Independent Income at later TL stages

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Well then, thank goodness that it doesn't! All it has are traits to represent kinda how rich or poor you are, how much to pay to maintain a lifestyle, and a couple of ways to increase or decrease your monthly cash supply. Y'know, things you might need to know during an adventure once in a while.

You've got to go into deep waters just to start identifying your 'monthly cash supply'...

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

By and large, Gurps wealth rules are adequate when

• you don't play in a murder-hobo or team mission game
• neither the GM nor the players care much about ingame finance or matching real world values,
  they just want some verisimilitude and fast answers to the questions :
  how much money do I have available? What is my income ? What do I own ? How many cp did it cost

I don’t think that it does either of those things. “Verisimilitude” means “similarity to reality”, not “never compare to real-world values”.

In the second place, if you build a GURPS character for a modern setting in a straightforward way, with Comfortable Wealth, a job, and a settled lifestyle, the question “what do I have” becomes very hard to answer. Whether they own or rent a house probably doesn’t matter, but whether they have a car certainly does. Do they own an SUV and a load of camping gear? Hiking boots? Do they have an AR-15, a SIG P-225, an AR-7, eye protection, ear plugs, and a big shiny knife? Those are very ordinary hobby equipment in Alaska or New Mexico.

Is my character’s Jeep Cherokee provided by his Status-1 cost of living, or do I have to account for it? If I have to account for it, does it have to come out of his 20% budget or his 80% budget? The AR-15 and the P-225 are for his hobby of 2-Gun Action Shooting, but the AR-7 is for protection from coyotes and such while hiking and camping, which he also uses the SIG for. Do hobbies come out of big budget or little budget? Or is the hiking/camping hobby lifestyle and the shooting hobby adventure gear?

Cost of Living and the Settled Lifestyle rule do not answer questions but compound them.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

This gets into Status as social standing, and Status as standard of living. A merchant of Genoa or Prato could have the same income as the King of England (and did not have to scatter it around so many castles and estates), but they were not of the same social standing. GURPS 4e combines the two into one trait in a way which is not helpful.

It's not about income, it's about Status and Cost of Living and the lifestyle that goes with them. These traits determine the reactions of people around them and how much cash they can bring to adventures. That's the helpful part. What they don't do is account for the value of their lands and goods and sources of income — which wouldn't be all that helpful, when all you really want to know is how much money can you spend on the adventure.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I don’t think that it does either of those things. “Verisimilitude” means “similarity to reality”, not “never compare to real-world values”.

Verisimilitude means having the appearance truth. The verisimilitude of things like Status and Wealth are that they give you reactions and cash in a way that appear to be kind of like the real world, as opposed to, say, rolling three dice, multiplying by ten, and calling that your "gold pieces."

Things that are verisimilitudinous are usually not true; they just have the appearance of truth. That's the economics of GURPS characters.

In the second place, if you built a GURPS character for a modern setting in a straightforward way, with Comfortable Wealth, a job and a settled lifestyle the question “what do I own” becomes very hard to answer.

It's a question explicitly left up to the GM. The GM is given guidance from "What Cost of Living Gets You" tables, but these are just there to guide the GM's rulings. The system in no way attempts to mechanically answer that question.

Whether I own or rent a house probably doesn’t matter, but whether I own a car certainly does. Do I own an SUV and a load of camping gear? Hiking boots? Do I own an AR-15, a SIG P-225, an AR-7, eye protection, ear plugs, and a big shiny knife? Those are very ordinary hobby equipment in Alaska or New Mexico.

In general, stuff that is extremely likely to be owned by just about everybody will count as "lifestyle" stuff. A car, for example. Even if owning an AR-15 is "very ordinary hobby equipment" in Alaska, that doesn't mean you more or less expect everyone to own one. Things like this must be bought with the character's listed cash.

And if you don't agree with me what's "ordinary" and expected, again, that's what the GM is there for. But if your GM agrees that anyone who can afford an AR-15 as part of their background lifestyle is likely to have one, then by all means it should be allowed as "background" equipment. I'll disagree with your GM's assessment of the frequency of AR-15 ownership, but not with his justification to make them background equipment if he honestly believes it.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

You've got to go into deep waters just to start identifying your 'monthly cash supply'...

But you don't. If you have Independent Income, you can just say something like "investments" or "pension," and set a level. If you have a job, you get a salary. If you have Debt, you can just say something like "child support" or "mortgage," and set a level.

Then you just keep track of your cash on your character sheet. As you spend or get money on adventures, you adjust the number, just like in nearly every RPG ever. Then, each month, to the number on your sheet, you add your salary (if any) and your Independent Income (if any), you subtract your Debt (if any) and your Cost of Living. Done. That's all it is.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If you have a job, you get a salary.

And you've stepped right into the aforementioned deep water. Where Campaigns' instructions amount to 'make something up entirely on your own recognizance' plus numeric tables that mix dubiously with the rules on cost of living.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It's not about income, it's about Status and Cost of Living and the lifestyle that goes with them. These traits determine the reactions of people around them and how much cash they can bring to adventures. That's the helpful part.

You don't understand. My hypothetical merchant can spend money as fast as the noble or scholar. And that is utterly irrelevant for status, because of factors that money can't buy. In many societies, that merchant will always be of modest Status.

Edit: in a game, the merchant will be just as good at getting Kewl Stuff as the noble or the scholar. He might even be better, because his station lets him spend it in an economically rational and far-sighted way. But he will be much less effective at pulling the other levers of society and he cannot change that by spending more money. He is a different character in a meaningful way, and should be possible to represent in a game with as many economics rules as GURPS has.

One of Francesco di Marco Datini's proudest moments was when late in life, the pope and some king invited themselves to dinner at his palazzo. The purpose of this was for them to eat his dinner and get a loan out of him which they had no intention of paying back. Why did he do it? Because they had more of what GURPS calls Status than he did, so he had to petition them to be associated with them.

There are societies where status correlates very strongly with income, but also many societies where it is much more loosely linked.

Timur the Lame's father had two servants, a half-empty stable, and did not have to work with his hands. And he was a Tartar chief, so he had to spend money in specific ways (hospitality and horses yes, sound business investments no). There were merchants who passed through his city which had higher incomes than he did, but he and his son who never laughed did not think they were more important or honourable men.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

And you've stepped right into the aforementioned deep water. Where Campaigns' instructions amount to 'make something up entirely on your own recognizance' plus numeric tables that mix dubiously with the rules on cost of living.

How is that deep water? If you want to make a job table for your setting, make one. If not, just use the typical values from the job table in Campaigns.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

You don't understand. My hypothetical merchant can spend money as fast as the noble or scholar. And that is utterly irrelevant for status, because of factors that money can't buy. In many societies, that merchant will always be of modest Status.

I think you don't understand. Wealth, Status, Cost of Living, salary have nothing to do with how fast you can spend money.

Again, these traits aren't modeling economics. They're used for setting the correct parameters of a character. So if you want to play a Genoan merchant equal to an English king, take Multimillionaire 3 and Status 7 and spend 20% of your starting wealth on whatever you want. The other 80% is assumed to be what created your lifestyle in the first place.

It doesn't matter what your background is or what the rules of your society claim to be the case, if your lifestyle puts you on par with a Status 7 king, you've either got Status 7, or you're paying extra cash for a Status 7 lifestyle. GURPS isn't modeling the rules or the economics of your society; it's modeling who gives bonuses and penalties to whose reactions and who pays how much GURPS $ for their lifestyle. There is NO rule in GURPS that says a king has to be higher on the Status table than a merchant.

Edit: in a game, the merchant will be just as good at getting Kewl Stuff as the noble or the scholar. He might even be better, because his station lets him spend it in an economically rational and far-sighted way. But he will be much less effective at pulling the other levers of society and he cannot change that by spending more money. He is a different character in a meaningful way, and should be possible to represent in a game with as many economics rules as GURPS has.

Status isn't about pulling levers of society. It's about reaction bonuses and lifestyle. In some settings it might come with authority, but this is a special effect of the setting, not a GURPS rule. If you've created a setting where an individual's Status gives him the incorrect amount of authority based on Status, you've created the setting wrong.

There are societies where status correlates very strongly with income, but also many societies where it is much more loosely linked.

GURPS Status and income are correlated, but not fixed. Status, Wealth, Cost of Living, and income are all independently adjustable.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Verisimilitude means having the appearance truth. The verisimilitude of things like Status and Wealth are that they give you reactions and cash in a way that appear to be kind of like the real world

But they don't appear to be anything like the real world. They don't look anything like having property and a family. Not even a bit.

Things that are verisimilitudinous are usually not true; they just have the appearance of truth. That's the economics of GURPS characters.

They only look like the truth if you don't look at them.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm going to give him Comfortable wealth. At TL8, that gives him starting wealth of $40,000, of which $8,000 goes into movable goods, and $32,000 into fixed assets such as furniture, a library, a computer, and perhaps a car that he doesn't use for adventuring.

If that's the scale it makes a big difference whether the car is included in fixed assets or provided by cost-of-living. And you have a very different idea from my insurance company or what it would cost to replace an ordinary adult's household contents. I suppose that we have to treat my furniture and bedding, clothes, kitchen equipment, tableware, and household electronics as provided by my cost of living, as though I was renting my house furnished. So does that mean that Agemegos has $32k in his current account?

The problem is that Average CoL is $600/month; $5200/month is well past CoL for Status 2, which theoretically goes with Wealthy. But I don't think that says that the income calculations are broken; I think it says that the assumption of constant cost of living is broken. I could go into detail, but I don't think you actually disagree with me about THAT . . .

Certainly not. I just think it's queer to defend the rules by explaining that they are broken.

[Anthony]

Realistically, the percentage of income that's cost of living is nearly TL independent, because to a large degree it's dependent on what people are willing to spend, which is a function of income. There's a floor but it's very low (in GURPS$, probably on the order of $25/mo).

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

You're confusing real-world social stations with GURPS Status, which does not scale to local conditions. Status 0 is that social position which GURPS characters default to if they don't spend or receive any points on it, with an associated Cost of Living of $600 per month. If you have more or less than someone else in the same setting, you are NOT of the same Status, regardless of your society's titles or egalitarianism.

I don't know what the lifestyles of those two governors are really like, but if one is a full Cost of Living above the other in GURPS terms, and both are paying the Cost of Living of their Statuses, then they are NOT of the same Status.

You are confusing the concepts of GURPS Status and what Cost of Living gets you. The Governor of each state is the same status within the state. The only thing different is what a given level of outlay gets them. The Status is the constant, the lifestyle is the variable.