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Making money matter (forked from Abstracting Wealth)
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<blockquote data-quote="DracoSuave" data-source="post: 5686804" data-attributes="member: 71571"><p>If you want to make money matter, you have to make spending money matter.</p><p></p><p>That means that your consequences for not having money have to matter. If it can be handwaved as 'you sleep in a bad inn' rather than a 'good inn' you've missed the point.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, you don't want to stunt character growth</p><p></p><p>The trick is not to have things YOU care about cost money. That's just DM wankery. The trick is to have PC <strong>goals</strong> cost money. THEY want it. They'll scrimp and save for it. </p><p></p><p>See, the bottom line is, the reason D&D has a magic item economy, is simply because magic items are <strong>universal things adventurers want.</strong> So collecting money for deeds, and spending that money on loot makes sense from a motivation aspect.</p><p></p><p>Now, if you change the economy so that magic items are no longer available, that's fine. But, you have this goal of making money matter. Can characters, in your system <strong>buy things they want?</strong></p><p></p><p>If the answer is no, or even "I don't know", then your system will not have money that matters. However, if your characters can have monetary goals, then suddenly scrimping and saving matters.</p><p></p><p>Don't make the mistake of thinking that not being able to afford an inn is going to make your money system suddenly interesting. Players are the determiners of interest. Many players will be put off by having to budget for stuff like that, especially if the only goal of the budgeting is to 'make budgeting matter.' Accounting isn't interesting unless you're an accoutant. If you have one person who actually likes this type of play, the players will just delegate the money tracking to him, and then pretend it doesn't exist.</p><p></p><p>And if they're pretending it doesn't exist... then money doesn't matter.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DracoSuave, post: 5686804, member: 71571"] If you want to make money matter, you have to make spending money matter. That means that your consequences for not having money have to matter. If it can be handwaved as 'you sleep in a bad inn' rather than a 'good inn' you've missed the point. At the same time, you don't want to stunt character growth The trick is not to have things YOU care about cost money. That's just DM wankery. The trick is to have PC [b]goals[/b] cost money. THEY want it. They'll scrimp and save for it. See, the bottom line is, the reason D&D has a magic item economy, is simply because magic items are [b]universal things adventurers want.[/b] So collecting money for deeds, and spending that money on loot makes sense from a motivation aspect. Now, if you change the economy so that magic items are no longer available, that's fine. But, you have this goal of making money matter. Can characters, in your system [b]buy things they want?[/b] If the answer is no, or even "I don't know", then your system will not have money that matters. However, if your characters can have monetary goals, then suddenly scrimping and saving matters. Don't make the mistake of thinking that not being able to afford an inn is going to make your money system suddenly interesting. Players are the determiners of interest. Many players will be put off by having to budget for stuff like that, especially if the only goal of the budgeting is to 'make budgeting matter.' Accounting isn't interesting unless you're an accoutant. If you have one person who actually likes this type of play, the players will just delegate the money tracking to him, and then pretend it doesn't exist. And if they're pretending it doesn't exist... then money doesn't matter. [/QUOTE]
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Making money matter (forked from Abstracting Wealth)
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