The Campaign Builder's Guild

Te biggest expenditures in GS are spells, skill kits, property, and Raise Dead spells, I think.

Sort of kidding.

Spells are really expensive to buy and hard to get in Guildschool, and it is a huge limiter to free cash.  And for those few players who decide to make their characters 'VoidBlind', skill kits take the place of money sinks, since it is a skill-based system, and this is the in-game mechanism for growth,

The sense of accomplishment gained from finally being able to purchase that bit of fancy gear is what I feel like I'd miss in an abstract wealth system.  At the same time, I also find myself torn over issues such as, for instance, noblemen or samurai who have unpaid retainers who simply owe them services.  Such things aren't really incorporated into a literal monetary system--they may have no actual money to spend--, but could easily be subsumed into an abstract system where you are more concerned with what you can acquire at a given time than how you paid for yesterday's meal.  I might be overthinking it or worrying about nothing, but I think I need to find a way to combine the two.

This makes me wonder - how gameable is the Conanesque adventuring-looting-debauching cycle? Like, you have no cash, you do some adventurey dangerous stuff, you get a mass of gold and jewels and stuff, you spend the next few months blowing it all on wine women and song. Repeat.

I can't decide if that's something I'd do as a player. Maybe I'd enjoy it, and it would suit the character I was playing, but I think even so some small metagamey part of me would be like "Yeah, blow most of it on having a good time, but spend like 1k on something useful"

In terms of combining abstract wealth with saving up for things, it's probably not too hard to marry the two types of mechanics. Let's brainstorm:

Perhaps you have two stats, "wealth" and "treasure" (or whatever). Where wealth is your overall standard of living in sort of a permanent way. Perhaps on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0-wealth is living on the street, 1-wealth is being a poor peasant farmer, and 10-wealth is being as rich as a sultan, etc. Wealth informs your level of comfort and luxury, as well as what possessions you can sort of take for granted that you have: with 7-wealth, just go ahead and assume you have as many horses as you need, but with 2-wealth you probably don't own one.

So "treasure" is your temporary save-and-spend cash money income. You get "points of treasure" (or whatever) as loot or payment for things. It's an abstracted value: maybe winning a high-stakes card game is worth 1-treasure, looting the treasure from a tomb might get you 2-treasure, or winning a reward from a grateful monarch is 3-treasure. While wealth is for long-term lifestyle, treasure is for short-term expenditures. Maybe you spend a point of treasure to live above your normal standard of living for a month (enjoying luxuries as if your wealth were a point higher. Maybe if you amass a bunch of treasure you can spend all those points at once for a permanent wealth increase (clever investing or whatever). Maybe you spend points of treasure on one-time big-ticket items you couldn't normally afford, like your fancy magic swords and whatnot.

So you still keep a system that's abstract and doesn't have you counting pennies, you have a way to represent general resources and standard of living, and a way to represent phat loot that you can save and squander.

Quote from: KindlingMaybe I'd enjoy it, and it would suit the character I was playing, but I think even so some small metagamey part of me would be like "Yeah, blow most of it on having a good time, but spend like 1k on something useful"

This is a real concern, but I don't think it's separate from any general discussion of metagaming.  My character turned down that reward on principle, but I really wanted to accept it; my character would never associate with that man, but if I don't I'm missing out on a new adventure or an important clue; this feat would be really appropriate for my character, but it's mechanically mediocre (and so on).  The bottom line is that some people are comfortable with making sub-optimal choices for the sake of role playing, and some people are not.  As long as the players are of a similar mind on the issue it's usually not a problem, at least in my experience.

Quote from: LCSo you still keep a system that's abstract and doesn't have you counting pennies

I'm afraid I have nothing to contribute to that system - I, for one, like to count pennies.  :)

or, my new litmus test...do you keep track of encumbrance>  then, of course you keep track of money.

Handwavium tracks across both continuums

LC, that's very similar to the system I was planning on using.  You could live below your normal standard of living and save up bonuses to buy stuff or blow everything and temporarily reduce your wealth level.  Frankly, it just struck me as solving an issue I was having with Elyria - that thanes generlaly dont have a lot of material wealth; they have land and people who don't charge them for goods and services.  Abstract wealth solves this issue quite elegantly, but it does remove all of the plundering and bean counting some people enjoy.

Vreeg, I do track encumbrance, but in the form of loadouts (it cuts down on ingame math).  But I also prefer more detailed combat (I also track combatants' fatigue, hit locations, bleeding, weapon breakage, and shield breakage).  I'm not a personal fan of accounting, and I've never been much of a stickler for making players declare every single item they own.  I've usually gone with "if it makes sense for them to have had it, they have it," with the caviat being for large ticket items, like armor, weapons, horses, etc.  That worked for my group then.  Now I'm largely groupless and trying to explore other options.