A lot of people look at games like D&D and cringe at having to use a monetary system requiring one to keep track of each and every coin and gem of several types in order to measure a character’s wealth; Exalted, on the other hand, has an extremely simple and abstract system for the same purposes: The resources background.

Now, this background has several issues and problems in and of itself. Most common are things like infinite purchases, the order in which you acquire possessions possibly leading to bankruptcy and one that always sort of bothered me, the fact that there’s no way to actually define how some Bureaucracy actions or charms involving haggling or selling things above their price works or what benefits it entails to a market-oriented character.

To further illustrate my point, I’ll give a brief example of each of these situations that I consider problematic.

1)   Infinite purchases:       Mr. Joe Solar has a Resources score of 3. He specializes in Thrown and thus wants to buy Javelins. He wants lots of them, in order to comfortably flurry. Under the standard rules, he could plausibly buy infinite of them as long as the Storyteller said it was ok.

2)   Order of factors affects product:  Let’s take Mr. Joe Solar again. Like I said, with the standard system, he could plausibly acquire infinite Javelins, or at least a few if the storyteller was sane. Now, let’s say he decides he wants an Exceptional Javelin, with a cost of 3. In this case, his resources would temporarily go to 2, and if he bought another standard Javelin, his resources would temporarily go to 1, and now he can’t buy any more Javelins and is in fact a lot poorer than he was when he began spending his money, because of poor budget-planning.

3)   Haggling is overly abstract:   Mr. Joe Solar, still with his resources 3, also has a few Bureaucracy charms and Excellencies. Now, he’s still intent on getting his exceptional Javelin, but he decides he wants to negotiate a better price. Under the standard system, a ST has either of two options: Either the price remains unchanged, explaining that the seller actually gave him a discount but because the dots are so ample, it’s not enough to lower the actual value in dots. The other option, implies lowering the purchase one dot, which in most cases, under an exponential system like Exalted would be an exaggeration, given that a dot could make the difference between a sword and a house.

4)   Selling wares or services is overly abstract: Mr. Joe Solar has now come across an expensive painting which he would like to sell, it’s worth Resources 4. Under the standard system, either it crashes and he cannot sell it, he gets no real benefit of it, the ST makes some kind of weird patch allowing him to get a Resources 4 item or for the sole fact of selling that item, he now has Resources 4, effective immediately.

The Proposal

This is what I came up with, one afternoon during a particularly boring anatomy class:

If we take into account the exponential (or vaguely exponential) nature of most traits in Exalted and White-Wolf games in general, it’s not hard to imagine this progression for dot values under the Resources background:

What this would entail is actually quite simple, Resources 5 could be expressed as 10 ten times Resources 4, a hundred times Resources 3, a thousand times Resources 2, ten thousand times Resources 1 and a hundred thousand times Resources 0.

If we combine this equivalency with expendable points of Resources, we have a system that is about halfway between counting every penny and the usual abstract system White-Wolf uses. This system solves, at least in my eyes, a handful of the problems presented above.

How It Works

Mr. Joe Solar has once again volunteered to be our example here. Following the above examples, he’s an Exalt specializing in thrown, who happens to have Resources 3 and a nice array of Bureaucracy charms.

Under this system, Joe Solar would have the right to make one Resources 3 purchase, ten Resources 2 purchases, a hundred Resources 1 purchases or a thousand Resources 0 purchases.

These “purchases” or expendable dots can of course be interconverted between each other and would refresh every once in a time period that would be defined by the ST as deemed appropriate for the nature of the income perceived by Mr. Joe Solar.

Additionally, a character would be able to obtain additional purchases or effectively raise his Resources score by selling items or services appropriate to their values. (For example if Mr. Joe Solar charged got hold of three Exceptional Javelins and sold them, he’d gain access to a single Resources 4 purchase)

How Does This Fix The Above Problems?

This is, of course, the most important point for the whole thing. We’ll go over the same cases as presented in the first section of this article, this time making use of the Altered Resources system.

1)   Infinite purchases:        Mr. Joe Solar has a Resources score of 3. He specializes in Thrown and thus wants to buy Javelins. He wants lots of them, in order to comfortably flurry. Under the altered rules, he would be able to buy ten of them without an additional effort.

2)   Order of factors affects product:     Let’s take Mr. Joe Solar again. With the altered rules, the scenario here is completely different, he could either buy one Exceptional Javelin OR ten regular ones, but not both at the same time. (both would result in him reducing his Resources score to 2 until he does something to remediate it or gets new income)

3)   Haggling is overly abstract:       Mr. Joe Solar, still with his resources 3, also has a few Bureaucracy charms and Excellencies. Now, he’s still intent on getting his exceptional Javelin, but he decides he wants to negotiate a better price. Under the altered rules, the ST could rule that due to his exceptional skills, the weaponsmith decides to give Mr. Joe Solar a 30% discount on the purchase of his Exceptional Javelin, because it would regularly be worth Resources 3, which is equivalent to 10 times Resources 2, Mr. Joe Solar would now only pay 7 purchases worth of Resources 2 for his Javelin, resulting in a net gain for him.

4)   Selling wares or services is overly abstract: Mr. Joe Solar has now come across an expensive painting which he would like to sell, it’s worth Resources 4. Under the altered system, Mr. Joe Solar would now have Resources 4 that would last until he used them up by buying ten times more Resources 3 or below items, or one Resources 4 item.

Of course, it’s important to note that dots acquired via selling or negotiation should be kept until spent and would not disappear over the regular periods of “refreshing.”

Additionally, this tangentially deals with characters actually having to nurture their fortune somewhat, and STs should work together with their players to define their sources of income and if there’s such a thing as a refreshing period (In the case of salaries, dividends, stipends, etc)