Im about to start a new RT campaign with my group as we really like the setting. We do however have an issue with the fact that there isn't no actually currency in the game. Everything you wish to acquire is done with the acquisition tests and you either get if or (temporarily) fail. Of course you can build a plot around acquiring special items but we still find the lack of currency missing.

Now we do see that if you wish to acquire e.g a couple of lasguns that its peanuts for a RT so there is no need to go into that detail. However for really rare items or better yet ship components, we do find the lack of currency going round a miss.

So one thought I have is to use acquisition points as currency. After all when you roll for your wealth and ship you get a number of shippoints and acquisition points and ship points unused you can add to your acquisition. So it stands to reason that 1 ship point == 1 acquisition point. Thus when acquiring a ship component you could argue that the amount of ship points needed are paid with acquisition points (after all they will put a dent into your wealth).

The question now is, would this be a good system, or are there aspects that im missing that would make this an issue?

Im hoping that more experienced players/gms can shed some light on this.

Thank you.

Burning acquisition points already does this. Rather then just hoping for the dice gods to favour you, if you're rolling against a -30 test (for a new macrobattery, say) houserule that you can auto-roll a low number (say, 75), and simply burn 1/10 the difference. So with a profit factor of 45, you would need need to burn 6 to get the necessary effective PF to pass with a 75 rolled. There you go, problem solved.

Roleplaying this would be fairly easy as well, since PF is representative of assets anyways. You are simply offering whoever owns the Macrobattery your stake in the Mining colony three days jump Spinward of Scintilla. Alternatively, since the Stryxis or rogue factions in the Expanse are unlikely to want your Calixis-bound assets, you could "pre-burn" PF by selling assets to Calixian Elite and storing the vast wealth in tradable goods, say refined Adamantine or electronic components or stocking up on a few thousand lasguns (always worth having to sell when you're dealing with those far from the grinding manufactories of the Imperium!).

If absolutely necessary to have a hard currency, why not go into a bit greater detail in the PF system, and assign an annual income in Thrones to assets. rather then a PF reward, reward them in lump-sums of thrones or an increase to their annual income.

good idea! thanks. (And indeed I meant profit factor, not acquisition points). This however does raise the question: how much is one ship point? (and thus one PF) if I were to monetize it, by as you say give them an annual income then that would mean that they get e.g 1mln a year (or 10 or 100 ??) but how would that translate into 1PF or 1 SP?

I short how much is 1SP in terms of thrones?

Probably between 20k and 100k if DH's super screwed pricing is right.

I'm just making this up.

I'll just quote myself here. A while ago we spoke of this, and here's an example of how much value one profit factor represents.

"I'd like to remind you, and anyone considering such a compensation fitting, that even 1 profit factor is an IMMENSE amount of money. Really, mindblastingly, unbelieveably, unrealistically many thrones!

The grand cruiser of Lorcanus Ryn, The Righteous Path, had it's gundecks and launchbays torn out. The ship was basically stripped of anything except the framework, warpdrives and armorplating, and FILLED, positively CRAMMED FULL of xeno-artifacts, relics, gems, art, and the rarest and most valuable of metals. The ship was litterally STUFFED with valuables. A grand cruiser, STUFFED!

If the PCs plunder the ship of all it's richess they get +3 profit factor.

I'll emphasize that.:

+3

In other words, If you crammed the most valuable xeno-wonders, great art, holy relics and mountains of diamonds, and whateverthehell you can imagine being valuable, into 1/3rd of a cruiser, you'd get 1 profit factor."

I hope this gives some perspective

Nearyn said:

I already imagined that there probly isn't a word invented yet that can summarize the actual size of the wealth of a rogue trader.

Still, given your description above (where is it from ?) I do have some issues with the book (page 34) I quote: "Any Ship Points that are not spent are added directly to the group’s beginning Profit Factor on a 1:1 basis." so the abundance of wealth described above equals say a 3 SP xeno tech ghost field (p206). Vice versa, scrapping a say Modified Jovian Pattern Class 4 Drive (again 3SP) would add a +3 PF.

It sounds to me that this is not completely in line with your quote... or is it??

Whether the value of the objects the The Righteous Path were carrying, match up to the 'ship points-to-profit factor'-rule I do not know, since I cannot maintain the concentration to be a rulecruncher.

I do know however, that starships are incredibly, amazingly valuable, not mainly because of the manpower the AdMech have to put into it, but because most parts of the ship are technoarcane wonders and holy relics to the mechanicus. So the prize is steep when it comes to vessels.

The part about the righteous path is taken from the adventure at the end of the rogue trader core book.

-Nearyn

thx. I'm not a rule cruncher myself, but I would like some guidelines, and I'm weary of a broken system... so if anyone else has something, pls share.

On a side note: 'a ship loaded with xeno-artifacts, relics etc etc' I guess the first question any player would ask is: 'is there anything of interest among that?

How on earth do you deal with that as gm.

Regarding the +3 PF for finding the Righteous Path; while it may originally have been stuffed full of goodies, by the time the party finds it it's already been stripped to the marrow after a millenia of looting; everything not nailed down is gone. The +3 PF is gained by applying a crowbar to the remainder. Specifically, you only get to loot the last, unsealed vault remaining in the whole of the ship, everything else is long gone. As for items of booty, knock together some sort of d100 Treasure list based on availability and featuring lots of Exotics.

As to the value of a single point of PF; it's just plain a pointlessly high sum, to the point where the negotiation over whether or not the seller has the item and is willing to part with it is more important than the number of zeroes on the bill.

The expansion Into the Storm introduced a rule of 'Cost is no Object' whereby a point of PF can be burned to gain +10 to Acquisition Tests as mentioned earlier. If you're using the Endeavour system, you could use Achievement Points as a sort of currency for small scale dealings.

Ok, rather then deal in hundreds of thousands of thrones, have PF generate Income Points. These can be chemical goods, thrones, w/e the source produces. 1 PF = 1 Monthly IP. Each IP counts as one burned PF when comparing to prices, but you don't get to roll, and start at a base of 0. So, an Extremely Rare item sits at -30, +30 for scale, applied to an effective PF of 0, turns into 10 Income Points (each counting for 10 towards the necessary 100. So an average PF would have enough income, now bear in mind this would be the dividends on your investments. It's like owning a business worth a half million dollars. Sure, if you sold everything you'd be loaded, but assuming you'd like to keep the business, you would only earn so many thousands a year.

This also opens up the door to providing different types of rewards. Looting a ship might give you 10 IP, while establishing a trade route might grant 1 to PF.

Work for you?

BangBangTequila said:

I think that this is an interesting concept were it not that I'm completely not following you. Can you give an example?

Say group has PF 45 so that will give them 45 IP a month? And then what, say they want to by acquire something that has a -20 penalty to acquisition...

wolph42 said:

They would spend 2 IP, and be down to 43 for the rest of the month.

ah check! clear, thanks! Not quite sure whether thats too much IP per month, but thats a matter of balancing.

Especially with space travel, I already noticed that with my DH group, can take a couple of months to get from A to B, which you usually fast forward (save encounters of course) which can lead to a huge pile of IP in a very short time. Gathering from the RAW space travel rules even a short travel (1 day warp) combined with a bad nav roll 1 DoF will already take a month in RS (which according to your system would give them an extra 45 IP). Im not saying it won't work, I actually like it, but it does require some thought.

And now that were on the subject anyway, how do you deal with misfortunes. I've been reading through them and an option is to make a roll on the table at the start of each session, its up to the players to do something with it however quite a few of the misfortunes require immediate attention in person, but the chances that they're actually there are minimal which means that even if they are willing to do something about it they'll be on their way something between 3 (at best) and 2 weeks on average. Likely making the players get there too late.

profit points uhm you gain 1 profit point for being a nobel rigth on lvl 5 that like somewhere close too 1000 thrones

with my 50 profit point nobel born (up one, down one due too grew) that mean 50.000 trones a month?

the profit point system like the assension system is somewhat broken. you could keep it a fixed number no matter what

you could tempory lower the number by how much they buy with it and how rare it is? (-1 and then add how hard it is too find)

lets remember profit factor also goes up if you did something realy big and inpressive with out a lot of cost too you or your schip. like stealing something and getting away just befor the sun blows up or being the first human too land on some planet and return that nobody ever heard of/ or if they did nobody els returned from

profit factor is as much rep as it is money and it is favors and deals closed