If you have played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e, then you might be familiar with the term Money to Burn. For those that are not, let me explain. In WFRP4e there are downtime actions you can take in a week. In that chapter there is a section regarding the character’s hard earn treasure which is controversial with the player base. In short, at the end of the downtime period, all the treasure the characters did not end up spending on gear, land, stronghold, etc. is gone. Their characters spent it in any way that best fit with the character’s personality and behavior.

You could see how this can be controversial with players. Their hard earn, hard fought treasure has been vaporized from their sheets. Though, i understand the design and more so with commentary from the designers saying that many aspects and mechanics of the game are there to incentivize and create adventures and emergent stories. Although WFRP4e promotes itself as a story focused RPG, there are many reasons to believe the designers wanted a system to encourage emergent stories and sandbox play.

So why are we talking about this mechanic today?

If you have played any older edition of D&D, you understand that gold equals experience points. As the campaign develops, the players will accumulate a mighty hoard of gold. You will also notice, that they will continue to accumulate gold, and the things they can spend massive troves of gold are very little. Sure they can buy hirelings, pay for armies, strongholds, expand their domains and so on and so forth but they will still have so much gold that its comical. This is by all means, not a bad thing. Though, unless your players do become invested in owning domains at higher tiers of play, they will keep adventuring. Not only that, but they will continue adventuring for the sake of adventuring or in a terrible case – they will adventure because that’s what they are expected to do, not motivated by anything else. Worse even when you reach your level cap.

If you read any stories from the Gary Gygax’s Appendix N (which you should) protagonists like Conan, Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser, and Elric of Melnibone will more often than not begin broke. Fafhrd even asks Mouser why this is the case in Swords in the Mist – Cloud of Hate

“Now that’s a strange thing. We’ve won i know not how many jewels and oddments of gold and electrum in our adventuring-and even letters of credit on the Guild of the Gran Merchants. Where have they all flown to?-the credit-letters on parchment wings, the jewels jetting fire like tiny red and green and pearly cuttlefish. Why aren’t we rich?”

The Mouser snorted, “Because you dribble away our get on worthless drabs, or oftener still pour it out for some noble whim-some plot of bogus angels to storm the walls of hell. Meantime i stay poor nursemaiding you”

These are men who will live lavishly when they have the money and the moment they run out, they are out once more, risking their lives for treasure. Not only that, but characters would spend their well earn money because to them its not just a number on a sheet. I think D&D would benefit of a rule like things and has even tried to do so previously in OD&D and AD&D with rules to pull gold away from the characters to varying degrees of success.

I believe that this would also open opportunities of adventure. Players would still need to come up with a reason to blow all this money. Debt, taxes, gambling, carousing, donations, etc. This can cause other movers and shakers of the world to take notice of them and bring them into the larger stage of the setting. Surely, a lord of a city state would notice this new found influx of gold coming into his city and would like to know how and why. The church would view the characters as worthy patrons from their donations. And let us not wonder what the Thieves Guild would believe of the characters.

How do we implement this?

• After an adventure, allow the players to spend their treasure on things they want to purchase. Provisions, armor and weapons, mercenaries, strongholds, hirelings. They should always buy what is important first
• After they have purchased what they wanted, the rest of the money is spent. All of it. The players should come up with a reason on why the money is gone. As stated previously some examples are gambling, donations, carousing, stolen, taxes and so on. As a Referee you can use this and have the world respond appropriately to them.
• Once characters have a stronghold and domains to their name, they should still follow the first step and buy what is needed, but instead of having the money spent entirely, it can go directly to their kingdom’s coffer. This money can be used exclusively for their domains in order to expand their troops, inhabitants and future strongholds. This also incentivize players to get their strongholds.

Now regarding the matters of time. OD&D says that preparation for dungeon expeditions is a week. Wilderness travel is one day per move and one week of real time is one week of game time. Now, how believable is it that your character can go through 30,000gp in a week is up to you. However, we could instead figure out how much that gold will last the players before they need to adventure again.

OD&D already mentions paying support and upkeep equal to 1% of their current experience points if you don’t have a stronghold. So a Fighter with 120,000xp would pay 1,200gp in a period of time. Perhaps we could use this to determine how long the downtime period lasts as they burn through their money.

The Fighting-Man of 3rd level has just survived his latest expedition from the underground labyrinth. He has found in his journey 2,000gp worth of gems, jewels and goods. The Fighting-Man is now at 6,000xp and will take his time enjoying his well earn money. 1% of 6,000 is 60, lets assume he spends 60gp per day. The Fighting-Man spends his 2,000gp through out 33 days on women, ale, fine drabs and living as if his next adventure might be the last. He is now broke, and must find new opportunities for greater gains.

I would like to mention that this idea is not recommended for 1:1 unless the characters burn their money in a week which again depends entirely on how believable you think that is. However, if you play in a game with a regular, small, group consistently this may be something you could try.