I’m resurrecting this idea that +Jeremy Strandberg had about wealth-as-abstraction. Rather than having wealth as a stat, wealth can be an expendable resource, so when you use it, you roll+wealth spent. That would give you a Supply move that looks like this:
When you outfit yourself for adventure, choose three pieces of gear based on the steading’s Prosperity that you want to acquire, and roll+wealth spent. *On a 10+, you find it all, no problem. *On a 7-9, choose one:
You can’t find everything you need, you only get two pieces of gear.
It’s expensive, spend 1 more wealth.
Throwing around all that money draws some unwanted attention.
More Prosperous steadings have more and better stuff for sale, though there may need to be some counterbalance that makes wealth more valuable based on a number of factors. This is just a first draft.
That’s pretty much barter from Apocalypse World, right?
What’s the appeal of abstracting wealth? I never quite got why you’d want to…
It’s an intriguing idea, but i’m not sold on it.
I figure the reason DW uses Coin instead of “barter” is a throwback to the old tropes. You want loot. You want discrete piles of someone else treasure. There is something tasty about tomb robbing, about pillaging, about counting the ill gotten gains after a score.
Coin is a nice balance between counting every copper, silver, gold, and platinum, every candle stick and chipped gem separately, while still getting a sense of the scale of how much loot ya got.
That said, i used to be rather cheap with treasure during my D&D days – i gave out too much once or twice, and it broke the economy. I really like that DW can’t get broke that way, and instead of worrying over coin, i just go with what the treasure rolls reveal.
Ya got 50 coin? badass!
Ya got 1500 coin? badass!
on the subject, how do you guys deal with the weight of coin? for example, in the loot table, certain results can give you ‘small chest etc’ worth #D# x 100, weight 1. EVERY time one of my party gets somthing like this, they immediately split the treasure and the weight becomes meaningless :/
Beak McNose, 100 coins is 1 weight, per the book. We round to the nearest hundred, rather than always rounding down, but either way, unless everyone able to keep just below the “trigger” number of coins, they will end up with some of their load taken up by coins.
In the case of “A chest of coins and other small valuables: 1 weight but worth 3d6×100 coins,” I would simply say that the chest itself is a significant part of the value, and it’s a big part of the weight–think of it as a valuable collection in a fancy case: if you take the stuff out and split it up, it loses a lot of the value. So someone has to take the weight of the chest if they want the full value.
Justus Goldstein-Shirley thanks for the reply! The idea of the chest being part of the value is great, I hadnt thought of that! like a collection of trinkets or pages from a legendary tome or something, where the value is in the group together.
I’ve had a look through the book, and the only reference i can find to the weight of coin is in the loot table:
7: A bag of coins, 1d4×100 or thereabouts. 1 weight per 100.
this doesnt seem to be mentioned anywhere else, and if it is meant to be a universal rule, it seems odd that they would hide it in the loot table, and not mention it in the Equipment, Playing the game, DM’ing sections, or just include it on the character sheets next to Gear. Unless i’m missing something of course.
It’s odd though, because for aaaaages I used to tell my players that 100 coin was 1 weight, possibly gleaned from that result from the Loot table, but eventually i said “ok this seems to be breaking things, i know it’s not realistic but lets make coin weigh 0”.
I’d be interested how it affects the game if 100 coin is 1 weight, do players just drop piles of 51 gold so they can pick up an important item, do they send coin home on the back of a mule with a (hopefully trustworthy) NPC, do they hide it and maybe come back later with a convoy of wagons?
Beak McNose, it’s also listed in the General Equipment Tags glossary:
“n weight: Count the listed amount against your Load. Something with no listed weight isn’t designed to be carried. 100 coins in standard denominations is 1 weight. The same value in gems or fine art may be lighter or heavier.”
I definitely agree that it could be mentioned more prominently, but at least it’s in two different places.
Anyway, I’ve never had this be any sort of issue; I don’t think characters have actually ever had to risk encumbrance due to coins. I imagine they would just have to drop some value of coins to get below the threshold if they needed.