Property Rules

[Orion]

You could eliminate XP entirely and make people level up by upgrading their house. Your wizard goes up a level when they literally go up a level by hiring some stonemasons to add another level to their tower.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That would be a solid idea for a D&D-style fantasy game. Not so sure about a Pokemon-style one, though... but I do think that a PC should get XP whenever they level up their Gym or whatever. I wasn't planning on having this stuff come online until Tier 2 in my game, but you could certainly make rules based around it being a thing from the beginning.

[PhoneLobster]

So, to visualize this

That seems elaborate and self contradictory I don't think I even understand what it is you are trying to communicate there.

I don't think owning a Bad Dragon factory should give you extra sorcerer powers, but I do think that owning a Bad Dragon factory should let you make magic buttplugs that give you extra sorcerer powers, which you can use on top of selling to people. I think I just don't like things to be too direct in this regard.

The selling to other people thing is an issue, and not just on the income front. I'm all for abstractions for the sake of game play but players will say "wait... we could have just bought ONE of these of some other sucker?".

Otherwise more broadly Dragon Hoard Loot -> Magic Item Charging Vault -> Magic Item -> Character power is pretty much one of the better implementations I've tried.

I think having the party effectively list out their own objectives might make things be less arbitrary, but I could be wrong.

Conveniently Arbitrary has two relevant meanings that are both true when a GM unilaterally decides a thing, not using real rules to do so and one is STILL true when a group decides a thing, not using real rules to do so.

Also the contract thing seems like needless book work and the introduction of an unnecessary fail condition.

Anyway the original point of me making XP distribution arbitrary (both ways) was because I felt that the GM (me) could make a better judgement on the spot as to when a level up was needed in game play compared to the designer (me) arbitrarily deciding at least half a year in advance that players would probably need a level up after X hours of game play then trying to back calculate through several variables all of which were guesses to decide in advance an XP drop rate that then in turn would require a bunch of additional administration to track and calculate.

You and your group seem to be making a similar decision through a few layers of obfuscation, not automatically good ones, but not automatically bad ones as well. A story goal the players care about might well be exactly the right timing for a level up. I just think its fine if the players and/or GM just try and identify that moment on the fly when it happens.

I'm not quite so sold on making things as combat-focused as I think you're getting at

Lets just say this. I tried to build and also play systems with much less integrated minigames. Things you would even call really proper minigames. I've even tried fully discrete minigames (and thus faced the plague that is.... minigame transition rules)

The correlation between rules being successful in practice and the rules being integrated as part of the combat rules was as far as I could observe, approximately 100%.

Incompatible minigames are... incompatible. If your social minigame is incompatible with your combat minigame you can definitively never convince the mad duke to stop stabbing you in the face using your powers of friendship and the world ends and everyone wonders why powers of friendship was even a god damn option in the first place.

As a general rule, most things that don't have some interaction or relation to stopping the mad duke from stabbing you in the face are, eventually, going to seem a lot like wastes of your time for some odd reason.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That seems elaborate and self contradictory I don't think I even understand what it is you are trying to communicate there.

Huh? I thought it was simple. Your Factory has X amount of money, representing a surplus. You get extra money by getting lucky at the market or doing adventures that affect your cash flow or whatever. Then you take that money and spend it on making your Factory cooler. If that's elaborate, I'd love to see your idea of simplicity.

Otherwise more broadly Dragon Hoard Loot -> Magic Item Charging Vault -> Magic Item -> Character power is pretty much one of the better implementations I've tried.

Just to continue the example, it would be Dragon Hoard Loot -> Bad Dragon Factory -> Bad Dragon Buttplug -> Extra Sorcerer spell slots?

Also the contract thing seems like needless book work and the introduction of an unnecessary fail condition.

What fail condition? The only one I could think of was "you don't accomplish what you set out to do"... which can happen. I'm guessing you as the GM just decide when the PCs level up? Hmm... I've never liked that very much. Probably because I'm bad at identifying when it's a good time to level up. Anything compared to that is going to seem like needless book work. It's like doing initiative based on where people are sitting rather than anything in the game itself.

If your social minigame is incompatible with your combat minigame you can definitively never convince the mad duke to stop stabbing you in the face using your powers of friendship and the world ends and everyone wonders why powers of friendship was even a god damn option in the first place.

Hmm... good point. I've already got them integrated, though it doesn't go that far yet. I think I'm more sold on making things as combat-focused as I think you're getting at.

[PhoneLobster]

Huh? I thought it was simple. Your Factory has X amount of money,

Why does the factory have it's own account? Is this about location tracking for the physical cash. Does the factory have a treasure vault. Your money location should be a treasure vault. Or a guy you deal with who owns a treasure vault (the bank). You can centralize your funds. Not record separate "surpluses" for the AirBnB and the Starbucks, and generate a location for raids and raid defenses to steal or protect the treasure.

representing a surplus.

eh... is surplus the right word here?

You get extra money by getting lucky at the market

That's the bit that looks like it could get complex. I'm against tracking ongoing income because an extra number to record, add to a tally and total every long term time increment forever adds up. If you are maybe doing that every long term time unit anyway but also definitely resolving a roll to determine if you do it/how much you do it that will actually add up even more time and complexity cost than the thing I was against because of it's time and complexity cost.

or doing adventures that affect your cash flow or whatever. Then you take that money and spend it on making your Factory cooler.

Wait why does the dragon loot go onto the balance sheet for the small business. The tax executioner will be onto your for dragon laundering.

But also... I thought this was a small business plan so I'm looking at the factory as a single game entity you own that does a thing. So if you invested another hoard you'd buy another separate small business. Are you instead conceiving of the factory as what I'd call an entire base or barbie mansion or something and its really just a site you build a variable and growing number of game entity structures on that all do things?

Then there was the thing you mentioned about working at your factory to put money into it...

Also what was the previous cash something something in something "BIG LOOT" mention.

I think currency tiers need looking into among a few things.

Just to continue the example

Sure why not. Its the surplus sales that seem like a problem.

The ah, buttplug itself wasn't the opening.

[owlassociate]

Just last month I was writing some notes on a V:tM/Shadowrun-inspired heartbreaker where character creation/advancement is entirely based on money. Money is literally the only resource. A starting character is just a specific dollar amount of character options you bought before the game started and you get better abilities by earning money and then buying those abilities. Like, here's one million dollars, go make me a cybernetic vampire hunter. Then, here's a contract for 10k so you can afford the paraliminal blood transfusions required to maintain your 'ware, maybe even save up for an apartment down the line.

I assumed that giving abilities an upkeep cost in additon to a down payment would motivate players to take on high-risk, high reward missions and maintain a side hustle for downtime, so my system has that as a basic gameplay assumption. Another base assumption for the game is that the characters have all, for various reasons, been deemed criminals by the city's autocratic fascist AI. Thus, they can't just go "we spend all our starting wealth and the next 20 years of our lives on our sustainable toothbrush start-up, DentEco" without it somehow also being a tooth-and-nail fight for self-actualization in the death throes of civilization.

Here's how I've answered the OP's questions based on my notes:

How many properties should PCs have control over?
If a PC can afford the down payment on a property, they can have it. Owning property ideally will not be mechanically deep enough to warrant strict limitations on this.

Are PCs allowed to individually own property?
Yes. It would be pretty arbitrary to restrict this in a system where the point of owning property is literally just to make more money that, as a bonus, is considered socially acceptable.

How long is each "turn"?
1 week/1 month/quarterly/biannually/annually. Strict timekeeping is one of the GM's responsibilities. Having a longer "turn" decreases the cost of the down payment.

How usable is this by NPCs?
Its 1:1, a PC is just an NPC that the GM isn't responsible for

How does this actually interact with my fucking PC, man?
It gives you money to spend on new abilities mostly. Special properties can grant new abilities outright (owning a mutagenic blood bank will grant you access to mutagen arrays, for example), but it's the same as just buying an ability at the same time as a property.

How many properties do we even want, anyway? From a pure numbers perspective, there is no difference between properties. A billion dollar a year genetic engineering company is not meaningfully different from a billion dollar a year ant farm manufacturing comany. However, I did plan on making several tables for random events which could indirectly tie into what kind of property a character owns (e.g. an extended soccer riot-turned-urban siege has blocked a major street in the area, reducing the profits of businesses reliant on said thoroughfare).

What does this look like at the highest levels?
You are Jeff Bezos, you're openly addicted to a psychic blood parasite and your best friend is a technological demiurge named Peter

What if a PC doesn't want to do any of this stupid shit?
You either own a property or you work for someone that does. Ideally this system won't be too intrusive, because the idea is that a character won't survive long without a side hustle.

I feel like this system is in dire need of criticism. The goal of the system is to give characters an to incentive to have a legal or at least social identity in the setting (e.g. my primitivist blood witch moonlights as a high-end flower arranger and thus exists outside of murdering security guards) in an appropriately dystopian way.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I normally hate doing these line-by-line replies, buuuuut...

Why does the factory have it's own account? Is this about location tracking for the physical cash. Does the factory have a treasure vault. Your money location should be a treasure vault. Or a guy you deal with who owns a treasure vault (the bank). You can centralize your funds. Not record separate "surpluses" for the AirBnB and the Starbucks, and generate a location for raids and raid defenses to steal or protect the treasure.

Ah, I see the issue now. You don't have separate "surpluses" because you don't have separate properties. You have the AirBnB, or you have the Starbucks. There is only a single number to track.

eh... is surplus the right word here?

Uh... apparently not. I'm always open to new terminology.

That's the bit that looks like it could get complex. I'm against tracking ongoing income because an extra number to record, add to a tally and total every long term time increment forever adds up. If you are maybe doing that every long term time unit anyway but also definitely resolving a roll to determine if you do it/how much you do it that will actually add up even more time and complexity cost than the thing I was against because of it's time and complexity cost.

I like examples, let's try another one: Your factory starts off with $0. Maintenance and costs and all that shit isn't even worried about. You have $0. You will have $0 unless something happens to your business. Once a week, something may or may not randomly happen to your business. Perhaps you roll "accidentally flooded the market" and get -$500, or you roll "some merchant came in and bought out this week's supply" and get +$500. Then you can take that $500 and buy a new Dildo Delivery Truck and now you can have access to your magic buttplugs in a different city or something, and you always have that truck and you don't pay upkeep or what the fuck ever. If that's still too much, I'm fine with making it simpler.

Are you instead conceiving of the factory as what I'd call an entire base or barbie mansion or something and its really just a site you build a variable and growing number of game entity structures on that all do things?

Oh, yeah, that's what I've been talking about this entire time. Perhaps "base" would be a better term for it.

I think currency tiers need looking into among a few things.

Yeah, I haven't really committed to writing down anything we've discussed ITT yet, so in the meantime I've been working on figuring out the baseline expectation of wealth at various levels. I've been doing this by taking the 'professions' that people are able to work in and looking at it from the highest and lowest scales. I figure that by determining the amount of money I expect regular, non-adventurers to keep going through the economy, I'll have a better baseline for adventurers and their BIG LOOTS. But economics scare me.
If I've got 4 Tiers and 20 levels, should I try to figure out a 'rough' level of wealth for each level, or simply a range for each tier? Or both, because math is fun?

The ah, buttplug itself wasn't the opening.

More like the closing, heh heh.

---

Anyway, let me make this post even longer...

Another base assumption for the game is that the characters have all, for various reasons, been deemed criminals by the city's autocratic fascist AI. Thus, they can't just go "we spend all our starting wealth and the next 20 years of our lives on our sustainable toothbrush start-up, DentEco" without it somehow also being a tooth-and-nail fight for self-actualization in the death throes of civilization.

This sounds related to what PL said about integrating your minigames into your, uh... maxigame. If spending all their starting wealth on DentEco is an option, then working at DentEco should give you reasons to fight tooth-and-nail for self-actualization in the death throes of civilization. Probably something about toothbrush DRM.

Yes. It would be pretty arbitrary to restrict this in a system where the point of owning property is literally just to make more money that, as a bonus, is considered socially acceptable.

Yeah, I hate being or feeling arbitrary, but this goes against my core idea of people focusing on a singular location. I'm thinking of like, owning a farm Harvest Moon-style or opening a local clinic because of a lack of healthcare - not becoming a 1980's cartoon villain going around landgrabbing. Focusing on one place just feels more... intimate, you know? I do think a property should be able to branch out and stuff - there's no reason your farm can't also be a ranch or illicit drug front.

1 week/1 month/quarterly/biannually/annually. Strict timekeeping is one of the GM's responsibilities. Having a longer "turn" decreases the cost of the down payment.

Splendid, I agree. I personally play at a pace that once per week would come up every few sessions, but I know other people timeskip a bit. Should the game accommodate for playing at different speeds, or should I just pick once a week and stick with it?

From a pure numbers perspective, there is no difference between properties. A billion dollar a year genetic engineering company is not meaningfully different from a billion dollar a year ant farm manufacturing company.

That's totally reasonable. I suppose in this case, how much money you're pulling in is directly related to the Tier of your property. The only part the players are going to care about is what the property does for their character both mechanically and thematically. I was also thinking about random events tying into specific properties, as well.

You are Jeff Bezos, you're openly addicted to a psychic blood parasite and your best friend is a technological demiurge named Peter

Jesus christ, how horrifying. That's awesome but I don't think mine's going to go that far.

You either own a property or you work for someone that does.

Or in my game, you Poke-murderhobo. But you've got a horrible vampire cyberpunk setting going on, so that's completely appropriate.

I feel like this system is in dire need of criticism. The goal of the system is to give characters an to incentive to have a legal or at least social identity in the setting (e.g. my primitivist blood witch moonlights as a high-end flower arranger and thus exists outside of murdering security guards) in an appropriately dystopian way.

For a second there I thought you were talking about mine and I was about to go "but I don't even have a system yet!" Then I kept reading. Aside from my above comments, I don't have much in the way of criticism. I guess if you're going for living in a dystopic hellhole, you should contrast the freedom and self-actualization of planting car bombs and hacking governments with the soul-crushing awfulness of working a day job. You should really make the players feel like no matter what they do or how hard they try, the only way out of the broken system they live in is by submitting to it... but that's probably too depressing, so explosions work, too.

[deaddmwalking]

It's not crazy to think that your players will advance from managing just themselves to managing a property (an inn, or a factory) and eventually advancing to domain management (a duchy or a kingdom). When you hit the Duchy level, you don't track individual factories, but you'd be presumed to have a stake in them...

Having a kingdom could be mostly like having a business with an income, but with the additional complication of providing you an army.

Regarding maintenance costs, those can be a pain. On the other hand, not every venture is supposed to make money. Owning a yacht is a thing people like to do, but it costs and costs and costs and never really makes them a profit. But it is a status symbol. You could have the income generated from your factory devote toward some of those status-symbols if you want.

[PhoneLobster]

Perhaps you roll

I'd need to know more about how many of these rolls happen how often per player/base/time unit/building, how you calculate the windfalls when they happen and what else of value the "random events" roll might also be doing to justify itself.

But economics scare me.

You could sit down and do piles of math and decide amounts of gold coins for all your tiers, expected budgets, incomes, expenditures, capital assets, etc... for various tiers of play. And then watch it probably break when someone realises they can just own enough bakeries to make dragon hunting redundant.

However if the butt economics scare you then your tiers should be split by separated currencies that cannot be exchanged for the currencies of higher tiers.

I like to use two tiers of currency mostly. Coins for the low tier, and Treasures for the tier where you buy buildings. You cannot ever accumulate enough coins to become a real proper Treasure. If you have Treasures you might not have infinite Coins... but lets just say you probably have enough it's not worth the effort to count them anymore.

This means the transition to owning buildings is pretty stark and clean, buildings CAN produce incomes of coins without breaking the economy (but you probably don't really care that they do...) buildings can provide basically unlimited amounts of stuff (like usable equipment) as long as that stuff is cheap and normally costs coins (so you spend a treasure on an armoury and its full of weapons that cost coins and provides your private guard army with weapons that cost coins).

It will cut out a lot of the math and most of the butt economy.

Having a kingdom could be mostly like having a business with an income, but with the additional complication of providing you an army.

I suspect the scope of the almanac's interests end somewhere before the kingdom transition since it seems to focus on "small businesses", that might just be bases for PCs to live in.

But I certainly have things to say about kingdom transitions. Starting with "throw out anything the domain threads ever had to say about that because it's obvious garbage".

[MGuy]

AA this is all still for your Pokemon game right? You're not doing a Pokemon war thing I suspect and you are instead keeping things in the realm of Pokemon Swashbuckling adventures. I don't think, if that's the case, players who are onboard with doing Pokemon adventures probably aren't going to care if they straight up can't interact with economics in any serious way.

[PhoneLobster]

This is for pokemon exclusive use?

...hm...

On the one hand I want the economy to immediately break on contact with sanity. Because of course it would, I'm talking to you pokemon franchise, your world is made of nonsense, the smurfs have a better economy.

On the other hand I feel it needs a rethink from scratch until somehow the currency is pokemon. And if possible mostly just psyducks.

[RelentlessImp]

This is for pokemon exclusive use?

...hm...

On the one hand I want the economy to immediately break on contact with sanity. Because of course it would, I'm talking to you pokemon franchise, your world is made of nonsense, the smurfs have a better economy.

On the other hand I feel it needs a rethink from scratch until somehow the currency is pokemon. And if possible mostly just psyducks.

Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu pretty much makes all Pokemon into a currency of a sort, as the primary goal of interacting with wild Pokemon is, in fact, capturing them, not battling them, and chaining capturing the same Pokemon over and over til you get a shiny. (Also Nature hunting in all the other games) You send your excess to Oak and he sends you back currency and candies, which begs the question of what, exactly, he is doing with them. (The community jokes that he's grinding them INTO the candies...)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

AA this is all still for your Pokemon game right? You're not doing a Pokemon war thing I suspect and you are instead keeping things in the realm of Pokemon Swashbuckling adventures. I don't think, if that's the case, players who are onboard with doing Pokemon adventures probably aren't going to care if they straight up can't interact with economics in any serious way.

Well, my posts have been about my Pokemon game, but I don't really want to hog the thread because I'm enjoying a lot of the ideas that are being thrown around. Like, what's going on with owlassociate's game? That shit sounds fun. I would say you're probably right... but my own experiences have proven otherwise. Once you've got a ranch with 40+ Pokemon chilling in it and you've got nothing better to do with them, then that's where people start asking the really fun questions. Questions like, "why don't I just go build my own personal mini-castle out in the woods" or "what if I used all these birds I have as a carrier service?" Questions that deserve answers!

domain stuff

Pokemon wars are a thing. They've happened. Shit, there's been entire spinoffs about them... but those are all set in fantasy feudal Japan and not the modern world, where personally owning a fiefdom probably isn't viewed positively. I can see having domain rules and having fun with them, but I don't think they need to be a part of the base game, since I am trying to make this game playable be people who aren't me, which means I need to assume people are playing in the regular Pokemon world where being a god-king isn't really a thing. That being said, I'm already taking heavy liberties with the Pokemon property, so...what's going a bit further? Hmm...

I'd need to know more about how many of these rolls happen how often per player/base/time unit/building, how you calculate the windfalls when they happen and what else of value the "random events" roll might also be doing to justify itself.

You and me fucking both, man. My rough ideas? A 'random event' happens once per player per week, or every 3 sessions or so. The windfalls may simply be cash influx, cheaper upgrades, or new items. The negative events are market shortages, robberies, sleazy competition, and so on. Most of the events on both sides are simple and resolved right away, while a few are more intricate and could lead to new quests? Like "the police are investigating your business and you have no idea why, but it scares off some customers" kind of events. Again, rough ideas.

However if the butt economics scare you then your tiers should be split by separated currencies that cannot be exchanged for the currencies of higher tiers.

Oh, duh. You'd I'd have read enough about angel souls and the wish economy to have thought of that. Thanks. Now I just need to figure out what kind of higher-tier currency would make sense in a Pokemon game. No, I don't think the answer is "Pokemon". Should I just make up some Pokemon Unobtainium?

Because of course it would, I'm talking to you pokemon franchise, your world is made of nonsense, the smurfs have a better economy.
On the other hand I feel it needs a rethink from scratch until somehow the currency is pokemon. And if possible mostly just psyducks.

... whoops. I will admit that part of me making this game is addressing just how nonsensical the Pokemon world is, mostly because the kind of questions the franchise doesn't answer are exactly the same questions that inquisitive tabletop players pose. So if we can just make the Pokemon economy make sense so that players can meaningfully interact with it, then that's the golden dream.
I'm not 100% sure if the Pokemon economy makes even less sense than the D&D economy.

Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu pretty much makes all Pokemon into a currency of a sort, as the primary goal of interacting with wild Pokemon is, in fact, capturing them, not battling them, and chaining capturing the same Pokemon over and over til you get a shiny.

Counterpoint: Pokemon Let's Go is for babies.
On a serious note, using Pokemon as currency is weird. We're already close enough to slavery, don't you think? Saying "we need something capable of lifting a trailer home and we'll pay $1000 for it" doesn't seem the same to me as "hey I'll give you my Psyduck in exchange for a magic (non-Honedge) sword". Because one is currency and the other is a living, sapient imaginary creature.

EDIT: Wait a minute. A higher-tier currency for a modern world that most people will never have any meaningful access to? I've got it!

[RelentlessImp]

Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu pretty much makes all Pokemon into a currency of a sort, as the primary goal of interacting with wild Pokemon is, in fact, capturing them, not battling them, and chaining capturing the same Pokemon over and over til you get a shiny.

Counterpoint: Pokemon Let's Go is for babies.

Counter-counterpoint: Not everything has to be high-tier competitive gaming.

Returning to the seriousness, the meme isn't too far off-base. In the first case, you are absolutely exploiting the labor of the Pokemon whose only marketable value is their labor and profiting off of what is essentially nigh-slave labor and who have no way to interact with the higher-tier currencies, no matter how intelligent they may be.

So... Pokecapitalism and Pokestocks.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Counter-counter-counterpoint: Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.

"Poke-stocks" is just a ludicrous term that I cannot actually put in my game for srs... even if it is somewhat accurate. And I do take objection to your second point: Are you telling me an Alakazam is incapable of secretly operating a megacorp from the shadows by mind-controlling the top executives and funneling the money it embezzles into a private account with a human name so it can live in luxury on its own private island? Because that sounds like a hell of a hook to me.

[RelentlessImp]

That does sound like a hell of a hook. But for non-psychic types, well...

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Yeah... it's a rare case, I'll admit.
I'm open to anything that sounds less silly than fucking 'Poke-stocks'.

[PhoneLobster]

Now I just need to figure out what kind of higher-tier currency would make sense in a Pokemon game. No, I don't think the answer is "Pokemon". Should I just make up some Pokemon Unobtainium?

In all seriousness there already IS a pokemon unobtanium that is a physical object of high value that you will never functionally earn enough small currency to exchange for. It's even in like EVERY game like that.

So the low tier currency in pokemon is what is it? Pokecredits? Whatever the cash is.

And the high tier currency you can't cash in for is Bicycles. Potions cost credits, Gyms cost bicycles.

edit: and presumably the bicycle factory is built out of masterballs or something.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I actually giggled out loud, good job. Here's a question: If there's different kind of crafting 'Scrap' that can be used instead of cash to make different things, are there different kinds of Scrap Bicycles, too? Mega Scrap?

[PhoneLobster]

I don't know.

Crafting has issues. For me it's something you do pretty much for "free" in formal terms and can include whatever ingredients you like on an informal basis.

To the degree it interacts with buildings and economy tier breaks, crafting could be a thing you do in buildings and crafting lower tier items in buildings that cost higher tier currencies should probably cost at most your character's time, at most.

Otherwise crafting is just shopping, crafting materials are just more currencies, presumably you can do whatever you do with regular currencies and shopping.

The biggest pitfall in crafting isn't the currencies or the execution of the crafting itself. It's the "crafting character build". If one character can be good at using swords and another character spends the same character resources instead on being good at making swords... there are problems.

Personally I think that means that crafting, as an ability, should be free, or at least free compared to things that grant direct character advancement, like combat skills. It can still and probably should cost currencies to craft-buy the individual items if you like.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

The way I have that set up right now is that every character, by way of their class, gets to craft something. There are 6 different Education skills which are all tied to different crafting categories, but these skills also let you identify things, assess the combat capability of enemies, and so on - so by getting higher Education you get better at crafting. Characters who are good at multiple Education skills have access to multiple categories of shit they can make. Every single class must invest in at least a single Education skill.

For example, someone who invests anything into Survival gets the ability to plant things, create Pokeballs, make traps, or whip up some poisons. Only one of those categories, though - although there are ways to get more if you really want, but those are bought with the smallest character resources that are used for RP things or whatever. Not anything directly related to your combat ability. So the "crafting character build" is someone who's really smart in various fields, but also help out in combat in ways besides "I shoot him with my syringe gun".

[pragma]

Yeah... it's a rare case, I'll admit.
I'm open to anything that sounds less silly than fucking 'Poke-stocks'.

Then how do you feel about poke-futures? I think they're the most appropriate investment vehicle for high level poke-movers and poke-shakers. Rather than investing in partial ownership of some poke-firm (a poke-stock), which makes no sense because Pokemon don't own anything, you are gambling on the predicted value of a given Pokemon over the term of your future. This incentivizes you to go and flex your Gyrados after investing in Magicarp futures, so that you drive up worldwide demand.

I'm pretty excited to move further down the line to Poke-collateralized-debt-obligations.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Uh. Well, there are already Z-Crystals, so if I really hate 'Poke-stocks', I could always just make up 'Poke-Crystals'. P-Crystals. Having the higher tier currencies be magical Pokemon crystals instead of something that people can buy with money in real life might make more sense. Maybe they're just a natural byproduct of really strong Pokemon, somehow. Like... whenever a high-level Pokemon forgets a Move, its old power condenses into a crystal that would naturally appear in more dangerous areas?

The problem with tying currency to Pokemon is that it incentives catching everything you see, which isn't particularly engaging. At the same time, it also seems like the obvious way to go. Hmm. But if it's only made by high-level Pokemon anyway, maybe it won't be that big of an issue? Perhaps making the crystals is taxing so Pokemon can't do it very often and have farms made out of them.
I dunno, I'm spitballing.

[Orion]

I'm with PhoneLobster: If you want to let players in a Pokemon game start side businesses, the obvious resource to use is the pokemon. If you don't want to encourage mass captures, then you can make job training the bottleneck. You could specify an amount of in-game time to train a pokemon for work, or you could let people do it once per game session, or once per character level, or require players to use a pokemon in their active party for a while before retiring them to a side job. Then you draw up an example list of pokemon businesses -- letter carriers, ferry rides, construction crews, fortune tellers, sleep therapists, etc, and the number and type of pokemon (or pokemon with specific moves) you need to establish the business. I would recommend keeping money out of it entirely. Tell your players that there are Poke-Capitalists who will lend you the seed money for the equipment and facilities your Pokemon business, but that the business will remain in a growth phase where all the revenue is reinvested or goes to debt servicing until your character retires from adventuring to live off their holdings. Then give each business one or more cool perks for the owner. Access to information, free consumables, conditional skill bonuses, the opportunity to do favors for NPCs, and so on.

EDIT: If your system has an abstract wealth mechanic like Lifestyle, you can certainly give people free Lifestyle bumps based on how many businesses they own.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That's... pretty good, actually. I guess sending your Pokemon to work at your factory is more palatable than sending them to work at some random factory, and training seems like a solid bottleneck... hrm. Having to worry less about money is always nice, too..

Now... what if I had an unholy abortion of discrete and abstract wealth? Like, "you can spend X amount of dollars to have X Lifestyle for a week, and now you don't have to worry about feeding most of your party and you can retroactively pull items out of your ass once a day"? You could easily replace "X amount of dollars" with "Have a Tier X property", but I like the idea of rich kids adventuring alongside murderhobos.