Resources

Resources

On this game, the Resources Background correlates to the lifestyle your character can afford to live in. It is not just the amount of free cash you have available. It is a general, overall description of the wealth level experienced by the character. There is no specific dollar amount tied to it and wealth/resources are not transferable. Your character lives the way your character lives. Your character’s friends live the way they live.

NOTE: House Rule: Resources are not pooled. Five people barely making it (Resources 1) does not equal the wealth and lifestyle of one multimillionaire (Resources 5). If so, we’d all have four friends we share a mansion with and multiple millions to spend among us. The exponential increase in higher Resources makes pooling Resources untenable.

The Resources Background describes your character’s access to and control over a range of valuable assets. Resources are valuable goods whose disposition your character controls. These assets may be actual cash, but as this Background increases, they’re more likely to be investments, property, or earning capital of some sort — land, industrial assets, stocks and bonds, commercial inventories, criminal infrastructure, contraband, even taxes or tithes.

A character’s Resources depend upon the standard of living she’s comfortable supporting. A character with no dots in Resources can have enough clothing and supplies to get by, or she may be homeless, but lacking a Resources rating doesn’t necessarily mean the character is destitute; all of her income may go straight to food and bills.

Please keep the above policies in mind when RPing, requesting builds, or requesting equipment.

What Resources mean

X Working poor

You live paycheck-to-paycheck, and that’s about it. You don’t have much discretionary income to speak of, if any.

• Sufficient

You can maintain a decent apartment in the style of the working class with stability, as long as you are careful with money. You might own a cheap vehicle that doesn’t crap out every week. You can afford cheap eats and drinks, but anything else on the menu is out of range.

•• Moderate

You can display yourself as a member in good standing of the middle class, with the occasional gift and indulgence seemly for a person of even higher station. A fraction of your resources are available in cash, readily portable property (like jewelry or furniture), and other valuables (such as a car) that let you maintain a standard of living at the one-dot level wherever you happen to be, for up to six months.

••• Comfortable

You can afford to either own a small place or have decent equity in some property, plus a nice vehicle, investments, and savings. You are likely a prominent and established member of your community, and you have a reputation that lets you draw on credit at very generous terms. You likely have more tied up in equity and property than you do in ready cash. You can maintain a one-dot quality of existence wherever you are without difficulty, for as long as you choose.

•••• Wealthy

You have the means to own a large house, some property, and at least two vehicles, as well as notable levels of savings and investments. By local standards, you’re a millionaire, and although that’s not worth as much as it once was, it’s still nothing to sneeze at. You might rarely touch cash, as most of your assets exist in tangible forms that are themselves more valuable and stable than paper money. You probably hold more wealth than many of your local peers (if they can be called such a thing). When earning your Resources doesn’t enjoy your usual degree of attention, you can maintain a three-dot existence for up to a year, and a two-dot existence indefinitely.

••••• Welcome to the 1%

As a multimillionaire, you’ve got substantial holdings, investments, and savings. You are the model to which others strive to achieve, at least in the popular mind. People in your circles and communities speculate about your clothing, the appointments of your numerous homes, and the luxury of your modes of transportation. You have vast and widely distributed assets each with huge staffs. You travel with a minimum of three-dot comforts, more with a little effort.

•••••• Billionaire with a B-ezos

Whatever you want, you’ve got it. You’re one of the richest people on Earth. You have multiple homes and many forms of luxury transport. You have assets everywhere, and can buy and sell people with a ten-minute phone call. You can shift the market of an entire business or industry. You can live at the four-dot level indefinitely if you ignore your fortune; higher if you put a little effort in to it.

Note: Resources 6 is typically reserved for NPCs. PCs only get it with HUGE HUGE HUGE justification.