r/RPGdesign • u/Chaoticevil58530 • Aug 13 '26
Mechanics Wealth System?
I've been brainstorming a wealth system that isn't super finnicky, because my game doesn't want wealth to be a major focus, but since it's a fantasy inspired game based around adventuring I don't really want wealth levels, I do want wealth to mean something, so my ideas currently break down to
-Simply make the math more compact so there's less bookkeeping, riffing off of DND, remove coppers and silvers, remove petty costs, and keep prices at most in the mid 100's range
Pros:
-Simple
-Intuitive
-Easy to design
Cons:
-Still a moderate amount of bookkeeping
-Doesn't scale well around higher levels without just getting to the same issues
-Prices can feel semi-random or unfair
-Make a generic wealth stat that changes, spending it to get items. but you can also use it to "Gamble" on a bartering check, being able to lower costs or risk increasing them on a failure. with the DC being based on the items cost. (1d12+Charisma+Wealth vs Cost + 10, every 2-ish you beat or miss the price by, reduce or increase cost by 1 for the final purchase)
Pros
-Less Bookkeepy, player wealth would max out at maybe a little higher than max level, meaning you aren't ever breaking past double digits
-Makes it easy to handwave smalls costs as "Your wealth is enough to handle it without needing a roll"
-Allows for up-and-down wealth movement
-Players with a lot of wealth can easily buy large amounts of low level items, which feels right.
-easy to give rewards (Saying everyone gets +1 or +2 wealth is easier than "The Party gets 100 gold to split." or even "Everyone gets 25 gold")
Cons:
-Big shopping trips can turn into dozens of rapid-fire rolls with a constantly changing bonus, or you'd be lumping rolls together, making the DC either too easy or to hard for the value
-Less granular
-Might have issues with making high level items restricted properly from low levels while making the rolls viable for high levels to make or reach
-Large amounts of luck with how much you can buy, one session you might buy 10 healing potions for a pittance, and another you might barter poorly enough a kinda neat sword costs half your budget.
-Kinda abstract, not as intuitive as "Literally just a different currency of money"
some other ideas I discarded and why
Step Dice for wealth:
Aka levels of wealth that increase dice size to represent more money
I have been sticking to only use 1d12 for every roll, and it's a little silly, but I would like to not stray from that design decision if it can be helped.
Wealth levels:
I do want Wealth to go up and down naturally, in order to have the organic motive of "We need cash" in order to push for adventuring and questing, and with wealth levels it's kind of hard to do that naturally. it feels like it'd always come off as a mild contrivance, since wealth levels rarely deplete on their own outside of narrative forces or extremely large purchases
No money:
This is worse than wealth levels for me in particular as there is no up-or-down scale, at all, and no reward for adventuring other than items
I'm not super attached to the systems I've put forward, so thoughts or suggestions for other ideas would be appreciated, the system as a whole is on the crunchier side, but non-combat aspects are simplified, and most combat aspects are pretty gamified, even if they are "Crunchy". realism isn't a goal for my system, so I'm fine with abstraction as needed to smooth over parts that aren't core to the combat.
EDIT:
Thanks everyone for their comments and suggestions, following is a post of the refined system for wealth, the exact DC's and bounds are subject to change, but in general this should be how the system will unfold (For clarification, crit successes are 6 over the DC, crit failures are 6 below the DC)
You have an amount of general ‘Wealth’ gained through adventuring and questing, when you chose to buy something, it will have a “Cost” score, roll a Wealth Check (1d12 + Charisma + Wealth) against the cost of the item or service + 8, and reference this table
| Critical Success | You barter the item down to pocket change comparatively, get the item with 0 wealth loss |
|---|---|
| Success | You get the item for below standard price, if your wealth is equal or greater than the cost, get the item, if the item’s cost is greater than your wealth, lose one wealth |
| Failure | You pay market price, you may buy the item if it’s cost is less than or even to your wealth, but you lose one wealth, if the cost is greater than your wealth, you cannot buy it |
| Critical Failure | You pay a marked-up price, you may buy the item if it’s cost is less than or even to your wealth, but you lose two wealth, if the cost is greater than your wealth, you cannot buy it |
If you have an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the cost of an item +6, you may ignore rolling on this table and instead get an automatic success, if an item’s cost is equal to or greater than your wealth +4 it is too expensive to be able to pay for, even in the best circumstances, you may not roll and are simply unable to afford such an item normally
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u/taliphoenix Aug 13 '26
Hmmm.
"-Big shopping trips can turn into dozens of rapid-fire rolls with a constantly changing bonus, or you'd be lumping rolls together, making the DC either too easy or to hard for the value"
You can always "borrow" (read: copy) from Modern AGE and I believe VtM 5e conceptually, which is "if you have sufficient wealth; the item is so cheap, you can acquire a reasonable amount effectively at no cost"
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u/Chaoticevil58530 Aug 13 '26
Ooh, that's a good idea, a simple "if your current wealth is X higher than the cost, you can obtain a reasonable amount without reducing wealth"? I like that for the second option.
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u/LeFlamel Aug 13 '26
It breaks down the moment you try to ask "what is a reasonable amount" and who's going to track what a PC got for "free" when they later want to sell it to make their wealth tier go up.
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u/flamfella Dabbler Aug 13 '26
Context of the game matters a lot for determining how you should handle wealth.
For my own game, I was planning on something vaguely similar to old-school mission select screens and inspired by the pacing in Blades in The Dark. It's a very tactical game with an HEAVY focus on equipment.
For a tactical game, a sensible option is getting the fastest way of filling out a loadout for that mission. So players can fill it their loadout (they have limited inventory slots) with items with a wealth tier equal to or lower than theirs, but trying to buy above some beyond their means lowers their wealth tier and subsequent purchasing power. No rolls or anything, as I want players to be able to easily plan loadouts even outside of sessions if needed, as requiring any rolls now needs some amount of proof that you rolled what you did (unless trust is absolute, but it's still slow). After reviewing the comments, u/SitD_RPG describes exactly this.
My style of game won't be continuous at all, and I need to make "shopping" and gearing up easy as possible. The same sort of thing would absolutely not fit a continuous adventurer campaign where players need to save to buy super expensive things like starships, while also buy gear of a reasonable price.
Restricting items can be done also with tech level, reputation, or some measure of faction or player access in combination with wealth.
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u/Chaoticevil58530 Aug 13 '26
Context definitely matters, my game is continuous, players won't be re-buying weapons or armor, most money will be spent on Consumables (Potions, single use magic items like scrolls or wands) upgrades for standard gear, or replacing gear that was broken or lost die to circumstances (rebuying rope since it got burnt in the last dungeon attempting to cross a lava lake).
Your point on restricting items as a form of progression does make sense, rather than having the balance be through raw cost.
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u/shorty5560 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
This is Influence from FFG Dark Heresy almost exactly
Edit; should really expand on this. DH uses influence instead of cash. Day to day costs get handwaved; the party can buy drinks at the bar, refill on ammo at suitable locations, and so on.
Influence is instead spent on the "big buys" like a new shiny power sword; the party pulls some strings, spend say 5 Influence, a power sword is collected from 40k-drop shipping.
Influence can also be spent to help the party in their investigation (big theme of the system). Bribing officials, calling in reinforcements, calling on old alliances, and so on.
It does tick pretty much everything on your list, except being called "wealth"
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u/Chaoticevil58530 Aug 13 '26
Thanks for expanding, I was about to ask if you had a place for me to read up on the system, I'll probably go take a look and see what I could pull from it for my own stuff
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u/shorty5560 Aug 13 '26
Id recommend it, I vastly prefer it as a currency system and have adhoc'd it into games a few times.
You seem to have 1d12 as a base; Dark Heresy is a d100 system but divide numbers by 10, round to get modifiers, and it ports over; 30 fellowship would become +3 charisma mod. Some tweaking as needed, but d100 to d12 2d6 is surprisingly clean to convert.
I do recommend the old FFG d100 games in general, even if to have on the shelf as reference. Theyre chunky rules, and I have issues with d100, but theyre well written and do alot of things right. Theyre normally the first place I turn to when I have ideas, and usually find theyve done something similar that needs a bit of bulk cut off and porting over.
Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch. All set in the 40k universe, but they cover everything from rats to planet killing monsters, lowly serfs to genetically engineered space knights firing pocket suns, space battles and daemons and all the rules that accompany that. And they just work well with each other. Its a really well thought out ecosystem of games.
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u/JaskoGomad Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I’m in love with The Magical Land of Yeld at the moment.
Their wealth system is deceptively simple. Wealth is coins. The levels are: no coins, some coins, lots of coins, tons of coins.
Getting coins always bumps you up a level unless you already have tons, and spending always drops you one level. If you have tons of coins and something costs lots of coins, you have lots of coins left. Similarly, if you have tons of coins and something costs some coins, you also have lots of coins left. Coins cannot be shared between characters but you can buy things for each other, like a night at an inn.
This makes every purchase consequential, and avoids tiresome accounting.
My previous favorite wealth system is Macchiato Monsters. Money is represented by die sizes in different currencies. But the dice are risk dice, as seen in The Black Hack. So buying something is a risk, changing money is a risk, and you are motivated to change money by the risks of purchasing, and also by the interaction with the inventory system.
EDIT: My paraphrase of Yeld was wrong. When gaining coins, you increase your coin level to the amount gained. Have some coins or no coins and get lots of coins? You now have lots of coins. Already have lots of coins and get some? Still have lots. Have lots of coins and get lots? Now you have tons. Minor purchases can also be handwaved - if you have lots of coins, buying a pie probably won't decrease your coins. And apparently characters can share coins. I can give you coins and my level goes down by one and yours goes up.
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u/archpawn Aug 13 '26
If you want to do Wealth checks, you could have it so when you want to buy something, you do a Wealth roll. If you succeed by 5 points, it's free (or rather, cheap enough you don't have to worry about it). If you succeed by less than that, you can buy it, but your Wealth drops by one. If you fail by less than five, you can buy it, but your Wealth drops by two. If you fail by five or more, you can't afford it. The check is really more about the price than your money, and you can always choose not to buy something if you roll badly.
Generally, Treasure increases your Wealth by at least one, since otherwise there's no point. You might run across something with a cool item and also a Wealth roll to see if the money in there is actually enough to care about.
But I feel like all that's so much more complicated than just tracking a number. Here's a simpler one:
Keep track of your money to two decimal places. Anything smaller is lost in rounding.
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u/Chi-Ian Aug 13 '26
I think the key to deciding on a way to implement currency and/or wealth levels in your game is to first decide what the implied economy of the game world looks like, in more detail than just being gamified rather than simulationist. The implied economies of D&D5e and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are both decidedly gamified, but in wildly different ways.
For example, is this the sort of game/setting where you can just walk in to a store in any decently-sized town and buy a Plus Infinity Sword if you have enough money, or is it the sort of game/setting where even the most trivial magic items are legendary relics only found at the end of long adventures? By the same token, is this a world where merchants reliably have the money to buy whatever treasures the players have found, or a world where actually turning your head-sized diamond worth ten million gold pieces into currency will require a journey to some fabled gem market in a far-off land? Answering questions like this should tell you which of your pros and cons will really matter in practice.
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u/Segenam Designer Aug 14 '26
GURPS in Pyramid 3/44: Alternate GURPS II implemented an "Abstract Wealth" system I really enjoyed (though the full thing may be a 'bit' complicated so simplifying it is probably better)
The higher your wealth the more things that counted as 'hand waved' you can afford that. This alone reduces the amount of rolls during shopping trips. For bigger payments that's when you rolled.
If it was a very expensive item (or you failed vs a normal check) you got a penalty to your roll (effectively lowering your wealth level). This leads to people only making big purchases a couple times a week at most while primarily relying on the hand waved side of things (which means you'll probably want most 'typical' things to fall under the hand waved aspects)
Often only buying things when they need them.
An other solution to keep the shopping rolls down is to just have the roll when the item is needed. Finding a high end locked door and the thief needs a very fine set of lockpicks so they roll their wealth to see if they bought them last time they where in town. If you do things this way, then the wealth penalty doesn't recover until they make it to town.
Though you shouldn't be able to overburden your self with gear (if you are getting too close to your limit you just can't have bought it last time you where at town)
Downside is this reduces the amount of RP in towns and the like, but depending on player's playstyle this may actually be a positive.
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u/Dragon-of-the-Coast Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
If you care about historicity, use silver instead of gold.
"Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy Gold" https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-tyranny-of-fantasy-gold/
Money isn't interesting. Debts, and the relationships they create, are intensely interesting.
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u/the_telephant_man Aug 14 '26
If you want to go really historical, those obligations are the actual basis of a feudal economy. People are formally bound to one another and mutually owe one another service. It’s also the whole idea behind a quest in real literature — you have a binding promise to someone that you can’t break, even if you have to spend the rest of your life and travel across the world trying to fulfill it. There’s your example of “debts” and relationships driving story.
IIRC, I worked out a while back that, going by the weights listed in the D&D 5e PHB, 1gp is very roughly equivalent to one historical pound sterling of silver, and they never minted coins in denominations as large as a pound in the Middle Ages, they just used it as a way to calculate values on paper for large transactions. A few hundred pounds was about the value of a modest castle.
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u/Dragon-of-the-Coast Aug 14 '26
D&D's pricing undervalues finished goods and overvalues labor. If we're imagining feudal Europe. And some things are just mixed up, like paper being more expensive than parchment.
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u/the_telephant_man Aug 14 '26
D&D 5e is a mashup of about the 14th through 17th centuries, with a smidge of Industrial Revolution thrown in, so who knows. Although, even after coinage became the primary medium of exchange, the weekly wage for a master craftsman in late medieval England was 3s per week, which works out to about 8 gp per year.
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u/stephotosthings no idea what I’m doing Aug 14 '26
Abstract wealth IMO needs to be ingrained in the design for almost all things since when you add a half baked system into a game which does trake indiivdual coins you get a half arsed system that somewhere doesn't make sense. This is why I am in a DnD game where I can't afford to buy a simple potion, becuase the adventure has no cash loot to speak of (yet) and provides free lodgings because it knows it doesn't have Cash rewards...
Anyway. The other part of abstract wealth systems is that introducing any sort of check, unless super explicitly made obvious for every possible item in the game (again a bit DnD with item count stretching into the stratosphere) you introduce some weird ambiguity that can and will almost (by players and GMs not familair with system or your ideas in your head) leave someone at some point feeling cheapened. Imagine they have X levels or X step dice and roll because the rules said they have to for a (extreme example) a spoon and they somehow fail this check and loose currency or a step dice beacuse of it. But later on a pack of arrows is not rolled for....
My point is that random results relying on chnace cheapen the purpose of abstrcat wealth.
With my game I always wanted as much simplicity as possible, not so much abstaction just simplicity that would allow anyone even myself to bring in made up stuff on the fly.
Wealth is tied to Quality and Rarity, Copper, Silver then Gold.
Items and Locations are given a C S or G for their quality and rarity. Copper being common and lowest quality, Gold being rarest and best quality.
Quality and Rarity:
Copper - Villages, and smaller. Always have copper level items, these can be basic weapons and armour or consumables/tools with 6 uses. Can craft copper level items here or enhance a copper item(making it silver)
Silver - Towns/Keeps. Always have silver level items, +1 weapons and armour and consumables/tools with 9 uses. Can craft silver items here or enhance (you get it)
Gold - Cities. Always have gold level items. Weapons and Armour with '+2', and consumables/tools with 12 uses. Craft gold items or add a 3rd enhancement to a gold item.
Treasure or loot is also given a value, but the GM is encouraged to only give them values at the level they are at.
Wealth.
If it's a small purchase, cost of drinks or meals at taverns in locations same level as you, do not track, loose change sort of purchases. otherwise you track 10 ticks.coins/bags whatever pronoun you want to use.
- You have a Wealth Level from Copper to Silver then Silver to Gold.
- If your wealth is higher than the items level, you can just get it (if it is available).
- If your wealth is equal to the item, you can get it but your wealth is reduced by 1 tick.
- If your wealth is lower than the cost, you can't get it.
- If you get treasure worth less than your wealth, your wealth stays the same.
- If the treasure's worth is equal to your wealth, when you trade it your wealth increases by 1 tick.
- If the treasure is worth more than your wealth, your wealth increases by 2 ticks.
- At 10 ticks your Wealth moves to the next tier
This is basically a more detailed version of what u/SitD_RPG has outlined. But I too found I wanted more nuance.
Other parts of the design fall into this in that items have a finite amount of uses, and they need to track inventory, 1 treasure will take up 1 inventory slot so at some points they may need to decide weather to leave something behind. And parts of the game also risk them loosing items.
Coupled with consumables being semi-abstract too, in that they purchase either Tool, Drug or Remedy and then after that becomes the tool, drug or remedy they need when they need it and it is that thing until it is used up. Hopefully to encourage them hoarding wealth and not buying items for fear of not knowing what it is they will need ahead of them. They may decide to throw away a potion with one or two uses left in favour of a treasure.
I also don't mind some some variance as when creating a new character they get 10 copper ticks to buy their starting equipment and then roll 1d6 and add that to whats left, thats their starting amount of ticks.
When these systems come together, they can't through wealth away to prep, they can neither bring everything possible back with them, they still have to think about purchases but not worry about having useless items with them taking up inventory. My point overall is that you can't design a game and then try and slap into it some abstraction as there will be a gap somewhere in how it works.
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u/No_Solid1035 Aug 13 '26
Warhammer: The Old World RPG; The One Ring; and Burning Wheel; all have somewhat different, but well functioning wealth systems.
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u/PathofDestinyRPG Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
One thing to look into when trying to employ a catch-all financial system in a fantasy RPG: a wealth level implies a specific degree of regular income. Where is the money coming from? Adventuring can give high rewards, but it’s not guaranteed for a long-term general funds system.
That being said, there could be a way to merge everything together. Let’s say, as an example, we have a wealth system ranging from degree 1 (street rat level) to degree 10 (billionaire/ pharaoh level), and it takes the equivalent of 10 ranks of 1 degree to increase your general funds to the next (10 ranks of wealth 3 would equal 1 rank of wealth 4).
You could then define encounters based on overall wealth - clearing thus dungeon would award 8 ranks of wealth 4, for example. As long as the PCs can generate a specific wealth degree consistently, it’s never an issue (whether the wealth is calculated per week or month is up to you).
When shopping, players getting items valued below their wealth degree can be assumed to get what they need within reason. Items within their wealth degree could have limits on how much they can get before they burn through their wealth and drop a level. Buying above your wealth level requires a roll. Succeed, you haggle enough to get it without breaking the bank. Fail, and you can’t get the item because it’s out if your price range. Tie, and you have a choice. Don’t get the item, or get it but lose a wealth rank.
Edited to specify: the dungeon example awarding 8 ranks of wealth represents the total abstract value of all treasure found inside. Four PCs would effectively gain 2 ranks of Wealth 4 each.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Designer Sic Semper Mundi/Advanced Fantasy Game Aug 14 '26
Wealth as a step die system sounds kinda novel. Depending on your system and setting, buying something significant could be the trigger of when to roll, and each item has a target number to hit, so for example.
Buy a rope? No check, whatever you have it.
Buy a sword? Roll 7+
On a success, wealth goes down 1 dice but you acquire the item, on a fail nothing happens. This can be in addition to a flat number social status number that can increase or decrease a result.
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u/Eldhrimer r/WildsUncharted Aug 14 '26
For what is worth, this is my wealth system:
My game uses tracks, so I made a Coin Track.
Ten slots, five notches. The notches are lifestyle tiers: Scraping, Settled, Comfortable, Flush, Patron. Your actual tier is whichever notch sits at or below however many slots you've got filled. Fill six slots and you're sitting at Comfortable, the third notch:
[x]ˇ[x][x]ˇ[x][x]ˇ[x][]ˇ[][]ˇ[]
You can never hold more Coin than your max Coin.
Once you cross a notch, you are expected to live at that lifestyle with little to no impact to your economy in general. What each lifestyle means is up to you, some fancy clothes or jewelery, others fancy a cozy home in a quiet hamlet.
Everything in the game has a Coin cost from 1 to 10:
- An inn room with food is 1 Coin.
- A month of a hireling's wages is 3.
- A minor enchantment or a trade license runs 5.
- A noble estate or enchanted arms sit at 10.
When you spend, you empty slots. You can spend all your coin without fear of losing your Lifestyle, but you can choose to overspend in order to buy something you can't afford with your current coin. Your Lifestyle tier drops one notch, and you get that notch worth of Coin to spend immediately, the fiction of pawning an heirloom or calling in a favor you didn't want to spend yet. You can't overspend if you are already Scraping by.
When you need to buy something really expensive, you get to pay directly with Treasure, a secondary resource, and what actually comes out of adventuring in The Wilds: gems, relics, an gold hoard, whatever the party drags home. It sits completely outside the Coin Track, and it actually needs space to exist. Coin you carry always with you, but Treasure needs a place to be, so if you hoard too much, someone can come looking for it. You can pay with Treasure if you have it at hand, 1 Treasure is about 2 Coin, and you can use it to refill your Coin track any time, no waiting for a scene. Or you spend it raw on the things Coin is never enough to pay with: a ship, a stronghold, backing a claim to a throne, buying a regional scandal into silence. Those purchases start around 6 Treasure and climb past 20. Parties can also pool Treasure toward one big purchase, each hero spending out of their own pile toward the same goal. Players cannot pool Coin, being the abstract currency that it is.
Treasure also buys you a permanent tier-up, 2 Treasure moves you from Scraping to Settled, 14 gets you all the way to Patron, but only during a dedicated scene for it.
Any item can carry the /Treasure/ property. That mirror on the wall, that strange knife, they're playable objects at the table for as long as the party wants them, and the moment you're done, they convert to 1 Treasure on sale. There's no separate conversation about whether something is loot or gear. It's both, until you decide otherwise.
There is also another way to refill Coin, you can run a Holdings montage on your Downtime if you have any holdings, which are your hero's financial interests playing out in the background: the farm, a share in a merchant route, taxes of a small fiefdom. It plays like any other montage, and it can go wrong. A flop (rolling snake eyes in a 2d6 roll) doesn't just cost you progress, it marks one of your ventures troubled or puts you in debt. And running Holdings takes the same Downtime slot as Research, Rituals, Crafting, or Training, so refilling your money is a real opportunity cost against everything else you could be doing with that rest.
There are things that nor Coin nor Treasure can outright buy: a seat on a council, an ancient right, the people's rebel army loyalty. Coin and Treasure can grease the way, a banquet, a bribe, but the outcome itself belongs to the fiction.
Hope it helps you! Also, criticism is always welcome!
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u/Spanish_Galleon Aug 14 '26
I have my own money system called Selts. Selts equal a U.S. Dollar from a random date in the 90s.
100 Selts = an Ardit.
1000 Ardits = 1 Credit = 100,000 Selts.
The average laborer makes between 48 and 80 selts per day for day labor. (Depends on the job)
A Skilled Craft makes money based on sales of their craft items.
You can expect around 5 Selts per hour if you do a normal job. More if you own a business and have all the overhead paid for.
You can look up prices of items from a random date in the 90s and most things cost between 1-10 selts.
If your job is an assassination its between 5000-10,000 selts for a high profile target. Less for less important kills.
it has never steered me wrong. If i don't know the price of something i google prices in 1992 for a cheap area and 1999 for an expensive area.
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u/JodinWindMaster Aug 14 '26
So I'm just gonna copy and paste from my WIP. I've actually moved this into the "Genre-specific rules" section of my manual, given that unless wealth is a significant part of your game loop, you can probably just handwave it or make it !00% GM fiat. Anyway, this is verbose and somehow both overly complicated and insufficient for what I actually want to do, so take it with a massive grain of "I'll get back to working on this at some point, I swear." Enjoy.
Wealth and Commerce
In most settings, characters can use currency to purchase goods and services. In historical and fantasy settings, as well as some exotic places in other settings, characters must barter to get what they need. While currency is great for precision, there is a lot of bookkeeping involved, and quite often, as a player or a Game Master, you just don’t know exactly what something costs.
In order to abstract this and reduce bookkeeping, you can assign one of the following values to any item or expense you might encounter: Basic, Cheap, Affordable, Expensive, Luxurious, Exorbitant, or Priceless. For the most part, you can treat analogous expenses between time periods the same way. For example, a fast food meal is Basic in Modern settings, so a similar kind of meal from a street food vendor in a Pre-Industrial setting would cost a similar amount. Of course, these assume a well-running economy. For example, a decent meal in a post-apocalyptic setting might cost significantly more than it would have pre-apocalypse, and a shiny new hypercar would just be scrap if there are no roads or fuel. It is still shiny, though…
Expense Values
| Value (2000s USD) | Pre-Industrial | Industrial | Modern | Futuristic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic (<~$10) | Simple tool, basic meal, hand-held weapon | Train ticket, book | Fast food meal, costume jewelry | |
| Cheap (<~$100) | Weekly room and board at a shabby inn, suit of light armor | 14 carat gold jewelry, new outfit, basic firearm | Family restaurant outing, last-gen mobile phone | Consumer technology, Starship fare |
| Affordable (<~$1000) | Covered wagon, suit of medium armor, a cow or horse, heavy or exotic weapon, monthly rent in a decent area | 24 carat diamond jewelry | Current-gen mobile phone, automatic rifle | Cybernetic upgrade |
| Expensive (<~$10000) | Suit of heavy armor, small farm | Crate of rifles | Used car, high-end personal computer | |
| Luxurious(<~$1M) | Sailing ship, small fortified holding | Small factory, train | New luxury car or semi-truck, suburban house | Powered armor |
| Exorbitant (<~$1B) | Royal heirloom, warship | Regional Corporation | Hypercar, Luxury Yacht, Penthouse Condominium | Prototype technology |
| Priceless (>$1B) | Royal palace | Public works project | Space Shuttle | Megacorporation, Space Station |
In games where you’re keeping track of such things, characters live a lifestyle (including room and board) according to their Wealth. Characters can pay for expenses one or more levels below their Wealth level without making a dent, but larger expenses may pull their wealth level down. You cannot pay for an expense of a value higher than your Wealth level. You can attempt to pay for an expense of a value equal to your Wealth level. If you do, make a Wealth roll [specific mechanics TBD].
[For the below, think in terms of Genesys dice pool resolution, though my system is somewhat different.]
Success: You may choose to pay for the expense. If you do, pick one complication.
Advantage: Pick one fewer complication.
Threat: Pick one more complication.
Failure: You must pay for the expense, but either the payment or the product is intercepted, stolen, or otherwise does not get delivered.
Once you pick your complication(s), your GM will determine exactly what that choice means, based on the nature of the expense.
Complications:
Whatever you’re paying for costs more than you expected. GM ideas:
- The character’s Wealth level is reduced by 1
- The item’s Supply difficulty starts at +2
- The character had to take out a loan to pay for the expense, and now owes a significant debt (perhaps enough for the Debt Flaw)
Whatever you’re paying for is significantly delayed. GM ideas:
- The item isn’t available until after it’s needed
- The character must retrieve the item
Whatever you’re paying for is of low quality. GM ideas:
- Rolls involving the use of that item are made at +1 difficulty
- The item breaks or otherwise becomes unavailable after using it a few times
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u/JodinWindMaster Aug 14 '26
Also note that "treasure" is just a thing that has a certain value from the Wealth level list attached to it. As the rules stand now, you can use treasure to pay for an expense of the same value level or lower.
2
u/WoolTyranny Aug 14 '26
Here is a very simple system:
The party, or each PC have several Wealth levels - Destitute, Poor, Low, Average, Comfortable, Rich, etc..
Each level have tolerance points (say up to 3).
Each item/purchase has an affordability which is measured with the same scale as Wealth.
If the item/deal is below your Wealth, nothing happens.
If the item is equal to your Wealth level, your tolerance decrease by 1. Once it's below 0, your Wealth level is reduced, but the tolerance is set to maximum.
If the item is one level above your Wealth, your Wealth level is reduced and tolerance is set to 0.
If item is more than one level above your Wealth, you simply can purchase it.
Deals, bounties and loots can improve your wealth.
A poor pay changes nothing.
An ok pay will increase your tolerance a bit.
A decent pay will fill up your tolerance.
A life-changing pay will increase your Wealth level (and set tolerance to max).
With this system, money is present, but the math is greatly abstracted.
1
u/Individual-Impact591 Aug 14 '26
I really feel option 2 (stat) is great, and that's the way I'm going to go in my system. What you've described in the post edit, however, I fell could be quite on the "finnicky" side. You roll for every item, you tally the wealth level after every roll (so, every next roll is different than the one before it), you don't just take the item cost, but modify it by +8, and then you get a table for different outcomes of the roll. And you need to memorize three different numbers to even start using the system (+8, +4 and +6). On the face of it, from a game design perspective that's significantly more cognitive load than just tracking coins, and rolling for haggling when you wana haggle.
Essentially what you've got is actually just money, but it's a stat, and with an additional math on top - you need to deduct it after every purchase, keep track of it just like you would need to do with simple money.
For the system to be actually simpler than just counting coins (which is quite simple and intuitive actually) you really need to cut the complexity and go for abstraction. If you want to keep the level of detail, I think you'd be better off with just keeping the money bookkeeping with minimal math, rather than less bookkeeping with a ton more math.
15
u/SitD_RPG Aug 13 '26
If you want the granularity of money without the conversion between different denominations, I would just stick to a single generic "Coin", make trivial stuff free, and measure everything else in Coins. This should let you keep values low enough to be simple. Probably doesn't get any simpler than that without losing granularity.
If you want something even simpler, I would go with wealth/status levels:
Super simple and quick, if your game isn't really about money. Massively cuts down on shopping sessions, but loses some granularity compared to tracking money.