elmcat recently posted their very cool map of the blogosphere, and of course I self searched immediately
Turns out that my top 3 linked-to posts are Modular Ecology (makes sense, this got me a runner-up prize at the Bloggies), The Witch's List (this is actually the post that led to me working on Mothership), and - in a runaway first place - Bell Peppers and Beef
This one's a bit more surprising to me I guess? But it goes to show you never know what will connect
Anyway, in the campaign that used that system I ended up adding a bit of tech to it that never got posted, so here it is:
Every establishment that sells stuff (potion shop, travelling merchant, bazaar stall, inn, etc etc) has an associated cost number. Players must have at least that much Money to buy there. So for instance, at the fancy antiques store (Cost 4), your players need to roll the die after buying something there as per the original rule, but if they don't have at least 4 Money to begin with they can't buy it regardless
This requires the GM to assign a Cost to every vendor in the setting, and I've massively leaned away from systems that make the warden come up with these arbitrary numbers (no, you tell ME what the DC of this check is), so here are two ways to calculate Cost as GM:
1: Gate everything into Tiers based on dice. Start with Cost 1, then each tier above that is based on, say, d4, d6, d10 or whatever you're using. So the tiers are Cost 1, Cost 4, Cost 6 and so on. Then note a description for each tier so you know where any new vendors fall. Average daily purchases, middle class aspirations, fancy rich people shit, literally buying a boat.
2: Cost X where X is the number of digits in the probable cost of the average item in real world cents/pence/yen or similar. So Cost 1 is tat that costs pennies, Cost 2 is up to 99p, so a snack or random items you'd get at a pound shop. Cost 3 is £1-10, Cost 4 is up to £100. And so forth.
(While we're talking about money stuff, hi it's me, still looking for work x)
