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blood & guts / Re: Mechanics for wealth
« on: July 15, 2015, 03:57:14 PM »
You might use something similar to the mechanic I'm using for my Mouse Guard hack.
Instead of having money, characters have an attribute called Resources that they have to select at CharGen and upgrade by levelling. Resources is a summary of your character's wealth, favors and contacts, professional skills, and haggling ability. A character with high resources might be "poor" but an excellent haggler, whereas a character with low resources might be "rich" but without any concept of the value of money.
Then use a move like this:
STRIKE A BARGAIN
When you haggle or offer payment for something for sale, roll +RES. On a 10+ choose one cost. On a 7–9, choose one cost and the GM chooses one cost.
Tense negotiations and hard haggling wear you out, take the Strapped (RES) debility.
The mouse you deal with needs a concrete assurance of your trustworthiness.
The mouse you deal with demands a concession suiting their interests.
You can’t get quite what you need, describe a close but imperfect alternative.
It will take days/weeks/months.
This way nobody needs to know how much money they have at the moment, only their vague ability to scrape an offer together. The consequences for failure can be a temporary debility (because they spent all their liquid funds), a permanent reduction of the Resources attribute (for extreme cases, when they permanently traded away something of irreplaceable value), or the seller refusing to part with something at any price they can offer.
Limitations to this:
Technically, a player with a Resources of 8 has a chance, however slim, of buying just about anything. You can control this by making clear what is and isn't for sale. You can have sellers refuse to deal with people of "obviously minimal means", or otherwise make their life hard.
Another option to control this is to set a minimum Resources Required rating for different things, so that players with Resources of less than 10, for example, couldn't even attempt to buy a gun. Or a player with Resources less than 13 couldn't attempt to buy a house.
Instead of having money, characters have an attribute called Resources that they have to select at CharGen and upgrade by levelling. Resources is a summary of your character's wealth, favors and contacts, professional skills, and haggling ability. A character with high resources might be "poor" but an excellent haggler, whereas a character with low resources might be "rich" but without any concept of the value of money.
Then use a move like this:
STRIKE A BARGAIN
When you haggle or offer payment for something for sale, roll +RES. On a 10+ choose one cost. On a 7–9, choose one cost and the GM chooses one cost.
Tense negotiations and hard haggling wear you out, take the Strapped (RES) debility.
The mouse you deal with needs a concrete assurance of your trustworthiness.
The mouse you deal with demands a concession suiting their interests.
You can’t get quite what you need, describe a close but imperfect alternative.
It will take days/weeks/months.
This way nobody needs to know how much money they have at the moment, only their vague ability to scrape an offer together. The consequences for failure can be a temporary debility (because they spent all their liquid funds), a permanent reduction of the Resources attribute (for extreme cases, when they permanently traded away something of irreplaceable value), or the seller refusing to part with something at any price they can offer.
Limitations to this:
Technically, a player with a Resources of 8 has a chance, however slim, of buying just about anything. You can control this by making clear what is and isn't for sale. You can have sellers refuse to deal with people of "obviously minimal means", or otherwise make their life hard.
Another option to control this is to set a minimum Resources Required rating for different things, so that players with Resources of less than 10, for example, couldn't even attempt to buy a gun. Or a player with Resources less than 13 couldn't attempt to buy a house.