Buying things with money

[Project28]

(I tried looking around the forums for topics on in game money and didn't find anything that covers this.)

So in 20th anniversary we have updated monetary values applied to the resources background. Cool. However looking at the lists of weapons and armours there's no price. I get it, you might not be in the U.S. You might live in say Guatemala and want to set your Mummy the Resurrection game there because you and your players all know the city of Quetzaltenango and the price of Heavy Leathers as armour will be different from say a troupe playing in Sevrei, Mongolia.

I've been running a long campaign which started in 2008 (hasn't been continuous, years gaps in between) and money's never hugely come up because buying things wasn't a big thing except for once or twice. My point is, am I supposed to just Google everything to get the first price I see and use that as an indication or is there a mechanic I've blatantly missed along the way?

Thank you for your help.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Do we have updated monetary values? I just see loose descriptions of quality-of-life kinda thing.
You should generally go with -sounds about right- , perhaps look into citations when something's cheaper or more expensive than someone thinks it is.

I imagine each dot is a multiple of the last, so, assuming a relatively wealthy nation with wealth disparity but not a state of paupers and billionaires (say Australia, France, Poland, Japan, Taiwan) if one-dot of resources is minimum wage and a person owns "10" , two dots of resources has 20, three dots of resources has 60... and so on. Someone with 5 dots is worth worth 120 min-wagers. Note if you do this then 10 dots still isn't enough to capture the scope of wealth that the world's richest billionaires have.
When you live in a place with a huge disparity of wealth, 3+ is probably the same as it is in more developed nations, 1 or 2 dots are weaker.

At one dot, you should actually consider your character's budget for equipment.
At two dots, you can fully outfit yourself with gear, just don't go crazy
At three dots, you can fully outfit yourself with gear, and finance two other people at two dots or five people at one dot, or do something expensive (like maintain a small plane, or buy a black market machinegun)

Another handy rule of thumb for employing people is to use their dice pools to evaluate how much they're worth. You pay someone with 4 dice 1 'point of resources' , someone with 6 dice 2 dots of resources, someone with eight dice 3 dots of resources. If you have 4 dots of resources you actually have the money value of 24 poor (1) people, 12 skilled working (2) people, 4 working elite (3 dot people and you can work out some maths to give yourself a big boost (This is assuming personal income; Richer individuals have influence and assets and can get their companies to do things rather than use their own private wealth. I'm also not taking into account that sometimes people can be short-changed for their skills, like migrant workers, or demand more money than they're worth, like American doctors)

As you're generally playing supernaturals, most characters can get beyond the troublesome 0 or 1-dot of resources very quick unless they're actively eschewing wealth.

[Project28]

My mistake, had a brain fart. There's no monetary values in V20, W20, M20, C20 and resources isn't even a thing in Wr20. I was thinking of Revised edition that provides actual money (which I suppose you could put through an inflation calculator and then convert into your local currency from $ at current exchange rates.)

1 dot was $1,000 in cash if liquidated and $500 income per month
2 dot was $8,000 in cash if liquidated and $1,200 income per month
3 dot was $50,000 in cash if liquidated and $3,000 income per month
4 dot was $500,000 in cash if liquidated and $9,000 income per month
5 dot was $5,000,000 in cash if liquidated and $30,000 income per month

Edit: Well it was 1998, the state of money was very different.

[MyWifeIsScary]

That's very different from V20, where 4 is a low-grade millionaire and 5 is a multimillionaire.

[baakyocalder]

Mage 20 has Resources go up to 10, but characters can pool resources. Still, 4 or 5 dots is quite a bit. Mages don't really need much money as they get more powerful, unless money is part of their Focus.

If you want appropriate resource costs in dots for weapons and black-market items, check out Darknet Markets.

https://www.storytellersvault.com/pr...arknet-Markets

[Project28]

Oh wow, good shout Baakyocalder, thanks.

[Dogstar]

An alternative is to use an idea from the Modern20 rules and make a 'Resources check' when a character wants to buy something expensive - bearing in mind that 'expensive' is relative to their level of resources.

Thus, as an example, a Resources 4 character who wants to buy a million dollar sports car would roll 4D against a target of 5, while a resources 1 character would roll 1D against a target of 12 (and don't allow Willpower on this check!)