Has anyone run into the 'Too much money' problem in the RPG?

[imperator]

I just thought of an OPFOR/Ally for your players that might also keep them in line as an arbiter.  Have then come into contact of a group "Retired" NPCs( Say Old guys/Old girls from a famouse unit-Davion Brigade of Guards comes to mind).  If you don't like them brainwashing the population with loyalties to themsleves, have the old guys meet with them, say this not what we do here in the FS.  If they try to spy on them, have their spies disapear.  If they try to pull their money sources, Tell them they are protected by special Davion law vs Veterans or that the bankers they use are actually more old guys from the Brigade of Guards( with a possible grain silo holding a surprise-damn why do all these all guys have grain silos?) The old guys are hard to assasinate, because they have been playing the "Game" for years, have contacts/allies everywhere, are the local heroes, and are rich unlanded nobles(maybe a small unentailed farm, with attached hiden MECH Cache, I mean GRAIN SILO),  and maybe hoping for a Good Davion like Hanse and Victor to return the Glory of the Fedrated Suns( Yup make them Fanatically Loyal like the three Musketters and D'Artagnan in the "Man in the Iron Mask", to the House/Family Davion, not neccesarily the house lord). Hell, make them the Four Muskeers in Heavy/Assault Clan Mechs.  I don't care how good the Bodyguard forces/Militia of the nobles are, A Lance/Company of Eilte Mechwarrior( with 3-5 SPAs each) in even Old(3025) Medium to Heavy 'mechs is going to to Godzilla a Castle/factory before they are taken down. Possibly do even more damage.

[Minerva]

Once the movers and shakers have been identified the next step is deciding what characters need to decide how their realm (I'd think polity is official term) is ruled.

Realm should have at least:
a) It has territorially defined population recognizing common government.
b) Government has a civil service to carry out decisions and a military service to back these decisions and protect itself from other realms.
c) It is recognized by other realms and it has status to act independently within its own realm towards its population.

Once all (especially players) recognize these issues the basis of running a realm should be determined.

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Realm has rough territorial format that determines how it organizes itself within its borders.

Each realm has Core area where its laws and regulations are fully enforced and whose inhabitants take part in its governing.

Outside Core area you can have Periphery areas where realms customs are hardly observed at all and who organize themselves as they see fit.

First, you need to choose Core and Periphery for each territorial duke, count and baron according to one of the following formats:

a) Considerably small core that rules its areas as dependencies.
For Duke there is one Core Continent (her realm) with all territorial Counts are Periphery
For Count there is one Core State (her realm) with all territorial Barons are Periphery
For Baron there is one Core City (her realm) with all territorial Baronets are Periphery

b) Entire realm has common core.
For Duke there is one Core Continent (her realm) with all territorial Counts are Core
For Count there is one Core State (her realm) with all territorial Barons are Core
For Baron there is one Core City (her realm) with all territorial Baronets are Core

Second, you need to consider role of mainstream culture within realm as well. Use same method to determine major Cultures within your system.

Third, you need to consider role of mainstream religion within realm as well. Use same method to determine major Religions within your system.

Note that you can have truly monolithic or balkanized planet if everything is either fully cored or divided to core and periphery but generally there should be a mixture of core and periphery areas.

I suggest that your system starts on everyone being with same culture, religion and territorial format during colony phase and then rerolling for changes whenever there is a change in who rules what in system's history.

I'd use a system where all three factors are rerolled whenever there is a change in leadership. Roll 1D6, with 1-3 denoting a break due major change in leadership at Duke, County or Baron level.

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Game mechanistically the roles of cultures and religions should not be deterministic. However, belonging to a different culture or religion should have a opinion modifier that can throw interesting snags to negotiations...

[StuartYee]

I'm sort of jumping in here, but my first thought is this- there are lots of problems that can't be solved with money. Throw that at them.

-Misjump to an uncharted system. Jumpdrive fried. All the money in the galaxy won't help here.
-An enemy who's even richer
-If one of your rich characters has the Dark Secret trait, there's a chance the secret is going to uncovered. It might be due to circumstances that can't be solved with money (some evidence to the Secret was uncovered and investigative agencies are already on the trail)
-Home planet is captured by an enemy House and source of wealth is GONE
-PCs buy all the expensive toys they want. Then it gets stolen.
-Rich PCs have health problems. Incurable. Except there's rumor that the SL had found a cure- LOSTECH HUNT!

Just some ideas off the cuff

[Kitsune413]

I'm sort of jumping in here, but my first thought is this- there are lots of problems that can't be solved with money. Throw that at them.

-Misjump to an uncharted system. Jumpdrive fried. All the money in the galaxy won't help here.

this could be fun and interesting for them.

-An enemy who's even richer

when you are a noble you make some noble enemies.

-If one of your rich characters has the Dark Secret trait, there's a chance the secret is going to uncovered. It might be due to circumstances that can't be solved with money (some evidence to the Secret was uncovered and investigative agencies are already on the trail)

unless they're dealing with fanatics these problems can unfortunately be solved with money. even if they shouldn't be able to

-Home planet is captured by an enemy House and source of wealth is GONE

I am ok with this because it leads to a campaign where they are trying to get their things back. This is generally a good thing.

-PCs buy all the expensive toys they want. Then it gets stolen.

I've seen to many GM's do this... and most of them don't have the players 'fun' as a concern. You should try to avoid situations where you are 'taking' from your players.

now everything is a bargain. If you lose your mech to complete a mission then that's an ugly transaction. But its fine to bargain with players. Stealing from them, unless its going to be fun to get the taken things back is not.

-Rich PCs have health problems. Incurable. Except there's rumor that the SL had found a cure- LOSTECH HUNT!

that's a really cool idea

Just some ideas off the cuff
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[Khymerion]

I'm sort of jumping in here, but my first thought is this- there are lots of problems that can't be solved with money. Throw that at them.

No problem with jumping in!

-Misjump to an uncharted system. Jumpdrive fried. All the money in the galaxy won't help here.

Getting lost is always a big problem... but depriving players of their intended roles permanently does not tend to sit well with those players.   Especially if it is a Jump Drive failure that equals scrap/permanent lost in space thing.  It works well in movies and books but if the players are not super techs/trained in how to handle it, you tend to have players who are next to worthless for long stretches of time... especially if the way out of it relies on a skill that no one or only a single person has.  One missed or botched roll or a terrible mishap to that single useful character in a stranded situation and suddenly there is no hope and the campaign grinds to a terrible halt with no one satisfied or happy.

-An enemy who's even richer

Always a perennial favorite.   That and it gives players something to target.

-If one of your rich characters has the Dark Secret trait, there's a chance the secret is going to uncovered. It might be due to circumstances that can't be solved with money (some evidence to the Secret was uncovered and investigative agencies are already on the trail)

This has actually come up in the campaign in question from which this thread has evolved.   They didn't start with a dark secret but they sure earned it.   And money has gone a long ways to smooth but not completely solve the problem.   It was former Noble Alpha by the way who's 'initiative' in putting the whole house of cards into question.

-Home planet is captured by an enemy House and source of wealth is GONE

Tempted to do that.  If things due to the previously mentioned dark secret evolve in a way they can't keep a lid on... it might not be an enemy house that is doing the invading...

-PCs buy all the expensive toys they want. Then it gets stolen.

Can't rely on this crutch for too long.  It is good for a plot hook or to get things moving but if used too much, it tends to sit very poorly and leads to further acts of paranoia.

-Rich PCs have health problems. Incurable. Except there's rumor that the SL had found a cure- LOSTECH HUNT!

This one sounds fun and interesting.   Did something similar to this in a campaign a long time ago and watched as a player who was playing a doctor tried to save the other player.   They didn't trust NPC doctors (my rolls are NOTORIOUSLY bad) so decided to stay within the party.   It didn't end well.  Seems botches are universal and the poor ace pilot died on the table.  Oops.

Just some ideas off the cuff

Thank you for sharing!


Ooooh, also... thank you again Kitsune413 for the work you did.   It has been a very helpful item to work with to help develop the world and the players have sunk their teeth deep into it...  which caused the 'problem'.  Trying to root out 'undesirables' of 'suspicious' family and political backgrounds has gotten things moving and interesting in ways that mere money can't get them out of it.  That and the old men's club of veterans that were suggested by Imperator has gone over quite well, keeping the players on edge... especially with the fall out.

So thank you all again for your suggestions!

[Pyro]

Just find expensive things you can spend the money on.  So, you've got enough money to buy a planet.  Problem is, the only planets that have titles available all kind of suck in their own way, so they're fixer-uppers that need major boosts to their education systems, infrastructure, and economic bases...  then if you build those, pirates want to steal it, because they're far from the front lines and underdefended, so you have to hire mercenaries or establish your own defense forces...

So say you navigate all of this and become the billionaire playboy philanthropist ruler of the Jewel of the Periphery.  Then what?  Then you face the named pirate bands in the books, whichever enemy house or periphery state you're nearest starts raiding your world, the expanded economy makes industrial espionage and sabotage into real issues as you suddenly butt in on long-established trade patterns, and the established (and higher) nobility of the realm becomes resentful of the new upstart that's making them look like a bunch of leeches that live the high life and contribute nothing to society and start making plans to bump him off, take what he has, destroy his reputation, or any combination of the above.

Rich people have problems too, and those can scale up almost indefinitely.  You think Maximilian Liao doesn't have problems?  How about the First Lord of the Star League?  Oh yeah, they do, and not just the ones inside their own heads.

[Mohammed As`Zaman Bey]

  Aqs a GM I don't like to throw improbable events at my players -No misjumps, no Deus Ex Machina events. I prefer to give them all the rope they want and enjoy their struggles to undo the traps they set for themselves.
  They got into a tangle with Clan Diamond Shark and lost several individual challenges -If they fought any other Clan I would have them roll up new characters. Instead, I allowed them to arrange exchanges in millions of C bills worth of trade items per character, which bankrupted one enough to retire from the campaign because he wanted to quit while he was ahead.

  For the most part, having huge sums of money does give the players the ability to mitigate almost any problem they encounter in the Inner Sphere. Almost. It does not get rid of negative reputations caused by stupid actions on the battlefield, nor has it gotten rid of the bounties on the heads of characters who tortured and executed prisoners during an anti-rebel mission.

  Give the players enough freedom and they will eventually screw up all on their own...

[Kitsune413]

Im generally not out to get my players. Im there to tell a story and alot of times that does let the players hang themselves.

I do play the antagonist as the gm. But I play protagonists too. I have intentionally killed certain characters. Particularly combat monsters. But I have never done so I a way that the player hasnt understood and enjoyed. (As strange as that sounds)

I am still not convinced that there is a "money" problem.

Banson had more money. For all of his influence and power he made a mech with a fossil fuel engine and 3025 technology. He was also politically out played.

If your players arent jacob banson, the ruler of Skye and the surrounding area or the ceo of Irian industries they arent that influential. Or heavy.

[kato]

Give them a decent investment road that you can later pull on for spiralling costs and random events. The whole capitalism thing, basically. They're on a backwater planet, it's bound for someone to exploit it.

One idea would be something along the lines of an interstellar consortium wanting to strip-mine for some rarer metal on their land. Hook them with moderate returns that would add to their wealth, draw them into further side contracts such as providing for certain needs for the mines. If they play it right, it could consolidate their position as being among the "movers and shakers" on the planet, with contacts well beyond their system.

Later cue needs for expansion of space-ports and other similar large-scale investment, unrest among farmers over environmental fallout, cultural clashes between miners brought in and their local population, the consortium essentially buying up educated manpower from the market, maybe with security needs spiralling out of control. Consortium brings their own mercenaries to the board too, maybe. If you want to escalate the situation, have said consortium actively act against the players behind the scenes. Have the group go to other nobles for certain things, play one against each other for their own ends, exploit political groups, remove dissident voices among the population, buy off people left and right. If you want a more personal involvement, bring in a couple decent leadership figures within this group that fill the role of antagonists for your players too.

[guardiandashi]

never had a major issue with "too much money" to be honest the closest was in a marvel hero's campaign where one of the other chars had "too much transmute" power (and it wasn't me) it gets a little crazy when the "tony stark" character doesn't have to buy the special materials on the market... one of the other chars can just turn cheap stuff into expensive stuff.  like transmuting iron or steel into vibranium (or the equivalent)  and it gets nuts in a hurry.

on the other hand "stealing" from the chars in the wrong way can really generate some long term resentment.  I reference a Gurps campaign I played in and I was again playing a "Tony Stark" style char, but I had invested in +2 tech levels for my char, this means I personally have access to or can build stuff like ... a modern computer in 1980 when everyone else is limited to stuff like the old PC-PC/AT commodore 64, coco3, Atari computer etc.  and the game atarts and the first encounter?  we find that the bad guys organization AS  a WHOLE has tl+2 stuff as standard equipment, so my character who blew big amounts of the build budget to be "special" is second fiddle and playing catchup to the "bad guys" who were effectively a government or government agency who for whatever reason were upset with the party

[monbvol]

Battletech does present a bit of a twist on the too much money problem.  The setting to me has always been portrayed as there just isn't enough to go around and thus it isn't as simple as dropping a few billion C-Bills and getting a new Mech factory at least started.  If it were that simple we'd see it happen a lot more in the fiction/setting as that kind of money realistically should be chump change for all but the poorest planets.

Nor is it as easy as having 20 million on hand and viola Marauder with varying amounts of change left over depending on era.

[ColonelCody]

I once had  a serious problem with a trio of players and their characters in a previous BT campaign of mine. They had uber-godly amounts of weaponry and ammo and were richer than the dreams of Avarice...However.. they had ego problems. SERIOUS ego problems. When they started to become a serious problem with their tech, equipment and money, I decided to allow them to begin to make serious enemies. You get a rep for being a bad ass merc, bad ass merc has a nego, an ego gets stepped on by a local NPC who doesn't like mercs, doesn't trust these ones in particular and they crossed a line. Didn't just cross it but they did a jig on it. Riverdance style...a lot..
So I created a small, highly trained, highly competent group of black ops guys working for said bad guys (WoB btw. Yah one of 'em pissed of a WoB ROM Precentor..) Same number as the PCs and their enterouge of NPCS combined. at the time in group 6 men and women. The NPC bad guys were created with the exact same points spent as the PCs. I kept careful records for them to view afterwards I knew they would demand to see them. (It's a House right for my players. It keeps both me and them honest in my view). And then I created. The 'Skidoosh" (Pro. Ske-doosh).... A sniper rifle that uses micro gauss technology. Only 6 exist in the entire known galaxy. It takes 2 men to man & wield it properly. Designed to sniper from immense distances, requiring the use of Neural link technology (to prevent the PCS from using it properly if it was captured wich it was).
The Skidoosh killed my N/PC (the character I played when the other GM ran the game), and the two problem PCs who were the ones who had the hit on them. Also one of the other PCs lost a hand from a collateral damage when their car was blown up.
All I'm saying is, If need be, there is always "The Final Answer". I've had to do it 5 times to players in maybe3? 4? campaigns In the course of nearly 35 years of RPG gaming. I figure not a bad score....

[Kitsune413]

The real problem is a gms perception of money. Most gms are prepared to throw an adventurer against orcs. Money is more abstract than that.

Dude makes 15 million a year? A 3025 locust, adjusted for 3145 inflation costs 9 million cbills.

A scout class jumpship would take him 20 years to buy... before you take into account inflation.

Gm's tend to think, "he makes 15 million a year? He us going to take over the galaxy!"

Every other dude who runs a planet makes the same amount so you have an "average" income noble.

There will be business men on his planet that makes more money than him. There will be interstellar corps touching his planet that will make him look like the working poor.

Jacob Banson barely bear age of war tech mechs with all of his wealth (which was much more than any player is likely to achieve.

Characters having money is not game breaking... and as a gm it should be your job to make sure they have fun and can try to leverage that influence and power, among antagonists that probably make more than he or she does.

You dont have to steal it from them or punish them for making a type of character that might be out of your storytelling depth.

If you want your players to build a clantech factory in the inner sphere and build daishi's with their tiny sums of money when the gdp of entire stellar nations havent managed it in a century then that is fine for your game.

But I think we gms can educate ourselves to tell high income stories, make them challenging and realisti. And fun instead  of getting intimidated and having that player be the only dude with money in the galaxy.

[Pyro]

Pretty much, the higher you rise, the bigger the bullseye painted on your back.  The more you have to use, the more you have that can be taken.  Enemy houses and pirates want to steal what you have, other nobles want to see you stripped of power, or bend you to their causes, and House Lords if anybody understand that the duties of nobility go both ways.  They may look at what you've built and go "Hey, that's pretty spiffy.  I need a company of 'Mechs sent to the front, get on it."

[RMDC]

Characters having money is not game breaking... and as a gm it should be your job to make sure they have fun and can try to leverage that influence and power, among antagonists that probably make more than he or she does.

You dont have to steal it from them or punish them for making a type of character that might be out of your storytelling depth.

QFT.

[ColonelCody]

Pretty much, the higher you rise, the bigger the bullseye painted on your back.  The more you have to use, the more you have that can be taken.  Enemy houses and pirates want to steal what you have, other nobles want to see you stripped of power, or bend you to their causes, and House Lords if anybody understand that the duties of nobility go both ways.  They may look at what you've built and go "Hey, that's pretty spiffy.  I need a company of 'Mechs sent to the front, get on it."

Exactly so. Look at the Kell Hounds, when they started out they were considered just a pair of rich punks with a dream. Morgan got into fistfights to defend themselves and their goals. Eventually he's facing down the single best MechWarrior in the DCMS leading arguably the single best unit to defend the corpse of the First Prince of the FedSuns. That placed a HUGE target between their shoulders. Send con men at them, Tax Collectors, debt collectors, force them to contribute to their land holdings maintenance and upgrades. taxes don't always cover the maintenance and upgrades. The whole point of the Feudal system is for the nobles to take care of stuff at that level of local government. The point of being Nobles is that you are stuck with certain Responsibilities. Who's watching their stuff while their off playing "Axis and Allies" on a Sphere-wide scale? No one ever said that the guy watching their stuff was a good guy or even loyal or competetant

[Col Toda]

AToW Companion has a much more detailed description of title and money and it's distribution .

[Warpimp]

...

Increase the threat level?  Perhaps it's just me but... 15 million cbills a year seems like chump change.  I'm used to running merc campaigns where we run a regiment or more, and have that amount monthly as part of our budget. 

Really a Duke should have at least enough obligations that he should be supporting a regiment to defend it.

There are a myriad of issues that a noble has to handle and by making these types of characters that is the kind of situations your players are telling you they want to be in.

Also, make situations where they should be leading from the front to press their weaker skills and make it hurt when their troops and allies see how poorly they pilot 'Mechs. That counts for something in the Inner Sphere, especially in the DC or Fedsuns.

[William J. Pennington]

So, I think the question I really am asking is...  how do you handle a game with TWO dukes (with appropriate property holdings) running around?   Should I just go and tell them 'Sorry...  I can only have a single super noble...  pick who gets to be the one...  in this flaming circle of death I have carved into the snow out back.'   They did both come to the same conclusion without talking to each other or knowing the other's plans.

Actually, its easier to simply out wealth limits right out front. No Nobles--or at east, no nobles with money or lands.  If someone wants to play the 5th son of a broke noble who has not that much money to start with, that is workable.

If the campaign focuses on a game of nobles, and everyone is Noble, or a highly placed servant of a noble with matching resources and skills that is doable..but a unusual campaign.

Stop problems before they become problems: tell players what the general theme of the campaign is, and tell them flat out what you will or won't allow.  It saves you a lot of time.

[monbvol]

*nod*

Even though my group is fairly decent our biggest problem is effective communication about GM and campaign expectation with a side order of insufficient player plotting how to achieve such ends.

Still some good ways to solve the dilemma have been mentioned and I'll just reinforce that there do need to be hurdles that no amount of money can overcome that the wealthy PCs have to solve themselves.