So the players need to go into the underhive or something and can't use influense. What's a gm to do?

I would really suggest to give an abstract money table where you can requisition local money amounts.

Like: a little money for +20, while a huge amount would be -30

Whenever you buy something with this abstract amount, its level is decreased by GM decision, depending on the rarity of the bought object.

I think something like this is really needed, because you just will need cash sometimes.

Influence is supposed to represent the acolyte's ability and resources to get what they need, materially or otherwise. Influence works just as well in the Underhive as it does in the upper reaches of society, it's just colored differently.

One thing I would like to see added is rewards in the way FATE handles treasure, which is similar to what GauntZero suggested. You get a "Chest Full of Gold" worth ~+30 on your tests to buy stuff. You pick how much of it you want to use to try to buy the thing you're interested in (from +10 to +30) and if you succeed that amount is deducted from the treasure, if you fail you keep it. This has the benefit of not having to deal with fiddly amounts of money while giving players that nice "you find a bunch of money" reward. DH2 has this as sort of a half-measure in that you can exchange rarer items for a bonus on finding more common ones.

What we don't need is a return to the way DH1 handled money. Tracking individual coins is an archaic game mechanic.

I definitely agree. I also dont want money back with real sums and such.

Abstract handling is fine with different amounts.

But something like this is really needed I think, as there definitely are xituation where you wouldnt use influence to get something, but you have to pay or bribe someone with good old cash money that you have with you - be it because he wont accept another deal, or because you wanna stay anonymous and subtle.

What we don't need is a return to the way DH1 handled money. Tracking individual coins is an archaic game mechanic.

Amen! Nothing snaps me out of the 'suspension of disbelief' faster than Inquisitorial agents looting used armour from dead bodies to sell in town (to a Dwarven smithee, no doubt...). Tracking individual coins should be limited to game systems where acquiring loot is the primary motive. In an investigative game, having to buy stuff with Thrones just encourages PCs to place loot ahead of the investigation...

What we don't need is a return to the way DH1 handled money. Tracking individual coins is an archaic game mechanic.

Amen! Nothing snaps me out of the 'suspension of disbelief' faster than Inquisitorial agents looting used armour from dead bodies to sell in town (to a Dwarven smithee, no doubt...). Tracking individual coins should be limited to game systems where acquiring loot is the primary motive. In an investigative game, having to buy stuff with Thrones just encourages PCs to place loot ahead of the investigation...

I strongly disagree, depending on setting and locale. If anything, Acolytes scrounging for supplies is definitely within the suspension of disbelief, and I cannot understand why doing so would break it for you.

After all, we're not really talking about open, official, sanctioned Inquisitorial Agents. We're talking about an Acolyte Cell of expendables. I'm willing to accept that yes, at some point, it's not just possible but even likely that they will be able to requisition this and that, and it's not even unlikely that Acolytes at some point can become so wealthy that individual thrones is no longer an object, but from the get-go in the original Dark Heresy, for example, you were two steps up from the mud on the Inquisitor's boots.

In my mind, both systems should be incorporated side by side, for different situations.

Didn't they do away with finicky moneymath all the way back in RT? I don't see them going back to the way DH1 was ever. My answer to the OP was that Influence works just fine in a setting where they need something in an area they don't have influence with (like the underhive). It's an abstract mechanic that covers the problem, "How do I get things?"

Having two different mechanisms for resolving the same problem is a mind-boggling suggestion. Why would you have both the abstract Influence characteristic and a coin purse with X thrones in it that could both be used to do things you do with money?

Going to agree with the influence side of this, at the most maybe have an actual purse of thrones as an item.

"The ganger looks a bit skittish, say's he'll only take cold hard cash"
"I throw him a pursefull of thrones" *removes purse from character sheet*

I would like to see the option to use cash for the small stuff and early in their career but I can see most of you are happy as is.

Actually I could see this working.

As a general rule you have your influence/profitfactor/etc

But, sometimes, you gotta pay cash without the ship's cargo bay teleporters. Or, ultra-early in the career, yeah.

Now how do we keep it semi-abstract, while sensible and useful enough that there's reason to even have these rules when 90% of it will be pure acquisition vs stats soon enough?

Perhaps you arrive at a world or start a mission,etc with 15^X thrones, where X is your influence/profit/whatever bonus?

Of course, the important stuff would not even have a price, but average or above weapons like laspistols or photon grenades have a throne value you can toss for auto-get instead of a test.

Money is a dumb enough concept in real life, we don't need it in games that already abstract reality. The mechanics already provide for a way to do everything you've mentioned, using Influence.

Maybe the Brag subskill of Charm should be replaced with Bribe, though.

I'd say Brag should stay, but Bribe could be listed as an alternative use, because that makes a lot of sense.

As for money? Influence represents wealth as much as it does renown, it works fine as is, honestly. I'd rather not complicate it more.

I'd say Brag should stay, but Bribe could be listed as an alternative use, because that makes a lot of sense. As for money? Influence represents wealth as much as it does renown, it works fine as is, honestly. I'd rather not complicate it more.

So what if you get into an area where you cant rely on your fancy accounts somewhere ? Where only local cash is accepted ?

And even if you say influence represents that you always have an undefined amount with you, it would be good to know how much it is, at least about how much - if it is too much, you probably get robbed.

So, an Local Cash item would be best in my oppinion which can be requisitioned in different sizes, which should be abstract.

I'd say Brag should stay, but Bribe could be listed as an alternative use, because that makes a lot of sense. As for money? Influence represents wealth as much as it does renown, it works fine as is, honestly. I'd rather not complicate it more.

So what if you get into an area where you cant rely on your fancy accounts somewhere ? Where only local cash is accepted ?

And even if you say influence represents that you always have an undefined amount with you, it would be good to know how much it is, at least about how much - if it is too much, you probably get robbed.

So, an Local Cash item would be best in my oppinion which can be requisitioned in different sizes, which should be abstract.

You're not thinking abstractly enough. Your character doesn't say, "Right, I'll just use my magical Influence to Jedi Mind Trick my way through here!" In your scenario, the use of Influence would suggest your character is obtaining whatever is needed to make their transaction, all without having to deal with some transitory "Local Cash" item whose only purpose is to serve as an intermediary for making the Influence test to get "Local Cash" and then trading said "Local Cash" for whatever goods and/or services you're after. By adding in your so-called "Local Cash", you're effectively adding another step to the process for absolutely no benefit. Sure, if you want to run a game and implement this yourself, go ahead; however, I don't see any need for it to take up space in the rulebook.

Agreed. Narratively speaking, one step of an acquisition test is 'draw down some funds from the secretive inquisitorial accounts with the local banking houses/commercia guild/gangs/whatever', which gets used to buy things.

One narrative justification for failing the test is finding said accounts inaccessible - if you just had a pot of moneys, then there's no point rolling dice - either you have enough or you don't.

If the item in question could be bought out of someone's realistic 'pocket change' then you just buy it - as noted, I wouldn't track individual thrones/credits/whatever unless staying solvent is a big part of the game.

I thought we had already talked about money. In several different threads!

Anyway, if your players need to descend into an underhive and you, as a GM, has decided that this particular underhive has a monetary system, I think the easiest thing would be to make something up for that. Outsiders, like PCs coming from upstairs, are unlikely to be well-versed in that particular underhive and probably start at "square one".

Thing is, even if a particular underhive is using anything approximating a monetary system, it's highly unlikely to use a galaxy-spanning system. It's probably not even a planet-wide system. Heck, it might not even be a hive-wide system.

I think the acquisition system mirrors this much better than a galaxy-wide monetary system ever could.

If you do want the players to worry about resources while out of reach of contacts, superiors, etc. (which I could see make sense now and then), it should be relatively simple to make up a quick system based on bullets, bottle caps, favours, or whatever, that is specific to the local environment.

Ok this is quite an important topic within my group - as the new wealth mechanic became one of the deal-breakers that has killed my play-test sessions

Needless to say from that opener my group do not like being forced to use abstract wealth all the time, they do see its use (we play RT and Ascended DH1 so its not a new concept for us) but they still want to know how many cold hard thrones they have to use when they are off the grid and away from official support.

Take the following situation from our Ascended campaign. The groups inquisitor had to go into hiding after upsetting some rather senior puritans and could not access any of his resources other than what the team had with them for fear of giving away there location - essentually there Influence was at 0 but because the group had a number of safe houses with small stashes of cash in them they were able to survive until they could clear up the misunderstanding. It did however leave them with a known, limited, amount of cash and the difficult choice between buying ammo and buying food.

In this scenario even though we were playing ascension with its influence mechanic we still fell back on the old Thrones system, and to be honest I'm not sure how I would have covered the above scenario with the new wealth mechanic.

I suppose what we really need is is some way of covering both styles of wealth as I can see the need for both in this game.

Regards

Surak

Influence is supposed to represent the acolyte's ability and resources to get what they need, materially or otherwise. Influence works just as well in the Underhive as it does in the upper reaches of society, it's just colored differently.

One thing I would like to see added is rewards in the way FATE handles treasure, which is similar to what GauntZero suggested. You get a "Chest Full of Gold" worth ~+30 on your tests to buy stuff. You pick how much of it you want to use to try to buy the thing you're interested in (from +10 to +30) and if you succeed that amount is deducted from the treasure, if you fail you keep it. This has the benefit of not having to deal with fiddly amounts of money while giving players that nice "you find a bunch of money" reward. DH2 has this as sort of a half-measure in that you can exchange rarer items for a bonus on finding more common ones.

What we don't need is a return to the way DH1 handled money. Tracking individual coins is an archaic game mechanic.

Seconding this.

Maybe the cell can make a pre-mission influence test to bring along "purchasing power" in the form of the expendable acquisition test modifiers you just outlined, but at the expense of some amount of subtlety.

FX: Pre-mission Inf Test with GM fiat mods. Each DoS = expendable +10 Acq Test mod & local/mission -5 Sub mod. Expendable Acq mods stack 9:3:1, so a +30 mod requires 9 +10 mods.

Locally found treasure & whatnot also provides expendable Acquisition test mods & all such mods stack.

Surak, your example is, honestly, a pretty good case for a more direct currency system. The thing is, I think it's such a niche situation that it's hard to warrant adding in a whole system of money. It seems like a situation where some quick houserules would suffice, because it doesn't seem like something that's going to happen often in the typical DH campaign.

One narrative justification for failing the test is finding said accounts inaccessible - if you just had a pot of moneys, then there's no point rolling dice - either you have enough or you don't.

If the item in question could be bought out of someone's realistic 'pocket change' then you just buy it - as noted, I wouldn't track individual thrones/credits/whatever unless staying solvent is a big part of the game.

This is the the sort of thing I was thinking of when I made this thead.

I thought we had already talked about money. In several different threads!

Anyway, if your players need to descend into an underhive and you, as a GM, has decided that this particular underhive has a monetary system, I think the easiest thing would be to make something up for that. Outsiders, like PCs coming from upstairs, are unlikely to be well-versed in that particular underhive and probably start at "square one".

Thing is, even if a particular underhive is using anything approximating a monetary system, it's highly unlikely to use a galaxy-spanning system. It's probably not even a planet-wide system. Heck, it might not even be a hive-wide system.

I think the acquisition system mirrors this much better than a galaxy-wide monetary system ever could.

If you do want the players to worry about resources while out of reach of contacts, superiors, etc. (which I could see make sense now and then), it should be relatively simple to make up a quick system based on bullets, bottle caps, favours, or whatever, that is specific to the local environment.

Firstly yes we have talked about money in other treads but I felt that we needed to talk about this WMMV.

Secondly I agree that moving from underhive to death world and keeping your wealth is silly but some guidelines on this would be nice.

Ok this is quite an important topic within my group - as the new wealth mechanic became one of the deal-breakers that has killed my play-test sessions

Needless to say from that opener my group do not like being forced to use abstract wealth all the time, they do see its use (we play RT and Ascended DH1 so its not a new concept for us) but they still want to know how many cold hard thrones they have to use when they are off the grid and away from official support.

Take the following situation from our Ascended campaign. The groups inquisitor had to go into hiding after upsetting some rather senior puritans and could not access any of his resources other than what the team had with them for fear of giving away there location - essentually there Influence was at 0 but because the group had a number of safe houses with small stashes of cash in them they were able to survive until they could clear up the misunderstanding. It did however leave them with a known, limited, amount of cash and the difficult choice between buying ammo and buying food.

In this scenario even though we were playing ascension with its influence mechanic we still fell back on the old Thrones system, and to be honest I'm not sure how I would have covered the above scenario with the new wealth mechanic.

I suppose what we really need is is some way of covering both styles of wealth as I can see the need for both in this game.

Regards

Surak

Thanks I was hoping someone would have an example like this. I would like to keep from letting players from using influence when on missions till the group has some success under their belt.

Surak, your example is, honestly, a pretty good case for a more direct currency system. The thing is, I think it's such a niche situation that it's hard to warrant adding in a whole system of money. It seems like a situation where some quick houserules would suffice, because it doesn't seem like something that's going to happen often in the typical DH campaign.

As I said above I would like some guidelines rather than use houserules. I can see my group needing to do this from time to time.

[...]

Having two different mechanisms for resolving the same problem is a mind-boggling suggestion. Why would you have both the abstract Influence characteristic and a coin purse with X thrones in it that could both be used to do things you do with money?

Because you use them entirely different, in different situations, for different things. Influence is your ability to influence people, resources or contacts abstracted. Thrones would be hard cash for those situations in which Influence does not make any sense at all.

Complete abstraction only makes sense when money or immediate on-person resources is not an issue, such as in Rogue Trader (because you are assumed to be insanely rich, rich enough to just say "I'm going to throw a couple of thousand thrones onto the floor, not because I need to, but because I want to" ) and in Deathwatch ( because Space Marines ).

But in Dark Heresy (and Only War, I would say, for all those instances when you're out of an immediate warzone or regiment camp), it's a whole 'nother beast. You're a regular human being in a **** situation, easily cut off from your resources and contacts, caught between a rock and a hard place.

Furthermore, there is no harm whatsoever in tracking thrones or assigning a cost to gear . You can still do abstraction, and for those things that are simply so valuable or rare that no price can be put on them, you simply put n/a in the field. But it helps immensely with all those situations during which abstraction might be hard, and gives a pointer on relative net worth in the game world.

You can still have abstraction. Hell, you can have some kind of abstraction as the main source of acquisition, I even agree that that would be the best.

Assigning a throne cost to things gives you another tool in your arsenal that will always remain relevant, and does absolutely nothing to hurt those of you that still prefer complete abstraction, while being enormously useful for us that doesn't.

There is nothing preventing multiple ways of Acquisition to exist side-by-side. I'm houseruling no less than 4 different ways (Profit Factor, Infamy, Requisition, and Thrones) for my own ruleset for this very reason, and there never was and never will be anything preventing them from working together, to take your pick of what you want, except that thanks to complete abstraction from Rogue Trader onwards, I'm going to have to guesstimate every single item's relative net worth in thrones. Thanks, Obama !

As I said above I would like some guidelines rather than use houserules. I can see my group needing to do this from time to time.

That's the issue, as far as I see it. It's such a rare occurrence that it's hard to justify taking up valuable page space.

Agreed. Narratively speaking, one step of an acquisition test is 'draw down some funds from the secretive inquisitorial accounts with the local banking houses/commercia guild/gangs/whatever', which gets used to buy things. One narrative justification for failing the test is finding said accounts inaccessible - if you just had a pot of moneys, then there's no point rolling dice - either you have enough or you don't. If the item in question could be bought out of someone's realistic 'pocket change' then you just buy it - as noted, I wouldn't track individual thrones/credits/whatever unless staying solvent is a big part of the game.

Yeah, but what if I want to make sure that I have the amount of money i need. I wouldnt want to rely on an Influence roll to make sure I can pay for that stub revolver in the underhive with my magical inquisition credit card. Cash is cash.

Being too abstract here is just odd.

I think one thing which'd fix a lot of issues of 'I should be able to afford this' would be to make easy requisition tests automatic wins. Have count against a daily limit of some form, but not require an actual roll.