Cash & Funds Table

I believe that at the top of this page Luke said that’s exactly what BWHQ does. Maybe it won’t be 100% perfect, but it’s far from completely arbitrary so it sounds like a good starting place. (And of COURSE this post would start a new page . . . The top of last page then . . .)

However, personally, that sounds pretty high. (2D cash for a days labour?) I’d go for something like Cash Dice = Resource Ob to get a more reasonable number. Like others have said, this is all pretty subjective, depending on your style of campaign.

And FigureFour, if I get frustrated sometimes because I’ve been trying (like others have) to master BW rules for years because I think it’s the awesomest game ever, I’m OK with this. I don’t have an ax to grind with BWHQ; they know I love 'em.

Yeah, I’ve seen you around before, so I don’t think you’re a crazy disgruntled asshole or anything, just that you seemed to be going down a terribly unproductive path when there was an easy solution in front of you.

Okay, here’s a quick start-

Sample Cash Dice Table
1D- Singing for your supper. Picking a pocket in the market.
2D- Picking a fat purse in the market. Looting a hamlet.
3D- Looting a village.
4D- Loot from a small troll’s cave.
5D-
6D- 100 barrels of silver pennies.
7D-
8D-
9D-
10D- Looting a large city.

Sample Funds Table
1D- A village priest’s living. Small-scale blackmail. Village girl’s dowry.
2D- A knight’s fee. Miller’s life savings.
3D- A lord’s manor. A prebend (canon’s living).
4D- Marrying the heiress to a barony. A queen’s dower.
5D-
6D- A treasure chest of gold and jewels.
7D-
8D-
9D-
10D- Smaug’s hoard.

Things to Add to the List:
The provost’s tax haul from Upton village
The provost’s tax haul from Upton county
A dwarven hoard.

Feel free to add items to the tables or to move items from the “to do” list to the tables (or to add cool items to the “to do” list for that matter). Also, if you’re a BW veteran feel free to comment on the appropriate value of items on the list or move them to their proper value.

I’ll revisit this when I get back next week. When it’s done it should resemble the Resources Ob table on page 366-367 of BWG. Thanks for all the replies!

  • I realize these values will vary according to what’s going on in the campaign. These values are meant to serve as a baseline. Adjust accordingly.
  • For goods and commodities, just double the value from the Resources Ob table (and proceed to haggling?) to convert the items into cash dice.
  • I wonder if loot from combat should be different: e.g. loot large city- 2D cash dice for common soldiers, 3D cash dice for knights, 3D fund for commander.

Okay, here’s a quick start-

Sample Cash Dice Table
1D- Singing for your supper. Picking a pocket in the market. A small pouch of silver.
2D- Picking a fat purse in the market. Looting a hamlet.
3D- Looting a village. A valuable tapestry.
4D- Loot from a small troll’s cave.
5D-
6D- 100 barrels of silver pennies.
7D-
8D-
9D-
10D- Looting a large city.

Sample Funds Table
1D- A village priest’s living. Small-scale blackmail. Village girl’s dowry. A small living.
2D- A knight’s fee. Miller’s life savings. A going concern.
3D- A lord’s manor. A prebend (canon’s living). A thriving business.
4D- Marrying the heiress to a barony. A queen’s dower.
5D-
6D- A treasure chest of gold and jewels.
7D-
8D-
9D-
10D- Smaug’s hoard.

Things to Add to the List:
[ul]
[li]The provost’s tax haul from Upton village
[/li][li]The provost’s tax haul from Upton county
[/li][li]A dwarven hoard
[/li][li]A robber knight or banneret’s war chest
[/li][li]A baron’s war chest
[/li][li]A count’s war chest
[/li][li]A duke or king’s war chest
[/li][/ul]

Feel free to add items to the tables or to move items from the “to do” list to the tables (or to add cool items to the “to do” list for that matter). Also, if you’re a BW veteran feel free to comment on the appropriate value of items on the list or move them to their proper value. If my valuation is obviously wrong, just move it.

I’ll revisit this when I get back next week. When it’s done it should resemble the Resources Ob table on page 366-367 of BWG. Thanks for all the replies!

  • I realize these values will vary according to what’s going on in the campaign. These values are meant to serve as a baseline. Adjust accordingly.
  • For goods and commodities, just double the value from the Resources Ob table (and proceed to haggling?) to convert the items into cash dice.
  • I wonder if loot from combat should be different: e.g. loot large city- 2D cash dice for common soldiers, 3D cash dice for knights, 3D fund for commander.

Excellent start!

I’d avoid couching things in terms of how much the cash/fund is worth. What happens when the players get enough coin & plate to fund their soldiers, but then fail the resources test? Was it enough money, or wasn’t it?! Perhaps something like, “A baron’s war chest.” Funding for a company of soldiers should be a resource obstacle in this system, rather than an amount of money.

I think owning a business is property, an affiliation, maybe some contacts, etc. The 3D fund is the profits from a thriving business, knight’s fee, whatever. (If you decimate the fund, you presumably still have the land/business/staff, but you’ve sucked too much cash out of it and now it’s only scraping by).

Regarding the looting entries - is this what the general rakes in from his troops, assuming the soldiers are pocketing 9/10ths of it? Or is this the full wealth of a village? If the latter, the dice seem a bit low, especially for cities. 10D of cash will buy you a nice horse and a couple of other things.

I’d be inclined to put these amounts on a single scale, with 1D of fund worth 3D of cash (despite what the obstacles are to create them). So, loot from a troll’s cave is 3D of cash or a 1D fund. From a GM’s perspective, I’d make things a fund if it’s more money than the players are usually involved with. A sack of shillings might be a 1D fund for urchins, but 3D of cash to a baron.

A treasure chest of gold and jewels (we’re talking Mayan jackpot here) is a 6D fund or 18D cash. (I think fantasy art has caused a kind of mental depreciation - a 30cm cube of gold weighs 521kg and is worth about $27M today.) 100 barrels of silver pennies (does the denomination matter, it’s still silver!) sounds like a LOT of money - sounds like a 10D fund to me!

Smaug’s hoard was ridiculous - in the history of the earth we’ve only dug enough gold out of the earth to make a 20m cube. The funny thing about a 10D hoard, though, is that you can buy weapons, food, drugs and exotic goods for the rest of your life - but go for a warship or castle and it’s all gone. (Maybe because word of your purchase causes massive inflation? Heh.)

After spending some time away from this post, I’ve gained a little clarity on it. My thinking about this was too uptight last week, but my brain is more limber now.

I can still put the tables together, but instead of doing this out of the blue, first I’d like to put together a list of assumptions that people seem to be using when coming up with cash and funds.

Assumption #1: To award cash dice, find an appropriate item from the Resources Obstacle Table (Page 366-367) and multiply by 2. [i]Wrathbone, I wondered if looking at the resources table backwards might help. A baron has enough money lying around to buy ‘x’, so take the resource Ob for ‘x’ and multiply by two to get the appropriate amount of cash dice? /i…[i]Secret BWHQ Confession time! This is exactly what we do when we need to convert an item to cash./i The only issue I have with this is that characters seem to be getting market price. Shouldn’t they be screwed a little by the greedy merchants? I think in Pendragon PCs get half value for everything they sell to represent this.

Assumption #2: Cash rewards and Fund rewards can be awarded based on the number of obstacles to overcome and their degree of difficulty. [i]]Equating them by obstacle-to-obtain is one way to go…/i Obviously, this ratio would be different for cash and funds. I’m open to suggestions as to what this ratio should be.

Assumption #3: Cash and Fund dice can be used interchangeably, with 4+ Cash dice=1 Fund dice. The larger the fund, the larger number of Cash dice should be given per fund die. . [i]I’d be inclined to put these amounts on a single scale, with 1D of fund worth 3D of cash (despite what the obstacles are to create them)./i This option is handy when an disbanding adventuring group wants to split up a fund between members.

Assumption #4: Loot (Burning THACO) Cash dice can be awarded on a scale of 1 to 10, depending on the difficulty of the dungeon.[i] Quick and dirty way: How difficult was it for them to clear out this dungeon, on a scale of one to ten? Give 'em that much cash. /i I like this method, but is it a straight 1-to-1 ratio? In other words, how many cash dice would you get per degree of difficulty?

Also, I’m thinking most other issues here can be resolved by bumping Resources by 1 (as per Titles) or burning up an NPC to see what their situation looks like (want to elevate a PC to baron? Burn up a baron and see how much stuff he has).

Question: (Aside from the ideas above) Any thoughts on deriving Cash or Funds dice as a ratio either from the Resources Obstacle Table (Page 366-367; for treasure and goods) or from the Lifepath Resources Tables (based on rps; for land, businesses and offices)?

Excellent summation.

I think funds are worth at least 4x their value in cash. Their persistent quality pays off. And the larger they are, the more exponentially valuable they are. A 6D fund is hugely valuable, whereas a 1D is nice, but ephemeral.

So I’ve got a handle on the conversion of dice to funds. What about the conversion of large amounts of cash to smaller amounts of cash? In other words, if 1D of cash is a small pouch of silver and 10D of cash is a treasure chest, and the treasure chest is divided between 10 PCs, they should be getting much more than 1D Cash, right?

Why not use the rules to create cash and funds from existing resources?

We needn’t involve greed! It’s just that the best price is hard to find. Merchants either have a retail presence with lots of customers (so they can afford to turn away those who want to pay just under market price, since others will be along soon), or they have a network of potential buyers they can tap to find who’s buying for the best price. If the players just go to a single buyer, they’ve got far fewer options.

Then factor in greed. :slight_smile:

I’m with luke - no need to create special rules here. Converting funds to cash is risky, you can aim too high and sap the fund. The dissolution of a group of shareholders is a perfect time duels of wits or fisticuffs!

I was interested in figuring out the total yield of a fund over its lifetime, from inception to depletion. (For example, a 2D fund that gets used twice, but is taxed to nothing on the second roll, has yielded 4D. A 2D fund that gets taxed down to 1D on its first use, then taxed to nothing on it second use has yielded 3D.)

There’s the question of when do you choose to use your fund? I used a somewhat conservative strategy, assuming that funds would only be used on resource obstacles that were no more than 3/4 the size of the total resources dice available. For example, someone with Resources B4 and a 4D fund has 8 dice available. I assumed this person would only test for resources obstacles of Ob 6 or less. (Otherwise you’ll kill your fund on the first roll for sure.)

Further, because I assume GMs will just Say Yes to rich people buying cheap things, I biased the distribution of obstacles high, by taking the highest of two linear random tests. (For example, with a max Ob of 6, I’d randomly generate two obstacles in the 1-6 range, and take the highest.)

I ignored the effects of Artha. I concentrated on what I thought would be typical values - resources exponents of B1-B6, and fund sizes of 1D-6D.

The punchline is that the ratio is basically 3 - a fund is worth about three times its size in cash dice. But it’s not linear, the table looks something like this:

1D Fund = 2D Cash
2D Fund = 5D Cash
3D Fund = 9D Cash
4D Fund = 13D Cash
5D Fund = 18D Cash
6D Fund = 24D Cash
7D Fund = 27D Cash
8D Fund = 32D Cash
9D Fund = 40D Cash
10D Fund = 46D Cash

This is awesome!