What should happen when players decide that their characters are going to keep more than the limit in coin or cred in a Blades or Scum game?
I would suggest to them that they stash the coin to raise their personal tiers instead, if they’re hesitant to do so, you could compare the personal coin to the amount of cash they can fit in a mattress; you could have more straight cash lying around, but it won’t be secure, and their characters are probably streetwise enough to not do that.
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In Blades, I’d say it makes the lair unusable for other purposes, harder to secure and hide. And the excess coin (and maybe more) is lost or stolen whenever the GM whims it so.
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The part about the coin getting stolen is where I was leaning, but it feels arbitrary—like I’m just punishing them for breaking the limit no matter what sort of story excuse I make up about how word gets around about your pile of cash. Next time they’ll just explicitly tell me they’re taking steps to keep it secret. With Scrum & Villainy that’s harder because the cred is on their ship, which is a fairly secure and private location.
I think I’d just have to tell them that whatever they describe about their ability to stash that extra cash is covered by the game’s limit on how much cash they can safely keep lying around. Thats how much whatever precautions they can come up with can cover, period. Anything above that is stored unsecured.
I just don’t allow it, period. Any coin above what you can store either needs to get spent before the end of the current Downtime, or go in your Stash. I don’t think the game gives you other options.
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Yeah, the only precaution that actually works is a crew upgrade. Or they should throw the extra coin on a long-term project to build a bigger vault. That’s how you play the game.
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Thank you for the advice.
I think by the book the limit is 4, full stop. PCs simply can’t keep more than this on their person. Any excess go into Stash.
If a hard limit feels too artificial, I’ve thought about softening it by not having a limit and instead having Coin/Cred count toward a PC’s Load. So if a PC decides to keep 4 Coin/Cred, they are already at a Medium Load when the job starts. This makes sense to me, as 1 Coin/Cred is supposed to be a significant dollop of cash.
A variation of this is to let PCs carry 4 Coin/Cred for “free”, with any excess counting toward their Load. If PCs want to be able to carry more, maybe there could be a “Deep Pockets” special ability that lets PCs carry beyond the usual 4 with no penalty.
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I have gone with that last option more than once. In general, my rule was that the PCs can pick up anything else they want during a job, but it bumps up their Load as a result. Something for them to consider when the Bluecoats run into them exiting Lord Dunvil’s estate loaded down with the family silverware.
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The way I try to talk to my players about situations like this is to combine the rules with fiction. There’s a limit mechanically, which is reflected in the fiction, unless they work for it they can’t break the mechanical rules.
Tell them to get a bank account. (Then hit them with an audit…)
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If you feel like having their money stolen is too arbitrary, just have it be associated with a clock. Define a trigger for the clock (every time they come across a gang who is lower tier than theirs, for example) and just roll with it. Every time the clock is filled, they lose some money, and the clock restarts. A bit less arbitrary.