Jim Montgomery writes:
As an aside, I was thinking of my "Cash" background again. Basically as players gain static amounts of loot (gems, jade, gold, or selling slaves, armor, whatever) you gain a number of dots in Cash. If you sell something, you probably get half its dots in Cash, unless it's really poorly or well maintained. Cash has no upper end, you'd save the bottom 2 or 3 Background slots on your character sheet for it (I don't know of any characters with 10 different Backgrounds).
Neat idea. I'm not sure it works in the same game as Resources, but Resources isn't a good idea for low-fantasy or manapunk anyway (grubbing for money's too important a theme there, and the difference between Resources 0, 1, and 2 is too grainy). It's a debatable choice for a game about trading caravans (I've been toying with GURPS Traveller's Far Trader as a wealth and trade system for Exalted).
Then there would be an exchange rate to convert Cash into Resources, if your character actually invested it into trading companies, banking institutions, criminal syndicates, whatever. It would probably be something like [(current Resources squared) + 1] equals the number of dots of Cash required to raise Resources a level. (E.g. 17 dots of Cash to raise Resources from 4->5).
So to go from broke to normal is 1+2+5 = 8 Cash, and from broke to Obscene is 35 Cash. So robbing 8 normal middle class guys in a city takes you from broke to Resources 2; robbing five times as many gets you to resources 5. That doesn't make sense. Armies and sailing ships are Resources 5 purchases; the pocket change of 5 people should not be good for even one of these. I think your problem is that Resources isn't a geometric progression, but exponential. Here's an alternative for you: Don't call it a second background, call it Temporary Resources (paralleling Temporary Willpower). Every time you do something distinct and interesting to draw upon your character's funds, you get to roll a number of dice equal to the difference between your Temporary Resources and Permanent Resources, with each success refreshing one point of Temp Rsrc. So checking your belt pouch gets you a roll, but if that isn't enough you'll need to take a letter of credit to the Guild, or take a loan, or sell your horse... Treasure -- like the rating 5 treasure chest you mention below, or the rating 1 pocket change -- causes a roll of its rating with a difficulty of your Resources; each success gets you an extra Temporary Resources point. When you have as many Temporary Resources points as Permanent Resources points, you clear your TR track and gain a dot of Resources. When you make a purchase, it costs a number of TR points equal to its normal Resources cost, discounted by 1 for every point by which it is less than your Resources level. Thus, a Rsrc 5 toy boat costs your starting character 5 dots of temporary resources. A resources 2 purchase is still free for him, but a resources 3 exceptional sword will cost him 2 cash. I suppose to get the Conan feel across (recover the Eye of Bob this adventure, buy a neat sword but be broke again next adventure) the conversion from Temporary to Permanent should be optional: if you want to spend your 17 Cash from the rating 30 One Eye Willie's Hoard, go right ahead; alternately, it would buy you one level of Resources.
To purchase a specific item or service, you just subtract its Resource cost from your Cash background. So for 17 Cash, you could buy three 5 dot items and one 2 dot item/service, raise your Resources from 4 to 5 (which wouldn't get you as many 5 dot items, but more <=4 items), or buy a 5 dot item, invest 10 Cash to raise Resources from 3->4, and have 2 Cash leftover. I imagine 5 Cash to be a classical pirate chest full of gold and gems, 3 Cash would be a sack of gold/silver/gems, 2 Cash would be a belt pouch of gold, and the pocket change off your average middle class guy off the streets of the city would be 1 Cash.
The problem with these ratios in a linear background like your Cash is that robbing 5 people is equivalent to a pirate chest. I like the idea of Cash in general -- a linear background to represent treasure, adventuring spoils, and other wild fluctuations in wealth. -Brian
Here's an odd thought for an alternative. You may or may not like. There is temperary and permanent resources--call the first Cash and the other Wealth. Both are on a 10 scale. Whenever you make a purchase, deduct its' cost from your cash (you may be alboe to make Buroc rolls to deduct from the cost). Every time you do something money-making, you roll your Wealth (a number between 2 and 10, perhaps capped by the type of money-making endeavor) and add that many dots of cash. This means that most money-making actions allows a Wealth 10 person to purchase a 5 dot item, on average. You may frob your Wealth both ways--you can hoc a dot of Wealth to add your Wealth to your Cash for big purchases. You can also spend some dots of cash, and make a skill roll that somehow involves investment, capped at the number of dots of cash you spent. If you get more successes than your Wealth, increment your Wealth by 1 (is this too harsh? Also, I was thinking that the difficulty of getting back the last dot of Wealth you hocked might be decreased) In theory, one should be able to have more than 10 dots of cash at a time, but this represents having gobs of liquid resources on hand and should not be a stable condition for most people. Possibility--you should also be able to increase your wealth simply by working hard and spending time at it, spedning a number of XP equal to your current Wealth to get Wealth + 1. Buying up from 0 with XP, resources1 costs 3xp, resources2 costs 6xp, resources3 costs 12xp, resources4 costs 21xp, and resources 5 costs 34 XP. 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9= 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45 So one could say resources1 translates to Wealth2, resources2 to Wealth3, resources3 to Wealth4 or Wealth5, resources 4 to Wealth6, and resources5 is Wealth9, using XP as a rough scale. Possibly better is to make your wealth the number of bonus points you would have spent to get that background, +1 (i.e resources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, translates to wealth 2, 3, 4, 6, 8), and you can start with an amount of equipment in cash equal to some formula of your Wealth (Wealth^2? no immediate clue here). Some of this can be in other abstract resources... "I have 20 cash worth of grenades" or "I have 50 cash worth of drones," and you deduct from and add to those pools as you go through adventures, pulling things out and spending cash to replenish the pool. If one is feeling like especially bold, one could even make those pools have an overarching stat--you build up Drones or Grenades as you would your wealth (spending cash and makign appropriate rolls). When you need a (Drone, interesting grenade), you roll your (Drones or Grenades) dice, with a difficulty of the resources cost of the item you're looking for. If you succeed, you can have the item in stock--if you fail by 1, you can have the item, but if you take it you lose a dot of (Drones, Grenades). If you fail by more than that, you can't have it at all. So--mugging people isn't especially money making, so when you mug someone, roll you wealth capped at something like 2 (or perhaps your larceny skill). So even a proffessional mugger isn't getting more than a point or two of cash from each mugging, and without skills to invest it, it stays cash and gets spent, rather than turning into wealth. While being frugal for 4 or 5 shadowruns probably gives you enough dice to try to get yourself another level of Wealth. Wealth might in some way correspond with status, and there could be things a wealth 7 person just gets to do without thinking that a wealth 3 person can't, or has to roll for. Timeformovienowgottagobye! --zebediah