What are good/creative ways for a wanted criminal to hide stolen goods in the wilderness? It's mostly a forest but with a nearby lake and some mountainous terrain aswell. I'm just looking for some ideas for a oneshot in a low magic setting.
>behind a waterfall (obviously)
>in an abandoned rabbit hole
>under the roots of a significant tree
>in the back of a bear den, can only be retained when the bear is out hunting, or after defeating the bear
>under the floor boards of a forester's winter cabin
Pic unrelated.
Inside a big bird nest in the trees.
Inside a beaver lodge
Under a giant pile of cow our horse shit.
Hollow out a hornet's nest, put all the loot inside of it, and hang it from a tree.
Under a stump. In a knothole. In a stacked woodpile. Carefully peeling up a bunch of moss, digging a hole, putting loot inside hole and covering it with the moss.
In the real world you'd stick it all in a waterproof sack, then dig a hole big enough for that sack, stick it in and cover it up to look like it's undisturbed.
I however think it'd be funny if instead you tied the sack to an animal. Bonus points if the animal is incredibly flighty, or dangerous.
bury it, and be the only one who knows where
That doesn't seem particularly interesting for an RPG.
Atleast attach the burial place to a riddle, like "dig where the oak's gaze meets the elm."
It's a good way to hide treasure.
It's also a good way to benchmark how players feel about various methods of interrogation.
But yeah, riddle also works. Or plain instructions split into several parts that need to be put together.
When you make a PIN for your bank card, do you leave notes around your house with on how to crack it? Why would anyone do this for their hidden treasure? It's a moronic story driving device.
Stories don't need to be realistic for them to be fun RPG stories. It of course depends on the taste of your players, but most tables I know wouldn't really care about this not being realistic. Do you also dislike treasure maps in pirate adventures?
In any case, a guy having a bunch of treasures hidden all over the place being worried he won't remember them all, is not unlikely to leave _some_ form of notes for himself. Wether these notes should or would be "crackable" for a third party is debatable, but again: RPG story, not real life.
>stuff boar carcasses with stolen goods under the pretense that you're simply a local resident dealing with the vile herd destroying the local ecosystem, and are looking to use parts of the animal for various resources as well
Pic more related than you know.
Perhaps a bit bigger scale than a single wanted criminal, but around 106 AD the last king of Dacia, realizing that his kingdom was about to be conquered by the Romans, ordered a group of slaves to build a dam to redirect a major river. He then buried the royal treasury in the riverbed, destroyed the dam to return the river to its previous course, and executed the slaves who had helped him.
It didn't work because his advisors knew what was up and betrayed the hiding place to the Romans immediately upon their capture, of course.
if its not subject to water damage bag it and weight it down. put in lake
This. Stuff the loot inside a hollow log, then fill the log with rocks and dump the log into a lake or pond.
For extra security, fill the water with man-eating eels.
Honestly, a minor underwater combat encounter against a swarm of eels or a giant catfish sounds like a fun obstacle for a low magic game. Players have options to be creative and find work arounds, or they can just go in to fight, but have to consider how much armour they want to wear.
Between the sapwood and bark of a tree, maybe in the elbow of a large branch in a way that causes the tree to grow around it.
That would make it almost impossible to retriece without some major effort, like cutting down half the tree.
that's the point
A sack hung into the crown of a tall but unremarkable tree. NOBODY will look upwards.
>he wasn't good enough porker
Get some engineers involved.
If you ain't got winches and thick sailing ropes, you ain't pulling up the bullion frog that grotto
Naturally the treasure should be hidden inside of an egg, the egg inside of a duck, the duck inside of a hare, the hare inside of a chest, the chest chained up and buried on an island in the middle of a lake on top of the mountains.
You don't hide stolen goods. You sell them at the earliest opportunity. Then, you "invest" the cash in a money laundering business selling low quality potions.