To be, or not to be… poor

[Anaraxes]

I generally ignore Wealth for games in which looting is a big part of the point. The Wealth traits are about representing wealth in games where's that's not the focus (the classic example being supers like Batman / Tony Stark / Oliver Queen).

Those traits also cover a lot more than just gear. They're social traits about your LinkedIn connections and relationships with other wealthy (or not so wealthy) people.

They can cover solving problems with money, especially off-screen -- which tends to run counter to the DF direct action paradigm.

But they're often out of place in a zero-to-hero game where the street urchin and peasant farmboy are supposed to become rich and famous, or the tramp freighter crew is just scraping by and looking for that big score.. Someone might want to play an actual knight or idle noble, but I notice fiction generally has those characters being dispossessed or usurped, not actually functioning as such in their societr, colorful backstory, but not active game mechanic.

Note that by RAW, characters that are Poor (etc) don't get to become rich. They either lose all that loot somehow (to no useful end), or they buy off their starting Disad.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

The topic comes up often enough that it strikes me that a Power Ups for Wealth would be an interesting book. Discuss the meanings and implications of the existing ads and disads, when and how to use them appropriately, and some alternate systems to use (unless this is a topic already covered in Alternate Attributes?)

I'd be happy to write that, but I'm not in a position to jump through SJGames hoops for the privilege.

[JulianLW]

You might just house rule that, at character generation, you can take lower wealth, but you only get half of the points back for it, though you'll still have to buy it off at full cost if the PC ends up with money.

So, say you are playing a 150 point PC game. A PC could take Dead Broke [-25] and put that down on their character sheet, but they'd only get 12 CP to spend, and they'd start play at 13 CP less than everyone else: 137 CP. That might solve the problem of a disadvantage being not really as disadvantageous in your game as it ought to be for the points.

It would also reflect that poor people in real life have a lower point value than rich people (i.e. most homeless people are not running around with 25 CP more in IQ or DX or whatever compensatory advantages than middle-class people have).

[Anthony]

Back in 3e, at least as we understood it, advantages gained in play had to be paid for after the fact, so if the Poor character gained enough money to instead be Comfortable, congratulations, your next 20 points earned experience go towards wealth. In 4e, which doesn't use that rule, you should probably just eliminate or reprice any advantages or disadvantages that can be easily obtained in play.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Note that by RAW, characters that are Poor (etc) don't get to become rich. They either lose all that loot somehow (to no useful end), or they buy off their starting Disad.

Nowhere in Gurps does it ever say to take away $ from PCs who don't ahve the right Wealth Trait. It does say in _one_ place to make PCs who become Wealthy to pay for that Advantage.

Of course there are plenty of campaign types where Wealth does not act as an Advantage after the campign starts.

My preferred solution would probably be to replace the overall Wealth Trait with jsut Starting Money.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Nowhere in Gurps does it ever say to take away $ from PCs who don't ahve the right Wealth Trait. It does say in _one_ place to make PCs who become Wealthy to pay for that Advantage.

That one place being exactly the place for discussing Wealth in "Character Development". I'd hardly expect that point to be made repeatedly throughout the rules in unrelated sections. (Though it does get touched upon again in Campaigns, with "must pay the points to buy up his Wealth level" (emphasis in original), rather than allowing the character concept to remain the same (which necessarily entails frittering away the cash in some way appropriate to the character).

Or you can lump lucre under "Traits Gained In Play" and just not charge CP for the improvement (or dis-improvement when the villains sack your kingdom or take over your company). But as the thread started out discussing, if you know the game is going to include money being thrown at the characters, then it'd be silly to buy Wealth at start and unfair for the GM to charge for it if someone did. That's where the "ignore Wealth" (as I put it) and "just starting money" (as you put it) come in handy.

If the gear matters (as in the OP), so that climbing up a ladder of gear is the game, you don't want to throw lots of cash at the players for them just to buy the top rung -- nor allow that via Wealth at the start. Those tramp freighter crews scraping by one replacement part and upgrade at a time shouldn't be allowed start out as multimillionaire nobles (unless the GM just swaps out that focus of the game at start, rather than later in the campaign).

[Stormcrow]

The rule about making characters who amass a lot of cash buy up Wealth isn't because having cash means you have Wealth. It's because characters who have a lot of cash are going to try to do all the other things that Wealth lets you do, as mentioned by others above.

For example, if someone Poor but who comes into a lot of cash spends all their money on guns, ammo, and vehicles, everything is fine. They're still Poor: they have lousy credit, bookies won't take their bets, clubs won't let them have memberships, and so on. If someone else who is Poor but with cash tries to put the money into the bank so that society accepts them as being able to have credit, cover loans, cover bets, and so on, they're trying to obtain the benefits of higher Wealth, so they need to pay the character points for it.

If the character's cash comes to them as a result of an adventure, the GM has the option to let them take their money to the bank and give them higher Wealth, in the same way that saving someone's life on an adventure might prompt the GM to directly give you a Patron or a Reputation.

The GM doesn't need to ensure that a character with more cash than their Wealth would suggest loses that cash. The GM doesn't need to give plot protection to the cash of a character with higher Wealth. What a character does with their cash is their business. All the GM needs to do is make sure that the character's overall interaction with Wealth — not cash, Wealth — matches the level they've got on their character sheet. If they gain or lose the benefits of Wealth, they have to raise or lower their Wealth level, one way or another.

[Kromm]

I think the mind-bender in the rules as written is this:

Wealth is tied to cash on hand and equipment only during character creation.

The instant game play begins, this function ceases to matter and the main function of Wealth kicks in, which about jobs; see Wealth Level (p. B517). In effect, you usually need high Status to land a high-paying job (e.g., Status 2 for a "Wealthy" job), and to support that Status, you need the associated Wealth (in the example, Wealthy [20]). If you luck out and get the job despite being less fortunate, you get paid the same but are obligated to raise Wealth as you get paid and save money, because now you have the means to sustain that level of affluence – i.e., a cushy job, its pay, and the confidence that banks and markets grant to high-earners. In this sense, Wealth represents abstract, legitimate social connections and investments.

Whereas if you steal cash, loot a corpse, win a fortune at the casino or in a lottery, or otherwise come into a windfall unrelated to a job, you just have cash. Cash given to you by friends is most definitely in this category. You aren't obligated to buy Wealth – but if you don't, then once the money's gone, it's gone! You have no job, investments, connections, etc. to sustain you. All you have is whatever you bought with your big score, plus whatever is left of the cash after buying that gear.

Oh, you say you put it into bonds, bought a nice house, became friends with the bank, invested enough to sit a couple of boards, etc.? Then you MUST buy Wealth; see Adding and Improving Social Traits (p. B291). That's because social ties are bought with points and money; cash is necessary but not sufficient, unlike for gear.

In genres or settings where banks, investing, long-term social ties, etc. don't fit, and where all assets are liquid, you have two options:

1. Don't use Wealth.
   
   
2. Find some other use for Wealth. For instance, in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Wealth acts as a "power seller" ability, allowing you to benefit from a larger percentage of the notional value of treasure. In effect, it reduces all social ties to those that matter in hack 'n' slash: the "job" of loot reseller, which reflects what merchants and guilds in town think of you.

As for bankrolling poor friends, remember: Wealth is tied to cash on hand and equipment only during character creation. It really doesn't matter in that capacity once the game starts. What matters is that all starting gear is paid for, not who paid for it, as long as someone paid points for the money. But even the best gear won't buy you the investments and contacts to have long-term financial security, which is what Wealth actually does.

And again, in settings where polite social considerations make little sense, you need to be creative. For instance, in Dungeon Fantasy, one person with Wealth can sell loot for the whole group, but they can also charge whatever they want for the privilege:

"Sorry, I have Wealthy and you four are all Struggling, so since my Wealth multiplier is ×5 and yours are all ×1/2, there's 14 shares, and I get 10 while you each get 1. Don't like that? Sell it yourself!"

In that example, the Struggling people are welcome to get all of 20% instead of 1/14 of 80%, or 5.7%. If the rich PC doesn't mind sharing equally, that's on them . . . of course, if they don't share equally, maybe the cleric won't heal them.

Which gets to the final point: One character being the banker for poor characters isn't any more or less fair or balanced than one character being the healer, bodyguard, chauffeur, or whatever. They pay points but all the PCs benefit, just as someone who cut corners and got crummy active defenses so they could afford some other cool ability benefits from the points their friendly spellcaster put in, say, the Shield spell.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Which gets to the final point: One character being the banker for poor characters isn't any more or less fair or balanced than one character being the healer, bodyguard, chauffeur, or whatever. They pay points but all the PCs benefit, just as someone who cut corners and got crummy active defenses so they could afford some other cool ability benefits from the points their friendly spellcaster put in, say, the Shield spell.

Wealth scales differently from those things, though. The exponential scaling on Wealth means that on many point budgets, if you go all in you make Tony Stark look like a panhandler.

"I drive, I heal, I guard, and I provide each of us with a personal automated luxury space dreadnought. And don't worry about damaging it, there are spares."

[weby]

As others have said, it depends on genre.

In my long running Fantasy campaign status and wealth very heavily linked and that extended to the party, party "shares" depended on the wealth. It worked well in that campaign.

In the previous campaign wealth was not used as advantage or disadvantage.