Wealth

Handling money for incidental purchases

Your character’s gear will be bought with Logistic Points, as per Sprawlrunners. LP represents not just the cost of acquiring any old gear, but the cost of acquiring gear suitable for crime: untraceable, scrubbed of all hidden RFID tags, no inconvenient ballistics records on file, etc.

Occasionally, though, your character might need to buy other things. Incidental lifestyle expenses in the game (eg. if Mr Johnson stiffs you on the restaurant bill.) Bribes to get past a snooty nightclub bouncer. Spreading some cash around to grease the wheels during legwork.

For these, I am going to use the SWADE wealth mechanic (pg 145.) These abstract the amount of liquid cash your character has available to a SWADE-style die type.

Starting wealth

At the start of each mission, Wealth resets to your lifestyle’s die type. For most characters, that’s a d6. If you have the Poverty hindrance, it’s a d4. The Rich edge makes it a d8; the Filthy Rich edge a d10.

Trolls starting wealth die is one step worse than usual, because of their increased lifestyle costs.

If you use the Side Hustle downtime action, you can get a temporary bonus to your wealth.

Spending Wealth

When the time comes to spend money, I’ll tell you what to do, based on how much you’re spending and what your current Wealth die is:

  • If it’s a trivial amount, you succeed automatically. (If you make a lot of trivial purchases in a row, I might eventually call for a Wealth check on one, just to represent the accumulated expenditure.)
  • If it’s too large an amount, you simply cannot afford it. Sorry chummer.
  • If it’s somewhere in the middle, roll a Wealth check. If it succeeds, you can afford the expense, but your Wealth die goes down a step. If you get a Raise, you can afford it and you don’t need to reduce your Wealth die.

Note that this might mean that when (say) splitting a restaurant bill, some of you are rolling to see if you can afford it, and others aren’t. It sucks to be poor.