{"id":948,"date":"2021-12-17T19:45:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T19:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/?p=948"},"modified":"2021-12-17T19:45:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T19:45:25","slug":"how-does-money-work-in-the-infinity-rpg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/2021\/12\/17\/how-does-money-work-in-the-infinity-rpg\/","title":{"rendered":"How does money work in the Infinity RPG?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Infinity RPG by Modiphius has absolutely the best, most detailed money system of any game I\u2019ve played. It gets a lot of grief for being complicated and difficult, but the moment I realized what it was, I was impressed. It represents the realities of living in a modern, finance powered economy. It also maps exactly to the other stress tracks, Vigour, Resolve, and Firewall, in the game. In the modern world, the sorts of people that most player characters are don\u2019t live on a cash basis. They have bank accounts, incomes, investments, they have credit cards and all of the trappings of modern finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Characters have Earnings<\/strong> which represent a sort of financial A<\/strong>rmor<\/strong> with Cashflow<\/strong> acting as a S<\/strong>tress<\/strong> track, Shortfalls<\/strong> are financial Wounds<\/strong> and Assets<\/strong> are equivalent to one time bonuses. Meanwhile purchases that characters might make have Costs<\/strong>, Tariffs<\/strong>, and Maintenance<\/strong> and are made harder to source according to their Restriction<\/strong> value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of proper nouns in that paragraph, let\u2019s break them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An item\u2019s Restriction<\/strong> determines the difficulty of a Lifestyle<\/strong> test to find it for sale (to source). The test for finding an item is decreased by spending more time looking for it and spending Assets<\/strong> to grease the wheels of commerce gains you extra d20, up to the normal maximum of 5 dice.<\/li>
The Cost<\/strong> of an item is a fixed amount with a variable component with a lot more added based on the item\u2019s Tariff<\/strong>. Cost<\/strong> is increased by the Tariff<\/strong> multiplied by the number of Effects<\/strong> that come up on the dice.
Example: a pistol might have a cost of 3+3N T2. This means that the item costs 3 plus the results of 3 Combat Dice and has a Tariff of 2. C So on average the dice will come up with a 1 or 2, without an Effect, but we all know how randomly that Effect can come up, or more often not. This would result in an average cost of 4 or 5, but it could go up as high as 9 if the character is extremely unlucky.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
Extra successes on the Lifestyle<\/strong> test to source an item can be used to reduce the Cost<\/strong> by one each.<\/li>
Earnings<\/strong> are subtracted from the Cost<\/strong> of an item.<\/li>
Any remaining Cost<\/strong> is subtracted from the character\u2019s Cashflow<\/strong>.<\/li>
If the character\u2019s Cashflow<\/strong> is reduced by 5 or more, or reduced to 0, the character suffers a Shortfall<\/strong>. Characters can suffer more than one Shortfall<\/strong> at a time, and accumulate up to 4 of them.
Example: if a character with Cashflow<\/strong> of 5, and Earnings<\/strong> of 3 buys something that Costs<\/strong> 8 or more they will suffer two Shortfalls<\/strong>. The Earnings<\/strong> will reduce the Cost<\/strong> to 5, which is applied to Cashflow<\/strong>, both reducing it by 5 and to 0, resulting in two Shortfalls<\/strong>.<\/li>
Cashflow<\/strong> is generally replenished each game session.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
A Shortfall<\/strong> increases the difficulty of any attempt to source items or to improve their financial situation.
A character must make a Lifestyle<\/strong> test and spend an Asset<\/strong> to recover from a Shortfall<\/strong> or to recover Cashflow<\/strong>. The difficulty is base 0, plus any Shortfalls<\/strong>. Success recovers 2 Cashflow<\/strong> or removes one Shortfall<\/strong>. Momentum<\/strong> can be spent to recover 2 Cashflow<\/strong> or 1 Shortfall<\/strong>. Assets may be used to get more dice for the test.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
Having a 0 Cashflow<\/strong>, as long as the character doesn\u2019t have 4 Shortfalls<\/strong>, does not prevent the character from buying item. Though buying any items with a net Cost<\/strong> over Earnings<\/strong> will cause a Shortfall<\/strong>.<\/li>
Once an item is bought it might have a Maintenance<\/strong> cost, this reduces Earnings<\/strong> on a one for one basis until the item is no longer owned by the character.<\/li>
Selling items work in reverse. With a Lifestyle<\/strong> test to find a buyer with a difficulty one higher than the items Restriction<\/strong>. The items Cost<\/strong> is determined the usual way, except that Tariffs<\/strong> reduce the item\u2019s Cost<\/strong> and the character\u2019s Earnings<\/strong> also reducing the item\u2019s Cost<\/strong>. Any leftover Cost<\/strong> (income in this case) is added to the character\u2019s Cashflow<\/strong>, if five or more Cost<\/strong> is leftover it can be made into an Asset<\/strong> instead, up to two Assets<\/strong> may be gained on a sale.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
That all sounds pretty complicated when I lay it all out like that, but it\u2019s not really that bad. Anything that Costs<\/strong> less than your Earnings<\/strong> is basically cheap enough for you to ignore its Cost<\/strong>. Which means that you don\u2019t have to worry about tracking every last credit your character might have, but big purchases are important.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Infinity RPG by Modiphius has absolutely the best, most detailed money system of any game I\u2019ve played. It gets a lot of grief for being complicated and difficult, but the moment I realized what it was, I was impressed. It represents the realities of living in a modern, finance powered economy. It also maps … Continue reading How does money work in the Infinity RPG?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-supplemental-material","tag-infinity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drobiumdesign.com\/RPGLogic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}