Over the years, I’ve encountered numerous suggestions in regards to how the finances of any one player should be handled. What options should the player have? Just how much script support is necessary to make accurate roleplay possible, plausible and reasonable, but also effortless and fun?
I decided to outline what could be considered a basic system that anyone can manipulate to represent nearly all of the real-world financial transactions.
The circulation of money occurs within two cycles:
GREEN CYCLE
Cycle number one is the “GREEN” banking system which contains personal, business and government bank accounts. All private & corporate deposits are guaranteed by the FDIC, effectively making those accounts impervious to unnatural fluctuations of the market, not to mention that they are physically secure. Use of cards and cheques as the instruments of your wealth makes it a somewhat convenient day-to-day solution, however, cards and cheques cannot be used everywhere. Moreover, each transaction within the system is registered. Finally, cash deposits over $5,000 will be reported, your account will be affected by the standard rate of taxation, and your “GREEN” value is going to be added into the calculation for the luxury tax.
GRAY CYCLE
Cycle number two is the “GRAY” hand-to-hand cash system in which money is an item on your person just like a weapon, drugs, or any other tangible entity. Having cash on you is by far the most convenient solution as it allows you to handle transactions anywhere and leaves virtually no paper trail as far as the player to player interactions go. The cash in your possession does not fall under the regular banking system taxation either. That said, large amounts of cash that go unreported, sudden, unexplainable surges of asset value to your name or any other inconsistencies in your personal finances could potentially lead to a tax evasion investigation being launched against you. Another drawback is that any cash that you have on you is up for grabs – be that a police seizure, burglary or a plain robbery. To complete the cycle, cash on hand should be limited, with vehicles and properties having separate cash storage possibilities.
CASH REGISTERS
On top of that, I’d like to suggest a “cash register” script for ANY registered business - assigned to a cash register furniture item instead of a property. That means even the smallest, home-ran businesses can have a cash register and make full use of the script.
Cash Register works as a temporary box for the cash flowing in and out of the business during the working day, with each transaction being recorded within the internal ledger. Payments by cash, by card, all on the record.
Every business has a separate bank account assigned to it with the owner as the master administrator of the account, potentially including an option to authorize other people to use the account.
At the end of the working period, you close the register for the day and automatically transfer the funds to the business bank account – that amount will be taxed and, in essence, ready for you to be moved wherever you need it to go.
In effect, the money can circulate within either “GREY” or “GREEN” part of the system, “GREY” being the no-tax, cash only transactions and physical money storage, and “GREEN” being the recorded and taxed money that’s within the banking system. Businesses are the most effective conduits for the money to go from GREY to GREEN, with direct deposits as an alternative way of introducing the money to the “GREEN” part. Of course, there will be questions should you start depositing money source of which you can not prove.
Attached, you can find a flowchart of a working two-level circulation with a minimal amount of players involved.
With the basic concept out of the way, I’d like to touch upon some of the nuances that I feel might get brought up.
CREDIT SCORE, CREDITS, MORTGAGES, VEHICLE LEASING
The introduction of the “universal basic income” feature removes the usual hurdles people face during the initial grind towards the “middle-class status”. Beyond that point, however, it’s meant to be difficult to acquire large lump sums of money that could be used for any large, legitimate acquisition. While a whole credit system could be developed, relying fully on the script, I believe that approach is misguided. Instead, I’d suggest a string of player-funded and player-managed institutions with an IC oversight from the government (including building a debtors database), and OOC oversight & support from the administration team. It encourages interaction, opens up real investment possibilities for the general population and gives people real control over the broad financial landscape.
Given how all of the banking and cash register interaction is meant to be recorded, lenders can accurately assess financial capabilities of the borrowers, and a credit score can be organically built based on your actions within the system.
STORING CASH
To touch upon the subject mentioned earlier – some easy ways of storing money should be introduced parallel to a reasonable limitation of maximum “cash on hand”. Anything from simple numerical value storages for properties & vehicles, all the way to cash pile furniture items representing exact amounts (with no loss of value on sale), safes that could store X amount of money, hidden compartments, you name it!
The main point I’d like to make is: While the money on your person is a fair game for anyone, I believe that stealing or seizing money from a property should occur only under admin supervisor to avoid a burglary epidemic of epic proportions as criminals citywide hope to snatch an easy score.
CARDS SAFETY
In general, I’d suggest every single card to be a debit card – withdrawing the money straight from your account with no possibility of overdraft. While it’d be interesting to make the card itself a separate item to open up theft and card scanning possibilities, I do believe that’s an overkill – scenarios as such can be handled on a goodwill basis as a mutual understanding between the players. Each card should have a hard limit on the cash withdrawals to prevent the unreasonable behaviour from the thief in question – cleaning out several hundred thousand out of a single bank account through an ATM simply doesn’t happen.
CASH REGISTER THEFT
Given the ledger shows whether the sum was paid in by card or by cash, there’s a potential possibility for having a current cash balance option within the script that could make the robbery a relatively pain-free process from the script's perspective. However, I don’t think a whole separate command should be used for that purpose – we should count on the mutual understanding of the parties during the scene, with the cash register owner handling the script end of withdrawal regardless of the IC circumstances (e.g. knocked out).
To summarize:
In the future, further development of the system would be optimal to accommodate more complex transactions and schemes. Given the current state of the server, I believe the proposal covers all of the immediate needs and more.
/discuss
