Assigning a throne cost to every single item would do harm. It takes up space on the page, it adds another layer of complexity to the already complicated game, and it adds yet another number that must be tracked by the players (one that new games have realized is dumb to track).

Want to bribe a guy? Deduct X Influence points to represent giving up whatever resource the target finds valuable. Why does that not work?

I agree not everything should be for sale. Anything above bolt should need Influence but if it might come up I would rather have it and not need it than vice versa.

In 1 game I played the gm wanted to run a cell of highly deniable acolytes who the inquisitor granted little to no support, literally mailing them tickets to travel and occasionaly assets like jewelry to be pawned off rather than any actual saleries. This left the group wih only the cash in their pockets to achieve their objectives, which we had to ration strictly (We even paid for food and accomadation, with the other option of simply risking camping in the lower hive). Good luck doing that with the abstract system.

There's also the issue that a unified currency (or, arguably, currency in general) is pretty **** unsuited to the 40k universe. Thrones were always a weird little abstraction themselves used to represent a handful of random regional currencies.

Honestly, with the amount of confusion that's already there from acquisitions in the Armoury chapter vs. the acquisitions in the Skills/Commerce section (are they two separate systems for different situations? Is one of them just an older version? Is it a typo?), I don't think adding in Throne costs is harmless.

The book needs to be clearer about how Influence works, not muck it up with even more options.

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.

I don't know if it's something you should expect to be able to handle without some measure of houseruling, but some guidelines on how to do this for various localities, perhaps even with examples, would certainly be welcome.

Strictly speaking, I'm not convinced that this would really be necessary for a core book. Maybe if there was an expansion book with details of the different types of worlds in the Imperium, or perhaps even as a web-enhancement.

But I'm generally very pro-"add some hints to help GMs design their games as faithfully as possible to the setting material", so you won't see me arguing against guidelines. Given infinite page-space, obviously.

Most of the time, you should be able to use Influence. Even in the Underhive.

But the best approach is probably to use a system like in Eclipse Phase where availability equates to cost. I'll just quote myself from when this was discussed previously:

Regarding the money vs. availability thing. It occurs to me that what we need is a simple availability to cost conversion ratio. Eclipse Phase has something like this because it has a lot of different societies that use different economic systems.

It can be different for every planet and is very simple to do. "This is an agri world that uses bricks of grox-dung for money +0 availability means 0-100 bricks, +10 means 101-500 bricks and because this is a backwards planet, really rare things +30, mean 10,000-20,000 bricks of grox-dung. And by the way, you're needed at the Royal Treasury right away."

It's easy, it leaves room for GM judgement and it can be done in 1-2 lines for any planet that uses money.

I actually don't think that the default assumption should be that you can buy everything anyway. People posting have grown up in a consumer society where things are manufactured according to need and desire. That is very alien to the WH40K universe. Things that you can buy on most planets will be things like food, robes, maybe nights at the inn.

People need to understand that most of the Imperium is more like a feudal society (and quite often literally is one). You don't go out and buy a lasgun. Lasguns are issued to you as a soldier in the Imperial Guard. You don't go to market and find a chainsword, you get handed one down that used to belong to your great uncle the baronet of such and such. You don't do these things because this is not a society where people decide to start a business selling lasguns because they see there's a market for those. It's not even a setting that traditionally has a street of shops you might walk down seeing what you like. Typically, a person has a job (probably handed down from their forefathers) and is allocated what they need by the Administratum. And if you're one of the wealthy? Well you still don't go shopping - instead your lands generate goods which you skim a bit off from and if you want something special, you trade a few favours for it with Sir Lepidus, that rake whose always hanging around your estate and mixes with a lot of ruffians and other shady characters.

Sure, there are all sorts of little ad-hoc currencies about, but these are really on a planet by planet basis and more importantly, they're used for ordinary goods. So that the farmer can trade with the blacksmith in brass coins, or the deck hands can gamble with each other in ship ration books. Not for out of the ordinary items that PCs might buy.

Short version: we live in a consumer society with supply and demand and everything ends up commoditized. The Imperium is really, really different and most of the things that PCs want are not commodities. You want a bolter? Well the local Arbites has an arsenal containing twenty, but the captain is not supposed to sell them. You want one, then you're going to have to use your influence. Maybe the duke has one he was allowed to keep for heroism when he fought as a Guard Major. But there's no trade in bolters, normally. If you are on a planet where there is, then the GM should make some quick rules up about it based on availability of the items and the society of that planet. But putting prices on items really sends out the wrong message and it just creates friction between players and GMs when the GM is trying to stick the fluff and a player keeps objecting that there's a price in the book so they should be able to buy it.

Yeah, the only real niche for 'weapon shops' and the like would be shady underhive markets, I imagine.

If you find yourself in a situation where the Influence system doesn't seem to make sense, you simply misunderstand what the Influence system represents.

It's not like with Influence, you're rolling into a fast food joint and yell "In the name of the Holy Inquisition, I command thee to make me a hot dog - double pickles, no onions, no mustard!" Unless you want to do that for some reason, but that's not the extent of what the system represents.

The basic idea is, whenever you roll Influence to acquire something (be it an item, a service or a favor), the roll represents you doing whatever makes the most sense in a given situation - be it proclaiming orders on behalf of the Holy Ordos, offering promises of future favors, or simply waving a wad of cash in front of someone's eyes. It doesn't matter if you're on official Inquisition business brokering deals with IG generals, or deep undercover bribing an underhive gang to create the necessary distraction for your further dealings - it's still an Influence roll, and it's the team's job (both the GM's and the players' making the roll) to describe it in the way that makes sense. Yes, it really is that simple.

There's absolutely zero need for bogging down this already rules-bloated edition with extra bean-counting.

There's also the issue that a unified currency (or, arguably, currency in general) is pretty **** unsuited to the 40k universe. Thrones were always a weird little abstraction themselves used to represent a handful of random regional currencies.

I was always under the impression that Thrones as a currency was simply a currency enforced by the Imperial Bureaucracy. Effective inflation and deflation may vary wildly, although this is also easily controlled by totalitarian bureaucracy, but there is nothing strange at all with the Imperium enforcing a single currency.

I actually don't think that the default assumption should be that you can buy everything anyway. People posting have grown up in a consumer society where things are manufactured according to need and desire. That is very alien to the WH40K universe. Things that you can buy on most planets will be things like food, robes, maybe nights at the inn.

People need to understand that most of the Imperium is more like a feudal society (and quite often literally is one). You don't go out and buy a lasgun. Lasguns are issued to you as a soldier in the Imperial Guard. You don't go to market and find a chainsword, you get handed one down that used to belong to your great uncle the baronet of such and such. You don't do these things because this is not a society where people decide to start a business selling lasguns because they see there's a market for those. It's not even a setting that traditionally has a street of shops you might walk down seeing what you like. Typically, a person has a job (probably handed down from their forefathers) and is allocated what they need by the Administratum. And if you're one of the wealthy? Well you still don't go shopping - instead your lands generate goods which you skim a bit off from and if you want something special, you trade a few favours for it with Sir Lepidus, that rake whose always hanging around your estate and mixes with a lot of ruffians and other shady characters.

Sure, there are all sorts of little ad-hoc currencies about, but these are really on a planet by planet basis and more importantly, they're used for ordinary goods. So that the farmer can trade with the blacksmith in brass coins, or the deck hands can gamble with each other in ship ration books. Not for out of the ordinary items that PCs might buy.

Short version: we live in a consumer society with supply and demand and everything ends up commoditized. The Imperium is really, really different and most of the things that PCs want are not commodities. You want a bolter? Well the local Arbites has an arsenal containing twenty, but the captain is not supposed to sell them. You want one, then you're going to have to use your influence. Maybe the duke has one he was allowed to keep for heroism when he fought as a Guard Major. But there's no trade in bolters, normally. If you are on a planet where there is, then the GM should make some quick rules up about it based on availability of the items and the society of that planet. But putting prices on items really sends out the wrong message and it just creates friction between players and GMs when the GM is trying to stick the fluff and a player keeps objecting that there's a price in the book so they should be able to buy it.

While I agree with the sentiment that the posters in the thread have grown up in a consumer society, and that this causes certain issues with interpretation, I don't agree with your belief that many of the things that Acolytes could want isn't commodities.

The Imperium proper is indeed feudal in nature, but it's also diverse in it's interpretations and often wildly anarchic, politically, socially and economically, with feudal or totalitarian principles enforced as a matter of necessity or circumstance, rather than ideology.

There is no shortage of guns available on the market(s), or most commodities. If there is, this shortage has always been represented by Availability, not price.

Many things, however, should obviously have no listed price, for very obvious reasons; they are not, as you say, market commodities. Harlequin's Kiss? No price. Power Armour? No price.

Arguably, some of these items shouldn't even have any availability listed. For example, in the lists and descriptions, I wouldn't mind seeing weapons that the players shouldn't normally be able to acquire at all, such as, let's say, Necron Gauss Cannon. It's all very simple; don't list availability, don't list price. They are so rare and so uncommon that there is no frame of reference to list general Availability. Relative to other objects, it is so valuable that the Price cannot be estimated.

It's as simple as that.

Everything else is solved by a note in the rules saying that - which should already be clear to anyone playing an RP anyway - the GM is the sole arbitrator on Prices and Availability, and are not only allowed to raise or lower Availability and Price, but is expected to do so. This is a note that should be there anyway , no matter what system you use, or no matter any number of different systems that are sanctioned by the Core Rulebook.

Certain things are easier to find on certain worlds than others. Whereas someone might look for that Harlequin's Kiss they wanted for their Radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitor on Footfall, it definitely wouldn't be available on Cadia. Adjustments like this should be commonplace regardless of what system we use, whether we abstract things or not, and it should definitely be mentioned in a rulebook, if only to deal with whiny players that have a problem with GM fiat and the GM:s mandate to enforce consistency and suspension of disbelief.

Assigning a throne cost to every single item would do harm. It takes up space on the page, it adds another layer of complexity to the already complicated game, and it adds yet another number that must be tracked by the players (one that new games have realized is dumb to track).

Want to bribe a guy? Deduct X Influence points to represent giving up whatever resource the target finds valuable. Why does that not work?

Really, we're talking about adding something to the end of a line in the book. It would take up minimal space on any table, and to call it added complexity ... I'm not even sure what to say. If anything, it would remove complexity because it easily solves issues and situations that might crop up. Issues and situations that have been mentioned earlier in the thread.

Bribing the way you suggest won't work, because the reason a listed price or unabstracted wealth is useful, is because you don't have access to your Influence Points. You have no resources to give up. Not to mention that giving up even a single Influence Point might not be worth it. Are you going to start giving up Inquisitorial phone numbers to bribe a drug dealer, now?

Bribing the way you suggest won't work, because the reason a listed price or unabstracted wealth is useful, is because you don't have access to your Influence Points. You have no resources to give up. Not to mention that giving up even a single Influence Point might not be worth it. Are you going to start giving up Inquisitorial phone numbers to bribe a drug dealer, now?

I'm not exactly sure how two paragraphs and an extra column on pre-existing tables in the book would 'consume too much space', to be honest.

The Thrones Currency should exist in addition to Influence in my opinion. I've used both systems in conjunction many times before, and I've never had a 'too complicated, can't do basic math' moments. The Thrones Currency is a nice tool to have to determine many things than just 'bribery'. With them, a GM can tally a reasonable and background-sensible cost of construction for commissioned works (I want my own, personal set of power armor GM! etc, etc). Similarly, that applies to dark and forbidden sciences (transgenic blasphemies), underworld dealings, etc.

Influence is a nice abstraction for when the Acolytes reach a point where they shouldn't need be concerned with the mundane or when they are directly dealing with leaders or the vast organizations of the Imperium (The Adeptus Arbites, The Ecclesiarchy, the Adeptus Administratum, etc). Outside of that, towards the masses who may never have seen a 'promissory note' from the Guilder Banks of Tartarus IV, I think it's more prudent to use the thrones on hand than to assume 'they just have it'.

It's nice for me to know that I can use something as minuscule as wealth to pose an obstacle towards my players. Do they want to pass the gate guard easily with a bribe? Or did they spend it all on tricking out their weapon instead?

Bribing the way you suggest won't work, because the reason a listed price or unabstracted wealth is useful, is because you don't have access to your Influence Points. You have no resources to give up. Not to mention that giving up even a single Influence Point might not be worth it. Are you going to start giving up Inquisitorial phone numbers to bribe a drug dealer, now?

If you have money to bribe, that can be the Influence you're giving up. Influence can (and should) easily represent straight up monetary wealth.

It can . I don't dispute this. But it also can't . It's not an and/or-situation. It's a matter of both.

When I don't have access to my 'bank account', and when the underhive don't accept checks, when I don't carry wads of thrones in my pockets, or when the costs does not warrant giving up an Influence Point, this kind of abstraction fails to deliver.

No-one wants to take abstraction away and nobody wants to complicate matters. It's a matter of tools in the hands of the players and the game master, and the suspension of disbelief.

Adding costs and guidelines on how to use them removes absolutely zero functionality, while adding heaps to the system and gives an idea of the relative worth of objects and an immersive understanding of the surroundings.

Page space is probably the absolute number one concern when making a book like this. Going over your page count can cost a fortune and will be avoided at all cost. Anything added to the game will have its contribution to the game weighed against its page count, and even a tiny table can throw off your layout. Saying "just add a table/number" is oversimplifying it greatly.

Fgsdfg, by complexity I mean bean-counting. Keeping track of another number on your character sheet is added complexity, to say nothing of sussing out a system by which to spend/increase that number. To your other points of 'not having access to your Influence' and situations where Influence 'doesn't make sense', I will direct you to Morangias' excellent post.

This post sums up my position on this topic very well:

If you find yourself in a situation where the Influence system doesn't seem to make sense, you simply misunderstand what the Influence system represents.

It's not like with Influence, you're rolling into a fast food joint and yell "In the name of the Holy Inquisition, I command thee to make me a hot dog - double pickles, no onions, no mustard!" Unless you want to do that for some reason, but that's not the extent of what the system represents.

The basic idea is, whenever you roll Influence to acquire something (be it an item, a service or a favor), the roll represents you doing whatever makes the most sense in a given situation - be it proclaiming orders on behalf of the Holy Ordos, offering promises of future favors, or simply waving a wad of cash in front of someone's eyes. It doesn't matter if you're on official Inquisition business brokering deals with IG generals, or deep undercover bribing an underhive gang to create the necessary distraction for your further dealings - it's still an Influence roll, and it's the team's job (both the GM's and the players' making the roll) to describe it in the way that makes sense. Yes, it really is that simple.

There's absolutely zero need for bogging down this already rules-bloated edition with extra bean-counting.

I'm not saying the system as presented is perfect - it's unclear regarding Acquisition/Requisition, for example - but it's a definite improvement over DH1.

My problem is still, that I do not have any 100% Influence in my bag - never.

I want to be able to take a certain amount of local currency with me, to make sure, i can do cerzain transactions.

I cant go to a deal with an abstract bag of money just to find out that it is not enough, because just then my influence roll fails.

This whole abstract influence thing is fully ok when doing requisitions or trying to get support on a bigger or general scale, but sometimes it is just necessary to have some cerzain cash. Even if this cash is no given number, but "money category 4" or something.

Influence is for me a mix of a credit card (which sometimes does not work anywhere - therefore the roll) or my personal connections (which i sometimes fail to influence enough - therefore the roll).

But for money in my bag I do not want to roll. IT IS THERE and I know it.

Everything else is esoteric nonsense.

Page space is probably the absolute number one concern when making a book like this. Going over your page count can cost a fortune and will be avoided at all cost. Anything added to the game will have its contribution to the game weighed against its page count, and even a tiny table can throw off your layout. Saying "just add a table/number" is oversimplifying it greatly.

I'm well aware of this. However, adding the single column to each table in the Dark Heresy 2.0 beta book won't result in additional page counts. The first edition book had 12 columns per armoury table, whereas the 2.0 book has 11. It's a simple matter. The one paragraph and a half about 'Thrones' can be added easily and done. No fortune crippling expenses really, so that's in my opinion a non-issue.

Fgsdfg, by complexity I mean bean-counting. Keeping track of another number on your character sheet is added complexity, to say nothing of sussing out a system by which to spend/increase that number. To your other points of 'not having access to your Influence' and situations where Influence 'doesn't make sense', I will direct you to Morangias' excellent post.

How is it more encumbering than keeping track of ammunition counts? The amount of financial transactions that occur in game are alot less than the times needed to reload.

I'm not exactly sure how two paragraphs and an extra column on pre-existing tables in the book would 'consume too much space', to be honest.

The Thrones Currency should exist in addition to Influence in my opinion. I've used both systems in conjunction many times before, and I've never had a 'too complicated, can't do basic math' moments. The Thrones Currency is a nice tool to have to determine many things than just 'bribery'. With them, a GM can tally a reasonable and background-sensible cost of construction for commissioned works (I want my own, personal set of power armor GM! etc, etc). Similarly, that applies to dark and forbidden sciences (transgenic blasphemies), underworld dealings, etc.

Influence is a nice abstraction for when the Acolytes reach a point where they shouldn't need be concerned with the mundane or when they are directly dealing with leaders or the vast organizations of the Imperium (The Adeptus Arbites, The Ecclesiarchy, the Adeptus Administratum, etc). Outside of that, towards the masses who may never have seen a 'promissory note' from the Guilder Banks of Tartarus IV, I think it's more prudent to use the thrones on hand than to assume 'they just have it'.

It's nice for me to know that I can use something as minuscule as wealth to pose an obstacle towards my players. Do they want to pass the gate guard easily with a bribe? Or did they spend it all on tricking out their weapon instead?

Got to agree with this more or less completely, as its how we've been running DH1 and RT in our group since Ascension/RT released. The abstract wealth system has its place, and is a very usefull tool for speeding up "gearing up" sessions when the group have just been given there new mission. But once they are out in the field its always been helpful to have cold hard cash around.

Another fantastic use for currency is as a comparative tool for in-mission "treasure" - yes you can use the + and - influence modifiers but personally I prefer something a little more granular.

Time to through put another example out there - this time from the earliest days of my first DH1 campaign

I sent my cell to Tranch to conduct an investigation under the radar, covered as a group of travelling merchants. I gave the group leader a large sum of thrones to act as a group fund but other than that it was down to individual character's finances. The first hurdle they had to deal with was when they realised that they had spent too much on shiny toys and hadn't actually got enough for all of them to take the mag-lev from the star-port to the hive, so two of them ended up having to find the local version of Hertz and renting the cheapest form of motor-transport they could find because thats all they had the cash for.

The entire session revolved around the group mis-managing there resources and having to find some other way to make it work, and all had a great laugh in the process - negotiating with dis-reputable traders, dealing with bandits on the road, having the two combat characters away from the rest of the party during a train hijack... and none of it would have happened if the players weren't in control of their own cash flow.

Influence/Profit Factor/etc all have their place in DH, but equally so does currency

putting a differnt spin on it - your conducting an investigation and the GM wants it to be obvious that the low-hive scum who's hab you've broken into has got more cash than he should, saying "there's a tight bundle of 100 throne notes on the table" gets the general idea, but its alot more impressive when one of the players realises there is basically the value of a car just sat on the table - without the armoury to reference how can you detirmine the relative value of the evidence?

Regards

Surak

I think determining the value of thrones is a pretty simple "the stack of thrones on the table could [insert real world analogue here for what it could buy]." Then whatever players claim it get Influence bumps.

In the influence system changes I proposed a while back I suggested that players limit number of acquisitions per investigation to their influence bonus. I also changed the availability modifiers to single digit values (+ modifiers are low values and - modifiers are higher values) and have a rule that players can automatically buy anything that had those digits equal to or less than their influence modifier but that this counted toward their acquisition limit. I think something simple like this would be helpful. Allow automatic purchases based on current influence.

I think determining the value of thrones is a pretty simple "the stack of thrones on the table could [insert real world analogue here for what it could buy]." Then whatever players claim it get Influence bumps.

That's a great way to stylize it if you are someone who likes to abstract everything. It's largely a preference thing though, so you won't sell that to everyone. =D

In the influence system changes I proposed a while back I suggested that players limit number of acquisitions per investigation to their influence bonus.

I really dig this house rule. I think I'll be using it soon. =D

I think determining the value of thrones is a pretty simple "the stack of thrones on the table could [insert real world analogue here for what it could buy]." Then whatever players claim it get Influence bumps.

[...]

What's the worth of an Influence Point? A car? A jetski? Eight barrels full of dwarf?

And if that worth is less than a full Influence Point, will we now be tracking fractions of an Influence Point to represent the cumulative value of Thrones adding up? Then what's the difference from hard currency to begin with?

This is completely beside the point that I don't want to make analogues to real-world currency, wealth or items (for reasons that should be clear to any roleplayer valuing immersion) and - due to the lack of relative value in thrones - I as a GM lack the necessary frames of reference to allude to the in-universe counterparts myself!

And those issues are completely beside the fact that the "Thrones on the table"-example brought up by Surak had nothing to do with the player claiming those thrones for himself, but rather letting him himself reach the conclusion that that's a fat wad of money right there on the table.

These are conclusions that the players should be able to make themselves and not have to have explained to them while drawing paralells to out-of-universe examples. "You see a card game going on in an adjacent room, and through the door ajar, you see a wealth of thrones on the table. The approximate value of the thrones on the table is comparable to a jetski in Miami."

Just no.

[...]

In the influence system changes I proposed a while back I suggested that players limit number of acquisitions per investigation to their influence bonus. [...]

Bribing the way you suggest won't work, because the reason a listed price or unabstracted wealth is useful, is because you don't have access to your Influence Points. You have no resources to give up. Not to mention that giving up even a single Influence Point might not be worth it. Are you going to start giving up Inquisitorial phone numbers to bribe a drug dealer, now?

If you have money to bribe, that can be the Influence you're giving up. Influence can (and should) easily represent straight up monetary wealth.

It can . I don't dispute this. But it also can't . It's not an and/or-situation. It's a matter of both.

When I don't have access to my 'bank account', and when the underhive don't accept checks, when I don't carry wads of thrones in my pockets, or when the costs does not warrant giving up an Influence Point, this kind of abstraction fails to deliver.

No, you got it all backwards. You don't track whether you have access to 'accounts', checks, whether the guy you're dealing with knows of your reputation, or if you simply have a fat roll of Dorns in your shirt pocket.

You just roll Influence, and then you narrate the outcome in a way that makes sense. Managed to buy that forbidden ripper ammo from the back-alley dealer? Guess you happened to have enough cash. Got yourself that shiny new military-issue M36 Lasgun? The local Munitorum representative remembers your great-uncle from the Just-Made-That-Up Campaign and hands you the requisition writ, or the local Magos is willing to let you "borrow" one to field test the local pattern - or you have the cash and the shady dealer is willing to sell it as a bundle along with the proscribed ammo discussed earlier. Fail the roll? You either don't have the cash, or the shady dealer finds you too suspicious to make business, or your formal writ of requisition gets lost under a metric ton of other important papers in the local munitorum. Whatever makes sense for the planet, character in question and the particular moment in the plot.

When you approach it like that, with an open mind and without delving too much on useless details, the number of situations where another system would be handy equals precisely zero .

No-one wants to take abstraction away and nobody wants to complicate matters. It's a matter of tools in the hands of the players and the game master, and the suspension of disbelief.

Adding costs and guidelines on how to use them removes absolutely zero functionality, while adding heaps to the system and gives an idea of the relative worth of objects and an immersive understanding of the surroundings.

It muddles things by introducing two separate systems that perform exactly the same function, and actually hampers verisimilitude by implying something like standardized prices exists for goods that will vastly differ in value from planet to planet, or even within the confines of the same city. And that's assuming the prices themselves actually make some sense, which cannot be said about many of them in DH1 (my recent favorite is the best cratsmanship, hexagrammatically warded Malleus Power Armor which costs exactly two-thirds of the price of best craftsmanship stormtrooper carapace).

Seriously, if you think you need rules for cash, you're grossly overthinking the marginal part of the game that's supposed to be handled in downtime between torturing heretics and punching daemons in the face - you know, the parts that are actually fun and relevant to the experience of being a servant of the Inquisition.

In terms of making real world analogies I think that's a matter of taste/preference. Most of the players I play with are not really versed in the lore beyond why is immediately in front of them. 40k is such an esoteric setting that a lot of the things in it aren't really a part of pop culture unlike in fantasy games or in something closer to Star Wars or Star Trek. I honestly don't really love the idea of telling players how much the money on a table is worth because its telling not showing and that isn't great storytelling. I also proposed in my system that there would be temporary influence that could be spent for roll bonuses or would add to permanent influence at the conclusion of a mission goal if it hasn't been spent. I think that models temporary things like cash infusions or favors from local authorities pretty well. Ill agree that when you're trying to look at an abstract system in terms of real world numbers that this way madness lies, but I guess that's one of those sacrifices that get made for rules. For example, the game dungeon world has an adventurers kit that just says it has X uses and when you mark off a use you can pull out an item that you'd probably find in the kit. Yes, that could lead to a situation where a player only has 3 grappling hooks in there or if a player wants to model carrying a whole bunch of gear, but I think those quibbles are worth the benefit of not having to track a bunch of junk that you'll never or rarely use and then having to track weight values as well. I had a player who wanted to play a batman seneschal and ran into the problem of all of the gear that fits in batmans utility belt weighing around 60 kg. Is that more realistic? Yes. Do I care about that kind of realism in a game about space Orks and heavy metal chaos monsters? Not really.

I think the problem is with the assumption that 'Influence' is purely a 'social skill'. It includes the use of hard currency. Using Influence can be anything from telling a merchant to "Charge it to this account" to paying with coins (or similar negotiable items- in the Black Library novel Atlas Infernal , the main Inquisitor character buys passage on a local transport with 'Influence' in the form of a handful of small ingots of valuable metal).

And it doesn't preclude having to scrounge for gear- if the Acolytes are in the middle of no-where, Influence doesn't 'conjure' supplies from thin air. There will still be circumstances where PCs need to loot supplies- Influence just negates the driving need to steal stuff to sell for coin a la D&D .

The currency is less a rule than a guideline. Its a preferencw that doesnt stop total abtraction using influence and requisition. It doesnt harm or hamper immersion. Many players really enjoy spending their thrones on shiny roys between missions. Its a preference. Statements using 'realism' and 'not fun' are just obtuse and largely defensive unnecessarily.

There is room for both to meet everyones expectations.

First things first: Orks do exist - we just didnt met them yet - lets hope this will remain so for a long time.

I wouldnt call the setting "esoteric" at all. Grimdark and full of superstition fits more.

And I am not talking about concrete money values, but about abstract sums of cash money to get by influence BEFORE the mission or DURING the mission to be able to carry and field if needed.

You could make a table with money "items" of different sizes, like:

small purse: +30

..

..

.. bag full of money: -10

..

..huge amount / 10 suitcases full of money: -30

Money would always need to be tied to a certain world / locality.

In this way, you could use your money in a subtle, more anonymous way, and in areas where influence does not fit.

You also could make sure, that you field a certain amount with you, without needing to roll (you already did the roll succesfully when you got the money item).

If you buy something significant, the GMN can decide, that your money items category goes down (e.g. from a huge amount (-30) to a bag full (-10) while paying a underhive deal in cash to ensure a gangs loyalty.

One additional interesting factor: money can be stolen or lost, and there can be situations where you can use skills like commerce to barter, which could save your money items category.