I am curious on a few aspects of the game concerning resources and money.
The first is how to generate money through non resources. I see begging can give cash in the skill description. Can other skills make money? Can I for example roll blacksmith with the intent to generate 2d of cash.
Next is building up property. How do you represent building up property or businesses in game? If I open a shop or business, would it best be represented as a fund, an affiliation or what? A business should be improved through a relevant skill test so increasing resources seems wrong. I should be able to make a better cooper shop through cooper for instance.
edited to fix typos and errors from making on my mobile.
Resources is an abstract system that keeps us in touch with our characters finances without upstaging the storyline.
If you want to earn a die or two in cash from a skill, we generally set the obstacle at twice the dice to be received with failures based on how badly you miss the obstacle by (so the greater the risks, the greater the rewards, it isn’t RAW, but it’s fun.)
As far as businesses being built by skill, that’s true, but not necessarily the skill of the craftsman as it is the skill of the businessman, and that’s where loans, partnerships, etc. (Resources) come in to play.
If you want to generate money in play, write a belief about it, and then go. That’s all you need. Normal Task and Intent rules can handle it from there.
But with task and intent you could justify making better barrels (Cooping) as the task to fulfill the intent of building a better “cooping” business
I would borrow the +2 Ob to make superior quality (anything) from the Weaponsmith skill as a rule of thumb, and if the character is consistently turning out superior quality barrels can a reputation trait vote or advantage die be far behind?
GM decides if task matches intent. If their intent is to make a fantastic barrel, I’d set an Ob in that. If their goal is to coop so good that their business improves and they buildup property, I’m probably not setting an Ob on that. There’s too many other factors that have nothing to do with their skill: demand, cost of supplies, publicity, patronage, competition. Now if they put in the work to move those premium barrels at a profit, I’m all in.
You can always find ways to tweak the rules to accomplish something. Ultimately, it comes down to whether this barrel making business is worthy of play, where beliefs are on the line and stuff is happening, or if it’s just a distraction from more important matters. If it’s just downtime action, I would probably use the “get a job” rules. Building up property for its own sake doesn’t really matter to the game much. If it’s taking up RP time, I want it to be relevant to beliefs, because it’s going to take up lots of brain space.
The GM always has the right to break up a Task and Intent into smaller subtasks and subintents. If your intent is to grow your cooping business, then that’ll probably require a number of tests, including but not limited to, Cooping, Haggling, Administration, Accounting, Persuasion, Customer-wise, etc. Which is why I recommended writing a belief about it. All this can be handled by the normal rules for Task and Intent.
You can only generate cash from Resources.
Begging pulls cash from other people and puts it in your pocket.
The Blacksmith creates wares. Valuing or selling them is not part of the skill.
There is an asymmetry in the different types of resources dice. Cash dice, Funds dice, Taxed Resources, and your regular Resources exponent all function slightly differently. So while its totally within the scope of the rules to use Blacksmith to recover lost Resources dice, you can’t use the skill to generate Cash/Funds. That said, I think it’s totally appropriate to use Blacksmith in a Linked Resources test: smithing a nice sword to sell, for example, or, more abstractly, spending extra time and work at your smithy during the Resources cycle for an advantage to your lifestyle maintenance. Of course, this comes with risk: If you fail your Blacksmith test, you’ve wasted a lot of time and material making shoddy goods which are harder to sell.