Cyberpunk: Cash vs. Points Implications

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Thus it is infinitely better to buy gear with money.

That depends on table rules and campaign type, I think. I've run campaigns where points were "easy come, easy go," and character values jerked around in the ±50 points range due to things the players did, I did, and the environment did. Nobody cared, because points were mostly: (1) a character-creation currency, of little budgetary importance in later play, and (2) a really rough index of average character capability, this being the only reason we tracked them in play. Whereas cash . . . cash was hard to come by. In the specific case I'm thinking about, the PCs were from another world, had no legal ID, and had strange and somewhat unmarketable skills. They also had no money.

I could easily see a Gamma World-style game where random mutation, nanobot swarms, mad surgical robots, and plain old accidents regularly alter the PCs' point values up and down . . . but where widely accepted trade goods (the setting's stand-in for cash) are extremely rare, to the point where all the PCs are perpetually broke. I could also see a cyberpunk dystopia where being hacked up and reassembled, changing point values, happens all the time . . . but where the wealthy and powerful keep the PCs in the ghetto, as far as cash goes. In general, the idea of points being the be-all, end-all currency of the campaign isn't universal. Cash is often the harder thing to get and keep, making parting with it for improvements a harder call than parting with points.