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 .

I know what you mean by this, I just dont agree, that cash money is a thing that is portrayed well by influence, as anything you carry with you physically has certain traits:

- it can be stolen or lost

- is DEFINITELY is there, not "maybe, lets see the roll"

- it can be seen by others (subtlety)

- it is much more concrete (its not like you cannot say how much you have)

Even as currently influence covers this aspect, this is odd and not a good way to deal with it.

Easier, maybe, but definitely odd in a lot of situations.

I have to say I'm really enjoying the growing divide between the "Use your imagination" camp and the "How does money work without numbers? I need a chart" camp.

Yeah, this seems to be an argument between two parties that won't budge. I honestly think that, in the end, the imagination camp will win out by sheer merit of not eating up book space.

Also, Gaunt, take a look at the thread I made earlier, I think it solves at least your second point there without the need for introducing an entire currency system.

@ Tom:

It is a good proposal that definitely is better than the current official approaches. As always - good quality from you ;D

Never the less, I stick to the feeling that money would be a good item to field, and be it just for the secure feeling to have it around.

I totally agree to those though, that concrete prices should NOT return.

If money returns (what I hope), then please only as abstract amount.

Its more like "we already have influence, lets not add an alternative" camp. Everyone in this discussion is pro influence/requisition. Some of us just want a monetary framework as well.

Page space can't be that much of an issue. Space - content optimisation in the beta is not very good, and there's probably 50 pages worth of artwork in there too, half which could be cut without issues.

Without the need to add prices to equipment, this is just one (1) small table with maybe 7 categories of cash money and their availability.

Not much space at all.

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 .

There's so many situations where this could happen that I don't even know where to begin, because somehow it's so plainly obvious to me, but evidently not to you.

Let's say that you have played for a very long time. You are filthy wealthy, and this is represented by a ton of Influence. All is well and good. Now let's take the down-on-your-luck scenario presented earlier. You have access to exactly zero of your offworld or upper-hive resources.

But you should, relatively speaking, be hauling around a metric ton of thrones.

You meet someone in the underhive. You need to bribe him, because let's keep using the bribery example, because we all love bribes. You fail the roll to bribe some lowlife junky that you could theoretically cover in wealth.

Or, returning again to the same previous example, what about those situations where it's so little money that you wouldn't realistically use your Influence at all.

Furthermore, the way you want to narrate is backwards. Influence Points is clearly meant to be an abstraction of wealth, influence, contacts, information and leverage. To say that you fail the roll and then create a justification as to why you failed the roll, after the fact, based on factors that have no relation to the definition of Influence Points (which is what you just used to make the roll!) is nothing short of ridiculous !

An Influence Roll is an abstraction. Saying "Do an Influence Points Roll." is basically the same as saying "Roll to see if you can influence this person based on your wealth, influence, contacts, information and/or leverage".

GM: You meet a shady character guarding the door.

Player: Can I bribe him?

GM: Sure, do an Influence Roll to see if you can convince him by means of your wealth, influence, contacts, information or leverage.

Player: But.. I'm walking around covered in gold. Don't I have any money on me that I can just try to give him?

GM: It's abstracted into Influence Points. It's high because you're wealthy as hell. Just do the roll.

Player: *fails roll*

GM: The guy recognizes you as the son of a rival and spits you in the face because of reasons.

All I can say to that is what!? So much what.

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).

And the implying of standardized prices are easily helped by what I described earlier, but to approach this from another angle, you must realize that this is already an issue, no matter what system you use, simply because the very idea of generalized Availability modifiers in itself suggests (as per your own logic) that all items are equally available everywhere.

And thus, would roughly share the same price, anyway.

This is of course not true. But it's the exact same "problem" as having value or prices listed. But even that argument forgoes the most important aspect of having listed values, which is the implied relative worth of items compared to eachother, to give the GM (and the players) an extra tool to work with, and get a feeling for what might be right in every situation.

How expensive is an Autogun on an average Imperial World?

What's the availability of an Autogun on an average Imperial World?

How does this compare to a Lasgun in these two aspects?

Now, what would be a reasonable price or modifier be on, say, a Forge World? Fortress World? Feudal World? Without any ideas of the answers to the former, the latter becomes impossible to figure out or get a feeling for.

The fact that they grossly screwed up on things like Hexagrammatically Warded Malleus Power Armour vs. Best-Craftsmanship Stormtrooper Carapace in DH1 doesn't make the system inherently flawed. Why would a Malleus Power Armour even have a listed price? That's ridiculous! Using cookie-cutter examples on the mistakes similar systems have made isn't a viable counter-argument by itself.

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.

I love the down-to-earth (so to say) stuff, the investigations, the political intrigue, and yes, scrounging by, counting coppers, and the shifts in luck and destitution.

Just because you define your "actually fun" on "punching daemons in the face" doesn't mean everyone does. Even the idea of "torturing heretics" and fighting actual daemons is alien to me for the most part; you make it sound like you're handed a power armour and a rosette from the get-go.

Which I would find dull as hell.

That just exactly hit the spot. Couldnt have said it better. He described very well the odd situations that definitely will occur in at least every second game.

GM: You meet a shady character guarding the door.

Player: Can I bribe him?

GM: Sure, do an Influence Roll to see if you can convince him by means of your wealth, influence, contacts, information or leverage.

Player: But.. I'm walking around covered in gold. Don't I have any money on me that I can just try to give him?

GM: It's abstracted into Influence Points. It's high because you're wealthy as hell. Just do the roll.

Player: *fails roll*

GM: The guy recognizes you as the son of a rival and spits you in the face because of reasons.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

Also the rules tell you not to roll if the outcome is not in doubt. If the player is ridiculously wealthy to the point of being able to instantly bribe the guard, just say it happens. If you make him roll, you are inherently stating that the roll could fail in the story for some reason. This is the same thing with people complaining that if they put a gun to someone's head and pull the trigger that it won't kill them RAW. If what the player does has no chance of failure, don't make them roll for it. Seems simple. I like the idea of a player failing an influence roll with that much money and being spat upon. What kind of thug won't take a bribe like that? What does that tell the player about the thug? Seems like there are a lot of story opportunities suddenly opened up by that failed roll. Not to mention that this may call for a social encounter using the disposition system if the player tries to figure out from the thug what his problem is.

GM: You meet a shady character guarding the door.

Player: Can I bribe him?

GM: Sure, do an Influence Roll to see if you can convince him by means of your wealth, influence, contacts, information or leverage.

Player: But.. I'm walking around covered in gold. Don't I have any money on me that I can just try to give him?

GM: It's abstracted into Influence Points. It's high because you're wealthy as hell. Just do the roll.

Player: *fails roll*

GM: The guy recognizes you as the son of a rival and spits you in the face because of reasons.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

Its roll playing versus role playing. Not using influence in this example opens up the player to actually use his skills for charm or deceive, etc. Both styles are great and equally valid.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

That's a terrible rationalization of a failed roll! Any rationalization should have something to do with the subject matter.

What I described is akin to failing a Swim roll I had to take because the waters are heavy, and the failure is rationalized by a seagull shitting me in the face.

As for your question as to why this necessitates rules for currency, it doesn't. The arguments in favour of listed values of objects is separate. My example was to show that post-hoc justifications (which is virtually a necessity in PnP RP:s) has to make sense and relate to whatever is being abstracted.

It's ridiculous to say that you fail a roll on one thing, and the narrative result then has nothing to do with the roll you made.

How is someone not accepting a bribe from you because he recognizes you as someone he dislikes a poor justification? That seems like a really good one. The justification doesn't always have to do with the player's actual skill. If you want tht level of detail, then use a multiple dice mechanic that uses different dice to represent different factors. Otherwise, with d100, the cause of a failure and success can be anything the GM wants. You might say a player fails a ballistic roll because dust blows up on his face. A melee roll because his sword scrapes the wall. Perception roll because the players hair got in his eyes. It seems pretty logical that a social roll fails because someone decides that he hates you. Why didnt that add a penalty to begin with? The thug didnt recognize you until you offered the bribe. I don't see many players complaining that they want a retroactive penalty being added.

Edit: or if you really want just say the player ineptly offered the bribe or offered way too much and the thug thinks he's arbites.

GM: You meet a shady character guarding the door.

Player: Can I bribe him?

GM: Sure, do an Influence Roll to see if you can convince him by means of your wealth, influence, contacts, information or leverage.

Player: But.. I'm walking around covered in gold. Don't I have any money on me that I can just try to give him?

GM: It's abstracted into Influence Points. It's high because you're wealthy as hell. Just do the roll.

Player: *fails roll*

GM: The guy recognizes you as the son of a rival and spits you in the face because of reasons.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

Its roll playing versus role playing. Not using influence in this example opens up the player to actually use his skills for charm or deceive, etc. Both styles are great and equally valid.

Thanks for trotting out this tired grognardism. Really elevates the level of discourse.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

That's a terrible rationalization of a failed roll! Any rationalization should have something to do with the subject matter.

What I described is akin to failing a Swim roll I had to take because the waters are heavy, and the failure is rationalized by a seagull shitting me in the face.

As for your question as to why this necessitates rules for currency, it doesn't. The arguments in favour of listed values of objects is separate. My example was to show that post-hoc justifications (which is virtually a necessity in PnP RP:s) has to make sense and relate to whatever is being abstracted.

It's ridiculous to say that you fail a roll on one thing, and the narrative result then has nothing to do with the roll you made.

I was going to reply to this but Nimsim wrote it better and faster.

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 .

Except for all those times what you describe makes no sense whatsoever, such as when you end up having a very high Influence, yet still manage to fail the roll, when you absolutely should have enough Thrones on you to bribe him, or pay for whatever services you need.

There's so many situations where this could happen that I don't even know where to begin, because somehow it's so plainly obvious to me, but evidently not to you.

Let's say that you have played for a very long time. You are filthy wealthy, and this is represented by a ton of Influence. All is well and good. Now let's take the down-on-your-luck scenario presented earlier. You have access to exactly zero of your offworld or upper-hive resources.

But you should, relatively speaking, be hauling around a metric ton of thrones.

You meet someone in the underhive. You need to bribe him, because let's keep using the bribery example, because we all love bribes. You fail the roll to bribe some lowlife junky that you could theoretically cover in wealth.

Or, returning again to the same previous example, what about those situations where it's so little money that you wouldn't realistically use your Influence at all.

Furthermore, the way you want to narrate is backwards. Influence Points is clearly meant to be an abstraction of wealth, influence, contacts, information and leverage. To say that you fail the roll and then create a justification as to why you failed the roll, after the fact, based on factors that have no relation to the definition of Influence Points (which is what you just used to make the roll!) is nothing short of ridiculous !

An Influence Roll is an abstraction. Saying "Do an Influence Points Roll." is basically the same as saying "Roll to see if you can influence this person based on your wealth, influence, contacts, information and/or leverage".

GM: You meet a shady character guarding the door.

Player: Can I bribe him?

GM: Sure, do an Influence Roll to see if you can convince him by means of your wealth, influence, contacts, information or leverage.

Player: But.. I'm walking around covered in gold. Don't I have any money on me that I can just try to give him?

GM: It's abstracted into Influence Points. It's high because you're wealthy as hell. Just do the roll.

Player: *fails roll*

GM: The guy recognizes you as the son of a rival and spits you in the face because of reasons.

All I can say to that is what!? So much what.

All I can say to that is, of course you're going to end up with ridiculous results if you're trying to track wealth in a system where there's no wealth to track!

Well, I guess I could also say, if you ask a PC to make a check that basically amounts to "let's see if I have whatever means will be necessary to coerce that guard into certain behavior through the means of my wealth, prestige and political pull", then you really dropped the ball by letting him narrate it beforehand as using wealth that you agree he does have on himself and asking him to roll anyway. It's not the rule that's not making sense, it's your interpretation.

You said it yourself, Influence is an abstracted value representing the sum total of characters' wealth, reputation, accumulated favors and whatnot. Now riddle me this: what differentiates a Highborn character with IF 50 and loads of money and a Hive ganger with IF 50 and lots of dangerous friends in low places?

The only correct answer is: the question is invalid, because you don't get to say "IF X and (whatever justification for the value)." It's just IF X.

Due to that, there's no such thing as "roll to bribe". It's "roll to coerce through your accumulated Influence". This can be a monetary bribe, or an exchange of favors, or simply appeal to the accumulated authority you wield. But it's not defined before you roll it and get to narrate the outcome.

If you use it like that, without making undue presumptions before making the check, there will never be a situation where an Influence roll yields nonsensical results.

If, however, you assume a character is carrying 1k Thrones on his person in a system where there's no such item as Thrones and you're explicitly not supposed to count them, then of course it will make no sense that he can't bribe a "sell my mother for a hot meal" thug. But it's the assumption that's wrong, not the system.

Cps why are you full of such vitriol? My point was valid and didnt detract or belittle either stance in this debate.

Cps why are you full of such vitriol? My point was valid and didnt detract or belittle either stance in this debate.

I think you wrote roll playing to mean "you narrate an outcome after the dice are rolled based on them" and CPS thought you meant it in the classic sense of roll playing being uncreative players who only care about how high their dice roll is. Is that correct? I don't see the intrinsic harm of using roll playing to mean narrating based on dice roll, but Id agree with CPS that tying it to uncreativity just leads to bad arguments.

What was your point? What does roll playing vs role playing even mean? After thinking about your answer, read this article and tell me how your definition is different.

http://rpgtalk.wikia.com/wiki/Role-playing_versus_roll-playing

I meant narration based on the effects of a roll rather than staging the encounter by merit of reactions.

But this is a perfectly valid in-game rationalization of a failed roll? Are you just opposed to post-hoc justifications in all cases? How is this any different from literally any other charm/bribery test, and why does it necessitate rules for currency?

That's a terrible rationalization of a failed roll! Any rationalization should have something to do with the subject matter.

It's a perfectly fine rationalisation very much based in what was involved in test. The PC tests influence . The target recognises the PC by the PCs affiliation with a rival . In other words, influence is exactly what was recognised, it just back-fired on the PC.

As for the roll vs. role playing thing, or whatever terminology, it'd be great if we could leave the hostility aside and quit seeing insults where none are. At least to someone like me, it's a perfectly useful distinction, as I am both. In different groups and games, obviously. But it's a good way to describe the bare basics of a group's playstyle.

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.

The cell is currently operating on a Feudal World where the general population is kept in the dark about the existance of the imperium at large. The cell is operating covertly and without local support as they suspect that the planetary nobility and higher-ups (as in anyone who is likely to know about the imperium) are involved in there investigation. They were smart enough to bring some tradable items and reproduction-local currency but how does that translate to the new Influence system? They have no influence over or rep with the local population, and tradable items and coin are a finite resource so how do you account for the reduction of avaliable wealth every time they buy something (like food).

Perhaps i'm just being alot more detailed than I should with my group but they are enjoying having to plan those details - and when I leave them out of a mission my players quite often complain.

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.

OK tell me how to do the above in influence because I don't see how.

OK tell me how to do the above in influence because I don't see how.

Normally, you just remove "falling back on the authority of the Inquisition" from the repertoire of possible justifications for successful/failed rolls.

All these situations you list are yet more examples of someone trying to complicate a system that was never meant to be complicated and being surprised that their on-the-fly houseruling yielded problems.

OK tell me how to do the above in influence because I don't see how.

Normally, you just remove "falling back on the authority of the Inquisition" from the repertoire of possible justifications for successful/failed rolls.

All these situations you list are yet more examples of someone trying to complicate a system that was never meant to be complicated and being surprised that their on-the-fly houseruling yielded problems.

I respectfully have to disagree. All of those examples all worked within the guidelines and rules of Dark Heresy 1st Edition. Equitable items of worth were used to trade for goods, services, and arms. How exactly does that complicate the system when it used the values and information directly from it?

No, trying to attempt the same scenarios that were perfectly playable under Dark Heresy 1st Edition will result in someone trying to complicate a system and finding what they previously had is now defunct and they then either have to house rule at that point , or change to a different scenario.

I don't like that theres always a player who never gets any equipment because hes unlucky with his influence rolls. The rest of this thread is pretty nonsensical on both sides.