Resources

Resources describes your character’s general level of material wealth in the game world and ability to apply it. This might not always reflect cash on hand, given the different ways you can represent wealth in a particular setting—in a medieval game, it might be tied to land or vassals as much as gold; in the modern day, it might mean a number of good lines of credit.

This skill is in the default list to give you a basic, easy way to handle wealth as an abstraction without getting into minutiae or bookkeeping. Some people might consider it odd to give a static skill rating for something that we’re used to seeing as a finite resource.

OOvercome: You can use Resources to get yourself out of or past any situation where throwing money at the problem will help, such as committing bribery or acquiring rare and expensive things. Challenges or contests might involve auctions or bidding wars.

CCreate an Advantage: You might use Resources to grease the wheels and make people more friendly, whether that represents an actual bribe (I Scratch Your Back_…_) or simply buying drinks for people (In Vino Veritas). You can also use Resources to declare that you have something you need on hand, or can quickly acquire it, which could give you an aspect representing the object.

AAttack: Resources isn’t used for attacks.

DDefend: Resources isn’t used to defend.

Resources Stunts

• Money Talks. You can use Resources instead of Rapport in any situation where ostentatious displays of material wealth might aid your cause.
• Savvy Investor. You get an additional free invoke when you create advantages with Resources, provided that they describe a monetary return on an investment you made in a previous session. (In other words, you can’t retroactively declare that you did it, but if it happened in the course of play, you get higher returns.)
• Trust Fund Baby. Twice per session, you may take a boost representing a windfall or influx of cash.

Limiting Resources

If someone is using the Resources skill a bit too often, or you just want to represent how continually tapping into your source of wealth provides diminishing returns, you can try one of the following ideas:

• Any time a character succeeds at a Resources roll, but doesn’t succeed with style, give them a situation aspect that reflects their temporary loss of wealth, like Thin Wallet or Strapped for Cash. If it happens again, just rename the aspect as something worse—Strapped for Cash becomes Dead Broke, Dead Broke becomes Debt to Creditors. The aspect is not a consequence, but it should make good compel fodder for characters who are shopping until they drop. It can go away if the character takes a break from spending cash, or at the end of the session.
• Every time the character succeeds at a Resources roll, decrease the skill by one level for the remainder of that session. If they succeed at a Resources roll at Mediocre (+0), they can no longer make any Resources rolls that session.

If you really want to get crazy, you can make finances a category of conflict and give each character a wealth stress track, giving them extra stress boxes for having a high Resources, but we don’t recommend going that far unless you plan on making material wealth a major part of your game.

Alternate Thoughts on the Resources Skill

The Resources skill is a one that some folks may want to tweak or modify. Ryan Macklin has posted an article with this thoughts at One Rethinking of the Resources Skill.

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