Yeah, some of my players had trouble accepting that over 50 sp their characters were spending 50% of their wealth a day. But of course they were used to D&D where whatever wealth you had was on you (despite being in ridiculous amounts) at all times and only went away when items were purchased or whenever the GM remembered to charge for food, ale, and inn stays. I rather like the High Living rules myself. The abstraction allows for more focus on the PCs and less on equipment. Although the PCs do have their favorite equipment that they may be losing soon. Heh, gonna be a hard session when that happens as they've gotten so used to their Akbitanan weapons they've won throughout the course of 3 adventures. :twisted:
A resource system?
- Thread starter Bailywolf
- Start date
I should add that I'm not saying that every character should squander their cash on wine, women and song but that it does need to go somewhere and I can't see a way for characters on the move to hang onto pots of cash very easily - or indeed for characters who have a 'base of operations' to be able to safely store much cash - most countries being stuffed full of thieves and rogues eager to relieve men of property of their valuables.
Surely the hypothetical aesthete would just ignore the treasure? And everyone else has the problem of transport, security and storage, which will be difficult, to say the least, in a pseudo-medieval world like the Hyborian Age.
I think this is a problem for almost every player. I certainly feel a little voice screaming 'No fair! No fair!' when my character is deprived of his sword and forced to use a weapon with which he is less skilled. Equally some folk have characters who have plate armour or some other such useful thing. But the flavour of the Hyborian Age is surely about the triumph of iron thews and will over adversity. And is not so much about reliance on equipment. And this makes it unlike most rpg settings.
Surely the hypothetical aesthete would just ignore the treasure? And everyone else has the problem of transport, security and storage, which will be difficult, to say the least, in a pseudo-medieval world like the Hyborian Age.
I think this is a problem for almost every player. I certainly feel a little voice screaming 'No fair! No fair!' when my character is deprived of his sword and forced to use a weapon with which he is less skilled. Equally some folk have characters who have plate armour or some other such useful thing. But the flavour of the Hyborian Age is surely about the triumph of iron thews and will over adversity. And is not so much about reliance on equipment. And this makes it unlike most rpg settings.
I have no particular wish for them to keep a spreadsheet of incomings and outgoings. A general idea of how rich they are will do fine.
Well, better adventure for something else then.
I believe you are exaggerating more than slightly. At this rate, we're getting to the question of how ANYONE keeps their wealth for more than two minutes?
Which motivates him to adventure for a non-cash reason... revenge.
I have every sympathy with them. Its their money: why can't they decide for themselves what to do with it?
Why? Why does it "need to go somewhere"? Why can't it just stick around? Maybe get lost as a result of events in scenario, but WHY do we need this silly, intrusive rulke that says what you do with your money? Howard managed to motivate Conan for adventures when he was probably the single richest man on the planet, with the possible exception of the King of Turan.
As we have two players who love to chase treasure, we have a group with wildly differing views on wealth.
One player is frustrated by the idea that half of everything goes away constantly. I'm frustrated by how no one seems to answer the question "Okay, you have cajillion bucks, what are you going to do with it?"
Ironically, I who couldn't care less about equipment, money, or any nonunique stuff have plenty of ideas for how to invest wealth constructively where the players who lust for treasure have no idea what to do with it when they have it other than to roll around in gold coins, laughing maniacally something that sounds like "I won, I won."
Let's take generic ale and whores. What purpose does this serve? Well, if you were the character and not the player, it's college (out of some movie for most of us). That's not terribly important in the long run unless the GM requires checks for venereal diseases or the like. I see there being another purpose - establishing one's credentials as a successful adventurer. It doesn't necessarily help reputation mechanically, but it should be part of someone's rep that they party like it's the Year of the Tapir (if anyone gets this reference ... wow!!!). Buying rounds of drinks for the town should be looked at favorably by nobodyfolk, potential employers, potential robbingfolk and other threats. So, it's networking. And, it's a way to (plausibly) lead into more adventures.
Meanwhile, ideas for where to invest I've floated, our GM has floated, or I just thought of include: upgrading ships, which would seem to be of great interest to the PC who wants to go to Vendhya; donate to churches for religious goodwill; loan to rulers for governmental goodwill; loan to merchants for business payoff; put into construction for fixing all of the collateral damage from the last adventure, generating nobodyfolk goodwill; hiring specialists; paying an army; improving the outfitting of an army; silvering up every bashing and piercing weapon in the party including half the arrows (this being rather important in our play); miscellaneous bribes to ease conducting travel or business; good forgeries of citizenship/travel papers; mounts; better mounts; porters, guides, human shields; medical care.
Basically, the primary thought should be how to turn money into goodwill. Having friends/allies/somebody who thinks they can get rich off of you is way better in Conan just as it's way better in life than having a big bank account or driving a Ferrari. Invest in people, first. The long term payoff is immense. Then, invest in stuff that matters like charters and ships and castles on the beach. Then, hit the brothels. Then, make it rain while walking down the street/alley/trail.
Will the GM have these payoff? Who cares? There wasn't any payoff to wealth in the first place. Does my dropping hundreds of silver on a fisherman ... after he already saved us ... mean jack? If it does, cool. If it doesn't, I had no use for the money anyway (besides silvering up weapons). Is my network any stronger than the greedy barbarian's? I don't know. Oh well, at least I don't have to be irritated by how my character is defined by what crap he carries around like is the norm for D&D.
One player is frustrated by the idea that half of everything goes away constantly. I'm frustrated by how no one seems to answer the question "Okay, you have cajillion bucks, what are you going to do with it?"
Ironically, I who couldn't care less about equipment, money, or any nonunique stuff have plenty of ideas for how to invest wealth constructively where the players who lust for treasure have no idea what to do with it when they have it other than to roll around in gold coins, laughing maniacally something that sounds like "I won, I won."
Let's take generic ale and whores. What purpose does this serve? Well, if you were the character and not the player, it's college (out of some movie for most of us). That's not terribly important in the long run unless the GM requires checks for venereal diseases or the like. I see there being another purpose - establishing one's credentials as a successful adventurer. It doesn't necessarily help reputation mechanically, but it should be part of someone's rep that they party like it's the Year of the Tapir (if anyone gets this reference ... wow!!!). Buying rounds of drinks for the town should be looked at favorably by nobodyfolk, potential employers, potential robbingfolk and other threats. So, it's networking. And, it's a way to (plausibly) lead into more adventures.
Meanwhile, ideas for where to invest I've floated, our GM has floated, or I just thought of include: upgrading ships, which would seem to be of great interest to the PC who wants to go to Vendhya; donate to churches for religious goodwill; loan to rulers for governmental goodwill; loan to merchants for business payoff; put into construction for fixing all of the collateral damage from the last adventure, generating nobodyfolk goodwill; hiring specialists; paying an army; improving the outfitting of an army; silvering up every bashing and piercing weapon in the party including half the arrows (this being rather important in our play); miscellaneous bribes to ease conducting travel or business; good forgeries of citizenship/travel papers; mounts; better mounts; porters, guides, human shields; medical care.
Basically, the primary thought should be how to turn money into goodwill. Having friends/allies/somebody who thinks they can get rich off of you is way better in Conan just as it's way better in life than having a big bank account or driving a Ferrari. Invest in people, first. The long term payoff is immense. Then, invest in stuff that matters like charters and ships and castles on the beach. Then, hit the brothels. Then, make it rain while walking down the street/alley/trail.
Will the GM have these payoff? Who cares? There wasn't any payoff to wealth in the first place. Does my dropping hundreds of silver on a fisherman ... after he already saved us ... mean jack? If it does, cool. If it doesn't, I had no use for the money anyway (besides silvering up weapons). Is my network any stronger than the greedy barbarian's? I don't know. Oh well, at least I don't have to be irritated by how my character is defined by what crap he carries around like is the norm for D&D.
kintire said:
I believe this is because Mongoose was trying to emulate the sword & sorcery genre. Keep in mind, Conan had the motivations that Howard gave him. GMs can't do that as easily with PCs as an author can with his characters. You as GM can try to give them some other motivation but PCs don't always bite. It's a small rule in the system and wouldn't affect much to lose it. If you don't like it then drop it.
Well let's say your character has actually got a treasure beyond his wildest imaginings - say a chest full of jewells. What will he do with it?
Edit: Ichabod seems to have had some thoughts on this that I largely agree with.
By having a stable base of operations - essentially running a business, joining the merchant class or having a stronghold, presumably with the keep sitting on top of the wealth of the world, which is used to pay for the upkeep of said fortress, guards etc. Essentially the store of funds becomes static and more or less vulnerable to pillage, whilst being eroded by the associated overheads. The footloose and fancy free on the other hand have no way of retaining that wealth. they might as well follow the Ichabod route or the Conan route.
Sure, adventures can be imposed by circumstances but sometimes if players have a lot of cash on hand they will likely want to use that cash to ease things, to make the adventure easier if they can (everyone gets a set of chainmail, swords, bows, arrows, three horses, pack horses, they take a month's food with them etc etc) and why not? It's what anyone with the cash would do.
Edit: Ichabod seems to have had some thoughts on this that I largely agree with.
By having a stable base of operations - essentially running a business, joining the merchant class or having a stronghold, presumably with the keep sitting on top of the wealth of the world, which is used to pay for the upkeep of said fortress, guards etc. Essentially the store of funds becomes static and more or less vulnerable to pillage, whilst being eroded by the associated overheads. The footloose and fancy free on the other hand have no way of retaining that wealth. they might as well follow the Ichabod route or the Conan route.
Sure, adventures can be imposed by circumstances but sometimes if players have a lot of cash on hand they will likely want to use that cash to ease things, to make the adventure easier if they can (everyone gets a set of chainmail, swords, bows, arrows, three horses, pack horses, they take a month's food with them etc etc) and why not? It's what anyone with the cash would do.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Well, while you certainly can get around with very little and inexpensive gear, a combination of all the best equipment including Akbitanan Weapon, Superior Plate Armour with Great Helm and the finest Bhalkana warhorse will set you back around ~24.000sp.
Setting a plausible coin size of 100 to the pound, the sum mentioned above converts to two hundred and forty pounds of silver, so you're right, that's not easily transported.
The good news is that this should convert to a more manageable amount of 20 pounds in gold (setting a 12:1 ratio), which due to the gold's density comes down to an ingot roughly the volume of a pound of butter. Less than a pint. No problem for a reasonably strong character to lug that around. Though of course it is still easily lost if the char ever is captured or overcome.
Setting a plausible coin size of 100 to the pound, the sum mentioned above converts to two hundred and forty pounds of silver, so you're right, that's not easily transported.
The good news is that this should convert to a more manageable amount of 20 pounds in gold (setting a 12:1 ratio), which due to the gold's density comes down to an ingot roughly the volume of a pound of butter. Less than a pint. No problem for a reasonably strong character to lug that around. Though of course it is still easily lost if the char ever is captured or overcome.
And he has to lug it everywhere... because it's more money than most folk he encounters will see in their lifetime. He has to sleep with it, take it to the bath-house, the brothel etc etc.
And it can't usefully be an ingot - gold coins, which will be bulkier will be the only easy form for large transactions. At say 10 coins to the pound, it'll be around 200 coins worth.
And it can't usefully be an ingot - gold coins, which will be bulkier will be the only easy form for large transactions. At say 10 coins to the pound, it'll be around 200 coins worth.
treeplanter
Mongoose
The thing is the Conan setting is meant to have cash/wealth at a moment but none at other.
So the party could own a ship and raiding the black coast one day, having good weapon and armor plus a loyal crew availaible, plundering and amassing ton of treasure and jewel.
But the could also likely attacked by a Zingaran galley couple of month latter and trown in jail. So about a year later they're in they've escaped and fled in the pictish wilderness were they are exhausted and desperetly looking for water.
To me that is the most enjoying part of Conan. True, you could made a kind of an ongoing campain a la DnD were PC accumulate silver, gold, equipement and were every game start were the last one finish, but this is not Conan
So the party could own a ship and raiding the black coast one day, having good weapon and armor plus a loyal crew availaible, plundering and amassing ton of treasure and jewel.
But the could also likely attacked by a Zingaran galley couple of month latter and trown in jail. So about a year later they're in they've escaped and fled in the pictish wilderness were they are exhausted and desperetly looking for water.
To me that is the most enjoying part of Conan. True, you could made a kind of an ongoing campain a la DnD were PC accumulate silver, gold, equipement and were every game start were the last one finish, but this is not Conan
Sir Hackalot
Mongoose
I think the best way to handle something like this is for the characters to have a goal to be persued. They may want revenge on someone, they may want to raise their army of bandits, a pirate crew, build a temple to their god and so forth. All of these things cost money, money that they will have to persue in order attain these goals.
Money should be a means to an end, when it come to that then the game becomes much more interesting.
Money should be a means to an end, when it come to that then the game becomes much more interesting.
I am with Kintire on this one. Money isn't a problem, it is a tool. If your players are just amassing it in great piles and never doing anything with it... well. That is very much their loss. And if it makes them not want to adventure at all anymore... well, again, their loss. Why are they playing anyway?
Ichabod has the uses of money fairly exact.
There is an aspect of this discussion that I don't see addressed though.
The 'Episodic' types of players vs. the 'Continuous' types of players. Continuous types ( like myself ) seem more prone to disliking having their actions dictated to them or defined by the system or GM.
You Episodic types seem to think that is the way things 'should' be, for proper story flow 'and' ( here is the point ) to keep your players motivated and at the positioning/social point/power level that you want them.
This is the second part that troubles me. Like a glass ceiling effect.
Basically I get the impression that a lot of the fans of high living favor it as an arbitrary way to melt away the wealth of players and keep them from having and using wealth with their characters... while still allowing them to have big piles of gems and gold at the end of adventures.
It seems more as a mechanism to limit player/character growth in the social sphere rather than anything else, and that is something that has always annoyed me in any game.
Ichabod has the uses of money fairly exact.
There is an aspect of this discussion that I don't see addressed though.
The 'Episodic' types of players vs. the 'Continuous' types of players. Continuous types ( like myself ) seem more prone to disliking having their actions dictated to them or defined by the system or GM.
You Episodic types seem to think that is the way things 'should' be, for proper story flow 'and' ( here is the point ) to keep your players motivated and at the positioning/social point/power level that you want them.
This is the second part that troubles me. Like a glass ceiling effect.
Basically I get the impression that a lot of the fans of high living favor it as an arbitrary way to melt away the wealth of players and keep them from having and using wealth with their characters... while still allowing them to have big piles of gems and gold at the end of adventures.
It seems more as a mechanism to limit player/character growth in the social sphere rather than anything else, and that is something that has always annoyed me in any game.
Why should it? A character in an episodic campaign can have long term allies, enemies, acquaintances, family, pets etc etc and they can develop 'deep' relations with these, if the players wish.
There's obviously no need to restrict cash or enforce the high living rules but doing so does not inhibit the social development of characters one whit. It might, of course inhibit their chances of being upwardly mobile in society. But that's a quite different thing. And if players don't want a big house and hordes of flunkeys fawning over them while the neighbouring barons look down their noses condescendingly at dinner parties (while eyeing the chances of a successful raid) then what do they need all that money for. And of course the upkeep of such and estate can be simulated by 'high living' rules or a slight modification of them.
treeplanter
Mongoose
What I hate in continueous play:
- Player can gain 10 level in 2 months. That is stupid.
- Player's get obsessed with wealth/equipment/shopping.
- You can't change the pace of the game/campain when you fell it get stuck or get boring (a while ago I add a lot of dnd game who eventually ended cause of this)
- It make thing more difficult for the DM to explore the different aspect and the different place offered by Conan RPG.
What I like in episodic style:
- Your character can potentially have a much larger story since he can devellop himself what happen between episode.
- Since no time is devoted to keep track of wealth equipment and crap mean there is more emphase on character, NPC, roleplay and intrigue.
- It is the way REH wrote Conan!!!
Of course this is my personnal opinion. If you like having 1000 sp and looking in the book for what you could buy and waking up the day after each session, then good for you.
- Player can gain 10 level in 2 months. That is stupid.
- Player's get obsessed with wealth/equipment/shopping.
- You can't change the pace of the game/campain when you fell it get stuck or get boring (a while ago I add a lot of dnd game who eventually ended cause of this)
- It make thing more difficult for the DM to explore the different aspect and the different place offered by Conan RPG.
What I like in episodic style:
- Your character can potentially have a much larger story since he can devellop himself what happen between episode.
- Since no time is devoted to keep track of wealth equipment and crap mean there is more emphase on character, NPC, roleplay and intrigue.
- It is the way REH wrote Conan!!!
Of course this is my personnal opinion. If you like having 1000 sp and looking in the book for what you could buy and waking up the day after each session, then good for you.
treeplanter said:
I don't think the above three points are necessarily (or indeed often) true though the third one holds the most water.
treeplanter said:
I agree with the above three points pretty much, though it is fair to say that I have never yet met a GM anal (pun intended) enough to require players to record the fecal habits of their characters.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Never played a lot of Rolemaster, have you?
"Daily defecation table roll
66: soft and brown"
"Daily defecation table roll
66: soft and brown"
treeplanter
Mongoose
LOL
Or alternatively, he could leave it at the bank.
You are reeling out a whole list of problems, and apparently assuming that no one has ever come up with any solutions. Are you aware that the earliest lawcode we have, attributed to Hammurabi of Babylon, and dating from c18th century BC, has laws regulating banks? Best guess is they were about a thousand years old at that point, mostly run by temples.
And again, who says that the PCs are landless wanderers? Again, this looks a bit like an attempt to impose one set of assumptions on all campaigns. "Noble" is a character class, you know. So is Scholar. Not all adventurers are low class scum.
You ask the question "why not?" but you don't give an answer. Indeed, why shouldn't they? The only reason I can think of is "because they have been arbitrarily stripped of all wealth."
Ancient and medieval banks weren't quite as sophisticated as they are today. They weren't open to just anyone and they tended to deal with either men of title or with the merchant class. And they didn't exist in every town by any means. While one could receive a note that would allow one to draw on a banker in another city or indeed another country, such notes were not universally honoured. Thus if Otho of Numalia issues a note for 2000 gold lunas to be drawn on Milo of Messantia, it will be honoured only by Milo. And Milo isn't going to hand over the money unless he's presented the note by a person of standing (a merchant with credentials or a noble). Notes were transferred between bankers but these were transactions between men who knew each other, at least by repute.
Now, nothing stops you having a more flexible banking system in your campaign if you like but it was the case in ancient times and well into the middle ages that large amounts of money had to be invested - either in trade or in property. In the middle ages, only governments could safely stockpile (and most did not, most ran up ruinous debt, recovering it by swingeing taxes). Most individuals with large amounts of coin that they could not safely bank (for whatever reason) buried it. Hence the large number of coin deposits regularly unearthered in the UK.
Also, in most towns and villages, walking down the street with enough gold coin to buy a warhorse is basically like carrying £250 000 down the street in Central Africa today. And about as useful. Nobody will be able to change a gold coin - only in the rich districts of the rich cities will even silver coin be readily changeable, let alone gold.
Don't you find your characters having more and better gear than their foes is a bit... well... cheap?
Now, nothing stops you having a more flexible banking system in your campaign if you like but it was the case in ancient times and well into the middle ages that large amounts of money had to be invested - either in trade or in property. In the middle ages, only governments could safely stockpile (and most did not, most ran up ruinous debt, recovering it by swingeing taxes). Most individuals with large amounts of coin that they could not safely bank (for whatever reason) buried it. Hence the large number of coin deposits regularly unearthered in the UK.
Also, in most towns and villages, walking down the street with enough gold coin to buy a warhorse is basically like carrying £250 000 down the street in Central Africa today. And about as useful. Nobody will be able to change a gold coin - only in the rich districts of the rich cities will even silver coin be readily changeable, let alone gold.
Don't you find your characters having more and better gear than their foes is a bit... well... cheap?
Not at all.
Or at least not as a general assumption.
If I am playing a cimmerian or pictish barbarian... sure.
If I am playing an Aquilonian Noble or a Kothic Sorcerer for example... not in the slightest. They 'should' have better gear than the next guy. And more servants, retainers, men-at-arms/followers... and money to throw at problems.
That is part of the point.
The impression I am getting from the 'High Living Is Awesome!' crowd is they would rather players did not have money because they find it inconvenient to have to deal with. Which leads me back to the glass ceiling impression I was getting before... where basically it seems like the idea is that PCs in your view 'should' be the wandering hero type of people. Which, coincidentally, is ... pretty much 'never' what I play, and probably why I find that play style rather annoying and limiting.
The device used in 'continuous play' to cover the passage of longer spans of time and allow for story flow etc is 'down time'. Let some time pass and, depending on what people decide what they do with themselves in the interim, make adustments/adjudicate a little... and then game on. But the point here, and this is critical to me, is that in 'down time' the player is still in contorl of their character. They decide what they are doing, how they are using their resources, and the GM is still the adjudicator. This differs from 'episodic style', or at least my impression of episodic style, in that the episodic types seem quite enamored by the idea of the GM simply designing a scenario and telling the players how they ended up there, and what they did to get there etc. Oh, and how they lost all of the wealth/power/resources they had acquired in the game up until that point to end up wandering in the desert, searching for water... and etc etc etc.
I can not think of anything that would annoy me more. I would strongly consider walking away from the table right there.
Not that I would mind if my character ended up in dire straits. But to be told, by someone else, what 'I' did to get myself there... rather than having it happen in play. Well... I just think that is vastly presumptive and arrogant on the part of the GM. It is 'my' character. I say what they do. That is the point of having one.
And that is the rub of 'High Living'. It takes control of the character and what they do away from the player and arbitrarily dictates that you 'must' be wastful in some way with your resources. Vastly annoying.
Or at least not as a general assumption.
If I am playing a cimmerian or pictish barbarian... sure.
If I am playing an Aquilonian Noble or a Kothic Sorcerer for example... not in the slightest. They 'should' have better gear than the next guy. And more servants, retainers, men-at-arms/followers... and money to throw at problems.
That is part of the point.
The impression I am getting from the 'High Living Is Awesome!' crowd is they would rather players did not have money because they find it inconvenient to have to deal with. Which leads me back to the glass ceiling impression I was getting before... where basically it seems like the idea is that PCs in your view 'should' be the wandering hero type of people. Which, coincidentally, is ... pretty much 'never' what I play, and probably why I find that play style rather annoying and limiting.
The device used in 'continuous play' to cover the passage of longer spans of time and allow for story flow etc is 'down time'. Let some time pass and, depending on what people decide what they do with themselves in the interim, make adustments/adjudicate a little... and then game on. But the point here, and this is critical to me, is that in 'down time' the player is still in contorl of their character. They decide what they are doing, how they are using their resources, and the GM is still the adjudicator. This differs from 'episodic style', or at least my impression of episodic style, in that the episodic types seem quite enamored by the idea of the GM simply designing a scenario and telling the players how they ended up there, and what they did to get there etc. Oh, and how they lost all of the wealth/power/resources they had acquired in the game up until that point to end up wandering in the desert, searching for water... and etc etc etc.
I can not think of anything that would annoy me more. I would strongly consider walking away from the table right there.
Not that I would mind if my character ended up in dire straits. But to be told, by someone else, what 'I' did to get myself there... rather than having it happen in play. Well... I just think that is vastly presumptive and arrogant on the part of the GM. It is 'my' character. I say what they do. That is the point of having one.
And that is the rub of 'High Living'. It takes control of the character and what they do away from the player and arbitrarily dictates that you 'must' be wastful in some way with your resources. Vastly annoying.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
IMO there is no need to keep PCs poor for gear-related reasons. The different types of gear have a very steep price curve for a very shallow power increase. There's nothing wrong with PCs wielding Broadswords or similar weapons most of the time, it fits in the genre. As for armour, so far none of the players I played with ever wanted anything heavier than a Chain Shirt and Steel Cap. That's a total value of about 600sp (for weapons and armour). You'd have to keep them on a short leash indeed if you think that kind of gear would spoil the players - personally I'd find it frustrating.
However, where lots of cash can be a disturbance is when the players get the idea they are so filthy rich they should be able to simply buy off any mundane NPC they normally would have to either fight or fight some other way around. Indeed it would be hard to believe that some dungeon guard would rather die than accept a bag of gold and look the other way when some strangers spring their companion from prison, just to name one example.
Also - and here you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - there's the question of character motivation. If you let characters accumulate a lot of wealth, their players will soon find there's no reason for the characters to continue adventuring - it would be like a millionaire signing up for front line military service in a war zone. And on the other hand, if you enforce High Living and have any amount of wealth melt away within a few weeks, it's a natural reaction for the players not to bite on another treasure-hunting hook at some point. "Never mind counting the treasure, it will all be gone when we meet this time next week."
Over all, I think players and GM need to be one the same page concerning wealth and its usage. There just won't be a lot of happiness coming from GM and players having totally different views on how rich the characters should be and what they would do with the cash.
On a different note, concerning wealth storage: please please please leave the banks out of the game. No matter what the historical evidence. It's a Sword & Sorcery game, not Bankers & Brokers. Can you imagine Conan's coming into Kordava, walking into a bank and producing a writ over ten thousand crowns?
I know only one P&P fantasy game setting that officially features banks, and that's a very un-fantastic and dry setting. And fwiw, I'm convinced the authors introduced those banks only after realizing they made gold and silver so inflationary cheap, you couldn't even carry enough gold to live off it, much less to save up for a plate armour (about 50 pounds of gold iirc) or similar gear.
Again, I simply don't see one good reason why you should introduce something so entirely genre-raping as banks into a Conan game.
However, where lots of cash can be a disturbance is when the players get the idea they are so filthy rich they should be able to simply buy off any mundane NPC they normally would have to either fight or fight some other way around. Indeed it would be hard to believe that some dungeon guard would rather die than accept a bag of gold and look the other way when some strangers spring their companion from prison, just to name one example.
Also - and here you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - there's the question of character motivation. If you let characters accumulate a lot of wealth, their players will soon find there's no reason for the characters to continue adventuring - it would be like a millionaire signing up for front line military service in a war zone. And on the other hand, if you enforce High Living and have any amount of wealth melt away within a few weeks, it's a natural reaction for the players not to bite on another treasure-hunting hook at some point. "Never mind counting the treasure, it will all be gone when we meet this time next week."
Over all, I think players and GM need to be one the same page concerning wealth and its usage. There just won't be a lot of happiness coming from GM and players having totally different views on how rich the characters should be and what they would do with the cash.
On a different note, concerning wealth storage: please please please leave the banks out of the game. No matter what the historical evidence. It's a Sword & Sorcery game, not Bankers & Brokers. Can you imagine Conan's coming into Kordava, walking into a bank and producing a writ over ten thousand crowns?
I know only one P&P fantasy game setting that officially features banks, and that's a very un-fantastic and dry setting. And fwiw, I'm convinced the authors introduced those banks only after realizing they made gold and silver so inflationary cheap, you couldn't even carry enough gold to live off it, much less to save up for a plate armour (about 50 pounds of gold iirc) or similar gear.
Again, I simply don't see one good reason why you should introduce something so entirely genre-raping as banks into a Conan game.
