I've been thinking about this for a little while. Some RPGs I've been playing, mainly World of Darkness games, don't have 'money' as such, instead having a resources score which gives an abstract value of wealth. Has anyone thought about introducing this into WFRP? Obviously you need to take into account that the adventurers are wandering around in the wilderness at times but there are obviously points where if they tried they would be able to earn a steady wage. I think this game would be able to work with a system like this, especially with the way wealth is determined at character creation and the 'social tiers' aspect in the game. I've also just today got the Black Fire Pass set and quickly glancing at the rules for runesmithing see it has a cost (though can be negated). I haven't been handing out large amounts of cash to my players (We are doing the Witch's Song adventure and there isn't a great deal of money in Fauligmere) and though the dwarf player seemed interested in runesmith as a career he was a little put off by the cost. I think a resources stat could over come something like this, and just limit how often he could do it. Has anyone else thought about something like this?

(note; not a very experienced GM)

There are a standard wages table in the economy chapter in the core rule book. There you can find how much different kinds of labour would pay. Glance there if the players want to have a job and steady income during a down period.

But I agree that an abstract value has it's uses, and it might even fit well with the streamlined rules in WFRP3e. Obviously this would be gained through the social tiers and then I'd say that 0-1 point in wealth would be the brass tier, while 2-3 creation points would be the silver tier (I don't believe that players should be part of the gold tier, at least not from creation). Then assign a wage/income for each tier which the players get each month (if nothing in the story prevents them from gaining the income).

I'm thinking especially for crafter professions like runesmithing, actual resources should be the difficult part of getting ahead...
A generic stat would make for a much more bland progression in my opinion, I would not do it here.

For professions like Agent, Roadwarden, Messenger, Scout, ... I could see it as detracting from what they really want to be doing, and here you could definitly try to incorporate it.

Your player could become the quintessential dwarf if he takes this career up: grouchy, cheap, gold-obsessed, and into runes! Give him an ale-addiction from the next supplement and you're set

As a GM, if your players want to go the route of a resources-intensive career, you might need to tweak the adventures a bit to fit it into their agenda...
The carrot-dangling does come a lot easier this way though

Just my 2 cents.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this today. I've also played a lot of World of Darkness games and just can't be bothered with counting the brass pennies, so am intending to bring a resource mechanic into the game.

The way I do so will be like this:

At creation, players choose which class/tier they are (in collaboration with the GM, and this obviously will depend on the career they draw/pick).
This is most likely to be brass, but could be silver and I wouldn't totally rule out gold.

I will give each player 3 distinct resource tracks, rated from one to five. With a ‘1’ being 'absolutely skint' and a ‘5’ being 'can buy any product or service in this tier without a second thought'. The player then spends creation points on wealth as normal, and this will mainly drive the starting position of their tier resource.

So a brass tier character who puts 2 or 3 points into wealth will start at 4 or 5 on the brass track, and probably at a 2 on the silver track. I don't need an exact formula, as these resource trackers will change during game play. A gold tier player spending only 1 creation point would start at a 1 or 2 on the gold tracker, probably a 3 on the silver tracker and probably a 2 on the brass tracker.

Spending the maximum creation points will never give anyone a ‘5’ on all 3 tracks. The richest brass tier character may just have single point on the gold track. The richest gold tier character will not have a full brass tracker simply because they wouldn't carry (or likely have easy access to) that quantity of brass coins. However, they'd be able to eat out at fancy restaurants very easily.
As the game progresses, and depending on work, loot, rewards, etc, the players will adjust their wealth tracks, perhaps making 'wealth management' rolls every now and again, to see if they are spending more than they're taking in (or even making more money). I'm not sure exactly what this roll will consist of yet, and could be different things at different times. But it will take into account haggling, budgeting, choices made in restaurants, or between coaching inns, etc. I may let them make haggling rolls etc during the game, but rather than have players cross off the coins they’re spending just bear the results in mind for the next time there is some ‘down time’, at which point I’ll adjust their wealth tracks up or down depending on how they’ve been doing.

The last point to mention is that I think character creation points should remain valuable in the long run. It’s not fair if a player spends points on wealth and is robbed 5 minutes into the game, whereas the player who spent all their points on stats will still be fine.

So, my characters’ wealth ‘stat’ will influence how well they are able to manage their money. A character with zero points in wealth will find it impossible to stay rich for long (without spending exp. on improving their wealth stat): they will gamble the money away, mislay it, get ripped off, spend it on baubles, etc. They won’t know how to handle that amount of money, won’t know the value of expensive objects, and likely won’t even be able to count using such large numbers.

Conversely, a character who spends full creation points on wealth, and who is robbed blind, will quickly find themselves in the money again once they have the opportunity to make/acquire some, driving hard bargains, knowing when to flash the money around to create business opportunities, etc.

First thing that comes to mind, Angelic. If your players work well together as a group, you might consider consolidating the resource trackers to the party sheet. I really like your take on characters with a low wealth investment being unable to maintain the money due to personal vice and poor money management skills. It creates some good roleplay opportunities to bring them back to a status quo of sorts and would allow me to provide more fiscal rewards in a campaign.

I've been fiddling with ideas to make wealth abstract, myself. What i had brainstormed was a series of 1 Encumbrance mini-items. Last session, I rewarded a thief's particularly well-played con with the equivalent of an Affluent Coin Purse to test the waters and see how it plays.

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Bag of Moths (For each 5b of purchase, roll [purple]. On [Chaos Star], you don't have the resources.)

Poor Coin Purse (For each 5s of purchase, roll [purple]. On [Chaos Star], downgrade to Bag of Moths.)

Comfortable Coin Purse (For each 50s of purchase, roll [purple]. On [Chaos Star], downgrade to Poor Coin Purse.)

Affluent Coin Purse (For each 1g of purchase, roll [purple]. On [Chaos Star], downgrade to Comfortable Coin Purse.)

Noble's Coin Purse (For each 5g of purchase...)

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A successful Charm (Haggling) check reduces the amount of purple dice rolled by 1.

A rewards of a particular adventure might include an upgrade a character's purse to represent monetary boons.

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Alternatively, inspired by the Battlestar Galactica board game's resource trackers, I was considering those dials a way of tracking party-scale resources. The game tracks Morale (party tension), Fuel (Item repair supplies/replacements/money?), Food (rations), and Population (least applicable, but possibly usable as an abstract of Renown). The trackers go from 12 to 0 with a clearly labeled red zone when low.

A night in town restocking would reset most to a threshold of 8, and each day out and about would drop them down.

Skill checks on the move could restore resources (e.g. Nature Lore for hunting could replenish Food by one or two).

I know my post took a lot of text to write, but I think in play it would be very easy to manage. Your ideas sound too 'mechanic heavy' for me. They seem like a reasonable way of introducing randomness and dice to the system, but for me the point of ignoring counting of coins and moving to a resources stat is to make it as easy as possible to follow, and - being abstract - as easy for me to wing things as I feel necessary.

I don't think I'd like to consolidate the resources into a party stat, for a few reasons:

1) It might take away the disadvantages of poor players being poor. If a rich character wants to bail them out all the time; that's fine. But keeping the 'resources' separate makes it very clear who's funding the group. Likewise, it takes away the advantage of investing points in being rich.

2) I removes opportunities for conflict and party tension!

3) As convenient as it might be for players to pool resources, real world economics shows that pooling resources is difficult. 'Tragedy of the commons' and all that. Coins are ultimately owned (or at least possessed by) someone. Four people can't all be holding the same coin at the same time, even if they all agree to share the money around as needed. An abstract 'wealth' stat represents not just who possesses what coins / other items, but who has what relationships with activities and contacts that generate an income. You tend to owe money to your feudal overlord in person (even if the money goes via a bailif), rather than to his family/group of friends. How he manages his money is up to him, but I think realistically (and in terms of providing fun opportunites in game), I think wealth should be based on individuals - their personal relationships, skills, luck, etc.

oy, i just found out this amazing doc : http://www.babylonia.nl/wfrp/downloads/wfrpwealth02.pdf

what d'you think ? i'm getting this one into my game asap.
i'll also add a "price stat" on Strange Eons item cards too.

Interesting that the same topic is coming up at the same time all over the world.

I was thinking about resources for WFRP similar to Wolrd of Darkness for the last weeks.

@Hurlanc: very good source but unfortunatly after having a look on it it seems for me more complicated than just sticking to money. So not really making it easier for the group to handle wealth. Also the complexity is not really in line with all the other WFRP 3e mechanisms.

@Angelic: I started with just one resource track, but see clearly the benefits of having 3 seperate ones.

Here some more mechanisma:

Have 4 levels of origin: Beggar, Peasants, Burghers, Nobles - should as outlined based on class/tier and GM decision

I added 2 further levels of wealth beyond the one you can achieve in spending points during character generation:

Wealth:
0 Broke
1 Poor
2 Comfortable
3 Affluent
4 Wealthy
5 „stinkig rich“ (other word for this is highly welcome)

Based on wealth value and origin I would alow the following characteric dice depending on the rough cost (Brass/Silver/Gold) of the item to aquire:

Wealth/Background Beggar Peasants Burghers Nobles
0 Broke (0/0/0) (1/0/0) (1/1/0) (2/2/1)
1 Poor (1/0/0) (2/1/0) (3 /2/0) (4/3/1)
2 Comfortable (1/1/0) (2/2/0) (3/3/0) (4/4/2)
3 Affluent (2/1/0) (3/2/0) (4/3/1) (5/4/2)
4 Wealthy (3/1/0) (4/3/1) (5/4/1) (5/5/3)
5 „stinkig rich“ (3/2/0) (5/3/1) (5/4/2) (5/5/4)

(draft values, need some verification)

Challenge should be rolled against the challenge dice based on the rarity of the item:

Abundant – Simple: <0>
Plentiful – Easy: <P>
Common – Average: <PP>
Rare – Hard: <PPP>
Exotic – Daunting: <PPPP>

Example: Charakter is a comfortable Burgher and wants to aquire a crossbow (60s, common) would need to make a challenge 3 characteristic dice against 2 challenge dice.

That is my current baseline - fortune, misfortune and expertise dice could be added based on the quality of the item (e.g. used, expertly made, ...), the environment the item should be quired (e.g. small village, Altdorf, ...). I have to make some calculations arround this.

Any thoughts on this idea?

Here's how I handle money in the game.

I have 200 copper, 400 silver and 200 gold:

Mcpy :

Indeed i didnt want something as elaborate as the above link, and I expect something more like what you describe.

Get a "wealth stat" that roughly defines general life standings (shelter, food, travel possibilities, typical gear..)
The PDF also gives a wealth stat to many items (+1 for better quality)

"Wealth 2" characters, may be geared with any "wealth 2" items up to "common" rarity. In my games, I enforce strong encumbrance rules so people will still have to choose what to equip.
I wanted to add a dice roll, for buying specific items, that are uncommon or above character wealth stat, modified by (relative wealth, rarity, skill trainings ..) but didnt get to an acceptable result...

A resources stat worked for games like Marvel RPG (FASERIP version). I'm not so sure I'm going to like it for WFRP. At least as abstract as it appears to be so far (only have Player's Guide).

McPy said:

I like (y)

Spending money on starting wealth doesnt make you feel well off or higher status... it just makes you feel like u have better starting equipment and after a few sessions makes you feel like you have wasted those pts.

If I was GMing in this I would suggest simply running with a resource stat like above - allowing players to gain an extra pt. in it for for free or buy for at half cost etc, if they make it big ... or alternatively allow them to burn a pt. (temp or permanant) if making a big purchase. - then use the Wealth rating as a statmodifier to any acquisition rolls or as a situational modifier to Fel tests.

my 2cents worth