Dealing With Finances

Ker'ion

Ker'ion

Primordial of Abstract Logic
How do you deal with money in your games.


Specifically, the large amount of cash flow typically thrown around by adventuring types.


I'm looking for ways to cut back on the cashflow aside from "You wake up and your money is gone, as well as your account information and your spare set of clothes."


I'm thinking on the nickel and diming them to death thing.


Charging for fuel, food, lodging, wine, women, etc..


It's sort of working out, but they're catching up faster than I anticipated.


And it's not me just handing out the money either, they've taken to scapegoating others for their looting and the law hasn't quite caught up yet...


Hmm...


Yet.


Last game, for instance:


Shogunate era.


They looted everything that wasn't nailed down from an old Manse using Elementals that are specifically in service to one of the player's family to cart it all off to the family (who can claim 90%) and then used what artifacts they had at the start of game to run when they saw troops moving in their direction.
 
This is still an issue in you're group even though you are using resources rather then actual sums of money? Hmm... In any case, a couple of ideas:


Nickel and dime'ing works only on groups that actually care about those kinds of expenses (and not always even then). Towns inns are too expensive? Sleep outside of town in a tent. Food too expensive? Either buy the cheapest food you can get away with or just hunt/find your own (super easy and quick) (Alternately, magic can supplement or completely eliminate the need entirely). Ale and whores too expensive? Don't even bother with them. Etc. In the end, these penalties are more against people who heavily roleplay their characters rather then the ones who are just their to kick ass and chew bubble-gum. It isn't a bad method but it doesn't have a huge effect (especially if their income is too high).


Make it hard for them to sell stuff they find. Small towns won't even accept it, and if it is REALLY valuable, even large towns won't (or offer you a fraction of their worth). some items are too clearly stolen and you will have to deal with the black market instead (with all the problems that entails). This is especially true in places like the Coral Archipelago where you have to have a license to sell pirated goods. After a while, they might not even bother anymore.


The reverse of the previous is also a good option: Instead of making it impossible to sell things, make it hard for them to buy them in the first place. You might have more jade then the empress but if you can't do anything with it, you are out of luck. Non-magical items are generally un-needed by players (or not an issue in the long run) and magical ones are so rare they can't just buy them from the store.


Lastly, just don't make so much loot available to them. Most manse are ancient and have been abandoned for a long time. It is very likely that they have been looted (entirely or partially) in that time already. If you don't want them to loot the bodies of their enemies then send Fair Folk (trying to sell glamor armor? lawl), Behemoths ("I don't have any pants!"), and other enemies that don't carry valuables around with them.
 
[20] Van77Man: I still think undermining their power base is probably the best way to go. If they're so dependent on their army, take it away. If they're so rich they can do nothing, make them have to do something to protect those investments. Or have them wake up and discover those assets are gone.


[20] Van77Man: If you do it so they don't know who gutted the family, that should ramp up the paranoia....
 
[20] Van77Man: I still think undermining their power base is probably the best way to go. If they're so dependent on their army, take it away. If they're so rich they can do nothing, make them have to do something to protect those investments. Or have them wake up and discover those assets are gone.
[20] Van77Man: If you do it so they don't know who gutted the family, that should ramp up the paranoia....
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This is another good suggestion. Suddenly taking away your players stuff is never a good idea (because you are the one who gave it to them in the first place, after all), but having NPCs try to take it and giving the players a (somewhat) fair chance to keep it from being taken is perfectly fine.
 
As it was said before, it depends. Are you using resources or a more itemized budgeting system? If recources, then the abstraction helps you by giving a quisi-ceiling- "you found a load of Resources 2 items? Congrats, you just went from Resources 3-4."


I would be wary of just straight up undermining their accomplishments, unless their actions warrant such a maneuver.


There is also the ideas enforced by the Cache merit. If you are on the other side of Creation from your income, you really don't have any more money than what you have on you. Yeah, you are worth billions, but credit cards don't exist.


There isn't a millennium's worth of looting in the Shogunate period, so claiming that looting already happened isn't the best strategy IMO, but you could always present negative consequences to their looting, or make their gains irrelevant.


"Okay, you have resources 4 now, but Artifacts are generally beyond the scope of Resources 4, at least game breaking ones."


So just give them less or make what they have less important relatively.


Once again, this all hinges on how you are handling money.
 
I'm thinking about changing to the cash system instead of the Resources system, just to make it easier on me.
 
I'm sort of stunned this an issue. Is this a mortal campaign or something? One of the best things about Exalted is that you don't have to worry about this kind of crap.


I dunno. Maybe its just because I made a conscious decision in my campaign to make the players rich really early (with solars, this is not at all difficult, as they can use various charm tricks and creativity to get filthy rich in weeks). It totally changed the notion of the campaign from a d20-locked-in mind set of "get loot!" to "yeah, you can afford that. So what?"


The thing is: while wealth can help in Exalted, it really just isn't that important. It's honor and sacrifice and bad-assery that holds off the (spins wheel...) deathlord invasion, not wealth.


So. That's my advice: don't cut back wealth. Increase it. Let them bathe in jade. Then throw things at them that wealth can't fix. It's Exalted, not fucking Munchkin.
 
I'm thinking about changing to the cash system instead of the Resources system' date=' just to make it easier on me.[/quote']
I think what the problem everyone else in this thread is having is that we don't understand what exactly the problem is you are having, especially now that you've said that you actually were using the resource system rather then a cash system. As wordman said, wealth is easy to get as an exalt but that doesn't mean it's useful.
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Precisely. Just put a sticky note up saying 'You can't buy artifacts for -any- amount of money' and wealth now has absolutely no effect on game balance. And this is true, if you read half the stuff related to the history or purchase of artifacts.


And if there are artifacts for sale, they're Jade. With the double attunement cost, this will most likely result in big piles of unused Jade daiklaves.
 
I am running a mortals and god-blooded game originally set 498 years after the Usurpation (the current Shogun will die at the 500 year mark, and that's only seven seasons from the current time). The game will continue through the timeline, hopefully until after the Empress' disappearance.


It is currently the 6th of Resplendent Earth in the Year of the Rat in the Wood Cycle, Quicksilver Era of the Third Epoch of the Shogunate Era, nearly five centuries since the Usurpation.


So, 215 years to the Contagion and their Exaltation, then another 768 years until the Empress vanishes. Oh, and they all have the Merit Immortal Flesh, so they don't die of old age before I kill them. :twisted:


I just don't want the players to whip up the wealth, sit at home and have their armies go do all of the stuff for them. It pisses me off when they pull stuff like that.


AND THEY DO IT TOO!!
 
I am running a mortals and god-blooded game originally set 498 years after the Usurpation (the current Shogun will die at the 500 year mark, and that's only seven seasons from the current time). The game will continue through the timeline, hopefully until after the Empress' disappearance.
It is currently the 6th of Resplendent Earth in the Year of the Rat in the Wood Cycle, Quicksilver Era of the Third Epoch of the Shogunate Era, nearly five centuries since the Usurpation.


So, 215 years to the Contagion and their Exaltation, then another 768 years until the Empress vanishes. Oh, and they all have the Merit Immortal Flesh, so they don't die of old age before I kill them. :twisted:


I just don't want the players to whip up the wealth, sit at home and have their armies go do all of the stuff for them. It pisses me off when they pull stuff like that.


AND THEY DO IT TOO!!
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Ahh! It makes a LOT more sense now.


Coup d'état, assassination (attempts), and similar actions all limit their ability to leverage their armies and require that they defend themselves personally. Heck, the Shogunate could waltz in and try to smack them in the face with an army. The trick is to get them to flee their seat of power at moments notice. This way, they can't bring all that wealth with them (and gives them a goal to retrieve it).
 
I don't understand your position. Your PCs are wealthy rulers capable of raising armies to fight for them. Why are you angry that they're acting like wealthy rulers? Do you see the King of England riding at the front of his army?


If you want a game about dungeon crawling slobs, then play a game about dungeon crawling slobs. If you're playing a game where the PCs are connected, powerful, and stationary, then... well, deal with it. Give them political challenges, things their armies can't fight, armies that are tougher than theirs, whatever.


Don't listen to a PC saying "I want to be a king!" in character generation, nod and smile, and then start figuring out ways to change the system so he doesn't have an army any more.
 
Thanqol said:
Don't listen to a PC saying "I want to be a king!" in character generation, nod and smile, and then start figuring out ways to change the system so he doesn't have an army any more.
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I don't think the issue is them being kings at character generation, it is keeping them from becoming kings over the course of the game. As he said, they all have immortality merit. Even the most incompetent player would be able to amass a fortune like that over the course of a couple hundred years. So what he want's to know (I think) is how to help prevent that from happening in the first place without saying "No, You can't."
 
Ah, point.


There's the rub, though. There's plenty of fiction where a guy who's only talent is living forever makes himself a billionaire just because he can invest long-term. With a game crossing that span of time, there's going to undoubtedly be 'now you've got fifty years of downtime' esque segments, which PCs will rightly fill making money.


Easiest plan is to have Da Man take it away. Terrestrials walk up and say, 'the Immaculate Dragons are offended that mortals have so much money, be glad we're not taking your lives'. I don't know, you've got contradictory goals here that I can't balance off the top of my head.


You're better off restricting what money can buy than taking it away.
 
The Catholic Church (one of the few real-world mortal organizations that can do and has done financial planning on the time scale you are discussing here) might be a good place to look for this. Historically, they have two financial problems: 1) getting a hold of things they want and 2) preventing others from taking what they've got. For the former, one technique that they (or, usually, more local officials of the church semi-abusing their authority) would "discover" heresy and put someone to death for it, then take their lands. For the latter, they prevented nations around them (usually vicious monarchies of one kind or another) from claiming eminent domain and grabbing their stuff mostly through religious threat and politics. That is if nation X seized a bunch of monasteries, they could count on the church telling nations Y and Z that it was God's will that they punish nation X. Usually Y and Z were just looking for an excuse to punish nation X, so were all too happy to oblige.


Basically, the more wealth the players gain, the more risk those around them will take to take it from them. In the Exalted timeline you are in, this basically means that their lunch money is going to get taken by terrestrials. There is absolutely no reason for dragon-blooded to put up with mortals getting rich while they do not. Unless your PCs can provide them with one, what stops the terrestrials from just taking what they want? That is the true point of mortals in Exalted: they aren't allowed to matter. Note that this creates a powerful disincentive to gain wealth and status as a mortal. Why spend the effort when it will just be taken from you anyway?


Another place to look for inspiration is drug cartels. Drug kingpins spend most of their time worrying about who is skimming from them. Essentially, the larger the fortune, the more bureaucracy the players will need to create to protect it from internal corruption.


All of this, of course, sounds more like you are playing Junta instead of Exalted, but whatever. It's your game.
 
The problem with the system is that it actually is a currency system, just more convoluted. Imagine, instead, a system that gets rid of the resource background and converts costs of items to say that something that costs Resources 1 costs one "jade piece", Resources 2 costs 10 "jade pieces", Resources 3 costs "100 jade pieces" and so on. Then just track how much jade the character has.


The only difference between the system I've just described and the one in the link is that the latter uses more complicated bookkeeping. Mathematically, they are exactly the same.
 
wordman said:
The problem with the system is that it actually is a currency system, just more convoluted. Imagine, instead, a system that gets rid of the resource background and converts costs of items to say that something that costs Resources 1 costs one "jade piece", Resources 2 costs 10 "jade pieces", Resources 3 costs "100 jade pieces" and so on. Then just track how much jade the character has.
The only difference between the system I've just described and the one in the link is that the latter uses more complicated bookkeeping. Mathematically, they are exactly the same.
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Indeed, that is actually precisely what I've done with my system. Reverse-engineering the background is less usefull than just saying that 5 dots gives you 10,000 "Jade Pieces", and a 5 dot item costs 10,000 Jade Pieces.


Of course, I suppose the question is: how is this different from DND? Is the only difference that it doesn't get down to every last penny?
 
Gylthinel said:
Is the only difference that it doesn't get down to every last penny?
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Sort of. The real difference is that prices are "quantized". That is, there are only five different prices in the whole world: 1, 10, 100, 100, 10000. I suppose, for flavor, you could, instead, have five different coins, each worth 10 times more than the last, and everything in the world always costs exactly one of the various coins. Same thing.


I just want to reiterate my initial point about making them rich. When you do this, it makes any resource system extraneous. Essentially, it replaces having a system that answers the question "can I afford that" with "yes".
 
wordman said:
Gylthinel said:
Is the only difference that it doesn't get down to every last penny?
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Sort of. The real difference is that prices are "quantized". That is, there are only five different prices in the whole world: 1, 10, 100, 100, 10000. I suppose, for flavor, you could, instead, have five different coins, each worth 10 times more than the last, and everything in the world always costs exactly one of the various coins. Same thing.


I just want to reiterate my initial point about making them rich. When you do this, it makes any resource system extraneous. Essentially, it replaces having a system that answers the question "can I afford that" with "yes".
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The problem I have w/ rich players that dont' have to count their coppers is that they often times use it excessively. For instance, they have resources 5, so they bribe EVERYBODY with a resource 4 bribe. I.E. they give away vast estates on a frequent basis, and think nothing of it. This causes problems w/ setting continuity, when every 2nd level magistrate gets a manor house simply to speed the PCs through red tape. The further issue is that there are very few mortals who would say "no" to an offer of resources 4.


#"Can I buy your daughter as a gladiator slave?" &"OF COURSE NOT!" #"How about if I give you this lucrative olive farm and 1000 slaves to run it?" &"I can always have more daughters. Deal!"
 
Wouldn't tossing out bribes of that sort lower their Resources level? I thought making purchases (or in this case bribes) of just under your Resources level dropped you a level. I.E. You have Resources 5, make a Resources 4 purchase and are reduced to Resources 4. I could be remembering this wrong as my games rarely focus on Resources in any significant way.
 
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