Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 gordjohnson Jan 11, 2009 1:33:48	i get how purchasing things work, but as a GM how do i give the players wealth? do i give them a briefcase full of 8 wealth to be distributed amongst themselves?
#2 tema69 Jan 11, 2009 6:53:59	Pretty much, yea. There's a table in the GMastering chapter of the book on how to deal with rewards. I recommend reading the GM Chapter before starting to GM. :D
#3 DwarfFighter Jan 11, 2009 17:05:15	I like the method of assigning a purchase DC to the reward and have the PCs "sell" the reward for Wealth. This means that a small reward has less impact for a wealthy character than a poor character. It also encourages characters to actually spend Wealth. Let's say the PCs agree to do a job for a certain fee. You set the fee to Purchase DC 20 per character. A character with a Wealth +3 will earn 2d6 +1 points of Wealth bonus (difference is 16+ and purchase DC is 15+) and a character with Wealth 18 earns 2 points. There is a table in the Gamemastering section that suggests Purchase DC's for various sums of dollar values, but you may want to avoid commiting yourself to specific values. This is because players will always try to work out the best Wealth increase possible. Never trust the players. -DF
#4 layla_minogue Jan 11, 2009 19:10:48	I like the method of assigning a purchase DC to the reward and have the PCs "sell" the reward for Wealth. This means that a small reward has less impact for a wealthy character than a poor character. It also encourages characters to actually spend Wealth... I agree, this is the best, fairest way to award wealth.
#5 gordjohnson Jan 18, 2009 16:31:10	ok, so i get how this works now, but does anyone have the story on why wizards concocted such an elaborate wealth system?
#6 backstabbist Jan 18, 2009 17:09:22	Probably because they felt people couldnt figure out having a checking account and rolling for Credit Lines from lending agencies. D&D players can keep track of their GP & PP & Silvers, their Art/Gems, and their magic values, and compute craft times by cost completion... , but they assume Modern players will get overwealmed by having to pay Rent and still have enough cash for taco sunday or betting at the track. In the Wealth system, you get unlimited gasoline for ever when you buy the car, but when you buy a gun you have to keep track of every bullet and constantly buy more
#7 TheRealOrion Jan 18, 2009 17:59:16	I think Backstabbist is being a little unkind, but basically, yes, money in the modern world is complicated enough that it would be a pain to keep track of by dollars and cents. How much is your savings? How much do you get paid per week/month? What's your credit limit? How much could you borrow if you had to? Yadda yadda yadda. Having a Wealth Score means that you cut through all that stuff and say "I have X amount of buying power" and leave it at that. Also, a Wealth Score means that you can more or less play the game in countries with different kinds of currency, which I appreciate as a Canadian. Clearly, the costs (and most epecially the firearms rules) are buil for America, but with the abstract Wealth it doesn't take too much tweaking to make it fit a different legal system. That's not to say that the system is flawless. Far from it! It's just to say that I see why they built it that way and I support the on-going effort to really make it work, as a system.
#8 senko Jan 22, 2009 6:11:02	I do want to point out that even DnD did simplify money, you had CP, SP, EP, GP and PP which were the same in every country/dimension/time you went too. That is if you had 250 platinum pieces it was worth the same in the small backwoods villiage, the capital city, the planar metropolis etc etc you could just buy more. As the above poster said In D20 modern with multiple countries, dimensions, credit limits, different brands of card (visa, AMEX, Mastercard, EFTPOS), precious metals, precious gems, stocks, semi-precious gems, artworks, rare first copies of Shakespears manifesto of divine correspondence:D they felt it ws simpler to just give an abstract buying power. You have all that stuff which when worked out gives you a spendable cash balance of WBX and you can sell stock to raise that to WBX+3 at a permanent reduction in your spending power because you bought that shiny new Lear Jet.
#9 degausser Jan 22, 2009 6:37:21	ok, so i get how this works now, but does anyone have the story on why wizards concocted such an elaborate wealth system? As stated before, the reason for the wealth system is pretty straightforward. As a player, do you want to run around killing Kobolds and doing political intrigue, or do you want to micromanage your in-game morgage with interest rates and factor out of your paycheck the number of cigirette breaks you took on your last shift? The general idea is that, while some players CAN keep track of all of that, there aren't a lot of players that WANT to. So, they just made a blanket term, saying that you have X amount of wealth, which is basically your lifestyle, how much you earn a week, how much you can spend on indulgancies like the unexpected slushie, and whatnot. I have concocted an alternate cash system, if you prefer. 1) To determine starting wealth, take the wealth that the character starts with (Their starting wealth bonus) and add 15, then convert that amount into cash using the purchase DC to cash value table. 2) If a player wants to buy something, Find it's value on the wealth to Purchace DC table, and make them pay that much. 3)Every Month, the payer must pay for their 'lifestye' which includes morgage, the kind of food they eat, how often they eat out, where they live, and insurance. 4)Ditch the old profession system. For each solid month of work a character does (assuming they don't skip out to go on too many adventures) make them make a profession check to see how much cash they have made. (Use a variant of the DnD/Star wars system to see how much cash.) I am still working this table out. Here is the general lifestyles and their costs. Low Lifestyle (Character lives in a budget apartment or commune and probably has one or more roomates. Covers 1 insurance for a beat up car or gun. Eat out sparsly, food is usually insta-made or crap.) $500-$1500, depending on location. Bachelor/Bachelorette Pad (Character lives in a decent single-person appartment, may have one roomate. Eats out moderatly, and generally has desent food. Can insure one decent-shape car)$1000-$2000, depending on location Middle Class Home (Character lives in a house, eats good food, and has enough cash to eat out whenever they want, within reason. Can insure one high end car or two desent cars)$3000-$5000 depending on location. Upper Middle Class (Character lives in a very well off-house, almost always has excellent food, and can ensure up to two high end cars, or 4 desent ones. They eat out at fancy resteraunts frequently)$6000-$7000 High Class (Character has an estate, with butlers and waitstaff. Can insure any number of cars and up to 1 aircraft. Personally catered food or eating out at the crem de la creme of resteraunts.) $10000 and up.
#10 senko Jan 22, 2009 17:09:44	I'd be interested in seeing that table when your done if you don't mind, most of the wealth system doesn't bother me but I've always been a little uncomfortable with the only earn income on level up part of it. Also are those prices for lifestyles per week, per month or per quarter?
#11 TheRealOrion Jan 22, 2009 18:19:27	I actually quite like that Wealth simply indicates lifestyle. Not only is it easier to deal with (who wants to pay bills in an adventure game?), it acknowledges that the word "wealth" doesn't just refer to money. It also refers to the kind of life you're accustomed to living and the creature comforts that go with it. In fact, wealth in d20M is a lot like social class in the real world (minus all the cultural elements, of course). Having Wealth +20 means that you just are rich, that you have an apartment with a view and eat fine food on a regular basis. It's a holistic element of your life. Rolling your Profession check every level is absolutely a contrivance--your job and your character levels don't necessarily have anything to do with one another--but it's a convenient contrivance within the game. Also, your Wealth score can go up through other means. Giving out cash and prises is absolutely part of a standard d20M experience. Not trying to diss this alternative model, by the way! I'm all in favour of whatever is the most fun for you. Just expressing a few thoughts about why I like Wealth the way it is, despite it's many flaws.
#12 degausser Jan 22, 2009 19:45:06	I'd be interested in seeing that table when your done if you don't mind, most of the wealth system doesn't bother me but I've always been a little uncomfortable with the only earn income on level up part of it. Also are those prices for lifestyles per week, per month or per quarter? The lifestyles are per-month, and I realize that they don't perfectly represent the real world, but they are simplified for convenience. Profession checks: You can take ten now (yay) and remember to add a +2 bonus if you have a relevant skill (say, for instance, you have the repair skill, and you get a job as a mechanic.) This is off the top of my head, and I haven't tested it out but this was the general idea. Profession skill 0-3: earn cash equal to $100 x your profession roll Profession skill 4-6: Earn cash equal to $200 x your profession roll Profession skill 7-9: Earn cash equal to $500 x your profession roll Profession skill 10+: Earn cash equal to $1000 x your profession roll. WHY'D I DO IT THAT WAY? This ensures some randomness, but also encompasses the diversity of our economic system. So someone with 3 ranks in Profession (buisnessman) is just out of college as a buisness major, and is ending up doing crap jobs at some ad agency, while someone with 10+ ranks of profession (Buisnessman) is a CEO, pulling in, on average, 20,000 a month. (for himself, not his buisness.)
#13 backstabbist Jan 22, 2009 20:52:49	I like the way it is just assumed after getting walloped by Weres in the sewers all night, and needing a week to heal up, that you will just continue to punch the clock 9-5 at your day job to earn you paycheck
#14 degausser Jan 22, 2009 20:59:23	(Jane comes in, black and blue to the office again) Jane: "Ow ow ow ow. I have got to stop doing this . . ." Coworker; "Doing what?" Jane: "Erm . . . uh . . .Doing . . . rollerderby, during the weekends . . . yeah, let's go with that." Coworker: " I didn't know there was a rollerderby in town . . ." Jane: Bluff check don't fail me now!
#15 senko Jan 23, 2009 0:49:42	I think I've seen that film, the social worker show's up to check on the possibility of spousal abuse and gets eaten by a living dumpster doesn't he?:D My character's tend to be smart/mage/psychic combinations who earn a living either as employee's of a group dealing with the problem (in game's where such exists) or as a freelance web designer or waitress, jobs where you can work to your own schedule or on a shift basis. They also earn a bit of extra cash selling magic items when they can find buyers.
#16 TheRealOrion Jan 23, 2009 0:55:55	Yeah, at a certain point you have to reconcile the two things, your "occupation" and your "hero" status, but fortunately, if you're doing a secret identity/superhero thing, it works perfectly.
#17 narukagami Jan 23, 2009 20:35:05	Wealth via Profession was Wizard's result while trying to come up with a method of allowing higher level characters higher purchasing power without having to rely completely on D&D style looting and pillaging.
#18 billionsix Jan 23, 2009 22:46:00	I recall in one early article about the Wealth system, one of the game's authors talked about an early experience he had with a character who spent all his beginning wealth on cool toys, then said he was paying for things with a credit card, and buying a car with a bank loan. He pointed out that pretty much anyone can get a credit card in an hour. In the modern world, the standard "You start with X amount of dollars" breaks down pretty quickly. Plus, modern games tend not to be about the acquisition of wealth. You could theoretically make a game about salvage merchants, but that's the closest I can think of to a dungeon crawl. d20 Modern abstracts wealth slightly. Some games abstract it even more. White Wolf tends to give overall wealth on a 5 dot scale. Feng Shui basically said that characters were either poor, working stiff, and rich. d20 Modern lets you play a rich character, if you are willing to take the Windfall feat a few times, and keep buying up the Profession skill. Just like everything else, you can be really good in that area, if you sacrifice other areas. It's not the best system in the world, but it's workable. Brian
#19 DwarfFighter Jan 25, 2009 5:46:48	Modern economics allow for a lot of abuse for those who do not concern themselves with the consequences. You can get a lot of stuff on credit now if you plan on never ever actually paying for it. Of course that means that you'll probably have wrecked your financial future and once the repo men have paid a few visits you've got nothing left but debt. Those are real-world consequences that a player will happily ignore for a character that he doesn't expect to live more than a few sessions. -DF
#20 backstabbist Jan 25, 2009 9:51:27	What consequences, the player will just have to make a BailOut Check(cha) to get the government to pay off his over spending. Rent-A-Tire, so people that cant afford tires & rims (even on credit) can rent tires and rims for their car.... and they dont rent economical 50k mile 78series, they rent the 22" bling. Much like renting a can of soda when you are thirsty. The modern world is full of folks making bad credit choices. We call those plot hooks for higher character level consequences. Perhaps there is a problem that players start with high level chars and then dont continue with them.... that sounds to me like a problem with how you play the game more than a problem with the game. I'm oldschool, we called it "First Level" because it is the level you start a char at, and the level you make choices that come back to haunt you at 7th or 10th level. "Those hookers were alive when I shoved them in the plastic lined cartrunk, maybe it was a mass enclosed suicide"
#21 TheRealOrion Jan 25, 2009 12:39:12	I keep getting all real-world about conversations on this board, but I just can't help noticing that the Wealth rules are trying to replicate an economic system that kinda sorta isn't really working right now! Perhaps that's the real problem?
#22 backstabbist Jan 25, 2009 16:05:10	As long as the modern world allows bankruptcies & bailouts the system works just fine, and we can just assume that is included in the big picture of the Wealth System. You buy a car for a set PDC, and then the wealth system bails you out at each gas tank fillup
#23 senko Jan 25, 2009 20:45:54	Just have the make a DC check for a 50 dollar purchase every 2 weeks or so to pay for petrol in their car, problem solved:D . EDIT You could be right that the problems in the system its mimiking rather than the game system itself. With regards to first level decisions coming back to haunt you that's about to happen in my game with the return of a powerful lich the group didn't stop being released at first level. He's been wandering around the world getting to know its changes and increasing his power base for the past few years and now he's interested in aquiring something the parties after.
#24 TheRealOrion Jan 26, 2009 0:01:40	Here's a general question about Wealth. If you're building a 6th-level character, should you roll Wealth and make purchases at every level, or should you roll 5 Wealth checks and get a total, and then buy things? How does the math differ, there?
#25 nobodez_here Jan 26, 2009 1:23:37	Okay, well, I admit, after this long, it's hard to find the answer, but it's been almost 6 years, so that's understandable. In the second Bullet Points article, they explained how to figure out higher level wealth. Here it is. Bascially its Table 7-2 bonus (+6 for 2nd level, the table's wrong), plus bonus wealth from occupation, feats, etc., then a bonus equal to the ranks in Profession. Finally, for PCs, add another +2.
#26 TheRealOrion Jan 26, 2009 1:35:26	Oh well. That's much easier.
#27 senko Jan 26, 2009 20:24:33	Personally I prefer to ignore the whole mess by starting at first level:P Seriously I'd suggest figure out starting wealth as nomal then have them make purchases/checks for each additional one if your not giving them starting equipemnt they'd have purchased. The reason being if you do 5 checks then purchases you'll actually wind up with a lower wealth bonus than if you did it level by level since its easier to raise wealth bonus after purchases rather than before them e.g. With Checks per level Starting Bonus = WB 6 After Purchases = WB 2 Check = 13 After Check = WB 5 After Second Purchases = 3 Second Check = 15 After Second Check = WB 6 Without Checks per level Starting Bonus = WB 6 Check = 13 After Check = WB 7 Second Check = 15 After Second Check = 9 After Purchases = 3
#28 TheRealOrion Jan 26, 2009 22:49:29	I'd go for whatever's higher, myself, since it's such a clear and mechanical progression. I just have players who'd probably rather take a set number than have to roll six times.
#29 akodo Jan 28, 2009 0:37:46	Here's how you have to wrap your mind around weath coming from a DnD game. In DnD, cash was king. There really was no credit. You want a horse, you plop down the full amount in gold. Same thing if oyu want a house. In modern, no character is giong to get enough cash to buy a car outright or buy a house outright. However, the character is going to get enough cash to make a monthy auto loan payment and a rent payment. This may be $300 for the car and $1000 for a nice apartment. Rest of the budget goes to movie tickets, eating out a few times a week, groceries, new video game, cloths, drinks at the bar on saturday night, occasional football tickets etc. it's all budgeted out. Character wants to buy a gun in preparation for the advancing zombie horde. Even though $500 is nothing compared to the blue-book value of his car, it is a REAL BIG bite out of the monthly budget. Weath represents this. Now the character finds a diamond ring...it isn't going to change is life much except for maybe one month of eating out at a fancy restraunt etc. Hence a cash reward may not affect a player's Wealth much. Now, an actual change in wealth means the character trades in his 2004 car for a 2008 fancier newer model and moves into a nice townhouse. Now he is paying $550 for a carpayment and $1500 for rent/morgage. He gets season tickets for football, eats out at a little bit more expensive places, but otherwies he doesn't tend to have much more cash in his pocket. THIS is what a change in wealth means....you don't get a chunk of cash, something happens and you get a stream of money that increases your monthly earnings. In many ways this is a much more balanced way to deal with very large rewards, and a more realistic way.
#30 cybertrucker Jan 28, 2009 6:22:25	Shadowrun has a lifestyle system and it works. As the poster said before figure out a starting cash value and let them buy the lifestyle they want.. then have them upkeep that flat amount everymonth if they miss more than a month of paymets they lose the lifestyle. as for generated wealth from profession thats assuming they keep the profession once their adventuring life kicks in. To the OP on your suitcase full of money.. thats a one time boost to wealth. Have the players distribute the wealth and have them track it seperately when they use it they lose it. pretty simple. Having a suitcase full of money is not the same as having income and revolving credit so i would handle it differently.
#31 senko Jan 28, 2009 6:40:33	Hmmmm assuming they aren't missing the month's payments because (to take an example for my current game) they've spent the last year in another dimension what happens if they do miss the payment, that is do they merely go down to the next stage, automatically drop to the bottom, something else? Do they need to make the payment at the start of the month, middle, end. Personally I'd say start of month and drop to whatever level they can afford but the problem is different priorities. For example someone living in a semi-respectable apartment with a roommate (who wonders just what her roommate does on her frequent nights out to get so banged about). Eats out moderately (because they don't have time to cook) and insures a car a few years old. The character has financial difficulties (lots of adventures no time to work, spent a week in some remote location etc). Now there are 2 problems here as I see it. First their spending a week in a remote location might not be something expected at the begining of the month (ingame) and the GM may not have even had that planned (they had events planned that took place earlier on but then had to come up with something for the last part of the month). Secondly while the food/car etc could easily slip her apartment would be something she'd really want to hang onto and her rooommate might pick up the slack that month knowing she's normally very reliable (along with the assumption that the PC will pay her back next month or the month after at the latest).
#32 backstabbist Jan 28, 2009 18:02:32	Just looked at it like this: How many hours a day can a PC spend "Buying" a high PDC item? Just 8 hr. So... after spending 8hr "buying", can my guy spend another 4 or 8 hr Crafting a robot? Heck NO! Nor can he travel 8hr after spending 8hr 'Buying" or crafting. but apparently he can punch the clock at the steelmill or telemarketer cubicle to continue getting a paycheck.
#33 senko Jan 30, 2009 18:19:13	Depends on the GM I suspect. I usually let my PC's do whatever they can fit in. Just because they spent 8 hours shopping for components doesn't mean they can't spend another 8 working on building high intensity light generators (time period WWII) to help combat a shadow creature. As long as they spend 8 hours (normally) sleeping I'll let them do what they can fit in.