Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I've played in systems (multiple ones I think, but I don't remember the names) in which wealth was just a stat you had, and if you wanted to buy anything that was ranked below your stat, you could, without doing anything. And if you wanted to buy something at your stat or above, you'd roll to see if you could acquire access to the funds. So, the number didn't event represent a pile of gold, it was completely abstracted as something like "financial liquidity". It's a solution for the situation where you don't want characters to have to spend time pinching pennies to buy a suit of basic armor and a weapon, but you also want there to be some scarcity at the margins, so they can't just buy the best sword in the game either. This system obviously had its own, different set of flaws compared to D&D style systems, but some advantages it had were that there was no accounting, and it played fast. If your players are sick of erasing and overwriting the numbers on the wealth section of their character sheet over and over until the paper is gray and ragged, and they are responsible enough not to intentionally try to break the game, I think that method works well.

Burning Wheel does this and I absolutely love the system. I liked how if you failed your wealth check, your score was lowered for awhile. You could also increase it like any other score with enough success of difficult tasks. The way all the various subsystems in that game interact was superb.

I do think you lose out in an abstract system though. Delving for treasure in a dangerous dungeon was most the appeal of the early RPGs. It's not quite the same rush discovering a horde that then gets abstracted away

> I liked how if you failed your wealth check, your score was lowered for awhile. You could also increase it like any other score with enough success of difficult tasks.

Put that way, it sounds like it's less a wealth check and more like a credit check where it's assumed the boring stuff is deferred until after the adventure.

that's largely how its described in the rules. It represents calling in favors, requesting credit, etc. A failure could be described as not having the funds, funds being tied up in other ventures, requests denied, that sort of thing.

I have to admit that even though "credit check" may be more accurate, it may, er, remind players of things they want to avoid in an escapist fantasy.

(Unless you're a fantasy-denizen enjoying the reverse-experience of Offices & Outlays, I guess.)

The way cash works with resources in Burning Wheel is really genius design. Since you have your lifecycle maintenance cycles, and you will want to buy stuff, it ends up putting some pressure on the characters to get some cash to be able to handle those resources tests, especially since you have the Tax risks. And on top of that it makes it more likely the party will help each other to lower that risk.

But I totally agree that the abstraction loses something about finding treasure.

Burning Wheel was probably one of them, I know I played some games in that system. It's been a long time, but I remember it having a lot of clever rules (like the skill progression mechanic that required you to both succeed and fail).

I think GURPS (or at least some games that use this engine) use the mechanism described: https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Wealth

It's a good fit to the loose story-based systems (yeah, like GURPS), but it's always iffy on the mechanics-based ones.

I'm a bit confused by this statement. Isn't GURPS EXTREMELY mechanics based? I can figure out the penalties for shooting a guy in the left eye as I speed by on my motorcycle at night. The combat is extremely detailed relative to a system like D&D which is more abstract. I know if you buy the advantage wealth in GURPS, it gives you multipliers for your starting wealth. It's entirely up to the campaign and how it's run whether you need to account for all of that spending or not. Typically if you're a millionaire, I wouldn't bother with normal purchase accounting. There is a published rule for abstract wealth to avoid this accounting. I feel like GURPS is pure mechanics, and you bring your own settings and feel to it.

You are supposed to pick what mechanics matters on your GURPS campaign, and ignore everything else. The main book repeats this a lot.

D&D on the other hand has a set of mechanics carefully picked to be fun exactly as designed.

Sure. The rules on firearm damage by caliber aren't relevant in a Cave Man RPG. The super powers can't be used in a setting without super powers. Ignore the magic systems in a cyberpunk game. GURPS is pure mechanics without assuming a setting so of course it's rare you'd use all of the mechanics in the same game. GURPS gives you everything but the setting. It's a toolkit for building role playing games with very different flavors, but does this by giving you mechanics to leverage in these scenarios. Whether it's the tactical shooting or high fantasy martial arts or alien device granting super powers. There are rules and mechanics designed for it in a generic and easily expandable way.

I think we're probably in agreement and I just misread your original statement. GURPS is very much a mechanics heavy game whereas D&D married their world setting to their game mechanics and abstracted it to a degree to which they are difficult and often not worth separating. That's why it feels weird to say D&D is more mechanics based than GURPS when GURPS has mechanics for everything you could want to do regardless of setting. I'd go so far as to say GURPS is JUST mechanics, and you've got to bring everything else to make it work.

It's not exactly the same, but in owlcat's upcoming CRPG Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader, is similar. You can just get anything and everything with costs lower than your wealth level (but not above at all). I'm assuming it's similar or the same in the TTRPG it's based on.

I was coming here to reference this actually. The Tabletop version is very similar. Wealth is abstracted, you're basically at a certain level or not. Far more important though are whether or not said item or thing is available, where, and if you have the connections to get a hold of it. I rather liked this as it places an emphasis on mobility, exploration, and roleplaying/socialization than whether or not you have enough gold. Fits very well in line with the general premise of the game. You're a privateer with the power of a planetary governor/high ambassador. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. =P

Blades in the Dark does a hybrid model: for small things (the example given is bribing a doorman) the player rolls a fortune roll with their lifestyle quality.

For larger things, there's coin. One coin is "A full purse of silver pieces. A week’s wages." Coin can be spent/sacrificed for significantly larger things than day-to-day expenditures.

A character banks coin in their stash which determines their lifestyle quality and, eventually, their quality of retirement.

It feels much more like a stat to me, but has some of the flexibility of a resource as well.

<https://bladesinthedark.com/coin-stash>

This is very clever, and makes a great deal of sense. Often that's how real wealth works too. I wonder why more RPGs don't follow this model.

It always seems weird to me that I'm (using GoW as an example) a God who can command thunder from the heavens, yet simultaneously am forced to loot people's forgotten stash to build my next set of armor. For a while, my son nicknamed Kratos as the God of Loot, rather apt I think.

this is how Call of Cthulhu works and it's worked out great for my group, most of whom come from D&D and were hesitant about it at first. a big part of why we found it to be so cool is that it makes purchasing stuff in-universe more of a roleplaying opportunity than merely an exercise in bookkeeping, while also discouraging "murderhobo" wealth-accumulation-seeking metagaming.

That does work pretty well. Although it does discount the occasionally entertaining trope of the player character from a wealthy family being persistently disgruntled at the low quality of food and drink and bed they can afford on their adventurer's loot

If wealth is a stat, presumably it can change. "You were raised at wealth level 7 but your adventuring only supports wealth level 3" solves that pretty immediately.

Burning Wheel, though there's still some rolling involved.

Wealth in the RPG "Exalted" works like that.

The World of darkness RPGs all worked like this.

Is that system called "life"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com