In fact, it seemed he liked to employ the classic Game Master trick of keeping his characters poor as a motivation to get them onto the next job. We saw a lot of that in the series. Serenity's crew was always living on the raggedy edge of being dead broke. It didn't matter how much the take was on the last job. The money never lasted long. They would take whatever job came their way, rather than running the boat either as a strictly mercantile operation or as a strictly mercenary operation. For Player Characters, that actually makes sense. It lets you tell a broader range of stories and that is what Firefly was all about.
The problem is, it gave us a very murky view of what the economy of the 'verse actually was. We know, for example, that a lot of commerce on the Rim and Border worlds was done in cash rather than through credit. The 'coin of the realm,' so to speak, being small Platinum tokens. There was also scrip, and credit, and probably several other forms of currency we didn't see come into play on-screen. What's important, is that it appears that the 'credit' was a consistent unit of currency across the worlds we see.
There was never a case where we see, or it's even implied, that they are changing from one form of currency to another. We don't have Pounds Sterling on Londinium, Marks on Ariel, Yen on Beaumonde, Dollars on Blackburne, or Sheckles on Persephone. It's all the same currency. It's implied that the costs for various items would change across worlds, but you'd be paying for it with the same units of cashey money. They were evidently on the Platinum standard.
The problem is, we don't know what the relative values are for the money we see changing hands. For example, the ultra-concentrated food Our Heroes salvage from the derelict in the pilot was worthless to Badger because of it's Alliance markings. The assumption being he couldn't fence it or sell it off himself if it had such obvious markings. That leaves Mal to sell it to Patience for a bag of coin. We have to assume that the coin was at least as much as Badger was going to pay them for going out and getting it, otherwise it makes no sense for Mal to sell it to her.
There are numerous other examples of these low margin jobs and crimes that, quite honestly, don't make a lot of sense except as a way to keep our characters poor and searching for the next job.
And people wonder why Firefly is so attractive to Gamers?
Anyway, Joss didn't give us a lot to work on when it comes to figuring out the actual values involved in the Firefly economy. Realistically, we can probably treat the economy like we treat the science: It made Joss's head hurt, so whatever worked for the story is going to be the way it is. We don't really worry about the details so much.
I'm sure someone who's an actual economist can shed more light on the subject, but the fact is Firefly Canon is vague on Firefly Economics and we're going to have to wing it. Though, to be sure, I'm going to hit a few implications later in this piece.
Unfortunately, that's really not very satisfying. Worse, as gamers, we're kind of stuck with trying trying to make this vague backstory fit in with a concrete set of numbers in our Second Life reality. A GM can toss out something vague like "It's a heafty chunk of change" without needing to specify a number, where a couple of players trying to haggle out a price are going to want some kind of actual number.
While I don't have a specific conversion of Plats to Dollars to use in game, we do have some basic real-world economics to work from which we can extrapolate into something we can work with in game.
At it's most basic, economics is easy:
- Acquire or produce a product.
- Sell it for more than it cost you to acquire or produce it.
- Profit.
- Wash, rinse, repeat.
It's when you add layers that things get complicated. For example, between the linked stories in Shindig and Safe, we see just how complex this can be, and see just how difficult it is to get a good handle on Firefly economics.
The premise is that Badger has hooked Mal up with a local Persephone Noble who wants to get some livestock off-world where they can be sold at a greater profit and with lower taxes than they can be sold locally. Simple. But what are the implications?
Badger, as we know, is, as well as being a snarky little twerp, a ruthless profiteer. He's going to be taking a Finder's Fee from whatever Mal gets paid for the mission. We can surmise that Badger's going to want to cover the costs, be it in favor or cash, for the tickets to the Shindig. How much is that going to be? We never really know.
Now, Lord Harrow needs to get his herd of cows to Jiangyin, where they can be cunningly concealed before being subsequently sold. Why is he moving them there? Because he can turn a greater profit by selling them there, of course. That's after paying Mal for transporting them there too. So we can assume that the local taxes on Persephone are high and the profit margins are pretty thin.
We also can surmise that Mal was able to at least turn a modest profit on this mission, or at least break even, even after paying for food, fuel, maintenance, and everything else it takes to keep Serenity in the air.
Now, to come back to the real world for a moment, basic economics tells us that for it to be worthwhile to transport any product anywhere for sale, it has to cost less to produce in Location A and transport it to Location B for sale than it does to produce and sell locally at Location B. There's issues of availability of course. If A is the only source, it will be a matter of transport it or do without. But the point is the Producer needs to make their profit. The transporter needs to make their profit. The final seller needs to make their profit. At each step, someone needs their cut and at each step there's people trying to cut costs.
This is why Maersk operates massive container ships rather than a bunch of small freighters. Economy of scale.
So, before this gets too freaking long (OK, I know, it already is too freaking long), I'll bring it back to what it means to us as gamers.
One: Firefly Canon doesn't give us a lot to go on for what constitutes "a lot of money" vs "barely breaking even." The numbers are abstract at best.
Two: This campaign 'verse is about Characters, not economics. A character's motivation may be to turn a healthy profit, but we don't need specific numbers to do that.
Third: Everyone is going to have a different idea of what's valuable, what something is worth, and how much is "a lot." We can use real world prices to figure out a range, with, just to grab some numbers based on what we've done so far, say $10 = 1 Plat - Subject to a great deal of variation depending on who's story we're in and other factors.
Forth: Second Life currency (L$) is, effectively, real money. Negotiate game pay, in either direction, at your own risk.
Fifth: FFRP currency is useful for giving real numbers to in-story transactions, but may or may not be suitable for all occasions.
Sixth: There is no number six, because he is number one. (Oatie bar to whoever gets the reference)
I know what you're thinking now. "Is she done yet?"
Yes, Virginia. I am.
For now.
