Action!-ising Wealth, Status &c.

[Agemegos]

Among its many excellences GURPS Action! includes simplified rules for Rank that (a) clean up complicated builds involving Rank, Patron, Allies, and Contacts and (b) provide simple, explicit rules for how rank can be used on an adventure to do the things it ought to do without faffing about with rules for Patrons, Contacts, Contacts etc. These rules simplify character generation and give positive support during play. My cash opinion is that it was worth buying GURPS Action! 1: Heroes just to get these two pages of rules. And by cash opinion I mean that I actually paid the money to get the rules in question and consider it a reasonable buy: the other good things in GURPS Action! 1 are money for jam.

It is my opinion, oft expressed, that GURPS basic rules for Wealth and Status are so tangled up with qualifications for characters leading settled lifestyles, cost-of-living rules, Independent Income, Debt, jobs, dependents, resources provided by cost-of-living, tech level et interminable cetera that we end up with complicated, fussy character builds that still manage not to work quite right, besides which it is far from clear what assorted advantages actually do on adventures.

I'd like to see a set of drastically simplified rules for (1) access to resources and (2) social privilege like those in GURPS Action! for Rank. I suspect that by cutting to the chase with rules designed for effect we can get results at least as realistic and at least as munchkin-proof as the current over-determined and ill-co-ordinated tangle of advantages, disadvantages, and rules, but much simpler and more concrete.

I'm pretty clear that I want to roll capital and income into a single wealth advantage, using perhaps a pact limitation to represent income from work. I am in some doubt as to whether access to resources and social privilege ought to be separate advantages (with guidelines suggesting that they be closely associated in settings where society works that way), or whether in the spirit of GURPS attributes they ought to be folded together with modifiers to allow their option deviation from one another in abnormal cases.

[Kelly Pedersen]

How abstract are you looking for? I've been thinking that it would be nice to have a much more abstract Wealth system, something along the lines of the old d20 Wealth Roll system, where you have a "wealth score" that you roll against to buy various items, with penalties for expensive items, and bonuses for cheap ones. My personal preference for cinematic games to to avoid all the dollar-tracking accounting that goes on with gear purchases.

[Flyndaran]

I just wish life-savings was divorced from income both independent and from jobs.
I like having characters that may have some really valuable gear but are presently down on their luck. Other than signature gear which doesn't always fit and the much less efficient points for cash option, I'm stuck

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

How abstract are you looking for?

I'd like to start by canvassing opinions on that point.

My personal preference for cinematic games to to avoid all the dollar-tracking accounting that goes on with gear purchases.

Not to mention ongoing budgets based on tech level, job, pay, Independent Income, other investments if the GM allows, Status, dependants, and cost of living.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Brett

I'd like to start by canvassing opinions on that point.

I think there's probably room (and demand) for (at least) four systems.

1. Much more detailed and cash counting than the default. It would have some detailed rules for currency exchange and make you actually detail that "80% in assets". There was a thread a long time ago where the poster seemed to really want something like this for 1980s Romania or something.
2. The default system.
3. A system that abstracts a lot more than the default cash counts at least for "adventuring gear" and "windfalls. This is useful in games where "money" is important but isn't especially interested in simultation. DF's system is kind of there .
4. An ultra-abstract system like D20 Modern. The game doesn't cocern itself with monetary values at all, and instead uses a some kind of "Buying Power" attribute to reduce purchases and assests to probabilities.

[Darekun]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I just wish life-savings was divorced from income both independent and from jobs.

Amen. I especially have this problem with non-casual starships. For PCs, "had the income and bought a starship" is rarely related to "has the income to buy a starship". And what should it do to their point total if a PC has no job, but 10× average starting wealth in magical gear from past adventures?

If you strip all the income from Wealth and treat jobs like adventuring income, would it be balanced? Or would Wealth then be overpriced? I haven't run the numbers with an amount of Debt that would cancel the average job for that wealth level, but I think that's a fixed amount of Debt… If you assume both are balanced, then the cost of Wealth minus income would need to be between them.

My main problem with the d20 Modern system is that it was a messed-up interpolation between exponential and linear. Getting money assumed it was linear, and for filthy rich characters it was linear, but for poor characters it was exponential, and for everybody in between it was a mix.

[joelbf]

I think that wealth and status should be kept separate advantages. I think there are fictional heroes (villains/characters) that display one but not the other. I would go with advice/rules per setting on how inter-related they are.

A common issue (in my group) when playing GURPS (or WoD or Aeon/Trinity) is the consequences of "acquiring" large amounts of cash. How is cash transferred into wealth? and how does that relate to CPs? I would love to se an abstract system that could elegantly handle this.

[RogerBacon]

GURPS: Conspiracy X had rules similar to those in Action 1 - Heroes. You might want to look at that too. Look under "Pulling Strings - Funding" for a better way to do money without jobs and job rolls.

[Langy]

I like the idea of having one advantage that strictly represents income (including how much money you'd make at a job - having a job that pays $500,000 an hour is definitely an advantage over one that pays $5 an hour, even if both characters have a billion dollars in the bank), one advantage that represents static assets like homes, cars, private jets, spaceships, etc - the stuff that Status buys you now, but without any actual assumption that you've got superior social status aside from that granted by wealth - and one advantage that represents liquid wealth and adventuring gear - stuff you can spend on guns, swords, armor, fighter jets, that sort of thing. I'd definitely completely toss the entire '80% of wealth must be in non-adventuring gear' bit, since it's such a stupid rule and complicates things en-masse.

Signature Gear would certainly change so that it no longer gives money towards the price of the gear, and trading Points for Cash wouldn't exist any longer, either, since there'd be another seperate advantage for liquid wealth.

If a player gets a lot of liquid wealth during an adventure, then his point value increases if he doesn't spend that wealth on non-assets. This seems to make sense to me, and I see no reason why it shouldn't work this way.

[gjc8]

This is still at thought experiment level, but it might be useful for you.

The attributes currently covered by wealth are split into two new advantages: Assets and Equipment, along with a revamped Independent Income simply called Income.

Assets covers the "background" stuff that normally is covered by the 80% of wealth: house, car, etc. This might be a standardized list for a setting, along with GM fiat on corner items ("You're Comfortable? Ok, sure you have a smartphone"). Alternately, you might have a certain amount of money, and be allowed to spend it on items you can justify. Assets costs (1/4?) of the equivalent level of wealth.

Equipment covers everything adventurers need, the 20% of normal GURPS wealth: swords, fighter jets, battlesuits, etc. This works just like it does normally, except the it costs (1/4?) as much to buy the appropriate amount of starting equipment.

Income is a "fixed" Independent Income. It has an exponential growth, based on an efficient pricing of Independent Income and (1/2 price?) wealth providing a multiplier, or you can decouple the two and let players figure out the efficient level for themselves.
By default, Income works like Independent Income, with the money arriving each month automatically. If the money is not automatic, that's a limitation on Income. If it requires a certain input of time (like most jobs) that's (haven't figure the levels out yet), if it depends on the character's skills, thats Requires Attribute/Skill Roll.