Working Stiffs or: How Much Should Professional Adventurer's Realistically Make?

[Jinumon]

This question has bothered me for a long time. Just how much money would it take to reasonably entice some exceptional Indiana Jones- or Geralt of Rivia-type to risk life and limb for a wealthy employer or with the promise of a big score? How often do they take jobs, and how long do those jobs take? Funnily enough, I feel I may have stumbled upon a solid ballpark figure while prepping for a 5E campaign of That One Game I intend to run shortly for some friends (it’s all they know, don’t hold against them… or me).

Based on my own best estimates, all of which are admittedly very rough (economics in That One Game have never made much sense), one gold piece is worth between G$50 and G$100, based on figures for a loaf of bread (2 cp) and varying costs of living. According to some math done by this fine gentleman, characters in That One Game aught to earn around 800,000 gold pieces worth of wealth between first and twentieth level, which reasonably represents an exceptional individual’s (i.e. Player Character’s) adventuring career. This results in a figure of about G$40,000,000 to G$80,000,000 over the course of an adventurer’s working life.

This seems reasonable to me. While adventuring won’t earn you Jeff Bezos levels of wealth, one would expect someone like Nathan Drake, selling archaeological finds and historical artifacts to museums and collectors, is going to make some serious dosh by the time he calls it quits. Assuming one puts about half of their earnings back into their “business,” adventurers will be able to live and retire in at least a Very Wealthy if not Filthy Rich or even Multimillionaire lifestyle.

The above figures speak only to Cost of Living and are irrespective of Tech Level. This could represent one of two things. Either the amount is adjusted for Tech Level, in which case I would probably consider the above figures to be TL8-ish, or the value of an adventurer’s time goes down relative to typical incomes as technology advances and narrows the gap between the exceptional and average Joes. Honestly, I could see a case for either and the most accurate interpretation likely lies somewhere in-between.

But how frequently to adventurer’s work? Arguably the greatest appeal of leveraging one’s exceptional nature in extremely hazardous situations is the amount of time one has between adventures in which one can essentially vacation. No one is going to punch a clock daily if it means a significant chance of losing life or limb, and even modern combat zones seem tame next to the non-stop marathon of action in an adventure-pulp serial. Again, I think That One Game might have a decent answer.

According to that same fine gentleman’s same math, every “tier” (4-6 levels) increases one’s expected income by an order of magnitude. After interpolating the data for some finer granularity, I ultimately wound up with a result where an end-game character receives about 1500 times what a starting adventurer makes. Assuming a single extensive, multi-act adventure earns the Player Characters one level and adjusting for our GURPS conversion, the first job will net each character G$8,000 - G$17,000 while the classic “one last time” will earn around G$15,000,000 - G$30,000,000, enough to retire on by itself.

Again, this seems reasonable to me. Depending on how much the adventurers spend replacing equipment and their personal taste for luxury, even a starting Player Character can live for months at a Comfortable or Wealthy lifestyle for a task that likely takes no more than a few weeks to complete.

These are just some initial thoughts, and any of these figures could likely be scaled up or down by as much as a factor of four. Let me know what ya’ll think. I might continue to expand on this if there seems to be any interest in it, and I can post my exact maths if people need clarification.

Jinumon