[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Debt

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The people talking about RP uses for debt are basically treating it as an involuntary duty.

I know I'm revealing my ignorance, but I thought it was more like an Enemy, just tweaked to collect debt instead of the usual issues.

Which might be what makes Debt legit; it isn't that you can't model certain aspects of it with different traits, but that having them all in a single package is handy.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Otaku

I've had some GM's that allowed a player to go into "Point debt" for something, creating a literal point loan, but it always ended up messy no matter how much both player and GM tried to make it work out.

I've been extended a loan by a GM of a single point, deducted from the session's experience award at the end of play. That works fine; it happened when there was a good plot reason for the character to learn a skill, but had no points on hand.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've been extended a loan by a GM of a single point, deducted from the session's experience award at the end of play. That works fine; it happened when there was a good plot reason for the character to learn a skill, but had no points on hand.

Something like that might be fine, but it was never that small. Well, perhaps at first, but soon it was double digits and - I think at its worst - at one time even low triple-digit amounts were allowed. In the case of the latter, I think it was to allow an expensive Racial Template on a starting PC without eating up all the available CP. IIRC correctly, a percentage of the player's earned CP (minimum of 1) would go towards paying it off. >.>

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Otaku

I know I'm revealing my ignorance, but I thought it was more like an Enemy, just tweaked to collect debt instead of the usual issues.

It's only an Enemy if you don't pay your debts. Otherwise, it's just someone expecting you to cough up money, and if you can't, it's a plot hook.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The people talking about RP uses for debt are basically treating it as an involuntary duty.

I'd say it's both. Normally the PC is low on take-home money even despite having good starting funds and ongoing wealth (e.g. a lucrative job and good socioeconomic connections). If the PC fails to pay up, then something duty/enemy-like shows up. That seems to be the niche that Debt fills, and you're offering to throw that away without providing an adequate replacement, only replacing the conditional part of it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That seems to be the niche that Debt fills, and you're offering to throw that away without providing an adequate replacement, only replacing the conditional part of it.

The problem is it does a terrible job of filling that niche.

[jason taylor]

As a side note, Ruth Benedict said that when she was in Japan there was a spike in suicides every New Year when contracts come due. To paraphrase Miyagi, in Japan, honor VERY important.

That could make debt an extremely hazardous duty.

[tanksoldier]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

As a side note, Ruth Benedict said that when she was in Japan there was a spike in suicides every New Year when contracts come due. To paraphrase Miyagi, in Japan, honor VERY important.

That could make debt an extremely hazardous duty.

I think that would be both a Debt and Code of Honor interacting.

Suicide is high in Japan because of their code of honor: salarymen, executives, schoolchildren...

...not because of debt.

[ericthered]

I was looking into kitting out some characters for a modern game and it occurred to me that the obvious way to get the large sea-worthy boat they needed was to take a loan out on it. For whatever reason it took the modern context to get me to realize that.

It would be interesting to offer character creation rules where wealth can be bought with meta-traits and thus don't count debt towards the disadvantage limit:

Investments (Major Item): gain an item up to x10 the starting wealth. Pay 20% of campaign's starting wealth each month. Your income is unaffected.

In modern games, buying wealth this way is a loosing game. Actually, looking at the implicit interest rate from paying 2% of the item's cost per month (and thus 12% a year), Investments as above isn't a great deal compared to a modern business loan. It would be interesting to drop the interest paid to be closer to modern rates.

Either way, my modern group will be acquiring some fairly steep payments on their boat... which just provides some pressure to acquire loot more quickly.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I actually haven't seen a game where the Wealth/Jobs/COL rules made any sense.

They've always worked at my table. And they would work pretty much at any table where:

* The GM keeps a tight rein on how much loot is handed out;
* The GM allows for enough downtime to make jobs feasible and desirable;
* The campaign pays enough attention to logistics to make such details warranted; and
* The setting involves stable polities.

I agree they make less sense in milieus like dungeon fantasy or post-apoc, at tables where bandits carrying steamer trunks full of silver meet with bored yawns, and in many campaigns in which the PCs are the swaggering masters of the earth to whom all mere mortals (= NPCs) are expected to kowtow, and the King's tax collectors are met with derision.