To be, or not to be… poor

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Wealth scales differently from those things, though.

It doesn't have to scale the same. The comparison is not that someone with X points in Wealth is equal to someone with X points in healing or guarding or chauffeuring, but that if characters want to share the benefits of their abilities, there's no reason they can't, and Wealth is just another ability to share.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It doesn't have to scale the same. The comparison is not that someone with X points in Wealth is equal to someone with X points in healing or guarding or chauffeuring, but that if characters want to share the benefits of their abilities, there's no reason they can't, and Wealth is just another ability to share.

Also, it's on the GM if they allow healers, guards, chauffeurs, etc. bought with cash to have the reliability and trustworthiness of Allies bought with points.

I think GMs who do that are nuts, which is why Peter and I hard-coded the unreliability of hirelings relative to Allies into GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen: They're subject to Loyalty rolls, the player has little say in their true capabilities, and they can have unwelcome disadvantages and secret traits, up to and including being a thief, serving an enemy, and being out to kill their hirer. You know, sort of how in the real world paid doctors have been bumblers who've overdosed celebrities, paid bodyguards have turned kidnappers, paid maids have stolen valuables, and paid lawyers and investment counsellors have made off with everything.

The true currency in GURPS is character points, not $, so quite literally anything that costs only cash is subject to the GM's whim. If you want to avoid that, buy your staff as Allies; your gear as Signature Gear, Unusual Background (Invention), or artifacts built with advantages and gadget limitations; and your wardrobe, home, civilian vehicles, etc. as Status, which gives you those things as long as you keep paying cost of living. Everything else is fair game for "plot developments."

So, if Mr. Rich takes Wealth and buys all his friends cool stuff, hires them guards, and keeps a driver and doctor on staff . . . great! That's what money is for. But points are for dramatic niches, and the GM shouldn't let those guards, the driver, and the doctor be better at guarding, driving, and healing than PCs who spend points on those roles, nor Allies bought with points to fill those roles. Permitting that kind of upstaging is just as much "being a bad GM" as always running combat adventures for the warrior in a group whose members also include a face man, a gadgeteer, and an 80-year-old crystal-gazer.

[Kromm]

I'll add that, yes, my advice will totally hack off the "But that's meta! In the real world, money is everything!" players. But as I said in a recent supplement, "This Is Not a Reality Simulator." If you want to simulate reality, start by getting rid of character points. Nothing is more "meta" than points. If you're keeping points, then you're tacitly accepting role balance between characters, a.k.a. niche protection.

I've had the experience at my own gaming table. One of my early campaigns (c. 1990) featured a Filthy Rich character whose player expected to take nothing but Wealth and some narrow power, leave everything else at baseline, sell back a few things to afford it all, and then compensate for the narrowness of his one power, mere baseline competence outside his area, and sold-back abilities by throwing money at every problem they caused: Can't fight? I'll just buy custom weapons, armor, etc. Can't keep up with the group? I'll just buy a fast car, fast plane, etc. And so on.

The player got very upset with me when I had authorities (justifiably!) confiscate his toys and enemies break them; ruthlessly enforced the rules for breakdowns, maintenance, and the environmental susceptibility of gear; and made a lot of key NPCs uncorrupt and actively hostile to bribery. I was very clear with him: Other players had paid points for powers and abilities that let them innately fight well, move fast, be charming, or whatever without any visible gear to target or money trails to follow, so I was going to let them do that but not him. What he had paid for was great wealth, which comes with all the rules and woes that money attracts; I was going to let him use it, but also enforce its limits.

Anyway, he retired the character and made another, and eventually quit. It's just a fact that some players really, truly see "realism" as they perceive it to be more important that dramatic niches and meta-game balance. What can you do?

[Ulzgoroth]

In a modern or ultratech 'mundane' game, 'you can't trust gear' doesn't make any sense. Everyone relies on gear. Characters without lots of money need to trust their gear more because they can't afford to replace it if it breaks or isn't the best tool for the current problem. The Filthy Rich play isn't 'I paid a billion dollars for the infinity plus one car' which you can then just decide to wreck in what totally isn't blatant GM malice, it's 'I can always afford another good car, or truck, or small aircraft...'

Also, in a game where the group is actually cooperating rather than trying to show each other up somehow, the exponential setup combined means that it's actively wasteful of points for the party to have everyone pay for their own stuff instead of one PC bankrolling everything. That may or may not be fun for the money-man's player...but the possibility that it isn't is an aggravation of the situation, not a mitigation. (Like the meme one sometimes sees about players being forced to serve as a party 'healbot'.)

For most abilities, if you want to be able to bestow advantages on someone else it costs more than if they bought them for themselves. With Wealth-for-money it's the opposite.

[Tymathee]

I vibe with the idea of the importance of emphasizing dramatic niches and meta-game balance. I might stumble with it myself, being a fledgling GM to GURPS, but you have to be bad before you can become good; my insight might be flawed but I do try to engage so I can bulk up the GURPS-brain muscles. I do not understand the fixation of reality simulation within GURPS, which appears to by default exist at "pulp fiction"-esque realism (at least to me anyways). "Realism" should be more reflected in feel and tone rather than game mechanics, as the pursuit of realism within game mechanics has very, very rapid diminishing returns. DF, which is what I'm mostly interested in (cheesy Action games might be something I'd do in the future perhaps!), seems to handle Wealth just fine. Campaigns being loot-centric is wholly stereotypical of the dungeon crawling genre, so boiling Wealth down to your ability to just buy, sell, and measure your starting cash is appropriate. DF (stereo)typically doesn't focus much on the social stuff and wants you to smash doors down and bash in monster brains for their cool loot. I'd echo the sentiment that "Mr. Money Bags" is a totally a valid character niche for party support in the same vein that the Face Guy, Healbot, or Sword Guy is.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Kromm

... Peter and I hard-coded the unreliability of hirelings relative to Allies into GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen:.. You know, sort of how in the real world paid doctors have been bumblers who've overdosed celebrities, paid bodyguards have turned kidnappers, paid maids have stolen valuables, and paid lawyers and investment counsellors have made off with everything.

And yet I had heard somewhere that GURPS is not supposed to be a reality simulator.

[ravenfish]

One problem with Wealth as Selling Power in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign is that it has uniquely poor synergy between multiple characters who take it. A second melee fighter lets the party take on foes the first couldn't handle alone; a second magic user lets the party keep throwing magic when the first would have exhausted his power; a second loot seller, as far as I can tell, doesn't get the party any better a deal than the first would have unassisted (this is exacerbated by the fact that the wealth advantage provides better prices without any need to roll- and, when easily achievable wealth levels cap at a 100% sell price, rolling against Merchant doesn't get anything further-, so a second rich guy doesn't even have a chance to cover for the first's failures). Can anything be done about this?

EDIT: Perhaps this can be resolved when we finally get Dungeon Fantasy: Urban Adventures.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think GMs who do that are nuts, which is why Peter and I hard-coded the unreliability of hirelings relative to Allies into GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen: They're subject to Loyalty rolls, the player has little say in their true capabilities, and they can have unwelcome disadvantages and secret traits, up to and including being a thief, serving an enemy, and being out to kill their hirer. You know, sort of how in the real world paid doctors have been bumblers who've overdosed celebrities, paid bodyguards have turned kidnappers, paid maids have stolen valuables, and paid lawyers and investment counsellors have made off with everything.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

And yet I had heard somewhere that GURPS is not supposed to be a reality simulator.

That's not simulating. That's "sort of how."

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

One problem with Wealth as Selling Power in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign is that it has uniquely poor synergy between multiple characters who take it. A second melee fighter lets the party take on foes the first couldn't handle alone; a second magic user lets the party keep throwing magic when the first would have exhausted his power; a second loot seller, as far as I can tell, doesn't get the party any better a deal than the first would have unassisted (this is exacerbated by the fact that the wealth advantage provides better prices without any need to roll- and, when easily achievable wealth levels cap at a 100% sell price, rolling against Merchant doesn't get anything further-, so a second rich guy doesn't even have a chance to cover for the first's failures). Can anything be done about this?

EDIT: Perhaps this can be resolved when we finally get Dungeon Fantasy: Urban Adventures.

A single Mr. Money Bags only gets to be one place at any time; if there's a big city and the stores that you want to get to are here, there, and way over there, then having two Mr. Money Bags can cover more ground and sell off the loot in a more time efficient manner. Of course if "Town" is just a glorified in-game shopping menu then this might be moot. My point here is that there's additional benefits that can be inferred from the DF take on the Wealth Advantage.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

One problem with Wealth as Selling Power in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign is that it has uniquely poor synergy between multiple characters who take it. A second melee fighter lets the party take on foes the first couldn't handle alone; a second magic user lets the party keep throwing magic when the first would have exhausted his power; a second loot seller, as far as I can tell, doesn't get the party any better a deal than the first would have unassisted (this is exacerbated by the fact that the wealth advantage provides better prices without any need to roll- and, when easily achievable wealth levels cap at a 100% sell price, rolling against Merchant doesn't get anything further-, so a second rich guy doesn't even have a chance to cover for the first's failures). Can anything be done about this?

With house rules, sure. One thing I considered was making it so that sell value is some contest between your wealth and the wealth of the merchant -- but you need a high wealth merchant to buy or sell expensive stuff.