Has anyone heard of a 'Point Buy' system using 'Money' Instead?

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**KnuckleWolf**

A gamer friend of mine was asking today if there were any games that used a "Money Alotment" instead of a point buy system. As in instead of a thousand points for your army, you get a thousand cash with change or something. I don't imagine they would be much different mechanically, only aesthetically. I mean your essentially moving over the decimal 2 spaces right? But for all the games I've played I couldn't think of one. Anyone ever hear of this?

**Absolutionis**

Are you talking about literally using USD and you're allowed to build whatever army you want at real-world MSRP?

Or are you just talking about using the term "dollars" or some currency instead of the term "points" in the lingo of army building? If this is the case, that Battlefoam game, Wild West Exodus, does exactly that.

**chaos0xomega**

Also the Arkham City game

**Lansirill**

Mordheim, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl all use(d) money instead of points.

**motyak**

Brushfire uses Gold in addition to Lumber and Food to build your army.

**erratyk**

As said above, Arkham City works exactly like that. for every 100pts you use to build your team, you get 500$ (i think) to buy weapons and upgrades for everyone. some characters such as the penguin have rules which allow them to spend extra money, because they're pimping like that.

**KnuckleWolf**

Absolutionis wrote:
Are you talking about literally using USD and you're allowed to build whatever army you want at real-world MSRP?

No but that would be neat to see wouldn't it! Have that awkward moment like "Whhoops, sorry guys, I thought the F-22 was 1.2 billion not 2.2. Hehe, guess I shouldnt have had all those javelin missiles in my Ranger squad!"

Awesome! Thanks all!

**Bolognesus**

Dreadball does as well. It's more than just a little label in the league (campaign) system too.

**Magc8Ball**

I don't really see a distinction between "dollars" and "points". It's just terminology for the exact same thing, a "resource allotment that you are granted to build your army". Who cares what it is called?

Hell, the terms ARE being used interchangeably by the player base of an RTT I've been spending time playing (Wargame: Airland Battle). On the forums people seem to equally refer to units as costing X points and $X.

**Eilif**

I believe the Campaign system for Battetech uses C-bills to grow your forces and you can determine the cost of a given mech and pilot if you wish rather than using the Battle Value lists.

**doc1234**

Heavy gear arena uses K for its currency/points allotments (i'v yet to figure out if this is just the currency or the more likely value with no currency given, especially when you consider say a knife is something like....3 currency. Seems less likely that 3000-insertcurrencyname-)

**TheAuldGrump**

Gods, Trillion Credit Squadron for Traveller, way back in the day....

I miss GDW.

The Auld Grump

**Shandara**

Using bare 'points' is an abstraction of all those pieces of eight, gold coins, credits, dollars, flaming skulls, etc.. systems.

One is as good as the other, but at least points has the distinction of not carrying any specific connotation.

**Grot 6**

KnuckleWolf wrote:
A gamer friend of mine was asking today if there were any games that used a "Money Alotment" instead of a point buy system. As in instead of a thousand points for your army, you get a thousand cash with change or something. I don't imagine they would be much different mechanically, only aesthetically. I mean your essentially moving over the decimal 2 spaces right? But for all the games I've played I couldn't think of one. Anyone ever hear of this?

Played a campaign system like this one time. started out with a platoon of a basic HQ and a couple of squads, then as the time went on, you'd add on more units as you won or lost, based on the campaign rolls from the old "Mighty Empires" campaign system.

I'd say a cool idea would be to play on necromunda scale for a few games, as you win/ lose, you would add in the sorts of additionally gained equipment from Only War. Not necessarily "Money", but you'd get allotted forces, equipment, weaponry depending on your battles/ wins, loses. So you'd use your base platoon, win and lose loses as you add in different replacements/ squads equipment and weaponry as you go from warzone to warzone.

You could do a fairly decent army after a few weeks, or so. Officers might even have some bonuses/ negatives, based on your positive traits, negative aspects.

They don't really have "Money" as the battles move. rather you lose units, you get replacements/ requisitions, depending on your status and missions.

**Balance**

Magc8Ball wrote:
I don't really see a distinction between "dollars" and "points". It's just terminology for the exact same thing, a "resource allotment that you are granted to build your army". Who cares what it is called?

Exactly.

Realistically, 'points' is just one term for the most common army selection control. Many games complicate this with some sort of Force Organization rules, or possibly another resource of some sort.

**Pacific**

Doesn't Bushido use grains of rice as its points system?

Shandara wrote:
Using bare 'points' is an abstraction of all those pieces of eight, gold coins, credits, dollars, flaming skulls, etc.. systems.

One is as good as the other, but at least points has the distinction of not carrying any specific connotation.

Yes right...

**Mannahnin**

Pacific wrote:
Doesn't Bushido use grains of rice as its points system?

I think it uses Koku, which is actually historical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku

The koku (石/石高?) is a Japanese unit of volume, equal to ten cubic shaku. In this definition, 3.5937 koku equal one cubic metre, i.e. 1 koku is approximately 278.3 litres. The koku was originally defined as a quantity of rice, historically defined as enough rice to feed one person for one year (one masu is enough rice to feed a person for one day). A koku of rice weighs about 150 kilograms (23.6 stone or 330 pounds).

In 1891, a smaller koku was defined such that one koku equalled exactly 240100⁄1331 litres, which is approximately 180.39 litres, or about 5 bushels (40 imperial or 48 US gallons).

During the Edo period (1603-1868) of Japanese history, each han (fiefdom) had an assessment of its wealth, and the koku was the unit of measurement. The smallest han was 10,000 koku and Kaga han, the largest (other than that of the Shogun), was called the "million-koku domain". (Its holdings totaled around 1,025,000 koku.) Many samurai, including hatamoto, received stipends in koku, while a few received salaries instead. In the Tōhoku and Hokkaidō domains, where rice could not be grown, the economy was still measured in koku but was not adjusted from year to year. Thus some han had larger economies than their koku indicated, which allowed them to fund development projects.

IIRC several games with a Japanese setting have used Koku.

**Balance**

Weirdest avoiding-points system I've ever dealt with was the Babylon 5: Call To Arms where ships were divided into 5 (or maybe 6... "Armageddon" level was added late in the game) levels by how powerful the ship was. A game was played at X points (usually 1-5) of Y level, and there were some complicated rules to convert points down. Major downsides of this system were it was fiddly to explain and sue, and the implementation encouraged taking lots of smaller ships, usually not the ones that were 'stars' in the show, instead of the big Omegas and such that were iconic. (Think a Star Trek game where the Constitution class or other 'Enterprise' classes was a poor option.)

**master of ordinance**

Judge Dredd and Necromunda both.

**Lanrak**

AFAIK, most narrative games tend to use some form of themed currency.
As this is less likely to focus the players on optimization and mathematical annalasys that points values seem to inspire.(IMLE)

**ArbitorIan**

As people have said, a lot of the more narrative/thematic games use some form of money as points - usually games where a big part of the game is trading, earning cash, campaign systems, etc.

In something like Necromunda or Blood Bowl, there can be real benefits to holding back some of your starting points for later in the campaign, and as well as playing games, you can earn more points from Territory, Ticket Sales, etc.

In these games, it makes lots of sense to refer to your points as 'credits' or 'gold' - compared to, say, 40k, where the points have no purpose other than to balance out the armies.