Cost of Living and Status in Fantasy Game

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Others have the right of it: You can take your money up front (100% of starting wealth as cash), spend it however you wish, and automatically become a wanderer who either pays exorbitant on-the-road rates or makes a lot of Survival rolls (and eventually fails a few, losing some FP or HP). Alternatively, you can take 20% of your money up front, leave 80% tied up in an established home and lifestyle, and have 1/5 as much for gear, but enjoy the assumption that you have a home where your food and lodging are covered.

Fantasy as presented in most RPGs is an unusual and sometimes annoying case. It assumes that the heroes are wealthy treasure-hunters with no fixed address in a world where the vast majority of people must labor long days to stay warm and fed (and sometimes that fails, too) . . . and yet are admired for it, not treated as murderous drifters. A fair GURPS treatment of this would probably be to insist that they take a Claim to Hospitality with perhaps a -40% Accessibility limitation ("Must save the town first"), and most likely to make them all Wealthy with Independent Income to cover the ability to spend all their money on arms and armor yet not be treated as negative-Status scum (Wealthy and Independent Income 12 would mean being constantly maintained at Status 0 without having to do a damned thing "on screen").

Given the amount of equipment adventurers seem to have, spending 1 extra point to get Very Wealthy and Independent Income 3 (4 times the starting wealth and the same income as Wealthy and Independent Income 12) might work better, I mean just buying a small mule or donkey will set you back $1,000! You can easily spend $5,000 on Armour.

[vicky_molokh]

What always puzzled me is exactly what stuff those 80% give you. According to B266, you get the settled lifestyle stuff according to your Cost of Living, not Wealth. Which is kinda fair given that Status costs 5 points/level and requires maintenance, but makes one scratch one's head regarding characters with diverging Status and Wealth. E.g. a TL9 Upper Class Twit who spends the $3,000 out of $3,600 from his income from an Average job (some clerk?) to live as Status 2 (mimicking the lifestyle of the city's wealthy mayor).

[Kalzazz]

You can easily spend the 20,000 from Very Wealthy on armor also

In a game where we dont pay as much attention to the 80/20 split (murder hoboish), I took Very Wealthy and was thinking to get some heavy armor for my character and her mount

Nope, middleweight armor it is

I should have taken Filthy Rich

[thom]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Others have the right of it: You can take your money up front (100% of starting wealth as cash), spend it however you wish, and automatically become a wanderer who either pays exorbitant on-the-road rates or makes a lot of Survival rolls (and eventually fails a few, losing some FP or HP). Alternatively, you can take 20% of your money up front, leave 80% tied up in an established home and lifestyle, and have 1/5 as much for gear, but enjoy the assumption that you have a home where your food and lodging are covered.

Thanks Kromm! This is what I was shooting for. You also made me realize that the Independent Income advantage as a reward could be very handy for the PCs, as well as offering them opportunities to pay CP and gain it from various benefactors (such as being able to buy into a caravan consortium and receive profits regularly).

So when the PCs do settle into long-term digs (as in, take a 6-month lease, paying 2 months as a security deposit <eg>), they can reap the "benefits" of having an established home and lifestyle...