Need a new money system

[invokethehojo]

Running a pirate campaign in a low magic world (meaning the quest for endless gold to buy more magic items isn't a primary goal in life) and I want to streamline the money system so it's not about tracking how many coins you have, but more about whether your flush or broke and have access to the things you want when you can afford them. I've done some pirate research and it seems like they were constantly shifting from having more money then they could spend to having next to nothing, which I love, but a regular monetary system of gold coins just seems too detail oriented for this kind thing.

I want a looser system that is easier to deal with, the closest thing I can think of is d20 moderns wealth bonus system. It has the basic feel I want, but it has a couple flaws I cannot get around.

1) if you have a wealth bonus of 5, and your partner has a wealth bonus of 10, and you guys get a reward of 4 wealth bonus for a mission and split it equally, it makes no sense. the dude with more money gets more money, and the dude with less money gets less money. It's not proportional
2) It says that you can buy items of your wealth bonus or lower basically for free, but if you buy something of your wealth bonus or higher it lowers your wealth bonus. This creates a metagame scenario I really dislike: buy all the cheaper things you want first for free, then buy the more expensive thing and be broke.

Any body got any ideas on a free form type monetary system that is easy to use but doesn't create it's own wierd set of problems? so far I've just been telling the characters they are flush or broke or in between and judging how much they buying power they have on the fly. It's worked so far, but I'm afraid I need something a little more concrete going forward.

 

[Nagol]

If you can find it, Swordbearer had a rather nice abstract money system. Under that one, iirc, if a wealth 5 and a wealth 2 party found a Wealth 4 treasure, the Wealth 2 person went "Whoop! I'm rich!" and became Wealth 4 and the Weatlh 5 person went "Oh look, pocket change."

 

[jonesy]

Make your own wealth categories that don't rely on counting money?

0. You have borrowed, donated or stolen clothes. Need to steal or beg for food and shelter.
1. You can buy clothes, food, and even shelter for a couple of nights.
2. You can buy your own weapons (+category 1).
3. You can afford proper adventuring gear (+categories 1 and 2).
...
and so forth depending on your game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I want a looser system that is easier to deal with, the closest thing I can think of is d20 moderns wealth bonus system. It has the basic feel I want, but it has a couple flaws I cannot get around.

1) if you have a wealth bonus of 5, and your partner has a wealth bonus of 10, and you guys get a reward of 4 wealth bonus for a mission and split it equally, it makes no sense. the dude with more money gets more money, and the dude with less money gets less money. It's not proportional
2) It says that you can buy items of your wealth bonus or lower basically for free, but if you buy something of your wealth bonus or higher it lowers your wealth bonus. This creates a metagame scenario I really dislike: buy all the cheaper things you want first for free, then buy the more expensive thing and be broke.

Well the thing about the d20 Modern system is that it assumes you not only have cash on hand, but also savings in a bank and that you can get credit cards and loans for additional funds for extremely large purchases. So it isn't the most precise system for adaption to a pirate economy (unless you were to assume that the PCs could "plunder" off-screen, giving you the equivalent of "taking out loans" or "using credit cards" for extremely large and fast influxes of spendable wealth.)

To rectify your two concerns, you'd have a few options.

1) Don't give out straight rewards of a certain wealth level. Instead, when the PCs gain "treasure", have them roll for a wealth increase the same way they are supposed to make a Profession check to increase wealth when they go up each level. I dunno what game system you are using, but you could certainly make or adapt a Profession skill like d20 Modern, or perhaps create a "Plundering" skill for your game to use. Obviously, the higher a player's wealth, the higher the DC to gain additional wealth, and thus richer pirates do not gain wealth as fast as poorer ones do.

2) This is pretty much spelled out in the d20 Modern purchasing rules as the logical scenario, so it's built into the system to do it this way. On the one hand, I can understand why it seems a bit off-putting, but on the other, the system was designed this way on purpose just so you wouldn't have to have a more complex system. And to be honest... the only real time where I think it would be an issue would be at character generation when players first start to equip their characters. Beyond that, they'll already have most of the stuff they need lying around and they'll only want to start buying "bigger stuff". (This assumes of course that you don't intend to have 'magic shops' available for PCs to buy all manner of magical item with which to Christmas Tree up their body slots, in which case, yeah, letting them buy as much lower wealth bonus items as they want will cause problems).

So to houserule the system, just rule that after character creation, players can only get as many "free" items that are lower than their wealth bonus equal to their character level, and any purchase past that will drop his wealth by 1. So a 4th level PC will get 4 purchases throughout their level they can make for "free" of items lower than their wealth bonus (whatever it is whenever it is during that level). After that, each purchase drops the bonus by 1.

 

[garrowolf]

Well one of the things I would do is get rid of gold. Basically people in history rarely actually had gold. They did everything in silver. If you have something worth gold then you would trade that back and forth or they would just tell you that they have no way to make change of that level.

Basically make it so that they can't change it all into money easily. They will have to store it somewhere or donate it or something. No one has the money to do buy all these magic items. Basically take it back to a barter economy for unusual items.

One of the things that you could do as well to simplfy the money is if they are always in the same area then have them buy into an inn. They get everything there for free after that.

The other thing that I did was to take all the magic items off the market. basically magic items had to be bonded to the person that they were made for. So if you picked them up later and they were not bonded to you then they were only worth the base item of the sword or stick (wand). You had to actually have an item made for you. Then that item would grow in power with you as you level.

 

[pawsplay]

It's not exactly what you are asking for, but Fantasy Craft has a very liftable system that does pretty much what you ask. You have a Lifestyle rating, which is divided up into Prudence and Panache.

Prudence is, simply, the cut of your wealth you get to keep after substantial downtime and from work income. The rest is presumed to be spent on lifestyle, frittered away, invested, or simply used up "off-screen."

Panache, on the other hand, is how impressive you are. It can give you a bonus in social situations due to your aristocratic demeanor, superior lifestyle, and social investments. It also depends how much liquid lucre you gain after each period of downtime. A low Panache person has, basically, whatever they have saved, but a high Panache person always seems to have that dash of cash, even if they don't have much to show for the fortune they once held.

The benefits: ridiculous amounts of wealth steadily disappear from the campaign, and wealth remains important but doesn't dominate PC aspirations.

 

[ggroy]

Well one of the things I would do is get rid of gold.

Even easier: Solve all of the world's problems, by printing up more money!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

As Pawsplay mentioned, you may want to look at the gear and wealth system in Fantasy Craft, if there is a copy available for you to look at.

There is a difference between cash and prizes, with folks with a lower Prudence spending more of their money between games.

Panache is pocket money - even if you frittered away the king's ransom that you got last game by, err, ransoming the king.

Prizes are based on Reputation - in order to hold onto that nice big ship you need a goodly amount of Rep, otherwise you are likely to lose it.

Oddly enough, I do not much like the gear system in the game, but it may work well for your purposes. (My differences with the system are more about things like the way poisons and disease are handled than in the (re)distribution of wealth.)

The Auld Grump, who left this hanging long enough that Pawsplay ninja'd him.

 

[Aeolius]

Give them money that they own but cannot use