I don’t know what rules RuneQuest Glorantha has about managing money and wealth, apart from the usual equipment lists, but here’s an actual conversation I had with one of my players in my 90s RuneQuest III campaign.
Player “So now I’m Rune Level, it says I need to tithe 25% of my wealth to the Cult. Can I continue doing ‘Community Service’ in the form of adventures that benefit my local settlement and its temple, like I did when I was an Initiate (paying 10%)?”
GM “mmn you can do that, but not entirely they are expecting you to pay out to maintain the bricks and mortar of that temple now”
Player (pauses ominously) “Hang about THAT’S MY TEMPLE, I built it or captured it and rededicated it to my god, so I can just ‘pay’ myself!”
GM (looks forlornly at the rules, sees nothing to counter the player) ” Oh go on then!”
Thinking about it now, I suspose I could have created some house rules, but given what my players were like they probably would have wanted to know if they can hire an Etyries, Lokarnos or Issaries cultist (all the trade deities) to deal with all this “money” nonsense 😀
2 replies on “RuneQuest Economics”
That probably means they should have been being charged for routine maintenance on the building, or noticing it start to crumble, the pretty wall paintings fading and getting damaged….
Yeah. This is one of those aspects that I love on paper, but it never seems to work at the table. Probably because I’ve never found money to be satisfying in an rpg in general.
I generally just handwave it, or use some sort of abstracted wealth system like those in more narrative games. In my latest game I’ve tried a system of favor with the cults and community, in which the players can ask for benefits in exchange for services. Its working okay, but they aren’t really engaging with it much.
I find this the most difficult aspect of community based games (as opposed to the traditional itenerent murderhobos setup).