Roleplaying Rich

[Hugh-Gi-Oh]

Being from a relatively wealthy family irl, one of the clearest and most obvious contrasts between behavior of rich people and poor people is this:

A poor person wants to try and show off that they're rich. A rich person doesn't want to try and show off that they're rich, because they know they are. 

 

Take phones, for example. Many of my poorer friends have the newest iPhones, and every two years they get another brand new phone in their subscription that they pay monthly for. They do this because, even though they might be able to better use that money for something else, they can afford it and they wanna try and convey the image that they're rich. 

On the other hand, my richer friends tend to keep a phone for much longer, and they're far more content with cheaper models, because let's face it, a phone is a phone, it gets the job done, you don't need that awesome camera.

 

Another example is cars. A few blocks away, there's a poorer few blocks. If I go there, I'll always see a few nice, pimped out cars. Okay, they're not ferraris, they're not super expensive sports cars, but they're pretty fancy cars! 

On the other hand, in my street, where people are genuinely wealthy, most just drive a simple Opel Polo or something. For long trips, my family has a different, more expensive car, but we really rarely use it because there's absolutely no need to convey the image that we're rich to other people. There's just no point. 

 

This is also what I believe makes a person rich. Aside from being born into a rich family, I mean, or just plain luck like a lot of celebraties. It's being able to keep growing your capital without feeling the need to spend it on a new expensive phone every year, or the most expensive cars. It's being content with having simple things that lets you afford nice vacations, a fancy party every now and then, and most importantly, a good retirement, which is a rich person's prime goal. On the other hand, poor people like to try and show off that they're rich, and they'll buy way too much stuff that prevents them from ever really becoming rich. 

 

 

 

SO! That out of the way. How would I roleplay a rich person? Depends on two things. One) did my character work for their wealth or were they born into it, and two) how old is my character? 

 

Someone who's young and inherited their money is much more prone to brag about it than someone who's an adult and who worked for their money.

If I played a young inheriting person, sure, I'll buy a Raiden Coil, spend a ton of cash on parties and booze, maybe throw in some cocaine, get a burn out, lose all my money 'cause of these stupid decisions, because let's face it, unless you're really the degree of rich where you have practically unlimited money, this lifestyle is not substainable at all. 

If I played a smart adult who worked for their money, earned it, then I'd drive a good car but not an overly expensive car, just a pretty okay car that gets my character to and from the places they gotta be. I'd invest the money intelligently, but I wouldn't just live on those investments, I'd still have my character actively work to try and substain and increase their wealth. The key to capitalism is growth, and that's what my character would strive for. Sooner than spend the majority of their wealth on a nice house or a nice car, they'd make expenses that they know will increase their net worth and improve their lifestyle. Growth. My character would have to very much understand economics, and stuff like that.

 

God. This turned out to be a whole lot longer than I thought. Summary time.

 

TLDR: A rich person doesn't buy sports cars, expensive phones and stuff like that. They invest, they keep working, they strive for growth so that they can retire with plenty of wealth. They plan ahead for the rest of their lives instead of thinking about what car they wanna drive next week. 

 

 

EDIT: This is not regarding the uppermost 1% of rich people. This is not about millionaires and billionaires. It's not about the people who could literally afford anything in the world, who'd be able to buy their own yacht and shrugs it off, not having to care about the expenses. It's not about the Wolf of Wall Street. This is about most real rich people, who are wealthy enough to live in a nice, big house(not a mansion) and the like. It's about the people who really work for their money, not the people who've already reached the point where money just keeps on rolling in whatever they do. We're talking a total value, with all their properties, of about 500,000 to 1,500,000 euros at most. Not liquid cash, but all of their net worth.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Hugh-Gi-Oh

[Gryffin]

This is an interesting topic. 

In my experience, it's quite rare to bump ways with someone who has a realistic-rich type of character. It's usually people with unexplained assets driving Pariahs or other expensive cars, perhaps managing a nightclub, you get the idea. I have to say that @Conway has one of those rare few characters that are rich, yet keep it low-key, as explained by @Hugh-Gi-Oh.

 For some form of an "elite club" to work, there needs to be a change of perspective. It's not going to be particularly exciting if only 2-3 realistically rich characters are part of said club. 

My personal, main character is also rather wealthy and I thoroughly enjoyed building the character to her current state over the span of almost a year. Now? All she can do is keep working, expand business and make more and more "contacts". She doesn't flaunt said wealth and instead invests it into business or hobbies, which she has more time for now. 

Tldr: for an "elite club" to work, people need to realize that there's a massive difference between a rich person and a poser. Nonetheless, I'd like to see that idea in action.

[The Brotherhood of Steel]

7 hours ago, Conway said:

My character is a wealthy woman who essentially does her job as a hobby and runs the business as a safety net. To be totally honest with you this server is quite hostile towards people with wealthier characters and quite often I feel like I'm singled out as a bad person for having a lot of assets and trying to portray a wealthier character. I'd love a more elite club, such as the country club, where your average joe can't come and spoil it for the upper class individuals. I'm talking dress codes, etiquitte etc. Unfortunately we're never going to see this because rich person bhed. Dreams are free, though.

People are being hostile towards this because it's overdone and never done right. 

[Crocker]

8 hours ago, Conway said:

My character is a wealthy woman who essentially does her job as a hobby and runs the business as a safety net. To be totally honest with you this server is quite hostile towards people with wealthier characters and quite often I feel like I'm singled out as a bad person for having a lot of assets and trying to portray a wealthier character. I'd love a more elite club, such as the country club, where your average joe can't come and spoil it for the upper class individuals. I'm talking dress codes, etiquitte etc. Unfortunately we're never going to see this because rich person bhed. Dreams are free, though.

 

[Jennie]

9 hours ago, Conway said:

this server is quite hostile towards people with wealthier characters and quite often I feel like I'm singled out as a bad person for having a lot of assets and trying to portray a wealthier character.

Just do the RP that you want to do and ignore those people, you are the one who decides the RP you want to have, not someone else, they're nothing.

[Topinambour]

2 hours ago, Jennie said:

Just do the RP that you want to do and ignore those people, you are the one who decides the RP you want to have, not someone else, they're nothing.

Pretty much this. 

 

Maybe you know a rich person, a rich few friends, or you're from a rich family, but there are many, MANY different types of "rich people" and among those types there are dozens of subtypes with a lot of complexity. Many sociologists spent an unhealthy amount of time mapping the richest and poorest layers of society, to find out it's an exceedingly complex topic. 

 

As a consequence, RP'er A's vision of "how RP'ing rich should be like" will be wildly different from RP'er B's vision. And the thing is: both might be right, or equally wrong. 

 

A simple example: the origin of said wealth, and the upbringing, are important factors. You have a lot of different people who become rich in various manners.

 

• The old-world heirs are one example. Most times those people will have children mostly in order to preserve their patrimony. They know they're rich, they've been rich for 15 generations, they feel like they're better than everyone else and can be highly disconnected from what the real world actually is. 
• The business-rich are another. People who weren't rich, but well-off to begin with, started a business and made it big because of luck and/or hard work (often a mix of both). While they won't be as disdainful as the previous ones, they'll often live in a fantasy where hard work means becoming rich and they often ignore the part of luck they had or the outside help.
• The rags to riches are yet another. They were never destined to become wealthy but still did, and they act like they THINK a rich person should. Shaquille O'Neal talked a lot about this situation he found himself in, when he spent a whole 1 million dollars in 24 hours, when he was 20, not even realizing it was that much. 
• The street crime rich, another one. Become rich thanks to dubious activities, it's a world where flaunting your wealth is a major exercise since you HAVE to do it to show you're boss, but you have to do it without getting caught by the IRS - it's a very, very bling world sometimes.
• The corporate crime rich, the next. Embezzled a lot of money, bought a few houses in suspicious islands, won't flaunt his wealth too much but most often, when you scam money out of people to be rich, you want to use that money... So they often end up showing their cash. A bit too much sometimes...
• The idealist rich, other one. The person who has an ideal, somehow made a lot of money, and wants to make the world a better place that way by thriving towards that ideal they have. Elon Musk would be one with his whole "let's become an interplanetary species" thing.
• The right place right time rich. They had a great idea. If they had the same idea 6 months before, or after, they would have failed, but the stars were aligned and they made it super big, à-la Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Again, those people won't behave like any of the previous categories.
• The cyberpunk rich. They made it big, they know how influential they are, they don't care whether their actions will make the world a better or worst place, and they live like the boss of a cyberpunk company (à-la Richard Branson who lives on his private island).
• The modest rich, next one. Well "modest" is a big word because they live in mansions and hotels that are worth 50 times the GDP of Botswana, but they don't appear much on TV and magazines and such, keeping their personality low-profile and enjoying their wads of money on their own (like Larry Fink). 
• The "daddy's son" rich. Their dad's rich, he bought them an Audi RS6 for their 16th anniversary, they think everything's owed to them and they do show their money everywhere they go (and some here will be shocked: they do sometimes street race, it's been an ongoing problem where I'm living). 

 

Think that's a lot? There are at least 150 more types of rich people, and each of those have at least 50 of their own sub-types with different demeanors, approaches to wealth, ways of showcasing it subtly or openly, disdain or empathy for the less fortunate, etc...

 

So, yeah, when someone's telling you "you don't RP rich properly", as if there were like one or two "proper" ways to do it... you can feel free to tell them to shove it. They most likely have no clue what they're talking about and most definitely haven't investigated the question at all. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Topinambour

[DLimit]

Within due time, after I heavily develop a few of my main characters, I may proceed to invest my time in developing a wealthy elitist-minded male that owns a small "secret" or "elitist" club within Los Santos. In my opinion, it isn't a major issue if only three individuals are active within this club, as one must remember that the ratio of wealthy individuals in comparison to middle-classed and lower-income individuals consists of a massive gap. It'd be fair to state that three to four out of two-hundred in-game player-controlled characters are wealthy enough to join this club.

My vision is a place where it'd be a diverse set of wealthy individuals, not limiting itself to "Suits and tophats", but strictly basing it on wealth, with a strict code that involves serving one another as a "brotherhood/sisterhood" over other individuals. As I stated, it would be like Freemasonry, but on a bourgeois-level, as a Freemason could either be rich or poor. 

P.S. I'm not referring to something along the lines of a massive building like the "Pacific Bluffs Country Club", but something along the lines of the "K.O.I." building within Vespucci.

Edited October 16, 2019 by DLimit

[EliH]

Yeah all I have to say is this is a perception problem due to low playerbase count. There's tons of different styles of rich people. The main problem I see is that some people RP having cars modeled after Ferrari's, etc, but don't have the job required to pay for it to back it up. 

[DLimit]

7 hours ago, EliH said:

Yeah all I have to say is this is a perception problem due to low playerbase count. There's tons of different styles of rich people. The main problem I see is that some people RP having cars modeled after Ferrari's, etc, but don't have the job required to pay for it to back it up. 

These characters could've potentially inherited the wealth from their family members or function as a C.E.O. in another state or nation-state, as-well. Unless, of course, they lack the creativity to proclaim that they've earned all of this wealth from bartending.

Edited October 17, 2019 by DLimit

[Topinambour]

There is also the issue that most of the jobs that would realistically get you enough money to be that rich... wouldn't make you rich, on GTAW. It's part of the remark I made on another thread, about the deliverables and the price they're estimated at, on the server, compared to real life. 

 

One example among many: IRL, your rich dad pays a fancy business school for you, he knows someone at that big company, they take you as a senior manager as soon as you're out of school, within 10 years you're director of marketing and within 20 you're an exec. On GTAW... your dad doesn't exist, the big company doesn't exist, there is no need for a director of marketing and even less so of an exec. 

 

And if you tell people "My char's family is rich and he's doing a marketing office job", you'll be told "Oh you don't RP your job that's bad RP you suck at RP you can't RP rich". ? 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Topinambour