Starting Wealth, What cost of Living gets you, and Cost of a Sedan

[Guver]

Something must be wrong, or I must be missing something here.

My numbers:

TL8 character normal Wealth = Starting Wealth of 20000.

What cost of living gets you for Status 0 at TL8 = A house (heavily mortgaged) or large apartment, and a car.

Cost of a Sedan in TL8 = 15000 (for a TL7 car, I assume it is then a used car)

The rule says: 80% of starting wealth goes into non-adventuring gear (house, car, etc.)
But the used car consumes 75% of the starting wealth... so the house is left with only 5%????

Something is amiss.... opinions?

[nik1979]

Why not just use the Car Loans Ads or Payment plan of your local dealer as a way to "finance" the car. At Status 0, there is enough disposable monthly income in average wealth for such payments.

[Phantasm]

The car is rarely fully paid for, same as the house. The typical person is making payments on both; car payment and mortgage. Normally, both payments are subsumed in the cost of living, but it's not out of place for some people to take levels of Debt to represent the payments - especially if they're in danger of losing the car or house if they fail to make a payment.

As a real-world anecdote, though... I have never made car payments in my life. All my cars have been bought used for cash; the most I've paid was US$4,000 for my current car, 4-5 years ago (the car itself is a 2000 Chevy Blazer 4-door SUV). (I think that translates into roughly G$1,500, or about 1/10 what the "new" price is listed in the Basic Set.)

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Guver

Something must be wrong, or I must be missing something here.

Same as the house, you're still making loan payments on the car.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Guver

Something is amiss.... opinions?

Look at it this way. Most players don't want to figure out their character's finances to the penny. They certainly don't want to track every individual paperclip, fork, and towel in the PC's apartment. The 80% "rule" and CoL lets a player get away with just buying the characters cool adventuring gear and still be able to say, "When I get back to my apartment, I take a shower, open a cold one, and watch the news" without having to spend any cash, or record any limited resources. Drifter types have more money for adventuring gear but they don't get the nice comfortable handwave of status appropriate lifestyle support.

It doesn't really matter (unless the character takes something like Debt, or Signature Gear, or the Vehicle perk) if the PC owns his Status appropriate car or not as long as he pays his monthly CoL. If he fails to pay his monthly CoL, and thus loses Status he might just lose that Status appropriate car.

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by Guver

Something must be wrong, or I must be missing something here.

My numbers:

TL8 character normal Wealth = Starting Wealth of 20000.

What cost of living gets you for Status 0 at TL8 = A house (heavily mortgaged) or large apartment, and a car.

Cost of a Sedan in TL8 = 15000 (for a TL7 car, I assume it is then a used car)

The rule says: 80% of starting wealth goes into non-adventuring gear (house, car, etc.)
But the used car consumes 75% of the starting wealth... so the house is left with only 5%????

Something is amiss.... opinions?

After worrying about this for a while, my own solution is...

1) Starting wealth is what you would get if you sold everything. So, after liquidating the house and the car, and paying off what you still owed on the mortgage, you would have $20,000.

In fact, you can assume that any other factor is a +0 modifier. Your character gets what your character paid points for. You want your character to have a wife and kids? That's fine; one may assume that somehow you've got the extra money to pay their expenses and support your own Status 0 lifestyle and absolutely nothing more or less so it has no effect on your character. (They may be worth points as dependents, but they don't cost you anything or make you any money.)

If you want to tweak things further (your wife has a cushy job and brings in lots of extra income to the family, some of which you can spend on gear for adventures, etc.), you can use extra levels of Wealth, Independent Income, and Debt to tweak the individual finances of the character.

This approach does abstract things somewhat, but it keeps them a) fair and b) simple. :)

2) Since the description of Comfortable at TL 8 in the Basic Set says "one new car or two older cars" I'm assuming that Average Wealth means one older car. If you actually need stats, etc., to keep things simple, you can assume older means 50% price and -1 to HT.

I hope this helps.

Mark

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

If you actually need stats, etc., to keep things simple, you can assume older means 50% price and -1 to HT.

No matter what your Status, I don't let PCs use any of that "lifestyle" gear extensively on adventures. If you haven't paid for it with the 20%, signature gear, a vehicle perk, or otherwise with adventuring budget and you willfully put it in a situation where it's stats actually matter, you are probably going to lose it.

[darebear]

Maybe it is just me but this sounds too much like real life. If I needed to track all that in a game I may as well just do some online banking instead. There is something to be said for rules-lite for some things.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by darebear

Maybe it is just me but this sounds too much like real life. If I needed to track all that in a game I may as well just do some online banking instead. There is something to be said for rules-lite for some things.

I'd be really interested in an abstract "resources" attribute, maybe split up into "assets" and "capital" with the former representing things you own and the latter representing liquid cash. Roll v. assets to see if you have something already (big bonus for a lighter, big penalty for a yacht), roll v. capital to see if you can afford to bribe the customs official, etc.

This wouldn't be for every game, but I think it'd be an interesting option for those who don't care how much a box of .22 LR is.

[Grouchy Chris]

This was covered by an earlier thread.