Money, Assets & the Economy
Money in the World of Darkness works like it does out there: it buys the mortal world's cooperation, and it stops exactly where the Kindred begin. Your sheet keeps the honest numbers; everything else is leverage.
What lives on your sheet
Your Net Worth section tracks everything the world can count:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Cash | Bills in a pocket, an envelope under a floorboard. |
| Personal bank account | The account with your name on it. A card debits it. |
| Bank accounts | Any other accounts — business, offshore, the club's books. |
| Assets | What you own outright: property, a club's sound system, a boat. |
Net Worth adds them all up by itself. Only the story moves the pieces: a deposit moves Cash into an account, a card payment debits the balance, a purchase moves money out. Every purchase is recorded on your sheet, however small — the ledger never sleeps, and neither does whoever reads it. Accounts can go negative — the overdraft limit depends on who you are, and past it the bank stops the card, sends letters, then collectors. Debt is a story, and it plays out like one: interest, pressure, negotiation, someone else paying.
Buying things
The GM prices what you want from a simple scale, then checks whether the money is actually on your sheet — every purchase below is deducted and recorded, and none of them needs a roll except the last tier:
| Tier | Price range | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Trivial | Under $50 | Deducted and recorded, no roll. |
| Ordinary | $50–$500 | Deducted and recorded, no roll. |
| Big | $500–$5,000 | Deducted if your sheet covers it — otherwise a loan, a fence, or a favor. |
| Major | $5,000–$50,000 | Your sheet covers it, financing with its debt, or selling an asset. |
| Extraordinary | $50,000+ | Liquidating assets, or a Resources roll at difficulty 2 — and a paper trail someone may pull. |
Standard goods — phones, sedans, houses, boats — carry set prices in the project's Equipment library. Anything discreet (guns, burner phones, forged papers) runs above retail and arrives with strings attached.
Where do you even buy this?
Before the price comes the scene. The city decides what exists, what is open, and who will talk to you:
| What you want | Who has it | When |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary goods (groceries, tools, phones) | Any store of its kind | Its business hours |
| Small stuff late at night | Gas stations, 24-hour pharmacies, late bars | Any hour, thin stock |
| Discreet goods (guns, drugs, burner phones, forged papers) | A contact — a dealer, a fence, the one guy | On the contact's clock, at a markup |
| Bagged blood | Blood banks, black-market dealers, the court | Never a store, at any hour |
| Big and extraordinary purchases | Dealers, auctions, quiet negotiations | Days or weeks, by arrangement |
The rules the table hides:
- The city decides what exists. If the Mile plausibly has the kind of shop you want, it is there when you arrive — opened on the spot, fully itself. If nothing fits, it isn't for sale tonight, and finding it becomes the scene: a drive across town, a wait until Tuesday, a favor.
- Hours are hours. At 4 a.m. the city offers gas stations, all-night pharmacies and dive bars — not gun stores, not pharmacies with their stockrooms open. Arriving at the wrong hour means coming back or finding another way.
- Discreet goods need a contact. Guns, drugs, forged papers — nobody walk-in sells these, ever. No contact means finding one first, and that is its own scene of the right bar, the right name dropped, the favor you owe the person who introduces you. A stranger on a corner at 4 a.m. sells nothing but trouble.
- Blood is never a purchase at a counter. Bagged stock comes from blood banks, black-market dealers or the court's feeding rights — always through someone. A fresh willing vessel is a hunt, not a sale.
- Big money is never a shelf. Major and Extraordinary purchases are orders, auctions and negotiations — arrangements that take days and leave trails.
Resources: what flows in
Your Resources advantage is the steady engine behind the numbers:
| Level | Each month brings |
|---|---|
| 0 | Nothing. You are broke, and the table plays the scramble. |
| 1 | A modest wage — about $2,000. |
| 2 | Comfortable — about $6,000. |
| 3 | Wealthy — about $15,000. |
| 4 | Rich — about $40,000. |
| 5 | Fabulously rich — $100,000 and up. |
Earning it: jobs and gigs
No Resources is not no income — it is income you have to work for.
Legitimate employment pays a monthly wage by how skilled the work is:
| Work | Monthly wage |
|---|---|
| Unskilled (dish pit, warehouse, night watch) | About $1,800 |
| Semi-skilled (trades, driving, retail management) | About $2,600 |
| Professional (nursing, accounting, mid-level office) | About $4,500 |
| Expert or scarce talent (surgeon, senior dev, fixer with a license) | $6,000 and up |
A job means showing up — a schedule for the living, awkward nights for the Kindred. If your employment pays better than your Resources level, the wage replaces that income at month's end; they never stack. Where your character file states a job or standing, it wins.
One-off gigs — freelance or criminal — are scenes priced by risk, not generosity:
| Job | Payout | Flavor |
|---|---|---|
| Small errand | $200–$500 | Carry a package. A night of muscle. One delivery, no questions. |
| Medium work | $1,000–$3,000 | A hack. A fence run. Cleaning a scene before dawn. |
| Big score | $5,000–$10,000 | A heist. A frame-up. A smuggle across state lines. |
A failed job leaves the complication it earned — the boss's call you can't unreturn, the mark who saw your face. And among the Kindred, elders pay in boons, never cash; a vampire who takes a night's work from an elder and asks for money just priced their own humiliation.
Rent and upkeep
Every month of story time, the costs of living leave your sheet with the income:
| What you keep or use | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| A room in a shared house | About $600 |
| A simple apartment | About $1,000 |
| A good apartment | About $1,500 |
| A suburban house | About $2,000 |
| A loft or haven-grade space | About $2,800 |
| A vehicle you own | About 0.5% of its value |
| Property you own | About 0.2% of its value (taxes, insurance, repairs) |
Renting costs the rent and nothing more — the landlord eats the taxes and the broken water heater. Owning is cheaper on paper and bleeds slowly: a $9,000 sedan runs about $45 a month, a $280,000 house about $560. Selling an asset brings in roughly 80% of what it is worth — nobody pays sticker price in a hurry.
So a house is never just a purchase. It is a paper trail with your name on it, and — in the Mile — four walls that must keep out the sun.
Consumables: the small stuff that kills you
Ammunition, blood, drugs, fuel — the things you burn through. Each has a priced item in the project's Equipment library (category Consumable):
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Box of 50 9mm rounds | $25 |
| Box of 50 .38 rounds | $22 |
| Box of 25 12-gauge shells | $20 |
| Box of 20 rifle rounds | $30 |
| Tank of gas | $55 |
| Pack of cigarettes | $12 |
| Gram of cocaine | $100 |
| Bindle of heroin | $90 |
| Ounce of marijuana | $160 |
| Bag of stale blood | $350 |
You never count single bullets or doses. A unit bought is a line on your sheet's inventory — you have ammo, you have a gram, you have a tank of gas. After a heavy firefight, a binge or a long burn, the GM calls for spending one unit. Running dry with nothing on the sheet means buying more at the worst possible time, or going without.
The rules on blood are hard: stale bagged stock slakes Hunger only to 2 and carries no resonance — it is survival, not satisfaction. A fresh willing vessel is a scene, never an item. A maintained Herd feeds you without a purchase at all. And every drug has a second price the tag never lists: scrutiny, craving, the wrong crowd noticing you can pay.
The economy the mortals never see
Among the Kindred, money is the lesser currency. The real one is the boon — a favor owed, remembered, and honored, because the court remembers it even if you would rather forget.
| Boon | Typical worth |
|---|---|
| Trivial | A night's watch, a name spoken at the right door. |
| Minor | Information, one feeding right, a night of muscle. |
| Major | A haven, a rival's ruin, a life. |
A Major boon outweighs money, and elders haggle over who owes whom like merchants over debts. Offering cash to an old Kindred for a favor is an insult — offer a boon, blood, or territory instead.
Blood itself trades. A bag of stale stock from a blood bank runs a few hundred dollars on the black market; a willing, fresh vessel costs more, and their Blood Resonance sets both the price and the risk. A maintained Herd feeds you night after night without a hunt. But prey is property: poaching another vampire's herd or feeding grounds is not a crime of passion — it is a matter for the court, and courts collect.
Borrowing from the wrong people
The bank is not the only lender, and rarely the fastest.
The loan shark pays cash on the spot, no paperwork, no questions — that is what you are paying for. Terms are simple and unforgiving: about 150% of the principal due within a month, or a standing debt runs a weekly vig of about 10%. The debt lives on your sheet like any other negative entry, and Net Worth counts it. Miss a payment and it escalates in steps: pressure and threats, collections and beatings, coerced service — and finally the debt sold to a worse creditor. Sharks don't freeze accounts. They come for you.
Kindred credit is worse, because the interest is a boon. An elder lends money, blood or a standing favor: about $5,000 prices a Minor boon; $20,000 or an open line prices a Major one; some elders take service or status instead of either. Defaulting on Kindred credit is not a collections problem — it is a court matter. The Harpy records it, your standing falls, and the holder collects however they like.
The rule of thumb: banks compound slowly and politely. The street compounds fast. The court compounds in ways money cannot measure.
A player's shortlist
- Check your sheet before you promise anything: Cash and accounts, not vibes.
- The city decides what exists and what is open — hours are hours, and 4 a.m. is gas stations and dive bars.
- Discreet goods need a contact. No contact means finding one first — and strangers at 4 a.m. sell trouble, not blood.
- Big purchases are scenes — who sells it, who sees it, who remembers you bought it.
- Rent and upkeep leave every month, the same as income arrives. Budget like someone who plans to survive.
- Assets earn nothing by themselves; income flows from Resources — or from a job you actually show up to.
- You never count bullets or doses — but the GM knows when the box is empty.
- A loan from the wrong lender looks like a rescue and reads like a leash.
- A boon owed can be collected years later, at the worst possible moment. Choose your debts the way you choose your enemies.