Money is Currency?

[M. J. Young]

Afterthought.

Frequently in Multiverser play when a player character wants to use in-world currency to buy available merchandise and there's no easy benchmark for it (or even if there is) a die roll will determine what it costs relative to what the player character expected it to cost--from significantly less to significantly more. In those situations, you're using the money as a character currency in a system that partially randomizes how much you must use to achieve your objectives (and knowing that if you verse out, it might become worthless, depending on what type of money it is).

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

Conspiracy X has a fairly developed abstracted money system.

Firstly, almost everything you need is a big ticket item acquired through Resource Points which are derived from the characters Influence.  But RP's are broken up by the *type* of Influence - frex, Military, Intelligence or Sceintific.  So you cannot just freely exchange RP's for goods, they have to be the right RP's.

In the field, if cash is required, the characters can make a funding test against the wealth of their department to see how much of a slush fund is available.  Difficulty increases for repeated uses in a month.

Magical rituals can be used to increase your wealth "coincidentally".  For the period, funding tests are made as if influence was a level higher.

This is one of my favourite resource models.  One of the things I like about it is its move away from the "homogenous market" and I think there are lessons here to be learned by other games.  The homogenous market in FRPG's drives me spare.

[gentrification]

O.K., that may be overstating the matter--but we've got no monetary system, no wealth stat, no character currency, and we don't use drama for it. The character owns what he owns; his money is just pieces of equipment. After all, a modern U.S. twenty dollar bill is not terribly easy to spend in Libya; it has no real value.

In an RPG, money is basically a mechanism for "getting stuff" via an even exchange. I've been speaking of coins because they're so typical, but in a more general sense it's just purchasing power. Whether an item is being purchased with coins or scrip or chickens or junk you've collected on the road, it's still money in the sense that it allows your character to "get stuff" without resort to theft. In Multiverser, if I'm reading you correctly, a character's power to "get stuff" varies wildly from setting to setting, and is usually (I would assume) pretty low. But more to the point, it's never strictly quantified (even in an abstract sense), and all transactions have to be role-played out, even if only to the extent of, "Will he give me sword for this dinged-up box of Turkish Delight?" ("No.") Am I mistaken, or doesn't that smell like drama?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

M.J., I agree with Mike. It reads very much like Drama to me, modified occasionally, as you describe in your second post, by Fortune.

Best,
Ron

[Aelios]

MJ, If I may be so bold I would characterize the wealth system you describe for Multiverse as drift. Since you described the game as not having any wealth mechanism at all, but also that you have an informal system that you use. I.e. one not defined by the rules. That's fine, I would even guess that yours is the best way to do it in the Multiverse.

I don't think directly modeling currency, in coins and bills, is inherently dysfunctional. But I do believe that in any game that it is used it shifts a lot of focus to counting coins at the expense of other game elments, and that can be dysfunctional. This particular mechanism is a little more fogiving of dysfunction than other kinds of rulse, like action resolution, because it very rarely involves other skills.

Wealth is esentially a resolution system for "getting stuff" as Gentrifictaion pointed out. The stuff you get is then, presumably, a mechanism that allows or gives bonuses to other actions. A rope gives a bonus to climb a wall, a torch allows a character to see in the dark, etc. We, as humans, are often so focused on what we have that wealth system have become an inherent part of most games even if it doesn't have to be. Often if wealth is not in the rules it is added through drift, as in the case of Multiverse that MJ described. Champions is the only game I can think of right now that totally did away with wealth and posessions, by making them powers you had to buy. Even then questions like "how come my character can't own a flashlight" come up. In Champions wealth is no longer equipment (as an item of value), but an ability of the character. Some other systems may do this as well, but less explicitly.

I did a little more research last night and found that in Call of Cuthuluh (sp?) the credit rating skill isn't wealth, it is the ability to get loans and sometimes bribe officials. Wealth is still in dollars and cents.
In Ars Magica you have equipment but no real wealth. The equipment you have is determined by your coven, you buy background points in your coven to give you access to more expensive goods. But the actual total wealth, and how much provisions you have, is not an issue.

Contracycle, do the resource points diminish as you use them? If so then I would guess that it's a mechanism very similar to hard currency, it represents somthing different but it's still a currency trait you spend to get, a bonus or ability. It is interesting that it is less homogenous than most wealth and I bet that works well in that game.

[gentrification]

I don't think directly modeling currency, in coins and bills, is inherently dysfunctional. But I do believe that in any game that it is used it shifts a lot of focus to counting coins at the expense of other game elments, and that can be dysfunctional. This particular mechanism is a little more fogiving of dysfunction than other kinds of rulse, like action resolution, because it very rarely involves other skills.

Although I myself am not a huge fan of coin-counting, I still think you're putting the cart before the horse here. It's only dysfunctional if 1) it really is drawing a disproportionate amount of focus away from other priorities, which is a possibility but not an inevitability, and 2) those other priorities are something the group as a whole wants to be focused on.

It is useful to discuss alternatives to coin-counting, because clearly not everyone finds that method satisfactory. However, I don't think it's useful to dismiss coin-counting as an inherently destructive game mechanic.

[Ron Edwards]

Following up on Mike's post,

Furthermore, I don't think anyone has suggested that coin-counting (to adopt the term) is inherently dysfunctional.

It's a major feature of playing Tunnels & Trolls, for instance, in which it's exceptionally well-integrated into every other aspect of play.

So let's not get bogged down in defending something that isn't being attacked.

Best,
Ron

[gentrification]

So let's not get bogged down in defending something that isn't being attacked.

Sorry again; I think I must be misunderstanding part of Aelios' position. Lemme chew on it some.

[contracycle]

OK, well I do have a big beef with coin counting - becuase in effectit is massive attention to system, attention that I think could and should be better, erm, spent, elsewhere.

This is not to say that, as an element of system and measurment of challenge or success, it has no place.  By no means.  But what does bug me is that in effect it is a parallel resolution system, like a combat system, and almost always a bad one.

Theres a time and a place for book-keeping and the RPG table is not it, IMO.  It undermines certain kinds of verisimiltude, or makes more problematic than they are worth IME, as different forms of coinage complicate an exchange. This is less problematic in modern or future games in which money is usually electronic transfer of whole figures.  Also, such systems can undercut auhentic non-monetary systems of wealth that struggle to be meaningful when juxtaposed with money.

Lastly, I think these money systems present a pressure against socially integrated characters.  This occurs because money in large quantities, and large ranges of quantitites, is so hard to actually use in play that it seldom engages the characters.  There are practical limits to how much money can feature if all its accounting has to be literal and without recourse to mechanical abstraction.

[Aelios]

Ignoring the multitude of wealth systems for a moment I question whether a wealth system is even necissary. In Orkworld, Champions, and Ars Magica (others?) you have equipment but it has no value other than it's assigned bonus. It is esentially the same as a skill or ability even though it may use a different mechanism.

At it's most abstract "Equipment: Lantern" is the same as "Ability: See in the dark, lantern." From this perspective wealth systems are advancement systems, like experience. It should even be possible to write a game based solely on equipment, without any "character" attributes at all. But that's off topic.

The biggest problem with eliminating wealth rules, especially to the level of Champions, is suspenison of disbelief. We *expect* that characters can pick up the gun our enemy dropped and use it, we expect that we can go down to the local grocery store and buy some band-aids. And so we expect that our characters also have some kind of wealth that allows them to do the same things. We also exect that our characters may drop or break a lantern, but that they would not lose their special elf ability "infravision."

(A note on Champions, if I remember correctly it was possible to buy a point-pool that did not represent any specific ability. Couldn't that be used to "buy" equipment, and when you lost the item you would get your points back to use for something other piece of equipment? Is this a "wealth" system?)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Atom,

Your description for equipment is exactly how it works in Hero Quest - you have "Lantern 18" on your sheet just like you have "Clear-headed 13" or "Rock-climbing 20."

However, the sheet also has "Wealth [#]" as well, which is used for things like purchasing or conceivably for augmenting various other abilities, especially negotiatory ones.

Now, in my mind, both of the above are "system." Not a unique system, like the space for gold-pieces-count on the Tunnels & Trolls sheet, but an expression of the more general system of play. I suggest that the same goes for Orkworld, in which items are expressed as extra combat dice and extra Trouble dice.

Gareth, I see your point, and in many cases, I agree with you. Tunnels & Trolls is one of the rare exceptions.

Michael, we got our wires crossed a little. I was referring to Aelios' post about dysfunctionality, not to any point you made.

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

My favorite LARP system design, the Arabian Nights LARP, uses both explicit money (coins) and an abstract Wealth status (ranging from "beggar" and "poor" up to "fabulously wealthy"). Characters can buy various wealth statuses for various amounts of money, and can also (at a loss) cash in wealth status for money. Purchasing wealth status stands in for a whole raft of transactions (buying or hiring housing, clothes, entertainment hosting, grooming, servants, slaves, etc.) by which the character spends money to create a higher-status lifestyle. All those purchases would be too tedious to play out explicitly.

Wealth determines certain social obligations and privileges, including influence over officials (with higher wealth status amounting to sort of a continuous automatic bribery), access to various modes of travel, and whether or not the player must worry about housing or hunger. (So, for example, if your wealth status is "poor" or "beggar," you must actually buy food each day or suffer game mechanical effects of hunger, but if your wealth status is higher you can ignore those rules, because your ability to afford food is taken for granted.) However, you can't use wealth status to buy a camel or a pomegranate at the market; you need actual coins for that. Wealth is a lot harder to steal than money.

It's possible to be wealthy but have relatively little cash on hand (like being "house poor" in real life). It's also possible to be a beggar with a huge hoard of cash, but you'll still be treated as a beggar (albeit as a beggar with cash in hand, if you flash it.) Lower wealth statuses above "beggar" require periodic additional payments to maintain (so the character must work at a trade or otherwise earn an income), while higher wealth statuses not only don't require this, they automatically generate ready cash from presumed but unspecified profitable investment of part of the money used to purchase the wealth status.

It would be very surprising to me if this were the only example of dual use of explicit money and abstract wealth in a single game system. The approach has many advantages.

- Walt

[Aelios]

Walt, I think splitting it into liquid wealth and assest is a pretty good division. It is difficult to keep track of the value of assests anyway, but many games demand that you do, at least during character creation. Another good division might be stationary assets vs portable assets, especially in a game where the characters leave their homes for long periods of time. This goes right back to the "what should the game be like" question. Wealth systems should support the goals of the game just as much as task resolution systems do.

Ron, good example, and I think it shows what I personally don't like about the the Hero Quest system, as well as I can surmise. Equipment and, to a lesser extent, relationships are very transitory and I don't see how the lost of the trait can be portrayed. Perhaps it works in Hero Quest, I don't know (I'm going to try and pick up the game on my way home). But I don't think it would wolk for me, this is only because I am very Simulationist. It destroys my suspension of disbelief. I appologize if this seems contradictory to my earlier post, wherein I was deconstructing the need for a wealth system and not necissarilly expressing my preferences.

[M. J. Young]

Refering to Multiverser,

It reads very much like Drama to me, modified occasionally, as you describe in your second post, by Fortune.

He was echoing what

In Multiverser, if I'm reading you correctly, a character's power to "get stuff" varies wildly from setting to setting, and is usually (I would assume) pretty low. But more to the point, it's never strictly quantified (even in an abstract sense), and all transactions have to be role-played out, even if only to the extent of, "Will he give me sword for this dinged-up box of Turkish Delight?" ("No.") Am I mistaken, or doesn't that smell like drama?

So agreeing that it did sound like drama (modified sometimes by fortune and sometimes, not posted, by karma, depending on setting), I wondered how I had missed that and why I thought it was an approach not previously mentioned. I had to go back and read

3. Wealth and money together are handled almost entirely by Drama. I can buy it or I can't, depending on my character's "place" in the world, and we don't monitor how much I have or have left.

That was the part that threw me.

Multiverser does handle it by drama, but in a sense it turns that particular approach to drama on its head. We do monitor what you have, often quite precisely, but as "equipment" rather than "wealth". You have three hundred gold doubloons from your pirate adventure, four thousand seventeen diktar in the plastic currency of Sardic in various denominations, stuff like that. What is not recorded is what this is worth, which is something that has to be decided when you attempt to trade it for something else. Those doubloons will be worth quite a bit on many worlds, and in some of them there will be ways to know their precise value based on their weight in gold. There will be some worlds in which no one wants gold--but plastic has value.

Now, there's a sense in which an equipment costs list in a rule book is itself a drama mechanic (someone decided what each item should cost). The wealth itself in such games is usually a karma mechanic (an expendable resource). That leads me to see that there's a difference between what the character has and what its value is--that a character has one hundred gold pieces versus that each is the price of a rich meal and all together they're enough for a long composite bow.

So in a sense, the character's wealth is a matter strictly recorded, in that we know exactly what he owns; it's the buying power of that wealth that is flexible.

Agreed that it's drama, it just does it from the other end, monitoring closely what the character has but changing what that is worth.

Oh, and getting back for a moment

usually (I would assume) pretty low

that's not so easy to say. Some players make an effort to collect "value objects" which are likely to be convertible to currency in a lot of worlds (gems, for example), and find that they can keep their buying power pretty high that way most of the time. Others just find a way to earn or acquire quantities of the local currency whenever they arrive. Others make due with what they've got. So it varies.

--M. J. Young

[MachMoth]

Oddly enough, I stumbled onto something, working on my Pneuma Engine for Spirit Chronicles.  Okay, follow me here.

[quick description of PE] // skip if you know already
Okay, the main limit I set when developing the Pneuma Engine, was that everything about the character (non-narrative material, that is) had to fit on the Aspect Matrix (grid).  Skills are placed on the grid, and the skills advanced, based on the largest skill adjacent to it.  Thus, for a skill to be adjacent, it had to had some tie to the other, thus eliminating the need for attributes.
[/quick description of PE]]

Now, I ran into the context of wealth pretty early.  Equipment, outside of major items, was tracked abstractly (donjon style, kinda).  So, to track wealth, I made it a skill, to be placed on the grid.  Boy, did I open pandora's box.  It didn't quite make sense at first, but then I simply redefined the wealth skill.  Instead of buying power, it represented an abstract combination of money, income, and ability to spend it wisely.  It also included a bit of haggling, and marketing, but I assume those could be seperate skills (placed adjacent to wealth).  This provided a few unique elements:

1)  When placed adjacent to another skill on the Aspect Matrix, that skill would benifit from high wealth (afford better training, etc.) and the wealth benifited from being adjacent to a high skill (professional skills make money).
2)  Experience could be placed into wealth, instead of other skills.  Also, since skills have a chance of advancing everytime they are used in play, so does wealth (Representing the fact that they either get better at buying, make money off of the deal, or, in the case of an expensive purchase, reduce the amount points lost.
3)  Player's can be rewarded in strictly Wealth Advancement Points (though this goes against the fluidity the system provides).

All in all, it still fits into #2, but I like the "accidental" effect the Aspect Matrix has had on it.