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Old 06-16-2021, 05:14 PM   #11
Gnome
 
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

The way I used Alternate Wealth in the one campaign where I used it was that I assumed everyone had a “settled life” with 80% of their assets sunk into life basics. This was handled with Abstract Wealth. The other 20% was handled concretely—basically you had a small amount of starting cash that never replenished on its own (though of course if you find money or sell something of value you can get more cash). The system worked really well. Normal everyday life things were mostly background, equipment purchases and adventuring expenditures usually came out of concrete cash, and when the party needed to buy something more expensive they could rely on Abstract Wealth. I really liked this way—it was generous to the players because they had choices about how to access their wealth, and it also smoothed out the wrinkles and problems with RAW Wealth. I would definitely use this idea again in a modern setting.
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Old 06-16-2021, 06:40 PM   #12
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
For very many people in the real world today, how much cash + credit they have at a given moment is basically random and under the control of factors out of the scope of an adventure story. Nobody wants to simulate how their character is managing inflows and outflows to fund daily life ("Bob's washing machine broke and flooded his server room, but one of his debtors finally pays him for the work back in '04"), we do that when we are not gaming. And the cost of products often varies widely: I have seen the same grade of cloth sold for 1 shekel in a shop in a back street and 2 or 3 shekels in the touristy street 5 minutes by bicycle away.

And adventurers tend to be closer to 'working poor' than 'comfortable middle-class person with a good credit rating.'
Maybe it would work for some games/players. Thinking over the last several campaigns I've played or run, they either involve substantive connections to a community, including property ownership and/or significant planning, equiping and logistics. The freebooting 'adventurer' hasn't been the norm for some time.
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Old 06-16-2021, 07:24 PM   #13
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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Maybe it would work for some games/players. Thinking over the last several campaigns I've played or run, they either involve substantive connections to a community, including property ownership and/or significant planning, equiping and logistics. The freebooting 'adventurer' hasn't been the norm for some time.
Abstract wealth rules seem suited for a game about police officers, or students, or secret vampires, or daily life on a space station, or other people with a lot of 'life stuff' in the background and few sudden drastic changes in characters' standards of living. They also abstract away "Status and Cost of Living" and "What Cost of Living Gets You" which are rules which many people do not find helpful. I notice a line on page 32 "If someone has Status, Rank, or Reputation, living below a certain level may reduce or eliminate those benefits until the person returns to living the lifestyle to which he has led others to believe he is accustomed."

I have never tried any rules in this family though- some d20 games use them- so I don't know if these particular rules are good 'uns.
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Old 06-16-2021, 08:29 PM   #14
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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Abstract wealth rules seem suited for a game about police officers, or students, or secret vampires, or daily life on a space station, or other people with a lot of 'life stuff' in the background and few sudden drastic changes in characters' standards of living.
They would also likely work well in a gift economy. Higher wealth represents having more credit with more people, and thus a higher chance of a person willing to provide you with a thing actually having that thing.
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Old 06-17-2021, 12:59 AM   #15
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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And adventurers tend to be closer to 'working poor' than 'comfortable middle-class person with a good credit rating.'
That perception depends on what adventurers you are talking about.

Take Scooby Doo and company for example. They traveled so much that Daphne Blake and Shaggy Rogers were given insanely rich relatives to explain where the money to travel to places like China was coming from. Clearly not 'working poor'.

Cliffhanger character set in modern times (1920s to 1950s) had much the same issue. Either they had a rich patron backing them or they were independently wealthy. Clearly not 'working poor'.

The last example is 1st level AD&D1 adventurers. Unfortunately for it to make any sense you need a lot of background.

In a world where the silver piece (10 of these to a gold piece or gp for short) is king a character needed:

"Level of the Trainee Character x 1,500 gp = weekly cost during study/training" with the number of weeks (1-4) being determined by how close to the stated alignment one role played (DMG1 pg 86)

Heck, Dragon #97's "Only Train When You Gain" (May 1985) pointed out that a 1st level Cleric who was so out of wack with his alignment was looking at 4 weeks of training would cough up 6,000 gp to get to level 2. "The cleric could throw in his robes and live a very happy life as a merchant if he had 6,000 gp."

Now in AD&D1 all coins had an encumbrance (representing weight and space) of 1/10 of an avoirdupois pound.

By having encumbrance represent weight and space taken up AD&D1 produced totally off the wall results with coins being way too large and by extension having too much precious metal in them.

Assuming .900 fineness a single AD&D1 gold piece has about 1.31 (.900*700/480) troy ounces of gold in it or about $178.10 in 1977 when the players handbook came out and $297.68 in 1979 when the DMG came out.

AD&D2 (1987) made things somewhat saner by making coins 1/5 the weight they were in AD&D1 but you are still talking about 0.26 troy ounces of gold in the average gold piece which in 1987 was about $105.92. While this is on par with the US Half Eagle ($5) of the 19th century it still makes gold coins much larger then they were in the historical middle ages.

D&D3.5e retained AD&D2's 50 coins to an avoirdupois pound as did D&D5e again making the gold coins too heavy when compared to the historical middle ages.

Even at bare minimum you have the equivalent of $156,880 per week in TL 7 money going to the local guild. Going by AD&D1 RAW that gets kicked up to $446,520 per week in TL 7 money. A month is 4.34524 weeks. That gets you from about $36,103 to $103,760. Divide that by TL 7's ~$483 (2,100/4.34524) and you get x 74 to x 214 or Very Wealthy to Multimillionaire levels for a brief period of time.

At named level (level 9 to 11 depending on the class), when they were effectively supposed to be landed nobles, you were looking at

1,000 gp /level/week (tithes, largess) for Fighters
2,000 gp /level/week for Clerics (vestments & largess) and Thieves (tools, equipment, etc.)
4,000 gp /level/week (equipment, books, experiments,
etc.) for Magic-Users

Definitely not 'working poor' but they still go adventuring.
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Old 06-17-2021, 04:33 AM   #16
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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do you mean that the lowest level in the two systems is priced differently?
Not only that the lowest level is priced (very) differently, but also that the lowest level seems equivalent to me. Homeless = Dead Broke. If anything, you might(!) argue that a homeless person has more "wealth" (several bags or a shopping cart full of stuff, sometimes a tent or even a car) than someone who is described as owning only the shirt on their back, which makes the pricing even dodgier. But let's not get sidetracked into a discussion about what is poorer, Homeless or Dead Broke. I'm just saying, 15 points don't feel justified.

If you take steps of -5 points down from Wealth 10, you arrive at a neat -25 points for the lowest level, but that doesn't track well with the changes in purchasing power (-50% from 10 to 9, -60% from 9 to 8, -50% from 8 to 7, -80% from 7 to 6, -90% from 6 to 5). Then again, the original point steps don't track that well, either.

Gotta play a little with that table when I have the time. Maybe we can come up with an Alternate Abstract Wealth. ;)
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Old 06-17-2021, 06:55 AM   #17
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

Regarding Independent Income, I've had some ideas before, but right now, I tend toward reducing the time needed on the job to maintain your level of wealth, except simpler than what I proposed in that other thread:

Each level of Independent Income would reduce your workday by 5%, so for 20 points, you'd no longer have to work at all and can live entirely on your pension / royalties / investments.
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Old 06-17-2021, 07:09 AM   #18
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They would also likely work well in a gift economy. Higher wealth represents having more credit with more people, and thus a higher chance of a person willing to provide you with a thing actually having that thing.
I really like this interpretation. If I ever had a campaign set in a gift economy, I think Abstract Wealth would be my go-to, now that you mention it.

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Originally Posted by CeeDub View Post
Regarding Independent Income, I've had some ideas before, but right now, I tend toward reducing the time needed on the job to maintain your level of wealth, except simpler than what I proposed in that other thread:

Each level of Independent Income would reduce your workday by 5%, so for 20 points, you'd no longer have to work at all and can live entirely on your pension / royalties / investments.
That's workable, although I'd suggest 10% per level, so that a "Doesn't Have to Work" Advantage costs [10] (as I stated in the Independent Income thread, it's worth about half of Doesn't Sleep [20], as the latter works on weekends and has immediate adventuring applications). For simplicity, you'll probably want to limit it to 10 levels instead of the normal 20.

In fact, you could treat adventure-related windfalls similarly - a character who makes $20/hour and gains $1600 from an adventure can take two weeks (10 workdays) off work - or work half days for nearly a month (20 workdays) or whatever. Basically, convert gained cash into hours that the character can take off work at some point in the future. This won't make sense for all jobs, however, but ideally an active adventurer would have a day job with rather flexible hours.
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Old 06-17-2021, 07:39 AM   #19
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

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That's workable, although I'd suggest 10% per level, so that a "Doesn't Have to Work" Advantage costs [10] (as I stated in the Independent Income thread, it's worth about half of Doesn't Sleep [20], as the latter works on weekends and has immediate adventuring applications). For simplicity, you'll probably want to limit it to 10 levels instead of the normal 20.
Excellent observation! Sorry, haven't caught up yet on the II thread.

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In fact, you could treat adventure-related windfalls similarly - a character who makes $20/hour and gains $1600 from an adventure can take two weeks (10 workdays) off work - or work half days for nearly a month (20 workdays) or whatever. Basically, convert gained cash into hours that the character can take off work at some point in the future. This won't make sense for all jobs, however, but ideally an active adventurer would have a day job with rather flexible hours.
Nice, but doesn't work in that many cases. I suppose you could just hand wave that your employer has no problem giving you unlimited unpaid leave on short notice. But it won't work well for PCs with Independent Income, who don't have much of a workday anyway.

I might go with the suggestion in the "original" Abstract Wealth and allow the PCs to blow the windfall cash on big purchases. If they don't, assume they invested it. In game terms, it's either just gone, or can be used as in-game justification for an increase in Wealth, to be paid for in character points, of course. Campaigns where you'd use Abstract Wealth in the first place are not really campaigns where financial gains are the primary motivation for the PCs, in my opinion/experience.

For example, when Sgt. Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon franchise gets his hands on large amounts of cash money from drug dealers, he launders it, puts it in a swiss bank account (I suppose those were still a thing in the early 90s), but makes a point of not changing his lilfestyle at all.
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Old 06-17-2021, 09:17 AM   #20
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Default Re: Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

I haven't played with abstract wealth in GURPS, but have used it in d20 Modern and it works very well. Chaosium has something broadly similar in its Credit Rating rules, where your Credit Rating score defines the lifestyle you can afford and whether or not you have the resources on hand at the moment to make a major purchase.

Cash on hand in an abstract system can be handled in two different ways, depending on how the group wants to handle it. Either having a pool of cash gives you a bonus to your rolls to make major purchases, or you use cash to make the purchase instead of draining the resources that fuel your lifestyle. In either case, once you've used up the cash (whether it was a reward, loot, or bribe, or whatever) it's gone and you're back to using your lifestyle resources (abstract wealth). Personally I prefer the second option, because sometimes it's fun to sit down with a shopping list of cool gear and it lets you roleplay your character's priorities (Do I buy a shiny new sports car, or use the money to justify having my poor character move into a nicer place with a functional shower and no roaches?). Also it can be a bit weird trying to figure out exactly what sort of bonus $5000 gives to the roll of someone with a wealth of 7 versus a wealth of 15. Abstract wealth with a bit of cash as seasoning also emulates a lot of serial fiction well, where characters tend to live at more or less the same wealth level throughout the series even if they do get a windfall sometimes.

Abstract wealth is a lot like BAD from Action. It works well if you don't want to sweat the details. If you want a game where every cent counts and you need to track your resources in detail, then the GM is going to have to sit down and figure out how GenericURPS wealth works in their specific setting.
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