Resources skill or stock concept

[ways and means]

I was wondering how people modelled a sudden large boost in income in terms of the resources skill. In a game I am in a person was paid $2 million dollars for letting somebody escape.  There is no reason why this massive windfall would lower his other skills so this means he can't raise resources without breaking the pyramid structure so how else could such a windfall be modelled in game?

[Richard_Chilton]

You might ignore the resource paradigm for a while.  I.E. track the money deducted from the windfall rather than doing resource rolls.  Or you might give him temporary use of the stunt Lush Lifestyle: - say tell him for a game year he has that stunt, then the money will be gone.

That's if he keeps it in cash.  If he buys something bill - say a house, nightclub, or other major asset then it doesn't affect his available money.

Another thing to think about is the paper trail.  Does he have the money in untraceable cash or was it cashier's check? Is the person who gave it to him a reputable business man? Depending on the answers to these questions, the character might have a high tax bill coming.

Richard

[sinker]

Yeah, the way we dealt with it was temporary access to the Windfall stunt.

[devonapple]

You could probably do it a variety of ways, depending on how the money will affect the narrative. Sudden access to money can theoretically change a person, so rearranging stunts or skills isn't necessarily out of bounds.

If the player is *willing* to shift around all of his skills to make Resources an apex skill, I would say let him - count it as a Milestone event.

And if the player is willing to trade an existing Stunt (or spend Refresh) for Windfall, this is a good excuse. Maybe a previous Stunt just stops having a spotlight. Maybe having the money means the player si less in control of things because of new obligations.

The player could switch out an Aspect for this new component of their persona, reflecting the nature of their relationship to the money - something like: Well Invested; Nest Egg; Diverse Portfolio; Money to Burn; Dirty Money; If Only the IRS Knew. In this case, you could be opt to be generous when the player Invokes the Aspect, but you could also compel it to introduce lifestyle complications.

As for doing it outside of the normal character options in the game... then just giving free use of Windfall for a game year sounds alright.
If the character wants to make that money a platform for a reliable investment, I'm not sure... that sounds like skill rearrangement.

[ways and means]

As the character is a supernatural mercenary with good +3 connections the best options for him would be either the temporary windfall stunt, though I suppose he could buy one really excessive purchase like a James Bond Car or a stinger missile launcher with assorted rockets (if the GM is willing).

[devonapple]

In the PDQ game system, "Loot" is awarded by the GM with ratings similar to the FATE skill ladder (Average, Good, etc.). Each time the player uses the Loot, they make a check based on how expensive their purchase is, and if they lose, then the "Loot" gets downgraded by a step until it gets to at or below 0/Mediocre.

So, the GM could award the player a "phantom" Resources skill, and each time you make a roll, have a risk of the skill ranks dwindling unless you are using it for items which are easy to acquire at that Resources level. Buying that expensive car would probably eat all the ranks up, but buying dinners, taxis, modest gifts, etc. might never even touch the skill.

But the DFRPG game rules are about narrative impact, and generally, if that money is going to have an in-game impact, it should be reflected within the character build. A wealthy investor PC spent a lot of skill points to get a high Resources.

Of course, one could make a case that this money will ultimately be used to benefit the entire group and their goals, but it could also be seen as unbalancing. What does the rest of the gaming group think?

[Richard_Chilton]

Let's look at how Dresden reacted to a sudden windfall:
He goes from "Will I make rent?" to "Wardens get paid?" to "Um, I might be late with the rent money, but look at this cool thing I built! Little Chicago is a work of art!".  To put it another way, the character received a surprising source of income but it didn't affect him in a long term way.  He just used it as a downtime excuse to get something new.

Richard

[Kommisar]

You really need to sit down and talk with the player and find out what their character plans to do with the money.  That will really determine the best way to deal with this in terms of game mechanics.  As you can see, there have been several good ideas and approaches here and what the character does will guide you to the right choice.

For instance, if the merc knows that the money is dirty and he needs to hold off on spreading it around perhaps he is just going to stash it away in plastic wrap buried somewhere.  Or launder it if he has the connections which may take a while.  This means that the money would not have an immediate effect on anything.  Gives you time to work something into the game and let the changes happen gradually.

But, he may have a bank account in Barbados or something and can deposit that amount without anyone asking any questions.  In which case the changes could be immediate.  Like those people that win the lottery and where their whole lives turn upside down over night.  With that big of an influx of wealth, I would lean towards making some changes to shift up in the skill pyramid or drop him the Wind Fall stunt by taking a Refresh.  Money changes people and, if you have enough, it can very easily control and dominate your life just as powerfully as a Denerian or giving yourself over to a Fae court.

This is especially true with the way he made this money.  Is word going to get out that he took this money to let a guy off the hook?  That will seriously change the way people around him will view him.  Especially if he compromised his personal or professional ethics in the process.  If he had a high level of Contacts, for instance, maybe that starts to dry up now with previous associates now distrusting him or expecting a fee where they use to not.  If word really gets out, maybe he takes a hit to his Intimidation check as the bad guys "know" that all they have to do in the end is slip the guy some cash to slide.  Or, if he starts living the High Life, he gets lazy and stops honing those combat skills and gets soft.  Keeping a Superb Weapons, Fists or Athletics is hard when you are sleep in to noon everyday after "Making it Rain" all night with your new "friends".  Or he just flat out losses that edge now that he has made his pay day.

This sounds like a big Milestone Event to me.  Use it and really take advantage of this opportunity.  This isn't D&D after all where you rack up more gold and magical items that a King and it don't change you cause your still putting on that chain mail and wandering off to fight bugbears in a dank hole in the ground cause it's awesome.  

[MijRai]

I would give them an aspect with a certain length of time (perhaps a session or scenario, or more if it was a payoff that could last that long) like, "Got The Big Pay-off" or "2 Million Dollar Man", where they can get a +2 to their rolls, or Invoke to be able to afford what makes sense.

[devonapple]

This isn't D&D after all where you rack up more gold and magical items that a King and it don't change you cause your still putting on that chain mail and wandering off to fight bugbears in a dank hole in the ground cause it's awesome.  

Exactly. D&D is a completely different mindset, a different game experience, and handling the acquisition of loot becomes a challenge in an abstracted, narrative-based game like DFRPG.

And with the right milestone(s), *all* the players could get another Skill point or two, and this may make it easier to shoehorn in a higher Resources without breaking the pyramid, or unbalancing the players.

On the other hand, the GM can smooth things over quite simply, by allowing that character to make Resource Declarations automatically or with a very low roll, in order to reflect the easy access to cash.

[Moriden]

I would give them an aspect with a certain length of time (perhaps a session or scenario, or more if it was a payoff that could last that long) like, "Got The Big Pay-off" or "2 Million Dollar Man", where they can get a +2 to their rolls, or Invoke to be able to afford what makes sense.

Similarly i would treat it as the person paying the pc is useing their resources to give the pc the sticky aspect 2 million dollers which can be tagged X times.

[Buscadera]

I had a similar situation in another game, where my character made a deal with one of the bad guys for a big bag of cash. I got a sticky aspect Dirty Money for Dark Deeds that I could use for a while until the problem was solved. Eventually my character bumped up his Resources skill, but that seemed to work for a while.

[zenten]

One of the PCs in my game got $50,000 payment.  I reflected that as a sticky aspect of "has $50,000" which he gets a free tag on.

[ways and means]

The player decided in the end to invest his ill gotten loot into the mercenary company (which the party is a part off). The gm decided that this meant that the firm's resources increased from +2 too +4 so that the whole party gained the benefit of his betrayal and as his personal weath was not affected so he did not have to reshape his skill tree.

[Becq]

As a variation of some of the ideas above, give the character a bonus aspect that is appropriate to the windfall and a few "Fate points" that are off-colored (green, perhaps).  The aspect can be invoked whenever throwing money at a problem might be useful (resource rolls to buy stuff, bribery attempts, etc), and the special tokens can be used in place of normal Fate when doing so.