Independent Income at later TL stages

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Rupert

So we have here an advantage that is clearly something purchasable with money ...

It is not purchasable with money. It costs character points.

Permission from the GM to spend character points that way may be premised (at the GMs discretion) on spending some amount of money. There are well known methods for anyone to determine a market cost in money for an income if that's what the GM wants to use, but the GM is not compelled to. She can do something else if she wants. It's not clear what value would be added by having the rules give guidance on a matter of discretion like this.

In a game that has a lot of rules/guidelines for how much things cost this is an oversight.

Or it's a level of directive detail that is considered superfluous. A matter of perspective perhaps.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

it not having anything, not even a short box on the matter, on how much II might cost to buy as an investment in game?

I'd like to point out that this is not the first time it's come up in my campaign, and I don't see why it wouldn't come up in other people's. It seems like a sensible move for someone who has made a goodly amount of money adventuring to want to put some of it into investments of various kinds (stocks, real estate, etc.) and enjoy a guaranteed income. .

<shrug>I've had PCs who've made _lots_ of money. Mostly they just hoarded it though sometimes they took $ (in-game character money) and made in-game investments with it so they could make more money.

Nobody ever tried to crossover $ with cp. The two aren't really related and you can't turn $ into Traits you have to buy with cp. There aren't any rules about how big a stake you needed to get into that card game where you won your starship either. It's all done with cp.

[Inky]

A recap here might be handy, I'm completely confused about what the problem's supposed to be.
Rupert, how much money do you want the character to start out with?
How much income do you want the character to have?
Is the character being created, or has play already started? (If you've already said that somewhere, I haven't found it).

Is the problem that 12% of the whole starting wealth per year is the minimum possible with II and that seems too much?

Originally Posted by Rupert

That does depend on how long (in game-time) the campaign is expected to run, and what the local ROI tends to be.

Just what that was at various TLs, for the sort of thing one might be able to gain something like an Independent Income from, and which historical settings an II from investment was essentially impossible to justify, would be nice.

Such information also gives an idea about how wealthy a patron, etc., would need to be to give out II in the form of stipends or revenue streams from something (like from a mill or use fees on a bridge or the like).

I think that's too big a question to do anything sensible at all with in GURPS - it'd make more sense to just look it up in actual history books or websites.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Such information also gives an idea about how wealthy a patron, etc., would need to be to give out II in the form of stipends or revenue streams from something (like from a mill or use fees on a bridge or the like).

Don't need to know his wealth -- he's giving out a part of his income, not a part of his wealth, so you need his income.

Realistically, the ratio of assets to income in GURPS is set up for adventurers. A net worth of less than 8 months income (at TL 8) is reasonable enough for a character in his 20s who's inclined to go out searching for adventure, and much less reasonable for the type of person who would be hiring such adventurers.

[maximara]

Another thread with the title "Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44 " was started and from what I have seen it appears to be light years ahead of what has been presented so far.

Wealth is turned into an attribute with 10 being the baseline.

Instead of keeping tract of how much wealth a character actually has with regards to buying stuff the player rolls against their wealth level and consults a Threshold Value table (based on TL) to determine how easily it is to actually purchase that item.

With the exception of a critical success and normal failure each purchase attempt results in effective Wealth getting a cumulative -1 for a set period of time.

If you want to get rid of the table just use the 10 row and do the others as a multiple of that. So 9 would be x 0.5 while 11 is x 2. Sure it won't match the table but it will come close enough to serve.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by maximara

Another thread with the title "Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44 " was started and from what I have seen it appears to be light years ahead of what has been presented so far.

Wealth is turned into an attribute with 10 being the baseline.

Instead of keeping tract of how much wealth a character actually has with regards to buying stuff the player rolls against their wealth level and consults a Threshold Value table (based on TL) to determine how easily it is to actually purchase that item.

With the exception of a critical success and normal failure each purchase attempt results in effective Wealth getting a cumulative -1 for a set period of time.

If you want to get rid of the table just use the 10 row and do the others as a multiple of that. So 9 would be x 0.5 while 11 is x 2. Sure it won't match the table but it will come close enough to serve.

Personally, I find it just plain silly that one moment a character can't afford somthing but then a at a later moment he can, based on the roll of some dice.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Inky

A recap here might be handy, I'm completely confused about what the problem's supposed to be.
Rupert, how much money do you want the character to start out with?
How much income do you want the character to have?
Is the character being created, or has play already started? (If you've already said that somewhere, I haven't found it).

The character has been in play for years. They've accumulated a pile of cash and want to buy Independent Income. The expectation is that this would be justified in-game by them taking some of that money and investing it in long-term investments of the sort you can't readily liquidate.

Is the problem that 12% of the whole starting wealth per year is the minimum possible with II and that seems too much?

That's something that's not ideal, but it's not the main issue.

I think that's too big a question to do anything sensible at all with in GURPS - it'd make more sense to just look it up in actual history books or websites.

And yet there's a small box in Low-Tech Companion I on how much interest a bank run by a religion (a fairly common set up historically) would charge, and how much buying a letter of credit from a widespread bank so you could move money to another place would cost.

One of the Spaceships books discusses payment plans for spaceship purchase (and buying them with points, for that matter).

This shows that GURPS does deal in financial matters, and it does have equivalences for points and money.

It also unfortunately has a system where monetary traits, listed levels and wealth, listed incomes, and listed costs of living don't play well together. On top of that, it gives no help in the matter of how much it might cost to buy II.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The character has been in play for years. They've accumulated a pile of cash and want to buy Independent Income. The expectation is that this would be justified in-game by them taking some of that money and investing it in long-term investments of the sort you can't readily liquidate.

That's something that's not ideal, but it's not the main issue.

I would still recommend splitting off "investment income" from the Independent Income trait, and focus the trait on things like pensions, sinecures, allowances, and remittances which can't be turned into a lump sum. That would let any hypothetical investment rules focus on economics and G$ and not get distracted with the story trait "does not need a day job in a campaign where most characters do."

As I said, in the late 20th and early 21st century the rules of thumb I know is that a retiree should plan on withdrawing no more than 3-4% of their investments per year to be confident of having investments when they die. In earlier settings, real returns might be higher, but there are far fewer safe investments and fewer ways for a small investor to amortize risk across many small investments (especially if they don't want to spend a lot of time and attention managing their property).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I would still recommend splitting off "investment income" from the Independent Income trait, and focus the trait on things like pensions, sinecures, allowances, and remittances which can't be turned into a lump sum. That would let any hypothetical investment rules focus on economics and G$ and not get distracted with the story trait "does not need a day job in a campaign where most characters do."

Independent Income has issue even there - it scales oddly with TL, and below TL5 you can't live off even 20 levels of II at the standard of living for the Status expected for your Wealth. At TL5+ you can, and it costs fewer points with each TL. Thus the value of the advantage goes up greatly with TL.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Personally, I find it just plain silly that one moment a character can't afford somthing but then a at a later moment he can, based on the roll of some dice.

No system is going to be perfect and some price must be paid for the abstraction of something that is in reality very complicated. I look at it less than just 'can't afford something' but rather 'can't afford something or item isn't readily available'.

Real life examples I can think of are some of Nintendo's Amiibos or certain buildable Lego figures (Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker). Thanks to scalpers those were way over priced.