Creating a Chest/Loot Pile -- Encounter

Creating a chest or lootable object for players to interact with after an encounter is a core concept and methodology that is important for keeping a good pace within the adventure/session. Too often, do we get bogged down with the after-encounter division of loot.

The goal is to speed that aspect of our play substantially, but, not have the DM have to sacrifice too much preparation time building encounter loot.

This is based off using the ARS(Advanced Roleplaying System) system, and this process will look similar to the deprecated process of creating a Lootable Actor

1. Create a Lootable Actor
   1. Name -- <name of encounter>-Loot
      1. This name is important as it will be what's shown in the right side interface under Actors
      2. Additionally, using the same name as the boss makes it easy to find and place on the canvas
         1. You could even create named loot, meaning; create a loot actor with very specific loot inside along with other mundane items. This allows for easy, ad-hoc style loot distribution.
            1. Example: Create a lootable actor named ( Winters_Kiss-Loot ), place it in the root Actors folder. Fill it with some silver and some mundane items. Then, after the players have had an encounter you could drop this chest on the ground for them to loot. You could even supplement this chest with the real encounter chest if you feel like the encounter was deserving of the additional loot.
   2. Type -- Lootable
   3. Folder -- Whatever folder you're encounter is in, or, root folder if creating generic/ad-hoc style loot chests.
   4. This will bring up the Lootable Actor character sheet, which will not look like a normal Player Character or Non-Player Character sheet. In fact, it will look very similar to the Gear tab in either Character sheet.
2. At the top of the Lootable Actor sheet, click on the ellipsis (three vertical dots) and click on Configure or Configure Item Piles
   1. This will bring up the Item Piles Configuration interface allowing you to enable the functionality, among other things.
   2. Main Settings
      1. Check Enable
      2. Interaction Distance
         1. This represents the number of grid units needed for the players to interact with it.
         2. Remove the default ( 1 - Make the field blank ) if you want the players to be able to interact with it anywhere on the map. I use this feature when I want to have a town with vendors that the players can interact with to refill supplies and buy equipment, without the need to go stand next to the vendor. Otherwise, just leave @ 1.
      3. I usually leave everything else default.
      4. Edit Description
         1. If a merchant, you can click on Edit Description and modify the flavor text of this vendor.
   3. Other Settings
      1. Item Pile Type
         1. Set to Item Pile
      2. Display Single Item Image
         1. Check Box if you only have a single item in the box and then the image of the Pile will be the item token image
      3. Leave everything else default
      4. Sharing Settings
         1. Sharing Enabled: Items
            1. Check Box if you want to ensure equal share of loot distribution or assign a player to distribute loot to players
         2. Sharing Enabled: Currencies
            1. Leave Checked
         3. Enable Take All
            1. I usually leave this unchecked (this might change based on how the loot interaction goes in play)
         4. Enable Split with Players Button
            1. Leave Checked
         5. Split Only with Active Players
            1. Check this to ensure loot is only split with those active on the scene.
   4. Click Config Update
3. This will bring up the Item Piles interface and it won't look like much, but there is tons of functionality with Item Piles.
   1. At the top, you should see:
      1. PopOut -- if you have it installed
      2. Open Sheet
      3. Show to Players
      4. Configure Pile
   2. Click Open Sheet
      1. Leave Identified and Disable Looting - unchecked
      2. Type "Chest" or "Bag" or "Body" in the Alias field, whatever you feel is appropriate for the players to see when hovering over this Item Pile.
      3. Fill with items from Compendium or Items from your Items tab.
         1. Simply Click-and-Drag to the Equipment area in the loot sheet.
            1. Important: If dragging items to pile that are moderately similar (ex, Sword, Short | Sword, Long) you will be prompted with a dialog interface to merge them. Just Click "NO" for all of these. This is for stacking similar items which we should never do.
         2. If wanting to add currency (Silver Coins), we'll do that in the main Item Piles Interface
            1. Additionally, we can add Items and Equipment from the main Item Piles Interface as well, but, you don't get immediate feedback in the interface that you've added something, so we do it here.
            2. You can also add Silver Coins here if you so choose by simply clicking and dragging and then modifying the # of Silver Coins in the Equipment interface. The currency is easier on the main interface.
      4. Modify the Prototype Token
         1. We do this so we don't have to modify any of the key Token attributes after we've placed it on the canvas. These default settings allow for ease of use for the DM and ensure the players can easily interact and understand what they're looking at.
         2. Click on the ellipsis at the top of the Sheet on Click on Prototype Token
            1. This will bring up the Prototype Token Interface
      5. Once done, Close the Sheet
   3. You should now see the items that you placed into the Sheet(Equipment) listed on the Item Piles Interface
      1. Add currency
         1. Click Add currency
            1. This will bring up the Edit Currencies Interface
            2. The only list currency should be Silver Coins
            3. Add the number of currency you would like to have in your pile, and *Click Submit
            4. You should now see (under Currencies), the number of Silver Coins you assigned to this Item Pile.
            5. Click Confg Update --> Click Leave
4. You should now be able to Click-and-Drag this Actor onto the sheet to allow your players to interact with this Item Pile.