** This ([[FromACertainPointOfView correct]]) usage is meant to characterize the GameMaster as one with traditional training from previous editions, where such a thing truly would have been ridiculous. They seem to be using third edition rules, but the GM is stuck firmly in the AD&D mindset.
* Jerry Holkins (Tycho) accuses Mike Krahulik (Gabe) of this in [[PennyArcade Penny Arcade]].
** [[KillerGameMaster Tycho]] advocates a ZeroSumGame instead.

*** Did anyone forget the blackjack tables in New Vegas? It's ridiculously easy to clean out every casino that has this minigame and earn up to 100,000 caps.
*** However, the treasure at the end of the Dead Money DLC is 37f gold bars worth 10,000 caps each (though each weight 35 lbs and there's a time limit before the vault self-destructs). The weapons and equipment found as well are good, though not completely game-breaking. Finally, by beating the DLC the player gets access to a MatterReplicator vending machine that takes the special Sierra Madre chips which you get a bunch of every 3 days.

The opposite to this is the KillerGameMaster, who delivers death and horror to the [[PlayerCharacter PCs]] in place of treasure and godlike power.

** The Awakening expansion also throws more money at the player then he may know what to do with. This is in stark contrast to the original campaign, where money is quite tight (barring DLCs and a single developer oversight that requires a lot of loading screens). Players new to the expansion may be shocked to find quest related NPCs requesting of them things on the order of dozens of gold pieces to commission some sort of order--a small fortune in the original campaign, pocket change in Awakening. With so much money available, you wonder why the Warden doesn't just hire a couple hundred mercenary soldiers to build up his otherwise vastly outnumbered forces.

* The [[SugarWiki/MostTriumphantExample biggest perpetrator]] of this has been DungeonsAndDragons, mostly because it's [[SmallReferencePools the only game that new players have heard of]] and because [[SturgeonsLaw most new Game Masters have no idea what it takes to run a fun and balanced game]]. That being said, this trope is frequently and [[IThoughtItMeant incorrectly]] invoked when a player of an older edition encounters a newer edition (the complaint running along the lines that [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike the new edition]] is all MontyHaul compared to [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks the good old days]]). This [[DidNotDoTheResearch fails to take into account]] several things:

** This ([[FromACertainPointOfView correct]]) usage is meant to characterize the GameMaster as one with traditional training from previous editions, where such a thing truly would have been ridiculous. Taking the MontyHaul and KillerGameMaster tropes as merely two extremes of an incredibly loose sliding scale, the default playstyle suggested by the rules has been objectively moving closer toward MontyHaul with each edition: where any magic items merely made you more powerful in AD&D, third edition introduced the concept of an expected wealth of magical items per character level, and fourth edition made a strict progression of magical items mandatory in order to not die horribly at every turn. Each edition seems egregiously more MontyHaul to anyone practiced in a previous edition, which can cause problems when any experienced GameMaster is inevitably drafted into a running a game in an unfamiliar edition.

** This ([[FromACertainPointOfView correct]]) usage is meant to characterize the GameMaster as one with traditional training from previous editions, where such a thing truly would have been ridiculous. Taking the MontyHaul and KillerGameMaster tropes as merely two extremes of an incredibly loose sliding scale, the default playstyle suggested by the rules has been objectively moving closer toward MontyHaul with each edition: where any magic items merely made you more powerful in AD&D, third edition introduced the concept of an expected wealth of magical items per character level, and fourth edition made a strict progression of magical items mandatory in order to not die horribly at every turn. Each edition seems horrifically more MontyHaul to anyone practiced in a previous edition, which can cause problems when any experienced GameMaster is inevitably drafted into a running a game in an unfamiliar edition.

*** Did anyone forget the blackjack tables in New Vegas. It's ridiculously easy to clean out every casino that has this minigame and earn up to 100,000 caps.

* Dee Dee from ''DextersLaboratory'', after taking over DM-ship of Dexter's game. Considering his DM style was decidedly KillEmAll, they were much happier with Dee Dee.

* Slathbog's Gold deconstructs this trope. Sort of.

* Many badly made designs for ''UnlimitedAdventures'' shower the characters with money. One design in particular (''From Beggars to Heroes'') was content to throw ''thousands'' of money for the meekest reason. Oh, and you get experience for these, too.
* S.T.A.L.K.E.R. also had its share of mods which purported to 'improve' the gameplay but in the process dumped some of the game's best weapons and gear into the player's arms near the very beginning. Kind of ruins the 'scavenge and survive' experience when your stuff is already better than everyone else's...

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<<|TabletopGames|>>

* ''{{Borderlands}}'' is this, but it's an odd example since VendorTrash, RandomlyDrops and (at the end of the game) MoneyIsUseless[=/=]MoneySink are all in play

Also, in the first and second editions of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', you got experience based on how much money you looted, one to one. So the Monty Haul characters would also end up with stratospheric [[ClassAndLevelSystem levels]], which led to situations like characters assassinating [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu ''gods'']] like Thor to gain their nifty weapons.

-->-- ''Jason Sartin, RPG Cliches''

** Tycho advocates a ZeroSumGame instead.

* Jerry Holkins(Tycho) accuses Mike Krahulik(Gabe) of this in [[PennyArcade Penny Arcade]].

* Dee Dee from ''{{Dexters Laboratory}}'', after being allowed into a party consisting of Dexter and his friends. The final segment of the game was even illustrated as a [[TheDatingGame game show]].

Note that this trope doesn't quite apply to video games or computer [=RPGs=], because in those, someone else set up the world. Also, many video games seem to either encourage or ''require'' the sort of player (or the sort of game play) who would take a broom to a dungeon, to make sure he swept up ''all'' the coins.

** Many Fallout players consider Fallout 3 in to be a MontyHaul game in general, compared to previous installments and the sequel [[FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]].

The opposite to this is the KillerGameMaster, who delivers death and horror to the [[{{PCs}} PCs]] in place of treasure and godlike power.

* Referenced briefly but used incorrectly in ''{{Goblins}}''. Forgoth mentions that Minmax cannot simply walk into a blacksmith shop and buy a magic sword, as that would be too Monty Haul, but that's exactly what PCs are expected to do with their treasure. (If you look in the DM's guide, it clearly says a PC can generally buy any magic item on the list, though they need to look for a seller.) Monty Haul only comes in when PCs have too much money for their level.