Editing Money (section)

===Money in Even More Modern Settings===
In theory, representing the currency system of an [[Industrial Revolution]] or later setting should be easy, as it's essentially a system everyone already knows. In practice, real monetary systems are far too volatile to be realistically represented in a game, as values can vary heavily not only year to year, but month to month and place to place. Further complicating things is that real money costs aren't really aligned with the gameplay needs of player characters or balance, and a majority of income is typically spent on living expenses that don't impact the game at all. As such, several systems have created systems to avoid dealing with this.

''[[D20 Modern]]'' introduced an abstract wealth score that allowed ignoring costs for minor purchases and not keeping track of modern fiances. This system is a total clusterfuck. Among its flaws are the high degree of randomness, which in turn requires the DM be present for character generation pre-errata (post-errata you can take 10 there to avoid it, though large purchases still have random costs), odd values, and generally being more unwieldy than the basic addition/subtraction it replaced. ''d20 Apocalypse'' introduced a barter system, but it was non-comprehensive, geared toward a very specific setting, and largely dart board in its value.

The original, White Wolf 3.5 version, and fan-made [[DM's Guild]] incarnations of ''[[Masque of the Red Death]]'' all use relatively standard for the medium depictions of wealth. The [[RPGA]] variant however, takes the interesting approach of giving characters an amount of money between adventures and declaring it represented merely their ''disposable'' income, explicitly rejecting the idea of them being pennyless hobos and leaving their personal finances to behind the scenes. Another interesting thing done by this version of the game is it explicitly encouraged use of period mail order catalogs as a supplement to its meager equipment list. Sadly, this came ''before'' they were all digitized and easily obtained as free, public domain, PDFs on the internet and required reproductions or the distant hope of finding one in a library. Made worse by the RPGA requiring players bring all used sources, so its suggestion of checking the library is instantly rendered non-viable.

Some games have ditched use of any form of currency to buy effects entirely, and instead price things purely on their mechanical effect. d20 Modern's child ''Spycraft 2.0'' has player characters get access to new and more powerful gadgets as they level up. This system is abstract and can represent issued gear, stuff the character created, or just what they can spare for their adventures. ''[[Mutants & Masterminds]]'' has equipment (generic mundane items) and gadgets (unique, special, items) priced in character points based purely on what gameplay effect they generate: Items that produce Ranged Damage 4 costs a fixed number of points, regardless of if it's a space blaster or magic bracers that let you throw lightning bolts. A character can be wealthy for a low cost, reflecting that while it may occasionally enable creative solutions (buy out the only company that can supply an important component the bad guy needs) it's not going to make Godzilla go away.

[[Category:History]][[Category:Not related]]