This site is for the trial run of Horizon, which has finished! If you want information on the full game, commencing October 2005, you should go here.
The Money System
Because neither you nor we want to spend our time bean-counting, we've provided a handy system, designed to cope with three things: how much money you can expect to be able to spend per turn, how expensive a particular item, service, or payment is on an objective level, and how capable you are of paying such things.All the job-related quirks in the character generation system 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.
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.
Poor: The vast majority of the city's population are poor. Think 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 the Ruins, 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.
Moderate: This is a bit better. By this point you can actually afford the odd luxury item and maintain a lower-middle class lifestyle, and you needn't be too concerned about whether you can afford to eat this week.
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. You probably live in a fairly nice house and can afford to hire a servant or two.
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 three highest income ranks are only accessible at character generation to mob bosses - 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.
Magnificent: Ships, palaces, personal armies... you can afford all these things. You are one of the richest people in the city.
Meanwhile, 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. 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. 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. The protection money demanded by the local mob per turn. 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 Moderate income for the rest of your life, if you never work again. Thousands of guilders.
To find out your character's spending power, merely find your income class in the table below and read down to find to find the purchase class for various prices. Don't try to memorise the whole thing - just the column that relates to yourself.
| None | Poor | Mod | Com | Cla | Mag | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trivial (pennies) | C | C | D | D | D | D |
| Minor (shillings) | B | C | C | D | D | D |
| Notable (guilders) | - | B | C | C | C | D |
| Significant (tens of guilders) | - | A | B | B | C | C |
| Major (hundreds of guilders) | - | - | A | A | B | B |
| Staggering (thousands of guilders) | - | - | - | - | - | A |
A: The purchase is very expensive - so much so, you will have to tighten your belt a little after you make it. Whenever you make a class A purchase all your savings are invested in it, and you drop into the income class immediately below yours for the next two turns.
B: The purchase is expensive, and you would only pay this much every so often.
C: This sort of thing is affordable, but you wouldn't want to pay this much every day.
D: The purchase is too small to bother keeping track of; you may assume you can always buy as many of these things as you need, unless you want vast amounts.
-: The purchase is beyond your means.
Each turn you earn enough money to make 1 class B purchase or 4 class C purchases.
Remember! Class A, B, C and D are out of character terms! Furthermore, they mean different things to different characters. When talking about the prices of things in-session, you should use the Price Class - "Trivial", "Significant", that sort of thing. Referring to a "class C" not only breaks the atmosphere - it doesn't make sense.
Putting It All Together:
Supposing the witch Melissa is selling a love potion to Pete, a Taxi driver. Melissa's income is Comfortable, and Peter's is Moderate. Melissa sells her potions for a Significant price, which is a class B purchase for Peter: that's all the spending he's going to do this turn, unless he's got some savings stashed away. That much money is also enough for a class B purchase for Melissa. If Peter were Poor, it would have been a risky class A purchase; if Melissa had a Classy income, the money she receives from the transaction would only be enough for a class C purchase; then again, a witch who's that wealthy should really stop selling love potions in the street and start selling them in upmarket coffee houses.Remember: price classes represent the objective value of something, purchase classes represent how much it's worth to you.
Savings:
If you make less than 4 class C payments per turn, you can start saving money. This is represented by savings points. The number of savings points you earn per turn depends on how many class C purchases you would be able to make with the income you've not spent:| # of class C purchases left over | Savings points |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 |
| 4 | 3 |
You will note that you can never save all the cash you don't spend; it's assumed that whenever you have excess cash you treat yourself a little, reducing the amount that you eventually take to the bank (or stash under your matress).
4 savings points can be cashed in for a class B purchase, or 1 point can be cashed in for a class C purchase.
If you make a class A payment remember that all your savings go into it, no matter how much you've saved.
Loans
Sometimes people want things they can't afford. Sometimes they steal these things. Sometimes they save up and hope. Sometimes they work extra-hard in order to increase their income.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 |
Sorry. The mobs do not give loans which would require only class D payments for their customers to pay off. 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.