Independent Income at later TL stages

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

This strikes me as much more appropriate. You'd need to adjust the suggested wages, however, as those are built roughly as "CoL + 10% Starting Wealth;" if you want to maintain that and have CoL be 80% of monthly wage, you'd need income to be right around 50% of Starting Wealth per month, which is... pretty freaking high.

I'd probably just note that this is really just applying the 80/20 rule to income as well as initial resources. I'd probably do something simpler for PCs such as "hourly income = base wealth/1,000; CoL = base wealth/10", so it takes 100 hours/month to cover your cost of living. This also means 1 level of independent income is worth 10 hours per month (1 point in less sleep would be half an hour a day or 15 hours per month, but less sleep doesn't count against your limit of 8 hours per day for long tasks; this in turn implies "can work long hours without penalties" is worth 1 point for +1 hour/day).

The 1/10 rule, while simple, does produce costs below survivable levels for Struggling at TL 0 and Poor at TL 1-3, so there might be a need to tweak things at TL 3 and lower.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's the low end of per capita GDP around 2004 (basis for GURPS $). Which isn't super healthy, mind you, but lots of people manage to survive on it.

Is that a worldwide average of Gross Domestic Product? If so it might be related to wages in India and China (who are swamping everyonbe else in the calculation) but it has nothing to do with _costs_ in a nation resembling the USA of 2004 whcih is the basis for Gurps economics.

You can use your figure if you can get a person to survive long-term on 83 cents a day in the US of 2004 but an average of global wages has nothing to do with it.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The fact that thread has no responses implies said system is very rarely used, at least amongst forumites.

But is it because people don't like it or because they don't know about it? Pyramid 3/44: Alternate GURPS II was dated June 2012 - 9 years ago.

Heck, the GURPSwiki has 86 pages of Pyramid 3 that are little more than a table of contents. That is over 70% (86/122) of 'we basically got nothing but a title and an author.'

Also the thread is actually "about people's experience with these rules or similar rules in other systems) It doesn't help that the information provided in the thread doesn't really tell anything about the system in question. Reddit actually gave more using a similar system from d20 modern as an example.

Originally Posted by Varyon

And, while I certainly do like the concept (and as you note later, many inconsistencies can be explained away - if you can't buy a landspeeder but a few minutes later can buy a starship, it's because there weren't any landspeeders for sale), my gaming preferences are for settings where characters generally lack a monthly income and acquire wealth via adventuring, which really doesn't mesh well with an abstract wealth system.

That is effectively what the Reddit thread form a year ago said: "It sounds like you're playing a dungeon crawling game. Abstract wealth mechanics can be a little awkward for games like that because acquiring paper is usually the main motivation for adventuring, so players might want to track it and spend it"

A little searching coughed up Starting Gear with Pyramid 3/44 Abstract Wealth...from 2013.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

But is it because people don't like it or because they don't know about it? Pyramid 3/44: Alternate GURPS II was dated June 2012 - 9 years ago.

I passed on that issue because I'm no longer in the market for elaborate systems of alternate rules for Gurps. Changes need to be simple enough to remember and implement off-hand. I am not going to collect a loose-leaf binder of house rules similar to what I have sometimes seen for AD&D1e.

As to the general concept of abstract wealth it sounds exactly the same as was done in the old Marvel FASERIP system and that was a very bad rule indeed. It didn't even meet the needs of a very abstract system of 4-color superhero adventure. It cenrtainly wouldn't work for the game system supported by Gurps High Tech.

No, "money and buying stuff work the same as in the real world" is the simplest possible system to implement.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Is that a worldwide average of Gross Domestic Product?

It's based on definitions of extreme poverty, though that actually works out to $36 in 2004 dollars -- I went a bit lower because income doesn't hard stop at the extreme poverty line, it continues going lower.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

There is no such advantage as "Doesn't Have to Work." Independent Income is not the "doesn't have to work" advantage. Independent Income is the "extra cash without needing a job to get it" advantage. I think this is at the heart of your difficulty with this. The point of Independent Income is not to support your Cost of Living in place of a job; the point is just to have a source of income other than a job. What you do with that extra income is up to you. How that extra income compares with your Cost of Living is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Varyon

The latter is what Independent Income is, the former is what it should be.

No it shouldn't, because GURPS IS NOT A SIMULATOR. It's not trying to model the economic forces behind personal income. It's just giving you some sliders that let you earn more or less money, and some more sliders that determine what happens when you have more or less money. And the main purposes of all these rules are to see if you can buy stuff and to see how you interact with people. The pretend money is just a means to an end. The character points are just a means to an end.

The wealth and money rules are there to service YOU, not the other way around. They're not there to tell you what happens; they're there so you can choose what happens. They are set up to reflect, in a simple but relatively accurate way, the fact that higher-TL societies have more "stuff" available in them than lower-TL societies. The system WORKS. The system is playable.

This is the point at which someone can say, "I don't like how it works, so I'm going to change it." And that's fine. You do what you want in your game. But an incorrect statement is "The rules don't work" or "The rules don't make sense." They do work; they do make sense. You just don't like them, because you want the rules to handle money the same way you handle money in real life, but they don't.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

No it shouldn't, because GURPS IS NOT A SIMULATOR.

Right, that's why independent income should be the "doesn't need to spend time working" advantage. If you're not doing simulation, the point value should be based on the amount and quality of free time it gives you.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I'd probably just note that this is really just applying the 80/20 rule to income as well as initial resources. I'd probably do something simpler for PCs such as "hourly income = base wealth/1,000; CoL = base wealth/10", so it takes 100 hours/month to cover your cost of living.

That puts Average hourly income at $20/hour at TL 8, which at first I thought was high, but a bit of online research indicates that's roughly where "middle class" was defined in 2004. So, ~$2000 per month, and CoL of $1000 per month, making Starting Wealth worth around 20 months - 1 year, 8 months - worth of savings. That sounds workable - but again, you're looking at less spending money during play for employed PC's ($1000 per month instead of $2000 per month).

Originally Posted by Anthony

This also means 1 level of independent income is worth 10 hours per month (1 point in less sleep would be half an hour a day or 15 hours per month, but less sleep doesn't count against your limit of 8 hours per day for long tasks; this in turn implies "can work long hours without penalties" is worth 1 point for +1 hour/day).

That works.

Originally Posted by Anthony

The 1/10 rule, while simple, does produce costs below survivable levels for Struggling at TL 0 and Poor at TL 1-3, so there might be a need to tweak things at TL 3 and lower.

If Starting Wealth scaled at a more constant rate, this wouldn't be an issue. Going with $20k for TL 8 as the standard and following SSR, TL 6-12 would be largely unchanged (the only difference: TL 11 would be $70k instead of $75k), but TL 5 would be $7k (or $7.5k), TL 4 would be $5k, TL 3 would be $3k, TL 2 would be $1.5k, TL 1 would be $1k, and TL 0 would be $700 (or $750). That puts the bare-minimum floor - TL 0 Poor - at $140 ($150) Starting Wealth, and $14/month ($15/month) for CoL. That's a bit below your suggested $25/month floor, but not egregiously so. Of course, we could adjust it so CoL goes down a bit relative to income as TL increases - if TL 0 Poor has CoL of $25, that's around 1/6th of Starting Wealth; with TL 8 being 1/10th, that implies +0.5 to the divisor per +1 to TL (TL 3 is 1/7.5, TL 12 is 1/12). Those all seem workable.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

No it shouldn't, because GURPS IS NOT A SIMULATOR. It's not trying to model the economic forces behind personal income. It's just giving you some sliders that let you earn more or less money, and some more sliders that determine what happens when you have more or less money. And the main purposes of all these rules are to see if you can buy stuff and to see how you interact with people. The pretend money is just a means to an end. The character points are just a means to an end.

From a gamist ("not a simulator") perspective, what makes more sense to base a wealth-generation trait on - the rules that are already in play for generating wealth (jobs) or something tangentially related (starting wealth, which is equal to 10 months' wages minus 10 months' CoL)? I'd argue for the former as more narratively useful - "Each [1] means you need to work 4 hours less each month to gain your normal monthly wages" makes more sense as a trait to me.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's based on definitions of extreme poverty, .

That's a standard for 86 million people in Nigeria. It's not a good source of numbers for even the bottom rung of the ladder in games set in places that will remeble The US or Europe. Particularly for characters who will be shopping in HT or UT.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I passed on that issue because I'm no longer in the market for elaborate systems of alternate rules for Gurps. Changes need to be simple enough to remember and implement off-hand. I am not going to collect a loose-leaf binder of house rules similar to what I have sometimes seen for AD&D1e.

The houserules were nothing compared to the official optional rules in the Complete (whatever) books or the totally insane Monstrous Compendium. I do agree with the rule (house or official) bloat issue.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As to the general concept of abstract wealth it sounds exactly the same as was done in the old Marvel FASERIP system and that was a very bad rule indeed. It didn't even meet the needs of a very abstract system of 4-color superhero adventure. It cenrtainly wouldn't work for the game system supported by Gurps High Tech.

4-color superhero are a beast in of themselves. People have made fun of the old Superfriends cartoons where the Legion of Doom would invent some incredible device they could have make millions off of legally but instead us to take revenge against the Superfriends or try to take over the world in some half baked plan. Basically the whole Reed Richards Is Useless problem. In fact, Marvel's whole the real world but with superheroes never made sense.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

No, "money and buying stuff work the same as in the real world" is the simplest possible system to implement.

If you want to generate item prices. ;-) Seriously I see the appeal if you simply use it to have a quick get equipment in the hands of the players solution and don't want to create a catalogue of stuff with prices for them to buy.