Abstract Wealth

[Blade]

I outlined a kind of narrative system as well where players can spend meta points to make things they earn in game a permanent part of their character. NPC contacts, castles, etc.

I think many games would benefit from having this handled by XP. After all, if gear/contacts/castles/etc. make your character more powerful, it's not so different from having attributes/skills/perks/etc.

This is particularly the case in games like Shadowrun where some characters are 75% gear.

[PhoneLobster]

I think many games would benefit from having this handled by XP.

That's not automatically a problem, but in most cases it would be. In the case of characters being 75% gear it would be more likely to be a problem.

If you buy certain parts of your character with XP and certain parts with Wealth and then you measurably deplete one of those things only for characters that want to opt in to a purely "side gig" option that by intention does not matter that much to the "main game" you are making them weaker at the main game AND doing so in a highly constrictive way as you effectively wall off a sub section of character options and labelled them as "not for you" the more they engage in the side game.

And the rarer or harder to earn the resource that you choose might be the more damage it will do to character builds, XP is generally treated as the more constrictive invariable resource to start with, and in cases where you only get 1 XP related option to every 3 wealth related ones, yeah, it's probably rarer and more precious again.

A separate currency just for side gigs is the safest way to avoid that, and if you didn't do that you would run with the most common and variable currency that it's more widely regarded as ok to unevenly and arbitrarily distribute as needed.

In the end if you need to be one level lower or have one less useful skill in order to be the guy who owns a castle purely for downtime and character background purposes... it's a trap option and very few players will choose to experience it.

[PhoneLobster]

I think it's been a day or two and I could roll out something else wealth related I'd like to talk about.

Wealth vs Prices
Here's a problem with wealth.

Haggling.

When you give out XP currency people don't argue for a discount to their next level. Much.

When you give out Coins as a currency people will walk their character into a shop and immediately try and trade that currency for power at a discounted rate based on haggling down the price of items.

And they are going to want to sell items too. And they are going to try and get higher rates on sales.

The idea that prices are flexible, and not even entirely based on real value is there and not exactly wrong. Buying low and selling high doesn't seem impossible. But it also seems like it's probably oh, you know, bad for character power progression.

Your wealth system needs to account for discounts, price variations, haggling and resales in some way that doesn't make it explode with discount strategies to vastly accelerated wealth as power.

On top of that sometimes player characters just find the item they want on an enemy or something and it's basically free, kinda. Arguably at least the best discount with the least haggling anyway.

There are... possibilities... for formalized mechanics. The age old "sells for half" and basically making haggling and other price variations improbable or insignificant... kinda works. It's still clearly open for exploits on a hard push, but it's also a bit constrictive on what it can represent for only mild resistance to problematic outcomes.

But I think after some experimentation actually a more informal approach is better.

It's important to try and monitor and regulate the VALUE of items as power a character accumulates. It is not important how they get them. It's OK if favorable resales, haggling, discounts, and random item finds happen. It's OK if not a cent of real wealth currency is spent as long as the real wealth value of power on the character build is "about right".

Therefore what the formal game mechanic part of your system needs to care about is final value comparisons and manipulation NOT store prices.

And in fact by acknowledging a disconnect from "real" value making prices themselves variable and informal you can more easily attempt to regulate and control wealth in an attempt to keep the balance of actual value on the characters where it needs to be.

Also as a side effect you can then represent things like "the bastard shop that over prices everything" or "the grateful merchant that sells to you at cost" or "I haggled and deceived until I sold it for more than it was worth" with less danger of outright breaking the system by simply having those even exist as options.

You can also informally model results that it would be a total hassle to have formal complex rules for. Like flooding small markets and seeing prices for used spears drop massively after the first dozen or so you sell in a small community.

Wealth vs Inventory
There are... a lot... of interactions between wealth and the physical management of objects that benefit from consideration.

One for instance could be using inventory based limits on equipped or active items as a cap for helping to dealing with the previously mentioned price/value issues of wealth systems.

Another is simply how characters physically interact with wealth based currencies themselves.

And then there is how should the players be tracking their items as power and wealth currencies in administrative terms.

It's a pity that Inventory mechanics are kinda their own realm of pitfalls and bad history. Whuuut?

Inventory lists are an administrative issue. I would like to think a fairly rewarding one. But all too often what happens is some players can't even keep one properly, and then those that can bloat it to infinity and beyond with every item they have ever come in contact with like a greed monster obsessive compulsive Guybrush Threepwood.

Encumbrance solves almost nothing. It's nice to have "weak character carries little" but beyond that it doesn't actually solve bloated lists or help with capping applicable amounts of wealth as power.

Abstracted Inventory slots are very probably the way to go but getting where you want to be is hard. How many should there be, how harsh do you actually want to be on abstracting someone into not being allowed to wear a hat and goggles at the same time because they are both head slot items? Worse if you just generically slot everything how much do you want to prevent them from wearing a hat and BOOTS at the same time just because they also have a CAPE?

I've tried a few variants in approaches over time.

Tangentially one of the most baffling failure results for a game mechanical experiment I have ever tried was an incredibly simplistic Inventory management system. The rule was "Draw your character, draw the items on. If you cannot draw them on, you cannot carry them, feel free to draw a stick figure and equally crude representations of your items". And wow, over night players that had been compulsively drawing depictions of their characters on their character sheets for YEARS just... stopped. They just did not want to do that thing. I still regard it as weird to this day.

Anyway I am fairly confident the correct answer is something like...

Abstracted Slot limits of some form for items doing things. Informal "that makes sense" limits for how many inactive items you can wear or carry at once. A very straightforward "Strong/Weak/Heavy/Light" tagging system for "weak people can't carry heavy stuff". And a formalized system that acknowledges that you might have a desire to "switch in" inactive inventory items or items just lying around into your "active slots" and then costs that in combat actions in some way that puts a meaningful yet acceptable formal cost on messing around with those during encounters.

More recently deciding that "everything is pretty much wealth based" has helped I think in conceptually pushing those active slots to a far more abstracted state where they exist with limited numbers by mechanical role rather than splitting them by body location or XP/Item divides. But even variants before that basically worked.

BUT. What about the actual currency as a physical intractable object and how you want to track it? I'm feeling like I don't know, splitting that. This vague heading and post has gone on long enough.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Thanks PL, you made me deviate from writing up equipment to writing up inventory rules. And what the fuck kind of experiment was that? Of course nobody wanted to draw the items on their character. That's... weird.

[MGuy]

There's a lot still to consider. As far as haggling goes off hand I think it should only effect temporary wealth. I'm going to say now that's what I'm going to use the word Fortune for. I still don't have numbers of course but now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably at least better define the concept of a fortune vs wealth so I can make my notes look a bit more sensible. I have fortune written down since it got brought up in this thread but I think now is as good a time as any to make an effort to get a more concrete idea of what I mean when I think about it.

What is a Fortune?
Fortune is going to represent 'temporary' wealth while the wealth score proper is going to represent more permanent wealth. What does this mean? Well Fortune is probably what a character can use when not at home. Reasonably your wealth is going to be tied up in your holdings. If wealth represents favors, assets, valuables, etc then likely a player isn't carrying all that around. So a Fortune is what the character has on the road as well as what the character. In addition this means that I'll have to tie permanent wealth to permanent assets/titles/etc since it will represent a more sustained income going forward.

So why have temporary wealth?
I think there is value for having Fortune and Wealth tracked differently.

1: Haggling - The very reason I'm thinking that I should define wealth right now is because of the idea of haggling. I do not value table time spent watching players haggle with shopkeepers, quest givers, etc. It is utterly uninteresting to me. I'd rather it be a passive 'thing' that savvy business/face type players just 'get' and be done with it. To facilitate this players have to be able to 'spend' and 'earn' wealth. This can't work with wealth as I currently have it because I'm planning on there being no more than maybe 10 tiers of wealth total. Since wealth is permanent and the numbers are low (and with good reason) there's no room for haggling to fuck with those numbers. So a secondary amount is absolutely necessary and the numbers will have to be bigger. Probably double digits, and hopefully on the lower end of those double digits at that (I'm thinking 20 ish).

2: Buying stuff. In thinking about how I want wealth to work I've come to the conclusion that Wealth, as it stands, is clearly going to be more permanent in nature. More of a representation of investment and sustained income. That means I likely don't want it influenced by individual purchases. Maintenance costs (like that for equipment, lifestyle, and upkeep) can be assumed to come out of one's wealth and not need to be tracked. However commissioning for a boat to be made probably should be. This means there's going to be a necessary split between things players can buy and things that just add to their upkeep.

There are probably more benefits that I can't think of right now but I think these two reasons are important enough to validate the choice.

What will make it temporary?
Alright so I said that the intent is to have a sort of temporary wealth but what would actually make it temporary? Well the players won't be able to hold onto their fortune over time. Or at least not without an asset that explicitly allows them to like a bank or a vault. Otherwise the fortune just gets used as wealth would over time and unlike wealth, since it isn't permanent, it vanishes. This would allow for players who are out on the road or who want to be drifters with no holdings or ties to anything to be able to fund their lifestyle without 'necessarily' needing those holdings. This also has other benefits I think. It means renting out other people's assets isn't a thing that can be done 'for free' since it drains the player's fortune, allows for players to combine their earnings toward group interests without fucking up the other wealth numbers, and is something they can likely use outside of the territory where their regular abstracted wealth would be reasonably useful (assuming wealth encompasses things like favors, status, etc along with imagined currency). It can also be drained when a player's regular assets 'fail' for a given time period.

There are probably other benefits I haven't thought of yet but these are the ones streaming through my consciousness right now.

So what's the exchange rate between Fortunes and Wealth?
I'm not sure yet. It is very important that adventuring be the primary way players make their fortunes. The fortunes they earn through this adventuring should also allow them to increase their wealth or give them greater access to resources that would allow them to access their higher level abilities. So whatever the exchange rate from wealth holdings being converted to fortune it has to be less than the amount you'd use to leverage those fortunes into wealth holdings AND also less than what you'd regularly get from the adventuring. Business assets should probably be able to produce a small amount of fortune on particularly successful time periods so characters that invest more in 'that' can see some limited returns.

I'll have to figure out the exact numbers later as I'll have to decide on exact numbers I'm willing to give to things like how much I expect players to be rewarded on successful adventures at a given level/tier of the game and right now I don't know what that's going to look like just yet.

Offhand I'm thinking that your wealth tier creates a cap for your max fortune and if you break past that cap you have to either expend the excess fortune and turn it into an asset of the appropriate tier immediately or lose it. I'm thinking 10 tiers of wealth and 10 units of fortune per tier. Assets would not be cumulative so you could have multiple tier 1 wealth assets. Upkeep/maintenance costs would also work like this with lifestyle/upkeep costs being individual drains on wealth/fortune. So a tier 1 lifestyle/upkeep cost would drain your fortunes by 1 or be maintained by a single tier 1 wealth asset.

Let's turn that into slots.

Players can get assets/boons/whatever that give wealth slots. These slots can be taken up by things that cost upkeep. The slots are individual and can't be combined. So you can't rest a thing that costs 3 upkeep on a slot that only gives a single slot. Or rather, if you do, you have to pay the rest of the upkeep out of your fortune. Let's say upkeep is taken monthly for now. You can liquidate an appropriate asset for an amount of fortune equal to its wealth tier (this happens automatically if you don't 'buy' found assets with your meta points) and an asset that produces wealth can randomly produce a minor amount of fortune in particularly successful conditions. You can upgrade an asset or buy a new one with Fortune. Let's say for now it requires 10 units of fortune to per asset tier.

Where does crafting fit in?
Crafting is a whole other issue altogether but it's ties to wealth and fortunes will probably be fairly straight forward. So firstly the exact numbers will 'still' be up in the air. 0 tier items, for example, are a newer concept for me that I hadn't considered yet at all and I'm only just now getting around to Fortunes. That being said Crafting is just another way to get stuff. You just get it a bit cheaper because what you need to spend fortune on is different and then you can turn around and reap the profit from the labor when you turn around and sell it for some fortune. It also affords you the most freedom and customization. This is good but also not something I want to go on a tangent about.

What is important for wealth here is that you can get stuff cheaper because what you spend fortune on will be different. It implies that there is then value to other things that through this medium and maybe more directly has a value. So things like ingredients, tools, and time have an indirect value and in the case of ingredients and tools, likely a market value players can spend fortune on. This could potentially mean that craftspeople are the ideal path to riches for players. I think the likelihood of this can be mitigated in a few ways that I've already written for wealth and for crafting.

I'm not going to go fully into my crafting system in 'this' thread. Crafting deserves its own thread and I'll probably make one not too long from now because it is something I've had to mostly go off and construct away from here because the last few times I asked I got little in response. I'll probably lump encumbrance in as well.

So what I think keeps things effectively tier locked in a way that helps the game is that ingredients are also tiered just like items are. If a player comes into the possession of a high tiered ingredient then they likely were a part of an adventure that got it to them. There is a cut off point for what tier of ingredients are actually on the market freely, which ones are on the market but really hard to get, and tiers of them that aren't on the market at all. Tier 1 (and I guess now tier 0) ingredients are found commonly. Tier 2 exist but are more costly and take downtime to 'find'. Tier 3 and 4 ingredients and items do not exist in a regular market at all.

I'm not sure what the exchange rates items and ingredients are going to have as far as fortunes go right now but it is going to be an important consideration. Also these will only represent important purchases. Even with all this I'm not going to be interested in tracking arrows purchased and likewise I won't be tracking arrows created. This will likely only be used to track significant equipment and ingredient purchases as well as creations.

Edit: A thing I forgot...
Fortunes are TEMPORARY!

It's hard to hold on to a lot of loose change. So beyond a certain amount you're going to need to have a place to put your fortune or you effectively don't have it. You can stash it somewhere and have a treasure map to find it later but in the interim you effectively don't have it and it's much better to put it in a bank, a vault, or somewhere you have invested in to make it easier to use it when you need it. So yea. Use it, buy a place to put it in, or lose it. Probably should have a time limit. I'm going to say a month. Or it's lost during the next "upkeep phase", which'll probably be monthly.

[PhoneLobster]

What is a Fortune?

Well this is slightly awkward. And not because I think I know better on your term selection, I mean, of course I do, looking at where you seem to be going I would have gone with "Cash" and "Capital" instead of 'Fortune" and "Wealth".

But just more if I kept talking about my stuff I went with "Coins" as my low tier currency... and "Fortunes" as my mid tier currency. So for clarity when I talk about that from here I'll just use the old name for the mid tier currency I used to use and call it "Treasures".

I do not value table time spent watching players haggle with shopkeepers

I feel like players want to do it, but don't know how and wouldn't enjoy any in depth time spent on it. It's one of the reason I think pricing should be kept separate from value and entirely arbitrary.

The GM just gives players an arbitrary price based on how they imagine the shopkeeper feels about the real formal item value (and what they as the GM feel about it). The players say "I um, friendly him for a discount or something" they roll a bullshit friendly roll that doesn't really use formal mechanics. Then the GM just gives them another arbitrary price based on how the roll has made them feel.

As long as they feel they had a chance at getting a discount it's a sufficiently satisfying interaction and arbitrary pricing and essentially fairy tea party resolution maintains some ability to lightly regulate the acquisition of actual practical value.

So what's the exchange rate between Fortunes and Wealth?

I'd just you know not do that. Wealth could just be a different thing you get from the same place.

If you do you are going to create an exchange method you will have to spend a fair bit of work on numbers and mechanical interactions to prevent potential exploits and break points. Which I think is achievable, at least to a sufficient if imperfect level of quality, but I'm not sure it's worth the work compared to preventing the exchange outright.

Or rather, if you do, you have to pay the rest of the upkeep out of your fortune. Let's say upkeep is taken monthly for now.

Well. You know my position on upkeep accounting. And it's not like there aren't alternatives.

After all you can't run a system like say, my "magic swords need magic sword vaults, super powers need super power rooms" without asking "what if you lose access to the required buildings" and the answer doesn't have to be a measurable increase in accounting complexity until the permanent capital requirement shortage is resolved.

For me stuff just... stops working. Time frames at various implementations being "immediately", "after next use" or "arbitrarily" because I don't like tracking a bunch of fixed number time durations either.

Also this is getting fairly complex on the Fortune, Wealth, Asset?, Meta-Point? interactions. I feel like I might get a grip on it with slightly more information on the Asset and Meta-Point bits.

It's hard to hold on to a lot of loose change. So beyond a certain amount you're going to need to have a place to put your fortune or you effectively don't have it.

Damnit that was effectively where I intended to go next. I mean, I still will...

[MGuy]

I'm not married to 'Fortune' as a term but I also wouldn't want to go with 'cash' since it sounds a bit too specific. I am thinking that what would stand in for fortune would be as abstract as what I'm imagining wealth to be. A mix of trade goods, favors, and ability to leverage status. I think treasure would be a good alternative.

As for players haggling with shop keepers, that's going to be a hard no for my thing. I know from experience that players at times like these encounters, and I can't tell someone what to like or not like, but it doesn't interest me. I want to avoid any dice rolling if I don't think it adds value to something. I'm not going to write up a haggling minigame so 'no dice' on this one.

I'd just you know not do that. Wealth could just be a different thing you get from the same place.

If you do you are going to create an exchange method you will have to spend a fair bit of work on numbers and mechanical interactions to prevent potential exploits and break points. Which I think is achievable, at least to a sufficient if imperfect level of quality, but I'm not sure it's worth the work compared to preventing the exchange outright.

I am going to take it at your word that it might be difficult (or very difficult) but I can't imagine this particular thing not coming up and causing tension. Earlier I rejected the idea of doing haggling scenes but haggling is going to represented in some form in the game. I feel a lot of tension with the thought that players both wouldn't be able to turn the troll's treasure trove into a bakery or get a bunch of quick cash for 'right now' and are willing to deal with the bad exchange rate.

Whatever I come up with will probably be imperfect. I am far from a math wiz but I 'am' somewhat confident that I can come up with something that will discourage attempts to game the wealth system in any way that doesn't involve engaging with the gameplay that I want the players to experience. If the worse abuses end up being 'taking 50 years off to become a top tier farmer' or something equally ridiculous then I'll have gotten things where I need them to be. I don't even necessarily want to bar players from getting rich as long as the road there pretty much requires playing the game.

Also this is getting fairly complex on the Fortune, Wealth, Asset?, Meta-Point? interactions. I feel like I might get a grip on it with slightly more information on the Asset and Meta-Point bits.

The wealth portion is largely uncharted territory for me and I'm pretty much going off of scattered notes on what I intend to do and am now spitballing. Most of the last post was what I came up with while I was typing it.

AS for complexity? That's as intended. I want every facet of the game to kind of loop in on itself. I want all of the little minigames to have effects in 'other' portions of the game. What I'm looking to avoid isn't complexity itself but how much table time the various minigames take up. I also don't want to dive 'too far into other aspects of the game because that would take up a lot of thread real estate. For this thread I only want to ruminate pretty much only about how to handle players getting money and how I want to influence them to spend it.

That being said... Playing the numbers game is going to be largely optional. I don't mind having some depth to it, for those who want to get involved with it. The game will definitely be playable if people don't want to spend a lot of time doing accounting for this. Having a home, some contacts, and a side gig that they just say they are filling their downtime with is what I imagine the average player will be doing with their time. The home and side gig wouldn't be necessary either but just a more convenient way for players to make sure they have their basic equipment and a place for their character to lay their head. Anything I write beyond that will be for players who care a little bit more than that. Crafting is definitely going to be similarly complex and I am very sure most players don't bother even looking at it.

[PhoneLobster]

I've been struggling over this one for a while. Trying to think how to say something sorta simple in an interesting way... and I don't think I found it...

Purse Fondling
I don't like unlimited imaginary money credit being an on character sheet thing for most of my fantasy games. I made the LT currency Coins and I want people to remember they are handling damned coins. Also I want career advancement opportunities for pick pockets.

So I set a limit on how many coins you could physically carry in your actual god damn hands before you had to put them in a bag of some shape or form. Money purses becoming not a super complex formal game rules item, but basically just barely an important one.

Purses The Size Of Buildings
And I wanted to create career opportunities for money vault raiders. So the Fortune Tier loot needed special storage buildings or you lose it.

Really crap storage chests at base camp
I didn't want low tier characters having an easy time securing and storing "spare" loot off their character sheet by sticking it in a diablo style worn out probably not even locked chest in the middle of a burnt out village with nothing but a sleepy disinterested old man to "watch over it". I felt somewhat hostile to other more sensible low tier investment security schemes.

So I implemented a harsh regime of imaginary pick pockets and general wealth entropy. If it wasn't on your character you couldn't make any guarantees what would happen to it.

Entry Point Into The Unlimited Item Closet[/i]
But I didn't want player characters to NEVER reach a point where they could rely on having... stuff... in a... place...

So one of the important early points of mid tier is a point at which you can afford buildings that have useful LT items in them.

And they don't JUST let you write down some off character storage. In fact they don't let you do that at all. They let you write down some LT items that that place will ALWAYS have available (or at least always restock for the next event), even if you in game go and pick them up and use them and forget to put them back or set them on fire or something.

Which was helpful for ensuring that the mid tier transition is a point at which characters enter at the minimum with all the LT junk they need, AND to help ensure that there were "equipment Locations" on "base maps" when players have their bases raided so the guy who rolls up "in the bath" for what he was doing when the base got attacked knows the nearest location he can go to grab a bunch of useful LT items to wear and hit things with.

And so there. Wealth storage and improperly stored wealth attrition. Things to do or something.

[MGuy]

I don't want to actually go through pick pocketing scenes anymore than I want to go through shopkeeper scenes. At least not for something like getting pocket change. It only matters when the players are doing something that matters to the plot. Being able to steal the rags off the poor isn't something I want to matter 'much'. If your side gig is 'pickpocket' then it just 'happens' off screen and can have downsides that will effect the character if luck isn't with them. As far as the players getting robbed? My solution is similar to this:

So I implemented a harsh regime of imaginary pick pockets and general wealth entropy. If it wasn't on your character you couldn't make any guarantees what would happen to it.

Though for my work this is true for any and all assets be they wealth generators/storage or contacts. I mentioned earlier that the players will basically have to get vaults or deal with banks, and part of it is worrying that if left alone someone will take their stuff while they aren't around. Same thing goes for other treasures and people that are associated with them. As their fame/infamy grows they will of course attract more attention to themselves. During downtime there will be special events that occur and usually a dice roll to determine whether they are good or bad at random. Background events like these usually have background modifiers that affect them so it's all taken care of within the 'non combat' structures. I also intend to have a structure for pacing when and how the GM can opt to interfere with these things as well. Both will grow in intensity, and likely scope, as the players grow.

[PhoneLobster]

I don't want to actually go through pick pocketing scenes

I think that's kinda a mistake.

Not so much because you not wanting to do a highly specific scenario is bad. In fact "street urchin is running away, oh no where is your purse!" is actually a pretty mediocre encounter in a lot of ways, especially if the PCs aren't the street urchin.

But more because I think the basic mechanical support for the pick pocket purse snatcher encounter is all game mechanical material you want for other actions and encounters.

Stealing a thing without someone noticing, running away from pursuit, hiding in a crowd or otherwise stealthily losing someone, failing at any of those things and the sort of combat actions/transitions that could occur as a result. Those are all useful if not vital in other scenarios.

Even more specifically "go steal the whatever off the guy" is a pretty reasonable minor adventure scenario and some sort of "meet him, distract him, steal the thing from him without him immediately noticing, get the hell out" is a pretty reasonable solution, that is basically just a later variant of "oh no pick pockets" and is supported by basically the same underlying mechanics.

So, yeah, not including something about how purses work because you just choose never to do purse snatching, sort of fine (I mean it's nice if purses are still a thing for looting, but whatever not much impact). But I'd hope you still have mechanical support for and intentions to represent encounters that include "steal the thing" and "cheese it!".

[MGuy]

I don't want to actually go through pick pocketing scenes

I think that's kinda a mistake.

Not so much because you not wanting to do a highly specific scenario is bad. In fact "street urchin is running away, oh no where is your purse!" is actually a pretty mediocre encounter in a lot of ways, especially if the PCs aren't the street urchin.

But more because I think the basic mechanical support for the pick pocket purse snatcher encounter is all game mechanical material you want for other actions and encounters.

Stealing a thing without someone noticing, running away from pursuit, hiding in a crowd or otherwise stealthily losing someone, failing at any of those things and the sort of combat actions/transitions that could occur as a result. Those are all useful if not vital in other scenarios.

Even more specifically "go steal the whatever off the guy" is a pretty reasonable minor adventure scenario and some sort of "meet him, distract him, steal the thing from him without him immediately noticing, get the hell out" is a pretty reasonable solution, that is basically just a later variant of "oh no pick pockets" and is supported by basically the same underlying mechanics.

So, yeah, not including something about how purses work because you just choose never to do purse snatching, sort of fine (I mean it's nice if purses are still a thing for looting, but whatever not much impact). But I'd hope you still have mechanical support for and intentions to represent encounters that include "steal the thing" and "cheese it!".

I do have mechanical support for stealing things off of people. That is still a skill, and players are free to do it. I just don't want to encourage players to actually go stealing the gold watches off of noblemen. So those who choose that as a side gig just 'do it' but in the same way as any other side gig. Just with different consequences for failure in their off time.

What I meant to convey when I added the addendum 'at least not for pocket change' is that I don't want to observe such a thing 'just because'. For another example, earlier, I said I don't want to do haggling with shopkeeper scenes. Haggling is just a subset of asking for a favor. (hopefully) I'll be making a system where a character can convince others to do them a favor but I don't want to encourage players to spam it at shopkeepers. I know that there will definitely be players who are merchants who haggle and cutpurses who steal things and I prefer to keep these activities offscreen unless they are of use in moving things onscreen along.