[Wealth] House system for wealth and assets, critique please

muranternet · 07-10-2010, 01:38 AM

Thanks all for the feedback. To address some points:

I think if you allow characters to take variable wealth levels at the start of the game (assuming an ongoing campaign) you have to make them pay for accumulation of wealth ingame, because otherwise Struggling is basically 10 free CP. The comparison I think of is two fighter-type characters. One of them wants to start with a horse and decent armor and some weapons and such, and has to buy Wealthy to pay for it. The other guy makes exactly the same character, but takes Struggling, knowing that in a few adventures he'll get that stuff anyway, and uses the difference to buy 7-8 points more in weapon skill. That's a big plus in exchange for a few sessions of inconvenience.
In a pure adventuring game, it's probably easier to just assume the characters will never have day jobs and just use the Wealth trait to track their starting and ongoing cash accumulation. It's harsher this way though for the poor characters as they can owe significant CP debts.
I don't leave suitcases of money lying around either, but if the players have a good idea for accumulation I don't like to say the game balance faeries just whisk it away either. :P If the haul is significant and you do have a poor guy who suddenly owes a lot of CP, I think some disadvantages are in order to make up the balance.

I think everyone is right about the bookkeeping aspect of the system being a problem. I didn't think so originally, but then realized that to track Assets you also need to be constantly adding up the costs of goods owned. You also have to keep track of CoL, but you were going to do that anyway.

To alleviate the problem it's probably better just to do the accounting occasionally, instead of every adventure (maybe you also do it after they find a suitcase full of money since that seems pretty significant). So you let the characters know that the system is in place, just to make sure that low Wealth/Assets actually has some impact down the road, and say every 5 sessions, or 6 game months, or major plotline, or whatever, you do the books. This also can encourage the players to do it themselves so they save up some CP in the meantime. In my play group the players actually really like to pore over their characters and gear lists, and adding up values can be trivial if you're using GCA.

07-10-2010, 01:38 AM	#8
muranternet Join Date: Jul 2010	Re: [Wealth] House system for wealth and assets, critique please Thanks all for the feedback. To address some points: I think if you allow characters to take variable wealth levels at the start of the game (assuming an ongoing campaign) you have to make them pay for accumulation of wealth ingame, because otherwise Struggling is basically 10 free CP. The comparison I think of is two fighter-type characters. One of them wants to start with a horse and decent armor and some weapons and such, and has to buy Wealthy to pay for it. The other guy makes exactly the same character, but takes Struggling, knowing that in a few adventures he'll get that stuff anyway, and uses the difference to buy 7-8 points more in weapon skill. That's a big plus in exchange for a few sessions of inconvenience. In a pure adventuring game, it's probably easier to just assume the characters will never have day jobs and just use the Wealth trait to track their starting and ongoing cash accumulation. It's harsher this way though for the poor characters as they can owe significant CP debts. I don't leave suitcases of money lying around either, but if the players have a good idea for accumulation I don't like to say the game balance faeries just whisk it away either. :P If the haul is significant and you do have a poor guy who suddenly owes a lot of CP, I think some disadvantages are in order to make up the balance. I think everyone is right about the bookkeeping aspect of the system being a problem. I didn't think so originally, but then realized that to track Assets you also need to be constantly adding up the costs of goods owned. You also have to keep track of CoL, but you were going to do that anyway. To alleviate the problem it's probably better just to do the accounting occasionally, instead of every adventure (maybe you also do it after they find a suitcase full of money since that seems pretty significant). So you let the characters know that the system is in place, just to make sure that low Wealth/Assets actually has some impact down the road, and say every 5 sessions, or 6 game months, or major plotline, or whatever, you do the books. This also can encourage the players to do it themselves so they save up some CP in the meantime. In my play group the players actually really like to pore over their characters and gear lists, and adding up values can be trivial if you're using GCA.