Biología-Geología 4º ESO

Money is notoriously number-

intensive in most role-playing games. Keeping track of what you have saved

up, what you are spending and how much you are making is important, but not to the level of keeping track of every last credit. EABA tries to push this to the back by using a less finicky scale for keeping track of things. Adventurers will have three ratings related to money:

lifestyle: This is a rating that represents the

level of expenditure you can maintain on a steady basis if you have steady work. It is allows for some non-essentials proportionate to your income, but more than this will dip into your savings. Lifestyle is EABA’s way to say ‘you do not need to keep track of money unless you overdo it.’ Your lifestyle rating is essentially one-quarter of your total income.

savings: This is a rating that represents your

cash reserves. Spend beyond your lifestyle and you get marks against it. Too many marks and you lose a level. Get a windfall and you get marks towards gaining a level. If unemployed, expenses normally covered by your lifestyle instead come out of savings. You can have a high lifestyle and low savings, a high savings but low lifestyle or anything in between.

investments: This is things like stocks, trust

funds, and so on. It is similar to lifestyle, but you get it even if you are not working. But, you cannot overspend it as easily as lifestyle. You get a certain amount per unit of time and that is it. The advantage is that you always get it (within the limits of money delivery in the gameworld), and things you buy with it do not count towards lifestyle expenditures.

Honestly, if you are just starting out, you can probably just skip this for the first couple game sessions. Just grab some reasonable gear or have the gamemaster assign you some and come back to this later.

Savings is based on your lifestyle rating, with modifiers for your age (the length of time you have had to accumulate it) and Will (the more self-control you have, the more you are able to set aside). Savings is your lifestyle level plus 12, adjusted as below. You can have a savings level of +0, meaning you have no savings at all and are living paycheck to paycheck.

adjustment savings Will of 3-4 -2 Will of 5-6 -1 Will of 7-8 +0 Will of 9-10 +1 Will of 11+ +2 adult (16-20) -1 physical prime(21-25) +0 mature (26-40) +2 middle-aged(41-60) +3 elderly(61-80) +4 extremely elderly(81+) +3

each level wealth applied to savings +2 each level of poverty applied to savings -2

The craftsman from the previous example is probably in the ‘mature’ age range. If they had a Will of 8, then their savings level would be +10 (lifestyle of -4, plus 2 for age, +12 to get savings level). They would mark off all but ten savings circles.

The way savings works is that spending from savings marks X’s in one or more circles, and adding to savings erases X’s. If savings is all marked in X’s and you spend more, savings level goes down and you erase the X’s. If it has no X’s and you add to it, savings level goes up and you fill it with X’s.

If our craftsman had a savings of +10, then spending 10 marks against savings drops their savings level to +9, or adding 10 marks towards savings increases it to +11.

As a lump sum, a savings of +3 is worth a total of your lifestyle+3, savings of +6 is worth life- style+7, savings of +9 (a year’s worth of saving money) is worth lifestyle+9, and savings of +14 is worth lifestyle+11.

At the start of play you have a lifestyle of the full dice of your best income-generating skill, minus 10. If you do not have an income- generating skill, use the full dice of your best Attribute roll and assume the skill is in low demand (you will be poor). Adjust as follows:

adjustment lifestyle

applicable complementary skill +1

skill is in high demand +1

skill is in low demand -1

each level of wealth/poverty applied ±2

less than 1 year at job -1

1-4 years at job +0

5-15 years at job +1

16+ years at job +2

A craftsman with a skill roll of 5d+0 and twelve years experience would have a lifestyle level of -4. A level of -4 is not bad, it just approximates your weekly disposable income on the cost column of the Universal Chart. Your approximate weekly pay is about your lifestyle level plus 4 and your hourly wage is about your lifestyle level minus 7. So our craftsman has an actual weekly pay of about 1,000 Credits (≈50KCr per year) and makes the equivalent of 25 Credits an hour.

In terms of conventional income brackets, lifestyle levels in modern terms would be: lifestyle class equivalent yearly income

-12 homeless ≈3KCr -9 poverty ≈8KCr -6 lower class ≈23KCr -3 middle class ≈65KCr +0 upper class ≈175KCr +3 ≈500KCr +6 ≈1MCr +9 ≈4MCr +12 elite >10MCr

As an aside, an adventurer can support more than just themselves. One extra person is a -1 on your lifestyle rating, and an extra -1 each time this is doubled. An extra person of the same income in the same household is +1 to the over- all household lifestyle.

Loans

The abstract savings system works for moderate income and average expenses. Huge windfalls or big expenses in play usually require separate accounting. Very few people buy a house or even a new car with their normal cash on hand.

Whether or not loans are done in a gameworld or are worth the trouble are up to the gamemaster. The easiest way to do a loan is to say that the adventurer gets the money to buy an item or pay a debt without using savings marks. This would be a short, medium or long-term loan. For a short-term loan (2 years), the weekly lifestyle cost of repayment is the cash level of the loan minus 13. For a medium-term loan (6 years) it would be the level minus 15. For a long-term loan (20 years) it would be the level minus 17. Adventurers can start play in debt if the game- master allows, and this can actually be part of their motivation (having a bank or a loan shark as an Enemy, for instance). Legitimate lenders will not usually loan to you if the weekly cost is more than your lifestyle (which would equate to about one-quarter of your total income).

Paying off the loan is simply a matter of applying the payments as a continual drain on lifestyle. If you miss payments, you might have to pay more on the next payment. Miss too many payments and the repo guy or the loan shark’s goons come calling. If you come into a chunk of cash, you can always pay it off at a cost of the remaining debt level plus 1.

If our craftsman with a lifestyle of -4 needed a lot of money, they could get a loan with a weekly lifestyle cost of no more than -4. An 23,000 Credit (cost level of +9) short-term loan would be a weekly lifestyle cost of -4. A 45,000 Credit (cost level of +11) medium-term loan or 90,000 Credit (cost level of +13) long-term loan would also have this weekly lifestyle drain. If they gradually paid off half of a 23,000 Credit loan, this would leave a balance of 11,500 Credits or a cost level of +7. Paying off this remainder as a lump sum would be a cost level of +8.

At the start of play, your savings rating is the cash supply to buy everything of significant value that you own. You will certainly be making marks against this value to acquire your starting ‘stuff’.

Investment income starts with no value. You have no investment income unless you buy it, and you buy it by reducing your starting savings level. Some of the money you have set aside has been put into income-generating investments rather than things like a car or computer or gun or armor.

If you lose a level of savings (marks equal to its full level), you can get a passive income of your savings level before the loss, minus 24. Each extra level of savings you lose increases the result by 1. Passive income amounts of less than -12 are generally not allowed.

If our craftsman had some investments, the

minimum amount would drop their starting savings from +10 to +9, and would give them a passive income of -14, which is too low to be worth

noticing. If they chose to drop their starting savings down to +7, then their passive income would rise from -14 to -12, which is barely on the table. For reference, your investment income is approximately one week of interest on the value invested at a five percent yearly rate of return.

Investment income can usually be turned back into savings with some delay, and an overall penalty. You get a number of check marks towards increasing savings equal to your investment income level plus 22.

If our craftsman really needed some cash and had a investment income level of -12, they could get 10 marks towards increasing their savings level (their investment income plus 22) and then drop the investment income to -13, pretty much disposing of the investments.

Any item whose cost is equal or less than your lifestyle, and is legal to own, and for which you have at least a +0d skill, status or other trait appropriate to, you are assumed to have.

Say you have a starting lifestyle of -4 and starting savings of +10. Each savings box for you is about 250 Credits). You want to have a a used car (11 savings marks), a decent computer (4 savings marks) an apartment (free if within your lifestyle) and all the furnishings and clothing that go with it (we will say 4 savings marks). These items cost you a total of 19 marks against your savings. Ten marks drops your savings to +9, nine more marks drops your savings to +8, so your remaining savings is +8 with no marks on it. But, you do own

outright all the stuff described. Since you have a

starting lifestyle of -4, everything related to your skills and interests with a cost level of -4 or less (250 Credits), you are assumed to have or can readily get.

Because of the way savings works, one ‘mark’ of savings varies in value, but is usually about your lifestyle (for a lifestyle of +0, each mark would be worth about 1,000 Credits). The total number of savings marks is something like the level squared, divided by 2, plus half the level (so a savings of +10 would have (10 x 10)/2 + 5 = 55 boxes worth about your lifestyle each). You will note that throughout the rules, costs for goods will have a price in Credits and a cost level. Not everyone will want to use the abstract lifestyle and savings rules and will prefer a straightforward cash economy, so the rules will cater to both needs.

Fancy & drab

All the basic rules for buying stuff and initial gear assume a uniform cost structure. Anyone who has ever compared urban and rural apartment prices knows this is not the case. The easiest ways to handle this are to simply say that costs of goods and services are more or less than normal. Note that home prices on the outfitting are set low just to encourage adventurers to own a place to live.

Buying stuff

In play, it is fairly simple. You simply keep track of the most expensive things you spend money on each week.

weekly expense

most expensive item its level each doubling of that cost +2 each item within 1 or 2 cost levels +1

If you bought something with a cost level of -4 and two things with a cost level of -5, then your expenses for the week had a cost level of -3. Items less costly than this do not count, as long as they are in moderation. Your expenses compared to your lifestyle are your expenses, not you and all your friends’ expenses. Just because something does not count does not mean you can buy a thousand of them... If the game situation is such that your total spending is not at or within 2 points of your lifestyle, you erase an X, or if there are none marked off, increase your savings level. If spending is equal or less than your lifestyle level, you are done. You are living within your means and no bookkeeping is needed.

If the amount is greater than your lifestyle, then you put an “X” in a number of savings circles equal to the difference. If you are not employed but wish to keep up appearances appropriate to your lifestyle (like making rent payments), this takes a number of savings circles each week equal to your lifestyle plus 4, with a minimum of 1 box marked.

starting gear: At the start of a campaign or

start of an adventurer’s career, you have to acquire your starting possessions. You can either use the outfitting guidelines to be generally equipped according to your income and social station, or you can simply add up the items you want that exceed your lifestyle, and take marks against your savings for the full value of each one.

Outfitting

Players can, if they wish, go through the minutia of the gear listings in the back of the rules and decide what they want to start play with. Or, to speed things up, they can just choose from one of the packages below and just select the handful of tech- or gameworld- specific items in that package. So, you can get into the game a lot quicker, and can go back later and fill in the details. The cost for the items in a package is a number of marks on starting savings, which will probably lower its level. Other notes on cost of living are on page 7.35.

lower-class package (lifestyle of -5): appropriate clothing(2)(350Cr)

weapon & armor if appropriate(2)(350Cr) minimal quality transport(11)(2KCr)

skill- or interest-related possessions(2)(350Cr) rented lodging for lifestyle(0) or minimal home (45)(8KCr), -7 lifestyle cost for either

middle-class package(lifestyle of -2): appropriate clothing(2)(1KCr)

average weapon & armor if appropriate(4)(2KCr) average quality transport(40)(20KCr)

skill- or interest-related possessions(4)

rented lodging for lifestyle(0) or average home (100)(50KCr), -4 lifestyle cost for either

upper-class package (lifestyle of +1): appropriate clothing(4)(5.6KCr)

good weapons & armor if appropriate(4)(5.6KCr) good quality transport(40)(56KCr)

skill- or interest-related possessions(8)(11KCr) professional staff(0, but lifestyle cost of +0) rented lodging for lifestyle(0) or high quality home(100)(140KCr), -1 lifestyle cost for either

If a modern adventurer had a starting lifestyle of -5 and savings of +6, this would be lower class or lower middle class. The adventurer has a total of 21 savings boxes, so they could get all the lower- class items (17 savings boxes) plus anything that was related to their skills and cost -5 or less. This would drop a starting savings of +6 down to +3 (17 marks drops 6 to 5, 5 to 4, 4 to 3 and then marks two boxes off the 3).

Tech-based income

Later in the rules we will bring up the concept of ‘tech eras’, which have a lot to do with the amount of industrialization in a society and its overall wealth. The equivalent cost for durable goods is higher in times and places with less automation and where fewer labor-saving devices are available. Less advanced societies will use the same lifestyle levels, but the prices for goods will be greatly increased. The prices in the rules are set at about the Late Atomic Era, or the present-day. Each fraction of a tech era below this is a +1 to the cost of any goods purchased, with exceptions for things produced mostly with low-skilled labor or static services (agricultural products and rents, mostly). Look at whatever you are wearing right now. Imagine what it would cost you if every last thread in that amount of fabric had been hand-spun, and then those threads hand-woven into fabric and that fabric hand-stitched into garments. The labor cost would make it a lot more expensive and you would own a lot less clothing...

If the previous craftsman were for a campaign in the Basic Era (16th century or thereabouts), this would be seven fractions of a tech era earlier. They still start with a lifestyle of -4 and savings of +10, but most prices for goods or outfitting are +7 to the listed amount. For instance, a flintlock pistol on the gear list has a cost level of -4, or 250 Credits. This would be within their lifestyle, if you were using modern manufacturing methods. However, with the +7 for the low-tech manufacturing methods, it is 7 points more than their lifestyle and costs 7 boxes off savings, a

major hit to your bank account. Or in cash

terms, it would be like a modern person making an 2,800 Credit purchase. A 30 Credit pair of jeans would be 350 Credits! This is why things like a sword or armor were matters of status. If you were a peasant with a sword, it was simply

assumed that you stole it, because there is no

way you could earn the money to buy it.

The gamemaster can also adjust specific

technologies in this way to make them more or less expensive to the average population.

Finishing up

Whether you are a new or experienced player, by this point you probably have some ideas for what sort of adventurer you want, and have probably absorbed more of the rules of the

EABA system than you realize. But there is

more to it than that.

The numbers on your adventurer sheet, and for that matter, the entire adventurer sheet is really just a memory aid and an anti-cheating device. You cannot just make up abilities you want when you need them, nor claim to have certain goodies you did not pay for nor which are an assumed part of your lifestyle or career. The heart of the adventurer is you. Without you it is just a piece of paper or pixels on a screen. The heart of the adventurer is also someone else, that persona that you have created. You are the one playing it, but there is a really good chance you have created an adventurer who thinks and acts in ways that you would not. And just as you came by your beliefs, attitudes, traits and skills by your upbringing, various events, coincidences, and maybe just plain luck, so did your adventurer. We have tried to encourage this in small ways by giving you free points and side effects for an adventurer for things like Background, but a good adventurer is going to have a lot of detail. And you might not even know this detail to begin with. It is perfectly acceptable to fill in the background of your adventurer during play, as long as this does not affect the history of the game. If you say that you have powers because your ancestry includes some ‘monsters’, that’s cool, but kind of vague. Maybe later on you decide that your grand- mother had an affair with a werewolf, it was a big scandal at the time and a dirty little family secret that no one talks about. Same basic thing, but you have fleshed it out in a way that is more interesting and gives the gamemaster more to work with.

Lifestyle and to some extent savings are not so