If you like you can look at the (sketchy, incomplete) GM notes as well.

The Money System

Whenever we mention the cost of an item, service, or payment, we'll attach one of the following labels to it, describing how significant the price is in absolute terms:

Trivial: Basic food and filthy, third-rate clothing. A copy of a newspaper. Rent for a hovel in the Slums. A few pennies.

Minor: Decent food and functional - though unfashionable - clothing. Rent, for those living in filthy tenement blocks, cramped attics, and whatnot (and that's most people). Widely published books. A floral bouquet. Protection money, in most parts of the Lower City. A few shillings.

Notable: Good food, fashionable clothing. Rent, for those who live in nicer town houses. A bottle of decent wine. The wages of one or two servants/bodyguards/mooks. A bribe for a medium-level bureaucrat. Basic equipment for magical rituals or alchemical studies. Tens of shillings to a few guilders.

Significant: A gourmet meal. The wages of a significant number of servants/bodyguards/mooks. Repairs for a steam-and-clockwork taxi. Clockwork guns. High-quality equipment for magical rituals or alchemical studies. Rare books. A bribe for someone with clout within the government. The services of a competant hit man, thief, or magician. Tens of guilders.

Major: A house of your very own. A banquet. Clockwork wings. The deposit required to run for Mayor. The services of a company of mercenaries. A bribe for a government minister. Books so rare most collectors think they're a myth. Enough money to effectively have a Poor income for the rest of your life, if you never work again. Hundreds of guilders.

Staggering: A mansion. A sailing ship (complete with crew). A factory. Major relics and potent artifacts, like the skull of a god or a book bound in human skin. Enough money to effectively have a Comfortable income for the rest of your life, if you never work again. Thousands of guilders.

Various quirks bought in the character generation system will have an income level attached. These do not stack; if Barry the Docker has the day job "dockworker", which gives a Poor income also happens to be a mover and shaker in the Dockyard Rats mob with a Comfortable income, then his income level is regarded as Comfortable. These income levels indicate how much money your character earns per turn. This is in addition to any money your character might receive in the course of the game as reward money, bribes, payoffs, blackmail, commissions, and so forth; your income solely determines how much money you earn per turn by default.

The income levels are as follows:

None: You have no financial means of support whatsoever. You probably survive from day to day on the kindness of strangers. Chances are, your life is completely miserable and just about any opportunity to earn a bit of cash would be welcome. About the only good thing about this is that the local mob won't hassle you for protection money; bullying beggars for a few pennies is pointless. With no regular income, you earn no money at all per turn.

Poor: The vast majority of the city's population are poor. Think of the sort of financial status plucky working class folks in Dickens novels had; if you don't find some additional sources of money, you can look forward to a life of poor sanitation in cramped tenements with far too many people living in a far too small space. Note that a Poor income will not give you enough to both pay rent and protection money, unless you live in the Slums, or join a mob and so get out of paying protection, or just live beyond your means and hope you'll be able to earn the shortfall by doing little errands for PCs and NPCs. Each turn, Poor characters earn enough money to make either one Minor or four Trivial payments; if necessary, they can Tighten Their Belts (see below) and make one Notable payment.

Comfortable: You'll never earn this much in a job which needs manual labour, which is a shame because if you don't get exercise you're liable to get fat. By this point, you can afford the odd luxury item and maintain a middle-class lifestyle, and you needn't worry overmuch about whether you can afford to eat this week. You probably live in a fairly nice house and can afford to hire a servant or two. If you have a Comfortable income, you can make four Minor or one Notable payment per turn, or one Significant payment if you Tighten Your Belt. In addition, you may make as many Trivial payments as you please, within reason - if you start giving away dozens of Trivial amounts of money to people we'll raise an eyebrow.

Because we are playing a game that focuses on "the cream of the crud", Comfortable is the highest income level most player characters can expect to attain legally. The two highest income ranks are only accessible at character generation to major criminals and well-paid undercover agents - although, of course, once the game begins the sky's the limit...

Classy: If you didn't earn this sort of money illegally, you'd be almost certainly be living in the noble district. In a mansion. With a large number of servants. And you can afford to throw really good parties. You can afford to make four Notable payments or one Significant payment per turn, or one Major payment if you Tighten Your Belt. In addition, you may make as many Trivial or Minor payments as you please, within reason.

Magnificent: Ships, palaces, personal armies... you can afford all these things. You are one of the richest people in the city. You can afford to make four Significant or one Major payment per turn, or one Staggering payment if you Tighten Your Belt. In addition, you can make as many Minor or Notable payments as you like, within reason, and you can scatter around a completely unreasonable amount of Trivial payments.

Regular Expenses

"Roger," said Dame Isabel, "I simply don't know what to do with you. You have an excellent education, good manners, a certain vapid charm which you employ when it suits you, and an undeniable talent for high living. What would you do without your allowance from me? Would you starve? Or do you think the demands of your stomach might bring you to grips with reality?"
- Jack Vance, Space Opera

Human beings need three things to survive: food, shelter and security. All three of these things cost money.

Food: Only characters with a Poor income, or no income at all, need worry about getting enough food for themselves. It costs a Trivial amount of money for someone to feed themselves and a small family for a turn - food bought on such a budget will be fairly basic stuff, but will be decent enough to keep you and your close family healthy and nourished.

If you cannot make a Trivial payment for food in a turn, it is assumed that you are living off whatever scraps you can beg, borrow, or steal. This is not a healthy way to live. If your character goes undernourished in this way for a turn, they will be weakened, and thus if they get involved in anything physical - manual labour, fighting, running from the Watchdogs, whatever - they won't perform as well as they usually might; however, if they are then able to get enough food in the following turn, they will soon recover. If your character is undernourished for at least two consecutive turns, they will begin to starve; the effects of their malnourishment will become more severe, and they may take a while to recover when (and if) they are able to eat enough again. Exactly how severe the effects of starvation will be will depend on your character's Brawn quirk.

Shelter: Unless your character is a beggar, he or she will need somewhere to sleep at night. Rich characters may own their own houses; less wealthy individuals will have to pay rent, which will vary depending on where your character lives and what quality of accomodation they reside in. You will have to choose a district to live in in character generation - see that page for more details on rent.

Security: Of course, most districts are run by criminal mobs, who will demand protection money of you. In return for this modest turnly payment, they will refrain from breaking your legs, and make an effort to stop random thugs breaking your legs. Again, see the character generation page for more details about protection money.

Tightening Your Belt

If you have the Squanderbug quirk, you cannot Tighten Your Belt, because you lack the financial discipline to do so.

Savings

Loans

And sometimes they are either too lazy to do any of these things, or in too much of a hurry to have time. Then they go and get a loan from their local mob.

It's simple. Just say how much you'd like, and then pay your monthly repayments for the next 5 turns to stop the big burly men from breaking your legs.

Loan	Repayment/turn
Notable	Minor
Significant	Notable
Major	Significant
Staggering	Major

System-hackers amongst you are probably thinking "Aha! If I have a Classy income or above I can effectively make Notable purchases for free, simply by buying them with loans!"

Sorry. The mobs do not give loans to customers who can pay off the repayments trivially (so, for example, they won't give anything less than a Major loan to someone with a Magnificent income). On an IC level, it simply doesn't make sense to give people loans which aren't going to be a financial burden, because as far as organised crime is concerned the loan repayments are only half the point: the intent of a loan is to both earn money and gain influence over someone.

It is, in theory, possible to get loans from banks. However, the banks of Horizon are much more picky about who they give loans to, since they don't have the option of breaking your legs or blackmailing you into killing people for them when you don't cough up. (Well, okay, maybe they do have that option. But they can't be so blatant about it.) The upshot of this is that getting a loan from the bank involves waiting for at least a turn while they go over the appropriate paperwork, interview you about how you intend to use the money, and so forth. If you want the loan in order to fund a business venture, and they're fairly sure the venture will turn a profit, they'll pay up, but otherwise they'll be reluctant to do business.

Putting It All Together

For example, supposing Count Xavier wants to contrive a way to rid himself of meddling journalist Yellow Ivan. Xavier decides to achieve this through the fine art of bribery. The Count enjoys a Classy income and so can spend four Notable amounts of money per turn; he decides to send a Notable amount of money to a rank-and-file Watchdog (Corporal Albert), a bureaucrat in the Loyal Order of Hounds (Undersecretary Bernard), and a judge rumoured to take bribes occasionally (Judge Cuthbert).

Corporal Albert has a Poor income; the Notable payment, therefore, is more money than he knows what to do with. Albert gladly arrests Yellow Ivan on fabricated charges, and is so overwhelmed by the generosity of Count Xavier's bribe that he puts a great deal of effort into fabricating the evidence and causing Yellow Ivan to repeatedly "fall down the stairs" at the Doghouse.

Undersecretary Bernard, meanwhile, has a Comfortable income. The Notable bribe is about as much money as he earns in a turn; although it's not going to drastically change his life, it's more than welcome. Bernard fixes the paperwork and ensures that Yellow Ivan will be tried by Judge Cuthbert.

Here, however, Count Xavier's plan becomes unstuck; he had been assuming that Judge Cuthbert enjoys a Classy Income, and thus a Notable amount of money would be a modest but appreciated gift. Sadly, Judge Cuthbert enjoys a Magnificent income, both from his crooked dealings as a judge and from his gangland connections. He loses Notable amounts of money down the back of his sofa and doesn't notice; the bribe offered by Xavier is insultingly small to him, for anything less than a Significant amount of money is pocket change. He finds Yellow Ivan innocent, and arranges for the Notable payment to be sent back to Count Xavier; when he next bumps into him at one of the Noble District's gentlemen's clubs, he'll make a snide comment about how Lady Justice is not a cheap strumpet and can't be bought easily.

Of course, Count Xavier could have afforded to bribe Albert and Bernard with Minor amounts of cash, and sent a Significant payment to Judge Cuthbert; in this case, he'd still have given Albert and Bernard a large enough amount of money to make a difference to them, and would have been able to afford to bribe Judge Cuthbert (though if Xavier had no savings stashed away this bribe would have cleaned him out).

The GM team would like to thank Andrew Currall for his excellent and detailed suggestions for updating the money system, which were so good that we adopted them in their entirity.