I agree with Gareth's recent posts about HW representing what is narratively important about a character, and ignoring mundane factors. Maybe nobody else does, but I think that should be written in bold letters in HW2. Wealth is only really important when it is a narrative fact about your character 'Onjor is the richest man in the clan...'
Benedict Adamson wrote:
> Are you suggesting dropping all the cementing rules? (This, in
> effect, is what we have done in our group).
We do. Uh, IIRC we still cement individual items (though we do disagree with others about whether an item is cemented at a starting level). However by our convention we would get Big Block of Gold 12, which does look slightly odd (lack of knowledge of trading with presious metals?). However I think it very unlikely that anyone will ever be handed a big block of gold by a narrator in our game unless it has some plot purpose.
Since we became poor, due to campaign events, few of is have sought to become rich - though Oranda is always on the look out to stuff her belly with food. I don't think wealth has ever been that important to us.
When we cattle raided, no one asks the question 'how much does our wealth go up' we were just eager to get one over on the no goods in the Icy Wind clan.
> Perhaps we are playing HW incorrectly then. We do HP awards and
> spending after the conclusion of each episode, and it consists of
> pure rules bookkeeping.
I'd disagree slightly. Whoever is narrating is always asked to veto/or not veto spending decisions, or hand out directed abilites. We don't tend to buy unrelated abilites due to cost, which is partly why wealth rarely goes up this way, few of our adventures would make us rich, though I think people could make a good argument for a wealth rating over a relationship rating depending on what happened.
If everyone suddenly became wealthy as part of the story I would just handle it the same way we handled becomeing poor. Look up the level of income and assign people below that wealth the ability. This balances the fact that it can go down by fiat as well. A we have said before its all about trust.
If people want a wealth table for their games, then great for them if they can build it, but I think that core HW can live without it.
Ian Cooper
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