In pretty much every RPG and beyond you want to treat everyone fairly. Everyone has to follow the same rules, the same judgements should apply to all the players and their characters and the GM should be impartial under normal circumstances. But what if there was a character class where that meta assumption shouldn't apply, as a feature?
Exalted is a game about playing capital H Heroes like Gilgamesh, Hercules, Sun Wukong, etc. There are many types of Exalted out there, from the peak human Solars that can punch through mountains, through elemental scion Dragonblooded that combine Avatar elemental bending with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, down to some out there concepts like golem Alchemicals that fight for communism and keeping their mechanical world alive.
Amongst all of them, we find Sidereals, the troubleshooters of Fate. They aren't very strong, their numbers are pitiful, and they have the most thankless job in the whole world - cleaning up everyone's messes and making sure the reality doesn't break down so there can be a next day. But they have one important trick up their sleeve to level the playing field - they cheat.
Sidereals, they be like that.
When they needed to disappear from history in order to be able to manipulate the entire world in order to save it, they broke an entire constellation to erase the memory of themselves from existance. When their power set wasn't enough to defeat their enemies, they developed magic kung fu powerful enough to kick people out of reality. When they couldn't overthrow the tyrants of the world, they turned their allies against them.
So I would posit the same ought to apply to how a GM would handle them in a game. This isn't to say they should have a carte blanche permission to fudge their dice or cheat at the actual game, but that the way you interpret the rules for them should be more leniant towards being bent in their direction.
This kind of approach is especially important when you take an important part of Sidereals' design into consideration - their power set is fixed and intentionally broken. The peak human Solar might have a Charm that lets them convince a crowd that they are speaking the truth and everyone will believe them through the sheer power of their charisma. Sidereals, since they broke one of the constellations that housed some of their power, don't have a Charm like that. Instead, they can only convince people that the truth they are saying is a lie. You never get a straightforward solution to a problem out of them.
Similarly, because their Charm set is fixed, they can't invent new powers. A Solar could decide that they want to be the best wingsuit glider out there and they can make new Charms around wingsuit gliders to help them assault some air temple, a Sidereal must rely only on the printed Charms in the book. So they would have to make do with being able to turn a mortal into a dragon and using them as a mount to try sneaking into an air temple.
Their sacred task of resolving troubles of destiny also encourages them to cheat their way through their jobs. Maybe a king of some land should've died but due to the snag in the Loom of Fate they survived a battle and now the Sidereal needs to ensure the king dies. But when they get to the place and realize the king is a little boy they might feel guilty about drowning them in a pond. So instead they can get them to abdicate their throne to their evil uncle who promptly gets an arrow to the head just after their coronation and everything is back as it should be.
So by the dint of the game encouraging the Sidereal characters to cheat, it wouldn't be an invalid approach for the GM to allow the characters to cheat within the system as well. A Solar having a Charm that lets them move instantly to anywhere they see could be stopped by the GM when they try to squeeze in through a crack in a mountain cave since they can't fit, while a Sidereal with the same Charm would be allowed to do it since obviously they could cloak themselves from reality for a split second and be at the destination they can see since that is the text of the Charm.
And it's not like other Exalted types don't have some game-breaking powers of their own. In an even fight a Solar will beat a Sidereal nine times out of ten since they get to throw raw numbers at anything they do. This isn't Munchkin where the players must pull a fast one over one another, it's more like Dune or Cosmic Encounter board games where everyone has some kind of powers that makes everyone go "Wait, you can do WHAT?". It would be an interesting and under-explored design space though to have character powers that come from being handled differently at the adjudication part of the game.
Conclusions
Exalted's Sidereals are a splat built around inherent limitations in their power sets and being encouraged to break the rules in order to succeed. As such, an interesting approach to handling them at the table might be to have the GM handle them differently from other PCs, letting them break some meta conventions of the game.
Recently while browsing /r/RPGdesign I stumbled on a post describing someone's monetary system in their work-in-progress RPG. It was rather bland - "100 copper is 1 silver, 100 silver is 1 gold", plus some stuff about who gets to use what kind of coin and so on. Then I thought to myself - I have a Master of Science in Cryptocurrency, I can put some interesting ideas together from various things I've read in the past. Well, here they are - a few ideas to adding some storytelling flavour to your game with money.
Coinage and taxation as political means
Anyone can create their own currency, but governments (and similar institutions of power) have a way of also forcing that money to circulate. By simply having the government print their own currency as well as require taxes to be collected specifically in that currency you can force the entire population to work towards the government's goals without having to coordinate everything.
If you want to maintain an army, pay them in those coins. If you want to build a monument, pay those workers. If you need to store grain, pay for the grain. Whatever the government Wants is where the money enters the system. Then by that invisible hand of the market everyone has to align themselves with that Want in order to pay their taxes.
If you pay the military, you will have people that feed them, clothe them, make their weapons. Those in turn will require other people to supply grain, cloth, iron and so on.
You could then tell some stories by twisting this formula. Maybe some region doesn't have many coins so everyone is desperate to sell their wares for cheap to get their dues before the taxes are due. Maybe the priorities shift and suddenly you have masons that are out of the job once the castle is done. Maybe you have the land be recently conquered and there is a frenzy to exchange the old currency for the new and re-establish oneself - something some merchants might want to capitalise on if they still do trading with the old rulers of the land.
This one might be subtle, but it serves as a nice shandification of your world.
Shandification of Fallout
("What do they eat?")
Multiple currencies and mercantile campaigns
Something that might not be for every group, but if you're into mercantile campaigns you might dig this - put multiple currencies in your world with no fixed exchange rate. This can be especially good for a campaign that involves a lot of travelling and trading - having currencies be worth different amounts based on the location and the political situation.
Maybe you have Dwarf Silver and Elven Silver that would be worth $1 in their home countries, $0.50 in one another's kingdoms, $0.90 in the human realm, but everything would also fluctuate by ~20% each season. This could encourage the players to plan ahead before they travel as to whether they want to keep cash in coin that might not be worth as much, or buy some goods for trade that should keep their value. Again, not for everyone, but something for people that love spreadsheets.
Then you can try spicing things up by letting players try doing market speculation akin to Spice and Wolf:
Spice and Wolf - an anime about fantasy capitalism
Maybe they earned a large cache of coins from a kingdom that's down on its luck. Now they would be invested in making that kingdom prosper in order to turn their profit into a small fortune. Or maybe they would just hype up the return of a king to power to drive up the demand for that currency only to dump it. Or maybe they buy war bonds of a losing army only to turn that around - it worked for Timothy Dexter...
This could be your party, for good or ill...
Best look at Suns of Gold for a neat way to fluctuate the value of goods and so on, which can apply to currencies as well.
Fiat and political control
In Exalted the most powerful kingdom of the land, the Realm, uses money as means of political control. Their money is based on jade, one of the magical elements of that world that's useful for making artefacts, magic, etc. However, most people will never handle a jade coin - instead, they use fiat banknotes issued by the Realm that are backed by jade. It's even a crime for a non-noble to be using actual jade coins.
By doing this the Realm makes itself indispensable - all the money is backed by it, and if you rebel against it, that will make your money worth less due to the shaken confidence. If you print your own money, that will be treason, if you try using a hard currency that will be a crime, so you have to play along.
Now you can start twisting the formula - what if the government turned a bit incompetent and started printing away the banknotes without the jade to back it? That's some way to get rich for a brief before the system becomes unsustainable in the long-term with fractional reserve banking.
What if jade was a key ingredients for running all magic and magical weapons? Then suddenly the government can start rationing how much power anyone can hold. You can't start a magitech rebellion if you don't have that key raw material to build your army since it was confiscated.
What if you still had to pay taxes in actual jade? That would mean it would have to be extracted from somewhere, bought from abroad or you'd need to go conquer some new lands to get some. Now you have a struggle for driving the big picture conflict.
So how do you rebel against someone that inflicts such control over your life? That's up for the players to tell you!
Moneyless societies
Not everyone in history used money or even barter (shocking, I know. Read Debt: The First 5000 Years to learn more). Now how would players interact with such societies?
First could be a smaller community that operates on doing favours for one another. One day I catch some fish so I give you some, other day your turnips are ready so you'll give me one, etc. The players might come into such village or town and be delighted that they don't need to pay for their food or lodging, only to find the next day the locals ask them for something of theirs - a broche, shoes, etc. Maybe they don't even realise that when someone says "that's a fine bow you have there" they mean "I would like you to give me the bow". Could be an interesting situation to throw your party into to see how they interact with a culture they might not understand.
Another one comes from our Crew Expendable campaign - what if the players found themselves on a planet that's true, functioning communism. Maybe one that uses money for trading with passing merchants, but also one where you can't bribe people because money has no meaning for them. I actually had one player try bribing a government official to let them skip a customs lockdown only for that to fail miserably since of course all the capitalist traders would try bribing them and not understanding their culture...
When you owe a bank a billion dollars...
There is another aspect to money that's not evident when you look at the small picture - money is deeply political. As the saying goes - "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.". The same can be true in your world.
You could have a kingdom that always pays its debts to whoever runs the iron bank, and one that's constantly in debt. When they go to war, you might expect the bank to side with the kingdom that has always paid back, but in reality they stand to gain a lot more by supporting the one that's their debtor. If that kingdom falls, they lose all that money. If it wins, they can exert their power to get that money back.
Similarly, if the ruler gives the power to print the money to a bank, they might be bowing down to them soon enough ("Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!"). Or maybe the trust in money comes from the royal lineage that's in decline so now the rich are scrambling to find a way to secure their position in the future - either by preserving the bloodline, or by changing their allegiances.
You can create a good deal of political intrigue by just focusing on who owed who how much, whether that's money or favours. After all, the creditor will want to make sure their investment gets repaid...
Choke on your gold
This one comes from a weird source. Back in the day in Poland someone released Play Dirty booklet. Then the same company released a few more booklets in the same series (but spoilet alert - John Wick did not write those, instead they were written by Ignacy Trzewiczek, a polish board game designer). In one of those books, he described a scenario for one of his Neuroshima campaigns (basically different take on Fallout): the players find a hoard of treasure that's immensely valuable (in that world old-world artefacts were valuable, so the treasure was a complete collection of Playboy magazines). The catch it - it's worth so much they will be hunted by everyone and not able to cash out their ill-gotten gains unless they find someone fabulously wealthy to buy it off of them. As soon as anyone would catch a whiff of this kind of wealth, they would be gunned down by raiders, bounty hunters, thieves, you name it.
So this is another way of storytelling with money - give players something so valuable they choke on it. Give them a priceless artefact they can't find anyone with enough gold to buy it, a shiny ship they can't pawn off, nor crew fully, etc. and challenge them to go nuts with it.
Working poor and #iHunt
As I already touched in "The game is not about that - iHunt, money, and mechanic as a metaphor" - lack of money can also be a statement for your game. It could be that money is only important in rough income brackets like in World of Darkness, or maybe it's only useful as a resource like in Fellowship, or it could be like #iHunt. In that game, you will always be a working poor. You will be doing gigs killing monsters and bringing in some dough, but money is fickle and it never sticks - there are always more debts to pay, more expenses that keep appearing, and you will be back to being broke and in debt in no time. Some might find that stressful, but because the game never tracks your money, it's liberating - you will always be broke, so don't worry. Life will always kick you when you're down, but you will always get back on your feet. It's an interesting twist on the idea of money in games, and it's also a good statement for the game.
Conclusions
There is a lot you can bring into an RPG world or session if you look at money more than just a way of keeping track of players' coffers. It can be a volatile tool, drenched in politics, influence and greed. If those stories work for your table or game - tell them!
Recently, my group and I ran a one-shot of the iHunt RPG. It's a game about being a monster hunter in the gig economy. You're perpetually poor, and hunting monsters for cash is the preferable alternative to getting evicted. The game requires a bit of a cognitive shift from your traditional games, which is what we are here to talk about today.
This post is based on a preview version of iHunt, so final mechanics might change.
Our interview about the game with Olivia Hill
During our first session, one of the PCs got shot with a bullet and was in need of medical attention (you are playing fragile humans after all). When discussing our options, one of the players started solving the problem by trying to pin down some numbers - "how much did we earn from killing that vampire?", "what's the standard rate for a vampire? Is that even listed in the book?", "how much does a hospital visit cost?", "how much does a street doctor charge?", etc. However, as we found out, the game (at least in its current, preview state) didn't have any of those prices listed, because that's not what the game is about.
iHunt is a game about being a poor person that turns to hunting monsters to make ends meet. Money is always fickle and doesn't stick. You might earn $10k in a day, but that's cash, not wealth, it's a windfall that comes and goes. There is a reason iHunt and FATE in general doesn't have a space on your character sheet to put your gold pieces in - the game is not about that.
Now, this was frustrating for the player. The game is about playing a person that cares about the money, but the game does not care about the money. You may want to get invested in the character getting ahead and lifting themselves out of the rut they're in, but by the dint of what the game is about, your character will never get out of their hole as long as they are a character. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a motivation to go iHunting.
The mechanic of how money is handled (or the lack of said mechanic) is one of those rare "mechanics as a metaphor" moments, where a mechanic exists not only to serve a purpose, but to convey a deeper message - "money is fickle, it comes and goes". Heck, later in episode 2 we came up with something similar - when a player sold some extra stuff they stole for cash, they didn't just add some numbers to their gold coin total (since again, the game does not track that), but instead they receive a temporary bonus in form of a FATE Aspect. The character was now Flushed with Cash, which they could tap into to get a temporary roll bonus in the future, after which the Aspect would fade, just like that extra cash in your wallet.
Both of those mechanical ways of dealing with money conveyed a message that was congruent with what iHunt is about - money is fickle, it comes and goes.
Sometimes playing games like this requires one to unlearn some tropes one picked up from other games. Going from D&D into iHunt (or many other games) one might start asking "what's your alignment?", "how much can I carry?", "where is the gear list?", "what damage bonus does this weapon have?", "what's my AC?", "what are my saving throws?", "how do I level up?", etc. The answers to all of them would be "the game is not about that. Unlearn what you have learned and see the world from a new perspective".
