Issues with Starting Wealth, Gear, and Cost of Living
Nov 29, 2016 13:02:03 GMT -8
Post by G.I. Joe on Nov 29, 2016 13:02:03 GMT -8
ATTENTION: Long and in-depth post below! TLDR: Starting wealth and cost of living need to be re-balanced so your PCs can actually start with something, solutions below.
When creating GURPS characters, something has always annoyed me: starting wealth. The base rules say that 80% of your starting wealth should be put into home, clothing, ect. For a TL 3 fantasy campaign this leaves you with $200, not even enough to buy any kind of average quality bladed sword (you can buy clubs). To further add annoyance, that $200 is only 1/3 of the cost of living for a status 0 PC (they have to pay $600/month or $20/day); so you'd better hope you don't have a dick GM and can make enough before the landlord/tax collector comes calling.
Now, there are several ways around this, but few are appealing. The simplest solution is to be a murder-hobo with no house; this lets you use all your starting wealth on gear, but comes with significant drawbacks. Mainly, that your cost of living goes up to $120/day (30 silvers or 1 gold and 10 silvers a day!) if you are staying at your status. You can reduce it to $60/day if you don't mind your character staying in crappy rooms in inns. However, even if you are a career mercenary, you cannot afford a full set of gear. This is a problem. GURPS seems very good at making ordinary peasants, but not much else (at least at low TLs). You could always buy wealth, but those could be valuable points that you need to make yourself capable at adventuring. There is also signature gear, but that has limits to things that are integral to your character.
What the biggest issue is, is that Cost of living does not scale with TL as I feel it should, especially since starting wealth does. I understand that SJ Games scaled everything off of the modern US dollar and the equivalent of what it costs to buy a loaf of bread or equivalent staple; but why doesn't cost of living scale with TL as well?
The way I see it, there are two ways to fix this problem: first, scale the cost of living; second, change starting wealth to better reflect the cost of living. I will start with the second one first, as there is already a handy rule-set in GURPS that can be hijacked for this.
Solution the 1st: Change the way that starting wealth is done:
My new way of doing starting wealth relies on the "Economy" section of GURPS Campaigns. To start, you look at your game world and decide (or have your GM decide) what the average age of independent labor is (the age at which you are working and earning money for yourself, not your parents, but are also paying your own way). This could vary by profession (i.e. blacksmith's apprentice might start earning his own money at a younger age than a farmer), however, and so maybe make this specific for each character (plus more backstory right there). You take this age and figure out what job(s) your character had and for how long. Then you use the job rules, still subtracting the cost of living each month, to figure out what your actual starting wealth would be. Yes, this would mean rolling in character creation. You'd have to figure out with your GM what reasonable stat/skill levels you would have at certain ages (or just use the ones under the ageing rules for stats and assume that they start out at the minimum required skill for the job). Now, most people probably do not start out with $0 when moving out; so maybe start with the 20% of starting wealth that the base recommends. Then add the net income and this modified starting wealth together and BAM! your new starting wealth.
For example, the age of manhood was around 12-14 in the Middle Ages (TL3 for our purposes), even though children usually started working as soon as they were able around 6-7. Because we are min-maxers, we will decide that our fictitious character is 12 when they move out of their parents and mostly live and work on their own. We weill say that our fictitious young lad has aspirations of becoming a brave adventurer, but obviously doesn't have the cash starting out to do it. He sets off from home with $200 (20% of the $1000 starting wealth for TL3), finds a place to stay and an average job, which pays $700/month. For simplicity's sake, we will assume a fixed wage. Now lets say his job requires Merchant 10+, which he has. again for simplicity's sake, we will assume that we don't roll any critical fails or successes, so no raises or demotions. This would mean that he has a net of $100/month. By age 18, he will have $1000 to put towards his adventuring gear, a place to stay, food, clothes, ect; and still have his job.
As for adjusting the cost of living, I am not sure exactly how this could be done, and so any ideas and comments would be appreciated. If I come up with anything, I will post it.
When creating GURPS characters, something has always annoyed me: starting wealth. The base rules say that 80% of your starting wealth should be put into home, clothing, ect. For a TL 3 fantasy campaign this leaves you with $200, not even enough to buy any kind of average quality bladed sword (you can buy clubs). To further add annoyance, that $200 is only 1/3 of the cost of living for a status 0 PC (they have to pay $600/month or $20/day); so you'd better hope you don't have a dick GM and can make enough before the landlord/tax collector comes calling.
Now, there are several ways around this, but few are appealing. The simplest solution is to be a murder-hobo with no house; this lets you use all your starting wealth on gear, but comes with significant drawbacks. Mainly, that your cost of living goes up to $120/day (30 silvers or 1 gold and 10 silvers a day!) if you are staying at your status. You can reduce it to $60/day if you don't mind your character staying in crappy rooms in inns. However, even if you are a career mercenary, you cannot afford a full set of gear. This is a problem. GURPS seems very good at making ordinary peasants, but not much else (at least at low TLs). You could always buy wealth, but those could be valuable points that you need to make yourself capable at adventuring. There is also signature gear, but that has limits to things that are integral to your character.
What the biggest issue is, is that Cost of living does not scale with TL as I feel it should, especially since starting wealth does. I understand that SJ Games scaled everything off of the modern US dollar and the equivalent of what it costs to buy a loaf of bread or equivalent staple; but why doesn't cost of living scale with TL as well?
The way I see it, there are two ways to fix this problem: first, scale the cost of living; second, change starting wealth to better reflect the cost of living. I will start with the second one first, as there is already a handy rule-set in GURPS that can be hijacked for this.
Solution the 1st: Change the way that starting wealth is done:
My new way of doing starting wealth relies on the "Economy" section of GURPS Campaigns. To start, you look at your game world and decide (or have your GM decide) what the average age of independent labor is (the age at which you are working and earning money for yourself, not your parents, but are also paying your own way). This could vary by profession (i.e. blacksmith's apprentice might start earning his own money at a younger age than a farmer), however, and so maybe make this specific for each character (plus more backstory right there). You take this age and figure out what job(s) your character had and for how long. Then you use the job rules, still subtracting the cost of living each month, to figure out what your actual starting wealth would be. Yes, this would mean rolling in character creation. You'd have to figure out with your GM what reasonable stat/skill levels you would have at certain ages (or just use the ones under the ageing rules for stats and assume that they start out at the minimum required skill for the job). Now, most people probably do not start out with $0 when moving out; so maybe start with the 20% of starting wealth that the base recommends. Then add the net income and this modified starting wealth together and BAM! your new starting wealth.
For example, the age of manhood was around 12-14 in the Middle Ages (TL3 for our purposes), even though children usually started working as soon as they were able around 6-7. Because we are min-maxers, we will decide that our fictitious character is 12 when they move out of their parents and mostly live and work on their own. We weill say that our fictitious young lad has aspirations of becoming a brave adventurer, but obviously doesn't have the cash starting out to do it. He sets off from home with $200 (20% of the $1000 starting wealth for TL3), finds a place to stay and an average job, which pays $700/month. For simplicity's sake, we will assume a fixed wage. Now lets say his job requires Merchant 10+, which he has. again for simplicity's sake, we will assume that we don't roll any critical fails or successes, so no raises or demotions. This would mean that he has a net of $100/month. By age 18, he will have $1000 to put towards his adventuring gear, a place to stay, food, clothes, ect; and still have his job.
As for adjusting the cost of living, I am not sure exactly how this could be done, and so any ideas and comments would be appreciated. If I come up with anything, I will post it.