Question - How does money work as Loot?

#1

I’m not seeing any price lists. If the heroes find money, what do they spend it on? Do I need to generate my own price lists? Is there an easy way to deal with it that I missed?

#2

WORLDS and the new Master Edition include a Price Method for progression. That might be the best place to look, but most people just forgo tracking money altogether. Obviously, if it works for your table then go for it, but there are alternatives that seem to work for those interesting in including money in their games. The method that comes to mind is just straight bartering LOOT and translating coins into LOOT.

Instead of counting each coin you just deal in LOOT. If a player wants an item from a shop they have to trade for it. Want a nice sword? Well, I’ll give it to you for that shiny shield of yours. This makes it so LOOT can constantly be exchanged and swapped out, which makes progression in ICRPG much more fluid and dynamic.

From there you can then incorporate gold LOOT. I’ve seen people usually reduce it down to a handful of coins, a bag of coins, and a chest of coins (or something similar). These are treated as LOOT items and fill up Equipment slots. You could say a handful = 1 slot, a bag = 2, and a chest = 3. These then become items you can exchange for other gear or rolls on the various LOOT tables. A chest will get you a roll on the EPIC table while a handful will only get you something on the SHABBY table.

It’s all up to you and how invested (pun-intended :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) you want to get with the system.

I, personally, just stick to LOOT and call it good.

#3

But…but…but…how do I know how many gold pieces that the heroes find in the intestinal track of the Crocolisk? :):grin:

It makes sense. Money is always a pain since heroes never spend it the way they do in real-life. I like the idea of a bag of loot=a loot roll and a chest of loot = an epic loot roll. Wait! You can’t roll until you get back to town! Unless you find an innocent yet suspicious trader doing business just outside of the bosses lair. Like that would ever happen! :smile:

#4

Exactly! Traveling through the doom vault, loaded up with gear. You come a cross an epic chest of gold that would take up 3 slots until you make it back to town. You don’t have enough Equipment slots to fill it in easily, so what Loot do you drop? :imp:

#5

check out this older post, it has some cool ideas with money and loot that you might like.

#6

Sorry TLTR….summary:
Economy types is a subliminal message of the setting you are really playing…don’t bother with it unless you want to go deep into what if’s.

Original post:

Economy mechanics is/can be an incredibly distinctive part of your locals and worlds…or it just Boggs down the game from the Heroic cool stuff.

ICRPG simply ignored most of it, as it is not essential.

Personally, different settings call for different economies.

Far future quasi Utopia would call for universal money and credentials where if you are qualified and have the money, you can get almost anything next day.

High magic everything and everyone has magic…same thing with less efficient delivery and you may need to travel for particular items.

Post apocalyptic…barter, tooth and claw, threats, and theft.

In between (ancients, modern, dark ages, and so on) locations have their own flavor of economic systems.

Think of the early 30s in the US. Most people never saw $5000 in one place, all knew illegal activity paid, but sophistication of law enforcement and moral norms reduced that. The mob worked well in that setting cause they kept their neighborhood decent, and committed crimes elsewhere, and with prohibition everyone knew the laws where stupid.

So a Cadillac V16 would cost you about $5000…you would be looking at $450,000 for a possibly equivalent car of today. But at the same time for the first time in history the model A Ford at $500 (a $13000 for today) was an affordable automobile for the people who made it.

So while the split between low end and high end has increased, you have many more choices of in between today, and can walk walk out of a dealer with a car with 0 down, and 0 owed for 60 days….in 1930 it probably would have been a week or two with almost all the money down.

(Reputation = Credit score) is bartered for cash on hand. Our current economy is sophisticated, chaotic, psychotic and almost all encompassing. While over 70% of the world population does not have access to Allibaba or Amazon no access to modern credit…yet even in this Pandemic over 90% of the world is food secure for the next 3 months….more than ever in our history, in the 1980s I think the best was 50% of the world.

Things are so good we have changed how we describe food security.

All I am saying is we have it really good!!! And we describe things as bleak…imagine a sword costing 6 months wages…and it’s a crappy sword.

And most people never saw a coin worth 10 weeks labor. Not because they didn’t earn it…just never saw the coin.

So based on economic system, you can make the roaring 20s, but with horses or space ships, and it will feel like the 20s because of the economics, social pressures, escapades more than if you set it in the 20s with today’s economy, social pressures and sensibilities.

“Now that’s a Dame!” Vs “Oh shit, she’s Fire!” Is window dressings vs how you go about getting a get away vehicle.

#7

The other day I ran a game for my son and his friend. They asked how much gold they would get. I decided that no matter what my brain was telling me, to not use gold or coin. (One of the posts above with the hand, bag,chest. Giving shabby, normal or epic loot is great and I’ll use that in future).

What I said was you get 2 loot rolls on completion. They did the quest and on the way back asked if they could negotiate the price with the towns leader. I said if they make a Hard CHA roll then one of their loot rolls gets upgraded to epic.

But like I said, that:
Hand 1slot shabby
Bag 2 slots regular
Chest 3 slots epic
This is bloody brilliant.

#8

A lot of people already abstracted money as LOOT and that’s a good way to do it

Personally, I did so in my current campaign :
A coin is a day’s worth of expenses (Food, inn, drinks, ect…)
5 coins pays for a basic item
20 coins an advanced one
50 for the rarers
and above that, it is unlikely that they can be bought with money at all