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Old 10-29-2018, 12:23 PM   #21
Black Leviathan
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

I have problems with this disadvantage on two fronts.

Wealth is largely a penalty to just starting wealth. There are some impacts to ongoing income but they're largely decorative. Once you begin your life of adventure your income rarely becomes an issue. I think we've played maybe three games in my life where anyone has been concerned with their paycheck. Struggling Wealth puts a real strain on a character to make priorities over essential tools to be effective in the game. Poor Wealth puts a character effectively cradling a cheap tool and having almost enough money to feed themselves. Less than that is functionally the same as Poor. As a player you select it because your basic tool is cheap and you're going to lean on the party for food/shelter/transportation and perhaps tools to do your work. There's no valuable reason to give more character points for taking the same financial role in the party. I'd argue that Dead Broke is still more viable as an advantage than very poor because at least then you are uniquely unprepared and the disadvantage is tied to an aspect of the game setting that may make other characters adverse to giving you fair compensation "I'm not giving Binx's slave an equal share.. he's a slave.."

The other problem I have is that Wealth isn't just a starting wealth fraction and a pay modifier, it's a legitimate economic class in the game world. People with average Wealth live comfortably in the economy. People with Wealth Struggling struggle to support themselves in the economy. People with Poor Wealth have lost that struggle. So what distinction do the "Very Poor" have that places them below the "Poor"?. How is there a job in the economy that pays 1/10 or 1/20 of a living wage? You've heard people complain that they work 5 jobs to get by but nobody works 20 jobs, that's not a thing. If you're going to have a wealth calls that makes less that 1/5 of a normal income you have to contrive a way that that works in an economy. And in most scenarios that looks more like Dead Broke with a Patron that gives you perks.
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Old 10-29-2018, 05:16 PM   #22
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
Wealth is largely a penalty to just starting wealth.
DF fixes this, and if when I run games where loot accumulation is key, that's how I run it too.

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There are some impacts to ongoing income but they're largely decorative.
Only if as GM you allow it.

Quote:
I'd argue that Dead Broke is still more viable as an advantage than very poor because at least then you are uniquely unprepared and the disadvantage is tied to an aspect of the game setting that may make other characters adverse to giving you fair compensation "I'm not giving Binx's slave an equal share.. he's a slave.."
So... you've 'fixed' Dead Broke for your games but you can't fix the other levels?

Quote:
How is there a job in the economy that pays 1/10 or 1/20 of a living wage? You've heard people complain that they work 5 jobs to get by but nobody works 20 jobs, that's not a thing.
Of course not, they just live that much further below the poverty line.

And even if your Character were working "five jobs" if you have Poor on your Character sheet you aren't earning an Average wealth level. You're Poor.
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Old 10-29-2018, 05:35 PM   #23
Vaevictis Asmadi
 
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
How is there a job in the economy that pays 1/10 or 1/20 of a living wage? You've heard people complain that they work 5 jobs to get by but nobody works 20 jobs, that's not a thing. If you're going to have a wealth calls that makes less that 1/5 of a normal income you have to contrive a way that that works in an economy. And in most scenarios that looks more like Dead Broke with a Patron that gives you perks.
Extreme poverty is extremely common in the real world, especially in poor countries. Many, many people work for a few cents a day breaking rocks, melting down e-waste, or in a sweatshop or farm or mine. Or they're semi-employed scavengers. They're not working 20 jobs, they're just paid 1/20th of a living wage for the 1 or 2 job(s) they do have. Some employers only occasionally pay their workers. Yes, they're starving and usually homeless. No, they don't usually have patrons!* Economies full of extremely poor people hum along all over the world today.

This was probably at least equally true in earlier historical eras with lower tech, and could be even more true in a horrible futuristic dystopia. In particular, any economy with slavery tends to have bad wages because slavery depresses wages for unskilled, semi-skilled, and sometimes even skilled work (depending on what types of work slaves do).

*In some circumstances the employer houses the workers in or near the workplace. I don't know whether that, or situations where workers lived in a company-owned town, count as Patrons.

Another thing to keep in mind, for GURPS, is that RAW apparently assumes a blanket cost of living for a given tech level. But costs of living differ by where you live, even within the same country. In a fictional universe, cost of living might also vary by character traits. Somebody with Doesn't Eat or Drink and Doesn't Sleep likely has a lower cost of living than a regular human. It's even plausible for a multi-species society to have separate minimum wage laws, or just separate wage customs, for different species -- fairly or unfairly calculated, as the case may be. But in GURPS terms, Wealth level is measured by $, not by whether your income covers your personal living expenses. So two people who each earn 1/5 of the average are both Poor -- even if one is living in poverty, the second lives at a near-Average standard of living because they don't eat or drink or need medical care.
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Old 10-30-2018, 06:57 AM   #24
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
Wealth is largely a penalty to just starting wealth. There are some impacts to ongoing income but they're largely decorative. Once you begin your life of adventure your income rarely becomes an issue. I think we've played maybe three games in my life where anyone has been concerned with their paycheck.

That depends on play style. I haven't run a game where loot is a notable source of income for years:


In Banestorm Atlante, we tracked months, monthly income was the primary source of money, and the characters needed lots of it. They were able to increase their wealth through other means, but that was mostly increasing their point total, and the characters with higher wealth got proportionally more.


In Monster Hunters, you don't get money from killing monsters. You get money from your off-screen day-job, and that funds your rather expensive hobby. So additional income is vital.



I've had other games where wealth didn't matter: when you were on the job, your patron (be that a eccentric billionaire, the planetary government, the Infinity Patrol, or the aliens who abducted you) equipped you and paid your expenses.


So it really does depend on the genre. But yes, looting plays havoc with wealth.
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Old 10-30-2018, 08:20 AM   #25
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
Wealth is largely a penalty to just starting wealth... Once you begin your life of adventure your income rarely becomes an issue.
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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
That depends on play style. I haven't run a game where loot is a notable source of income for years
There's yet another possibility -- that money isn't a focus of the game, as it's not one of the important game resources. Maybe you get loot, maybe you're rich -- but that just doesn't matter, because the game isn't about the stuff and getting more and better of it.
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Old 10-30-2018, 08:36 AM   #26
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

In my current GURPS campaign, the PCs lately got back from a 20-month trading voyage to unknown lands. They started out with starting wealth of $9000 and $6000 in borrowed money; they ended up with $144,000 after expenses (including bonuses to the crew and interest paid to the creditors). Now nearly all of them have raised their wealth levels; I let them do this by dedicating their profits to raising starting wealth and paying character points for higher Wealth. I think their combined starting wealth is now $35,000. They're also having a larger ship built, and I'm going to let them define it as jointly owned Signature Gear.

So yes, a campaign where wealth plays a substantial role is perfectly possible. The GURPS system of wealth levels isn't perfect, but it provides a structure that I was able to use.
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Old 10-31-2018, 12:49 PM   #27
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

If you run a campaign that involves a lot of going to work and dealing with work things then your ongoing paychecks are a valid concern. It has been my experience as a player and GM and someone to talks to a lot of folks; that with few very viable exceptions the beginning of a campaign signals the end, if not the beginning of the end, of punching a clock for the characters. Even if the players are not thrown out of their normal routine to the point of losing their jobs, even if the adventure and the job perfectly align the adventure marks a slow-down of time where the paycheck stops being the focus. Case in point, we've played a few different games as FBI agents where our jobs were the core of the adventure. But the adventure also marked the point where our characters stopped being focused on our vinyl collection or making payments on the sail boat and became enthralled in the conspiracy, took up the fight against the cult, started sizing up who in the agency was a robot. DF is one set of examples where loot-economy is impacted by Wealth, look through enough GURPS books and you'll find more, but the bulk of the impact of Wealth is felt as you try to equip your character at the start of the game (Which I feel is completely relevant at that point level). I don't feel a moderation between Poor and Dead Broke validates another -5 CP.

I'm not criticizing the Wealth advantage. I think it's scaled reasonably well, or as well is it can across every world. My problem is that I feel it works well as-is. While there are people who have almost nothing and make less per day than Americans lose in their couch if they sit down wrong, they often also live in the Poor economic class of cultures where the average wealth is much lower. Or they are not significantly divorced from what GURPS would define as Dead Broke. "Poor" as a word has meaning that is reflected in the Wealth-Poor disadvantage. It is a defined economic class that is easy to understand when portraying a character. "Very Poor" is an adjective added to Poor, it has the same degree of real-world meaning as "Less Poor", or "Pooresque". It does not portray the same non-subjective impression of economic status. There isn't the same understanding of how one exists in this economic strata, at least not a definition that is meaningfully different than how we understand Dead Broke.
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Old 10-31-2018, 02:08 PM   #28
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
I'm not criticizing the Wealth advantage. I think it's scaled reasonably well, or as well is it can across every world. My problem is that I feel it works well as-is. While there are people who have almost nothing and make less per day than Americans lose in their couch if they sit down wrong, they often also live in the Poor economic class of cultures where the average wealth is much lower. Or they are not significantly divorced from what GURPS would define as Dead Broke. "Poor" as a word has meaning that is reflected in the Wealth-Poor disadvantage. It is a defined economic class that is easy to understand when portraying a character. "Very Poor" is an adjective added to Poor, it has the same degree of real-world meaning as "Less Poor", or "Pooresque". It does not portray the same non-subjective impression of economic status. There isn't the same understanding of how one exists in this economic strata, at least not a definition that is meaningfully different than how we understand Dead Broke.
I don't particularly care about that. I wouldn't use Very Poor in my own campaign, either. But if another GM wants to talk about how to fit such a thing into their campaign, I'm prepared to discuss what makes the best fit to the rules as written.

Though I want to note one of Robert Fogel's later books on economic history, in which he claimed that in the late 1700s, a nontrivial percentage of the British population were chronically hungry, and in such poor physical condition that they could not function meaningfully as part of the work force. That's TL5, which by GURPS terms is $1100/month for an Average job; it would be $220/month for a Poor job, which will pay a substantial share of the cost of a Status -2 lifestyle.The $55/month for Very Poor might work for "barely enough to keep from dying of hunger."
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Old 10-31-2018, 02:16 PM   #29
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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So yes, a campaign where wealth plays a substantial role is perfectly possible. The GURPS system of wealth levels isn't perfect, but it provides a structure that I was able to use.
Note that you're actually making people pay for wealth gained in play. Wealth is only problematic if you let people accumulate assets without actually increasing wealth.
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Old 10-31-2018, 02:30 PM   #30
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Default Re: Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

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Note that you're actually making people pay for wealth gained in play. Wealth is only problematic if you let people accumulate assets without actually increasing wealth.
I'm letting them do that if they choose, and in fact, several characters had profit shares of $40,000, which fell just short of their raising their starting wealth to $50,000 for Filthy Rich; so they're stuck at $10,000 for Very Wealthy, with most of their profits not tied down. I'm having them spend some on monthly cost of living; I've offered to let them pay a higher cost of living and buy better clothes if they want to work on raising Status; and I'm letting them acquire a new, larger ship as Signature Gear. But I'm also assuming that some of their wealth is likely to dissipate, like a lottery winner's masses of cash.
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