Abstract Wealth Pyramid #3-44

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Abstract Wealth rules are a lot like the RAW GURPS Wealth rules. They're fine if you want to indicate a general sense of how wealthy and connected a character is in a game that doesn't really care about money, as long as you're careful not to look at them too hard or expect them to simulate anything with mechanics that model the real world.

Which describe the majority of my games.

Outside of DF (where every $ and item are carefully counted), we seldom want more details than that.
Neither I nor, more importantly, my players, care about the details beyond a general sense of how wealthy and connected a character is, and whether or not they can afford a purchase.

Obviously, there will be games were this is different.
Game were the focus is on trading, for example.

For the same reason, when the players want to hire an hireling, they use the abstract rules in Campaign p517-518, or the even simpler rules in DFRPG p90.
Even when those rules fail to simulate a real hiring process modelled on the real world, which they certainly do in many cases.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'll note there are some systems that actually do this, in a roundabout fashion - you don't really keep track of ammunition (except perhaps for how may extra magazines/powercells/whatever you have on you), but certain "failure" results on your attack roll means your weapon is out of ammunition and needs to be reloaded. In theory you could get dozens of attacks out of a revolver without needing to reload, or have to reload a drum-fed tommy gun after a single attack, but then that does fit a lot of cinematic settings.

Or perhaps more accurately, the possibility of running out of ammo inconveniently is based on rolls. Action movie characters reload whenever the camera angle changes. If they run out of ammo on screen, it is because of an unlucky moment, not the capacity of the magazine.

Originally Posted by Varyon

The GM probably shouldn't let you keep asking the same person (or organization, depending on how things are setup) for whatever you're searching for, at least not without enough time passing that something might have changed.

And the Abstract Wealth rules handle that. If you fail to buy something, you can't try to buy that same kind of thing again for days, weeks, or months, depending on the scale of the purchase. And a failed purchase roll is not necessarily "does not have enough cash in wallet" but "could not find item available for sale at prices my current liquid assets plus available credit can cover".

The pocket money level is handled by the fact that trivial purchases are completely ignored.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RyanW

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The pocket money level is handled by the fact that trivial purchases are completely ignored.

This describes many of my games. Money works like in the real world but nobody is keeping track of how much they spent on lunch. that's muhc simpler than learning new rules for abstract wealth.