THE RULES: ---------- Buy STATUS normally (+/-5 points/level). Add up all sources of income and subtract essential expenditures to generate NET MONTHLY INCOME (NMI). If this is greater than the campaign standard, buy Increased Income for 5 points/level: *2, *5, *10, *20, *50, *100, etc. If it is *less*, take Reduced Income for -5 points/level: *1/2, *1/5, *1/10, negligible, negative. Add up all cash and goods to calculate CAPITAL ("Starting Wealth"). If necessary take Increased/Reduced Capital using the same scheme as NMI. If cash and goods do not fit the standard 20%/80% split, adjust the latter separately for +/-1 point/level. Standard FREE TIME is 70 hours per week (with 40 hours per week working and eight hours per day sleeping). Adjust this up or down by five hours per week for social constraints (+/-2 points/level), and one hour per day for physical or emotional constraints (+/-3 points/level). PREPARING THE CAMPAIGN: ----------------------- Several aspects of wealth are setting-dependent. In a time travel or cross-genre game, one setting should be chosen as the base for the campaign and characters from elsewhere modified accordingly. 1. Create a table for Social Level and Monthly Cost of Living (MCL); see p. B191. 2. Choose a standard Net Monthly Income, either a fixed value or (more usefully) a multiple of MCL. In the ancient world this should be a small fraction of MCL - people didn't have much to spare. Most later historical and SF settings should be in the range (1/2 - 1 1/2)*MCL; Fantasy is exceptional at 3*MCL. For a published setting the value can be estimated from the Jobs Table (e.g., p. B194) by dividing average income for an average job by the Status 0 MCL, then subtracting 1. 3. Choose standard Capital/Starting Wealth, either a fixed value (see sidebar, p. B16) or a multiple of MCL. The latter method makes Status more important, with higher-status characters having even more money. To use this scheme in a published setting, divide the Standard Starting Wealth by the Status 0 MCL (for example, Fantasy is 5*MCL and Modern is 25*MCL). NOTES & SPECIAL CASES: ---------------------- INCOME may include more than just a salary: income from property (such as food from an owned farm or rent from tenants), royalties, an allowance from parents, interest earned on savings, etc. Furthermore, if a Patron (or another PC!) pays for part or all of the character's Monthly Cost of Living this should also be included. When income varies from month to month (for example, due to the skill roll in most freelance jobs, or changes in royalties from a book due to fluctuating sales) base calculations on the average amount received. EXPENDITURE always includes MCL but characters may also have to pay interest on loans, medical bills (for themselves or for Dependents), tuition fees, etc. Only include outgoings with significant negative consequences for non-payment (such as loss of Status, repossession of property, or withdrawal of important services). This makes negative NMI (when income is not enough to cover essential expenditure) an inherently unstable situation; characters will have to eat into their capital to pay the bills or suffer the consequences. CAPITAL is simply Starting Wealth, renamed to indicate that it applies at any point in a character's life. See p. T:FT101 for details of the standard split into 20% cash & liquid assets/80% goods & fixed assets. Capital borrowed long-term should be included (but always as goods, since it can't honestly be sold). FREE TIME can only be increased through Reduced Work Hours or Reduced Sleep but it can be decreased by many things including longer work hours (paid or unpaid), time spent commuting, more sleep, or regular medical treatment. Only include commitments with significant negative consequences for skipping (such as an increased chance of job loss, health problems, or danger to self or Dependents). In some games capital and income are likely to fluctuate as a result of adventuring. GMs and players should not adjust characters' points totals until it looks as if a change is likely to have lasting consequences. RATIONALE: ---------- 1. The point value of a (dis)advantage should reflect the effect it has on adventuring; anything else belongs in the back story. For example, how much you spend to maintain your lifestyle is usually irrelevant in play - the amount left over (net income) is what makes the difference. 2. The rules should be flexible enough to handle characters living any lifestyle - see the example characters for some cases that would be difficult to model with the standard rules. 3. The rules should be simple. EXAMPLES: --------- All examples are from a campaign set in 1990's England (standard NMI = MCL, standard Capital = MCL * 25). 1. Peter lives in a cardboard box under a bridge in London. He spends a few hours every day scrounging up enough to eat. Status -2: -10 points Negligible NMI: -20 points Negligible Capital: -20 points 20 hours/week work time: 8 points 2. J. R. Hartley is retired, living off a modest pension and the meager royalties from his recently-reprinted book "Fly Fishing". He owns a cottage which is now worth a lot of money due to a quirk of the property market. Status -1: -5 points Capital goods *20: 4 points 0 hours/week work time: 16 points 3. Paul has a well-paid job but has to support his wife and child, leaving him no better off than average. He works Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5, but spends two hours each day commuting to his London office. He also spends some time each weekend looking after the baby to give his wife a break. 60 hours/week work time: -8 points 4. Mary, Paul's wife, is a full-time mother to their three month old daughter. She has virtually no free time and no source of income except child benefit, but her husband pays for her keep. Although she never gets eight hours sleep a night she could do with it. NMI *1/10: -15 points 100 hours/week work time: -24 points 5. Sir Basildon Bond is a very successful businessman, sitting on the board of several companies and holding shares in many more. He has trained himself to get by on only five hours sleep a night and takes on enough responsibility to have to work a six-day week; as a Workaholic he also spends most of his free time working, but if he could give this up he would find that it is not necessary. Status 4: 20 points NMI *2: 5 points Capital cash *2, goods *10: 7 points 5 hours/night sleep: 9 points 50 hours/week work time: -4 points CONVERSIONS: ------------ Wealth/Poverty: It is simplest (and most accurate) to recalculate the character's worth from scratch, although you *can* use the cost comparison table below. Multimillionaire: 3 levels multiply Capital by 10 so there is no need for a special rule. Temporary Wealth/Poverty: use the Capital multipliers instead. Trading Points for Equipment/Ship Owner: multiply just the 80% capital goods using the 1 point/level cost. Trading Points For Cash: In theory it should be 4 points to multiply just the 20% capital cash, but that gives you a *lot* less than the existing rule. Suggestions welcome. Cost Comparison Table (Dis)Adv. Capital GMI NMI WH S Old New1 New2 New3 Dead Broke: *0 *0 -ve 0 0 -25 -29 -29 -29 Poor: /5(*1,*0) /5 /5 50 0 -15 -18 -18 -18 Struggling: /2 /2 /2 40 0 -10 -10 -10 -10 Average: *1 *1 *1 40 0 0 0 0 0 Comfortable: *2 *2 *2 40 0 10 10 10 10 Wealthy: *5 *5 *2 20 1 20 33 28 23 Very Wealthy: *20 *10 *5 10 1 30 52 47 42 Filthy Rich: *100 *20 *10 10 1 50 77 72 67 Multimil. 1: *1000 *20 *5 10 2 75 97 87 77 Multimil. 2: *10000 *20 *2 10 3 100 117 102 87 Multimil. 3: *100000 *20 *2 10 3 125 132 117 102 Multimil. 4: *1000000 *20 *2 10 3 150 147 132 117 Multimil. +1: *10 --- --- -- - +25 +15 +15 +15 Capital: assumes that original Starting Wealth was not MCL-based. Poor illustrates a non-standard split of Cash & Goods. GMI: ~Gross Monthly Income (assuming a job where multipliers apply) NMI: ~Net Monthly Income, MCL-based WH: Work Hours S: Status Old: Old point cost New1: New point cost, all wealth based on fixed values. New2: New point cost, income based on MCL, capital fixed. New3: New point cost, all wealth based on MCL. GOING FURTHER: -------------- Logically, these rules should affect a number of disadvantages which use up money or time (such as Addictions and Compulsive Behaviors); I don't intend to tackle this unless it comes up in play. It should also affect the resource-providing aspect of Patrons, which I'll bear in mind if I ever get around to revising Patrons, Allies, Dependents, Enemies, etc. DESIGNER'S NOTES: ----------------- My long-term dissatisfaction with the wealth rules came to a head back in February 2001 in discussions with Archangel Beth concerning the GURPS Pyramidians Project - I felt neither of us could really be represented properly. I dug out Revenant's Deunified Wealth Rules , which *could* describe our situations, but it still didn't satisfy me - the tables were too complicated and I wanted something I could actually remember. Then I found "The Colour of Wealth" on Incanus' website , which didn't have the flexibility of Revenant's approach but was simpler and tackled things in a very different way. I tried to blend the two, but whenever I came up with a version that could do what I wanted it turned out to be too hard to use. I had to break down the problem into smaller pieces. Concentrating on Starting Wealth (which looked like the easiest part) I asked myself two questions: where did the complexity come from, and what degree of flexibility did I actually need? The answers were "needing to cope with extreme values" and "no more than the standard rules". T. bone's excellent GULLIVER came to the rescue, providing the logarithmic "area scale" progression which is easy to remember; 5 points/level seemed to work well for positive and the first few negative levels. Applying GULLIVER's "Rule of -5" made it bottom out at negligible Starting Wealth for -25 points, perhaps a bit too generous but at least it was consistent. The standard 20% cash/80% goods split made the 1 point/level "goods only" version an obvious way of handling fixed property. Moving on to Income, the same "area scale" scheme looked promising but there was also the complication of increased cost of living, which didn't seem to work on either a linear or logarithmic scale. Putting that to one side I looked at Hours. I had already decided that what was important was "tied time" rather than just paid work hours, and while looking at the sleep-related traits to get an idea of cost I began to wonder how a race that sleeps 90% of the time could work 40 hours a week anyway! It occurred to me that what was important was free time, which in turn led to the realisation that the important thing about income was free money. Concentrating on Net Income eliminated the need to put a price on increased MCL, and the "area scale" could cover it. Almost. There was now a problem with representing characters unable to maintain their current standard of living (negative NMI), which should certainly be a bigger disadvantage than having negligible NMI. My wife Alison suggested the final scheme; I complained that it added complexity. She countered by suggesting I see how complicated it appeared when written down, and at <150 words I had to concede the point. The final stages were to use Capital instead of Starting Wealth, incorporate Incanus' MCL-based wealth as an option rather than a requirement, and write up all the additional notes and examples. In the end I had something that was a little more complex and a little less flexible than my ideal but which felt good enough. It remains to be seen whether the rest of you can take it that final inch, and whether it meets anyone else's needs... DISCLAIMER: ----------- I have posted this to GURPSnet and the Pyramid GURPS board. I will *not* crosspost discussion, but my aim in posting is to polish off any rough edges before putting a version on my website. If you don't want me to use your ideas for this purpose please don't post a response. If SJ Games can find a way to make money out of this post I would be both surprised and delighted. Happy New Year! John http://www.elvwood.org/GURPS/ (due for a revamp before April)