I don't always have the time or the energy to track currency in my elfgames, and although I see the merit in doing so when you're aiming for a specific kind of gamefeel, it's not a great fit for every game. So why is this so often treated as the standard? I mean, it can't be pure nostalgia or blind adherence to the old ways; a lot of the games that still stick with this have traded inventory weight for inventory slots, for instance. Gold for XP could be a plausible reason, but then again, there's no reason you can't implement this with abstracted wealth rules.
Now, while I can't give you a definitive answer to this conundrum (if there even is one), I have spent some time trying to come up with interesting rules for wealth abstraction, just for fun. If nothing else, perhaps these will inspire some game designers to question why they're still sticking with the ol' Copper/Silver/Gold standard rather than experimenting with fun and less disruptive ways of handling wealth in their games.
WEALTH POINTS
You can spend your wealth points (WP) to add positive modifiers to negotiation checks.
When the party finds treasure, tell them how many wealth points they acquired. A small amount of coins would be worth a single WP for the whole party, while a golden statuette with emerald eyes could earn them as many as 5 WPs.
When you want to buy something, you can make a negotiation check by rolling a d20 vs a Difficulty Rating of...
• 10 (mundane/cheap items)
• 14 (uncommon/expensive items)
• 18 (rare/exclusive)
You can bypass a negotiation check entirely by spending a fixed amount of wealth points for each item tier, as seen below:
• Common/cheap: 10 WPs
• Uncommon/expensive: 15 WPs
• Rare/exclusive: 20 WPs
If you still want to brute force your way through a purchase after a failed negotiation attempt, add +5 to the WP cost. Any wealth points spent on the roll are subtracted from the total cost.
✦ Design notes
So, these rules intentionally put a big emphasis on negotiations over fixed prices. This is meant to represent haggling, rather than how much each item is actually worth. Prices normally fluctuate between stores and different regions IRL, so I thought this was a nice way to incorporate that in a game. And since you always have the option of caving in and paying an exorbitant price even if someone is overcharging you for their wares, I added that bit about bypassing negotiations.Finally, if I were to implement this mechanic in a game, I'd definitely want to prepare a reference list for treasure and another for typical items, just to keep things fair and easy to run.
WEALTH USAGE DIE
If you want to keep the Copper/Silver/Gold standard but don't want to bother tracking individual coins, you can simply assign an usage die for each. Then, make three item lists: one for things that can be bought with copper, another for items that can be bought with silver, and one for the truly expensive things that only gold can buy.
• Copper can only buy from the copper list.
• Silver can buy from the copper and silver lists.
• Gold can buy from all three lists.
When you want to buy something, roll a copper, silver or gold usage die, as determined by what you're buying. If you roll a 1 or 2, drop the die by a step (d12 > d10 > d8 > d6 > d4 > nil). If you don't have at least a d4, you simply can't afford to buy the things you want.
After completing a quest or exploring a dungeon, the party can potentially increase their wealth usage dice by a step, depending on how much they earned or pillaged. The standard odds for wealth improvement are...
• Copper: 4-in-6
• Silver: 2-in-6
• Gold 1-in-6
The odds above are subject to both positive and negative changes, per the fiction. If the party was promised a fortune in gold, they might have higher odds of improving their gold usage die. If they were simply out in the sewers killing rats, maybe they only get to try to improve copper or silver (not both), with gold being out of the picture entirely. Such is the life of an adventurer.
✦ Design notes
The biggest hurdle to implementing these rules in a game is deciding the starting wealth of PCs. Do you just give them a d4 in copper, in which case they're flat out broke? Are some classes (if you're using those) wealthier from the get go? Are some even poorer? Balancing this out can be fun, but it's the sort of thing that will directly inform how your game feels in play, at least until the party gets some experience under their belts.GMs can play around with positive and negative modifiers to UD checks, by the way: depending on what you're buying (and from whom), the GM may assign you a positive or negative modifier. This is a good way to represent how cheap or expensive something is, as well as the seller's negotiation skills and their disposition towards the buyer.
WEALTH LEVELS
No rolls, no checks, just a simple Wealth Level (WL).
• At WL1, you can afford common gear, travel rations, simple accommodations, basic services
• At WL2, you can afford quality gear, specialized services, components, luxurious accommodations, weapons, armor, daily wages
• At WL3, you can afford property installments, magic items, monthly wages, horses, livestock
Characters increase their Wealth Level by getting paid for their services, plundering dungeons and undertaking financial ventures. There's no need for hard rules and parameters, either: if it makes fictional sense for a character to be on WL2, then that's their Wealth Level. If they go on a buying spree and overspend, they may drop down to WL1. Easy, clean, simple.
OPTIONAL RULE: if you want to mix gold for XP with these rules, characters can only level up when they reach WL3. Afterwards, they must invest most of their funds into training under a competent tutor, dropping back to WL1.
✦ Design notes
There's no denying that this is an incredibly high trust approach to wealth, bordering on FKR, and that's intentional. If you're completely burned out on currency tracking, this will probably be your favourite take on wealth abstraction in this post. Similarly, this is a great fit for games where wealth doesn't matter all that much, although the optional rule can give it a bit more heft, if that's what you're looking for.ALL ABOUT THAT CASH
A funny thing happened while I was writing this post: I no longer know how I want to handle wealth in most of the games I'm currently developing. A few of these could be a great fit for some of my games, and indeed, they were built on ideas I initially had for the aforementioned games, but dropped for one reason or another. In a way, I guess this means I succeeded at what I set out to do with this post; I just didn't expect to be on the receiving end of it!
Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go have a design-induced existential crisis. Those are always a lot of fun!
