The Essential Johnny CASH

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him buy.

H.G.

Jan 20, 2024

CASH stands for Currency Abstraction System. The “H” is just an “H”. CASH started as a way for me to procrastinate on the very boring task of assigning prices to all of the items in Actlite. I wanted a temporary way to handwave money away mechanically while keeping it in the fiction. Bribery, extortion, and haggling can all be great sources of character moments. Money is a good motivator for players in a slapped-together playtest. However, all of the bookkeeping involved and trying to make up meaningful and consistent prices was slowing down gameplay.

Hence, CASH—a completely untested system for abstracting away prices.

The CASH System

CASH expresses the narrative cost or value of something through broad characterizations. Every character has a CASH level. CASH levels are ordinal but not cardinal. Having a CASH level is like having a position in a footrace. If you know you are in third place, you know your relative position but not your actual distance from any other participant. Your position is only defined relative to other positions.

The Rules

You cannot purchase anything valued above your current CASH level.
If you purchase something valued at your current CASH level, lower your CASH level by 1.
If you purchase something 1 level below your current CASH level, perform a BARTER or SOCIAL check. If you fail the check, lower your current level of CASH by 1.
You can buy anything 2 or more levels below your current CASH level.

CASH Levels

The following CASH levels are listed along with characterizations and/or examples of what you could buy at each level. The actual value of different items will depend on setting and context. The examples should not be taken as authoritative price lists. You should feel free to add, remove, or modify levels as you see fit. These levels are entirely untested at time of writing, any changes to CASH levels will be linked at the top of this page.

Deprivation: Food barely fit for human consumption. Most things you could purchase at this level are practically indistinguishable from trash.
Destitution: Some street food, maybe a loaf of bread. Rags. Ale.
Indigence: A cup of stew. Hardtack. Raggedy threadbare clothing. A night in a run-down shack. Maybe a club.
Scarcity: A short stay in a shared room. A hot meal.
Penury: A knife. An article of common clothing.
Poverty: A dagger. A backpack.
Frugality: A short stay in an inn. A cheap spear or a woodcutting axe. An old rickety open cart. A wooden shield. Rope.
Austerity: An old mule. A new outfit. A basic weapon like an axe, a spear, or a short sword. Padded armor.
Moderation: A pack animal. Provisions for a journey. Nice warm clothing. Leather armor. A sword.
Substance: A horse. A polearm. Fine Clothing. A skiff.
Prosperity: Chain mail armor. A brigandine. A helmet or breastplate.
Affluence: A small sailboat. A war horse. Fine weapons of war.
Abundance: Plate Armor. Bodyguards and servants.
Fortune: A mansion. A ship capable of crossing an ocean.
Wealth: Businesses. Militias.
Riches: An estate. A Galleon. Marble statues.
Opulence: This level of wealth commands political power, it is difficult to even conceptualize. Fleets of ships. Entire industries.
Incredible Fortune: You command armies. You own banks. Your face is on the money.
Unfathomable Wealth: You determine the course of entire economies. Your wealth is your power, your power is your wealth.
Limitless Riches: This level of wealth exists only in legend. The wealth of gods. The wealth of an immortal dragon sleeping on a planetary core of pure gold.

The CASH system doesn't actually exist in the narrative itself. In-fiction, the characters are spending, bartering over, and earning whatever currency or store of value is appropriate in their setting. As a result, there must be some accepted store of value in the setting and it must be relatively easy to move around. It can't be so heavy that you should ever need to account for the burden of carrying it. This is easily accomplished by having many types and denominations of coins, gems, whatever. All of the characters must somehow possess the currency in a purse or a bag that can be stolen or taken away. Characters could conceivably store money in a bank of some kind and only carry some of it, in this case the GM will have to decide how that money can be split up.

The DM should talk about money relative to the character's current level of CASH. If the players are bounty hunters being offered a "huge job" the DM should tell them what their CASH would be if they completed the job.

Limitations

This system relies on “good faith” and a lot of GM fiat. It doesn't work well if the GM is constantly fielding stupid questions like “can I buy 1000 things that are 2 levels under my current CASH and then sell them to increase how much CASH I have?”

Weirdness at the Margins

Not every transaction where you make money is going to result in an increase in CASH, but they could still impact your ability to spend. Some ways a GM might to do this includes giving you a +X bonus to the next Y barter checks or raising your CASH level but giving you a penalty on barter checks for a while.

End

Today’s post is more half-baked than usual, but I wanted to make sure I wrapped up one of my drafts this week. These rules are not quite MOSAIC Strict but it should be relatively easy use this system in any game. Just choose the mechanism for deciding whether a player drops in CASH level when buying something one level below their current CASH. You can always just flip a coin.

I’m pretty comfortable with the core rules of CASH, but I think the examples are going to need to be reworked a fair bit. This will probably take a good deal of research on the prices of boats, weapons, horses, types of armor etc. I think the system probably has legs. I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays.

Actlite