How do we make this game better?
I've heard a lot and lurked a lot on Veeky Forums about why this game sucks, but what about it needs to change to make it better?
tl;dr: Lets fix D20 Modern with suggestions.
Note: I know all about the other modern RPGs out there(GURPS, Savage worlds, phoenix command), so if your opinion is to just "Play those instead" then that completely and utterly misses the point of this thread. Stay in your circle jerks.
Use E6.
What is E6?
You only go up to level 6, then you only get feats when you'd level.
It's an OK fix for 3.5, dunno how it'd work with modern. Probably stops people from being able to tank bullets.
Get rid of the Wealth system wholesale, it's busted.
>RPGs out there(GURPS, Savage worlds, phoenix command)
What about Spycraft, Ops & Tactics, or True20? Three modern RPGs, are ones that are actually based on the d20 system. If you're looking for "d20, but modern" they might do what you want better than a houseruled d20 modern.
This so much.
Beyond that, make Dex less of a god stat somehow.
What this guy said. It would allow characters to get three levels in a basic class and another three in an advanced class. It's enough to round out a concept, but not so much that the math starts to cave in on itself.
>so if your opinion is to just "Play those instead" then that completely and utterly misses the point of this thread. Stay in your circle jerks.
I think you miss the point of why people complain about d20 Modern. 3.5's problems are pretty baked in, and you're then taking a system meant for epic medieval high fantasy and trying to use it for modern firearm combat. It's like asking how to fix a car that drove off a cliff; you get a new car because by the time you were done that's pretty much what you'd have anyway.
Just accept it for what it is or play something else.
I'd make it more deadly, with a vitality/wounds system by default and people never getting enough vitality to make any armed conflict safe or trivial. Any amount of damage to wound points would impose penalties from pain and tissue damage, and you'd probably be unconscious or too disabled to fight well before losing your last wound point and dying. Since vitality represents things like good tactical positioning, surprise attacks go straight to wound points.
To counterbalance this a little, the basic classes would have much more powerful and flavorful abilities. Instead of having vague stuff based on ability scores, the classes would all be based on roles that people might actually want to perform in a fight. Out-of-combat stuff would be supplementary and not the focus of a whole class.
The problem with applying e6 to d20 Modern is that d20 Modern already has classes that are too boring and not separated well enough from each other. Setting a level limit makes that even worse. People who like the d20 system like fiddly rules mechanics to play with.
I'd like to propose replacing it with something more like the similar-but-less-dumb wealth system from Marvel FASERIP. It has more forgiving guaranteed purchases, it's harder to lose wealth by buying things, there's less variance, and there's a more sensible system for buying big things on credit.
Or, y'know, you could just use a cash system like every other sensible game out there.
>People who like the d20 system like fiddly rules mechanics to play with.
Character building is the single most cancerous component of the game, and the character advancement is the number one breaking point of D20 Modern. You cannot consider D20 Modern "fixed" until you fix that.
>using a cash system
>in a universe where things like credit, bills, taxes, etc. are all a major component of daily life
They were right to not use cash.
Are you really going to make a PC worry about their fucking taxes in a game?
You can fix the math without depriving the players of fun toys to play with. The main reason people don't play Savage Worlds is that it doesn't give the players much of a variety of things to do rules-wise.
The D&D mechanical framework is pretty narrow in what it's good for, so you'd need to try and focus the game as opposed to the bizarre psuedo-generic system it ended up being.
The best modern equivalent to D&D's themes is contemporary action movies, so I'd go from there. It'd likely end up looking a lot like Feng Shui but with more tactical combat.
Do you not understand how those things work? That credit cards are just free money, etc? How is abstract wealth closer to how the real world works than "You have $X available to buy stuff with"
Is that really the reason? I'm switching over to it specifically because it gives you a lot more than Fate and a lot of other light generic systems, while still being pretty streamlined.
Okay, how's this for an alternative wealth system?
It's stupid for players to track their wealth independently because they're a team. It encourages one player to focus on wealth to the point where he can just buy shit for all the other players. So instead have the entire party have a single wealth level that you never make rolls for and that dictates the gear everyone can have. Say some nice gun has a price level 5 and your party is wealth level 5, each player who wants one can have that gun in their loadout on a mission, take it or leave it. Buildings and vehicles are party property rather than personal gear and are very slow to respawn if destroyed, but the party can speed this up by permanently lowering their wealth. Gifts to NPCs always bring the wealth level down at least a little - no using the player's personal gear allowances to give arbitrarily many guns to a friendly organization.
At least FATE tries to do something different by loading some of the burden of narration onto players and having rules focus on that instead of a blow-by-blow combat simulation. Savage Worlds has the same basic setup as D&D or GURPS as far as what the players and GM do (the GM narrates, the players each dictate the actions of their own characters only, one attack at a time,) but with all the interesting parts gutted out.
Was AFK, responding now.
>What about Spycraft, Ops & Tactics, or True20? Three modern RPGs, are ones that are actually based on the d20 system. If you're looking for "d20, but modern" they might do what you want better than a houseruled d20 modern.
I'll take a look at all three of these, thanks.
>I think you miss the point of why people complain about d20 Modern. 3.5's problems are pretty baked in, and you're then taking a system meant for epic medieval high fantasy and trying to use it for modern firearm combat.
what exactly is baked in? What specifics about D20's issues make it unsuitable for Modern combat? That's what I'm trying to answer here.
This.
>Character building is the single most cancerous component of the game, and the character advancement is the number one breaking point of D20 Modern.
What's wrong with character building?
>Taxes
Whut.
I've not looked at Savage worlds. What are the guns like?
What benefit does this have over "Give money, get rifle"
It's not tacticool at all, if that's what you want. They're treated more-or-less like any other weapon, with a single skill for hitting people with them and no difference between different models except a different damage value and number of hands needed to use them.
Is it generic like GURPS or are there specific models?
I'm reading through ops and tactics(Cause it was free and the easiest to find) and JESUS CHRIST WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GUNS?! I mean I like guns, but this is a lot of guns.
Also who the HELL includes rules for BUILDING AR15s?
I think I found Spycraft and I'm gonna read that one next.
Savage Worlds has plenty.
Seriously, if your game is pandering to the "lego made of math" crowd, you've already failed. There is not a single game that panders to this element that isn't a fucking mess.
Much less bookkeeping. Making most people add or subtract numbers with more than 2 digits bogs down the campaign a lot. I prefer games that use milestones or some advancement system other than XP, because I've never had a GM who could do long division in a timely manner at the end of a session (or who had the presence of mind to do that shit in advance) or a group of players who competently kept track of their own XP without it quickly degenerating into confusion and disagreement.
>It's stupid for players to track their wealth independently because they're a team.
No it isn't, and no they're not. Not all the time, at least.
>It encourages one player to focus on wealth to the point where he can just buy shit for all the other players.
There's nothing wrong with this. Being the rich guy is a perfectly fine role in a modern game.
>All that other retarded bullshit
Your system has the same problem as the regular wealth system. What happens when a player swipes a guy's wallet? What if they want to buy stuff in bulk? What if one player wants to play the rich guy, but he can't buy a shiny Lamborghini because he hangs out with a couple of chodes poorer than him?
It's stupid. An individual cash system is just fine.
>Seriously, if your game is pandering to the "lego made of math" crowd, you've already failed.
I have a few questions about this
1. What is the "Lego made of math" crowd
2. Why do you consider them inferior?
3. What systems do you think are a mess that fit the "lego made of math" ruleset?
It's more generic than GURPS. I'm sure there's a GURPS book with lots of different guns and fiddly bits to add to your guns.
Being a mess doesn't make something a failure; being unpopular does. 3.5 was an incredible success despite being a mess. Savage Worlds is forever niche because it's forever boring.
I probably understand how it works better than you, you patronizing piece of shit. Modern finance is considerably more fluid than that.
Or do you want to enjoy the fun of tracking a player character's investment returns, the interest on their lines of credit, and the costs of their taxes?
>Whut.
Taxation is a very real component of the modern world, and since modern economies are interconnected and closely monitered, you don't get to just hide your jar of gold coins under your floor boards.
Modern wealth is very fluid, and a person's financial situation can readily change from month to month.
>Taxation is a very real component of the modern world
It's also irrelevant in an action-packed game of pretend.
>Much less bookkeeping. Making most people add or subtract numbers with more than 2 digits bogs down the campaign a lot. I prefer games that use milestones or some advancement system other than XP, because I've never had a GM who could do long division in a timely manner at the end of a session (or who had the presence of mind to do that shit in advance) or a group of players who competently kept track of their own XP without it quickly degenerating into confusion and disagreement.
This sounds like a personal problem that you're projecting onto the lot of RPGers.
I don't mean any offense, but that's what it reads like.
>Modern wealth is very fluid, and a person's financial situation can readily change from month to month.
I'm sure it does. How does that have anything to do with the span of a Modern RPG? I could argue the EXACT same thing for D&D. And whats worse, is that there ARE rules for it. Wealth other than coin. Gold. Silver. Property. Slaves. Art. Jewlery.
You don't need to invent tax law in a modern game to make it a good game. Because tax law adds nothing good to a modern RPG, and we're not trying to play "The accounting adventures of Henry"
>1. What is the "Lego made of math" crowd
You know them dipshits that describe their characters exclusively in terms of build and then assemble them out of strictly mechanical components? Them.
>2. Why do you consider them inferior?
Because they pretty much do nothing but stretch the mechanics of games to their breaking point, and when allowed into a game are pretty much guaranteed to grind it to a halt in some fashion.
>3. What systems do you think are a mess that fit the "lego made of math" ruleset?
Anything D20 based.
>popularity is the metric of a game's merit
Wow, you're everything wrong with gaming. Good job. I guess going on pulp adventures is too boring for you, gotta have them comprehensive builds so you can show how good a gamer you are by being willing to spend hours constructing a character, amirite?
You're a dense motherfucker. I'm saying that an abstract wealth system is the easiest way to properly handle this and that cash in hand will just wind up with you having to handwave far more.
You too OP. I'm not saying invent tax law, I'm saying don't go with cash in hand because it requires more handwaving.
>What happens when a player swipes a guy's wallet?
Nothing, unless he was trying to steal the guy's ID to get in somewhere. Amounts that small would just not be tracked.
>What if they want to buy stuff in bulk?
Why are they doing that? If it's to blanket a country in humanitarian aid or Liberator shotguns, then it counts as gifts for NPCs and would reduce their wealth level. If it's just for the party to have spares back at home; it's already assumed that they have that and so it makes no difference at all.
>What if one player wants to play the rich guy, but he can't buy a shiny Lamborghini because he hangs out with a couple of chodes poorer than him?
If you're crazy wealthy and have a team that you trust with your life and share everything with, they are effectively crazy wealthy too.
An individual cash system would cause just as much argument and rules abuse, with the added disadvantage of requiring vastly more bookkeeping. And not just in the way that gamers use the term, like literal bookkeeping. Accountants spend their whole careers figuring out this shit for people; it's way too much to be one minor rule in an RPG.
>>Character building is the single most cancerous component of the game, and the character advancement is the number one breaking point of D20 Modern.
>What's wrong with character building?
Not the guy you are asking, but going off of memory, it has to do with what stats effect and how each class is designed around one stat. Fast hero is immediately better than everyone else in any combat situation because Dex is such a god stat, especially in a setting where 80% of weapons are ranged. Compared to like, wise hero, you can see how this might make the game less fun for some players.
It doesn't have to be in character creation, but yeah, an RPG has to bring something to the table other than the bog-standard stuff that every other game has. Savage Worlds is like every uninspired RPG compounded together with a Gaussian blur. At first I thought it would be interesting because it involved playing cards, but it only uses them for completely randomly determining initiative; you could have done the same thing with a game of spin-the-bottle, or rolling for a random player to start and going clockwise from there.
And yeah, pulp adventure is by far the most boring kind. Games that recreate 30's pulp fiction (with a few exceptions like Lovecraftian horror) are stupid on purpose, in imitation of stories that were stupid by accident.
>Have $2500
>Pay $500 for a thing
>DURR HOW MUCH I HAVE LEFT? ME NEED TO BE ACCOUNTANT FOR DIS GAYME
It's basic fucking math. Same as the gold system in regular D&D. It's not that goddamn hard, and requires a whole lot less memorization and rules than the Wealth system.
>BUT MUH TAXES!
Fuck off, they don't matter.
>I'm saying don't go with cash in hand because it requires more handwaving.
What is wrong with handwaving?
>You know them dipshits that describe their characters exclusively in terms of build and then assemble them out of strictly mechanical components? Them.
Minmaxers? Grognards?
>Because they pretty much do nothing but stretch the mechanics of games to their breaking point, and when allowed into a game are pretty much guaranteed to grind it to a halt in some fashion.
So you have a problem with minmaxers. Understood.
>Anything D20 based.
I can tell you, from personal experience, Minmaxers exist in ALL systems.
>Fast hero is immediately better than everyone else in any combat situation because Dex is such a god stat
Because Dex affects both accuracy with ranged weapons(Firearms, in a modern game) and defense(Because Defense/AC is pretty much the GO-TO in D20 games)
>An individual cash system would cause just as much argument and rules abuse, with the added disadvantage of requiring vastly more bookkeeping.
Every system, good, bad and mediocre, that has used a straight cash system has never had the problem of "Too much bookeeping".
I'm not really seeing the "Bookkeeping" you're talking about. Players buying stocks, bonds, gold, investments, that's not the point of D20 Modern, or any game in that realm for that matter.
For reference, I've looked at two modern systems thus far that were sudgested to me: Ops and Tactics, and Spycraft
>Ops and Tactics
Straight money system where the money you're paid for your job is implied to be "discretionary spending". Your bills, taxes, and all that shit is taken care of
>Spycraft V2
Spycraft works on some weird money system where you request equipment for a mission instead of worry about rolls or anything. if you have enough resources, and you need it for the mission, you get it. Simple. Same as a straight money system.
>Have $5
>want $500 thing
>put it on credit card
>Now have to keep track of credit card payments and compounding interest
I prefer wealth.
Smart Hero, Wise Hero and Charismatic Hero are all support classes, user. They aren't meant to be as combat capable as the others. The guy who really gets the short end of the stick is the Strong Hero.
Not just taxes, but also credit, running expenses, managing things shared by more than one player, and lots of gains and losses that don't conveniently have zeroes on the end. Players will exploit all of that shit or piss and moan when you say they're not allowed to.
Your caricature of people to make them look stupid does nothing but make you yourself look stupid.
>>put it on credit card
>>Now have to keep track of credit card payments and compounding interest
Or just disallow the use of credit cards. Or say "Oh well if you're gonna use credit it cost twice as much" or some shit like that.
>It's basic fucking math. Same as the gold system in regular D&D.
You mean that thing that's ALSO pretty fucking stupid?
It sort made sense in OD&D where it was a.) also XP, b.) a resource management game where you actually expect to be penny-and-dime'd.
It had been an otherwise superfluous "system" (or lack, thereof) for the last, what, 30 years?
Short term investments, long term investments, changing value of the dollar, credit cards, rent to buy etc.
Modern economies are a fair bit more complex than D&D ones.
Well, right, but like I said. That was what I remembered being a problem with the classes in the game. I haven't looked at the game in ten years.
>Or just disallow the use of credit cards. Or say "Oh well if you're gonna use credit it cost twice as much" or some shit like that.
At which point you are not really dealing with a modern game.
Which would be fine if their abilities actually made them really good out-of-combat. As it is, a Charismatic hero is losing too much in exchange for too little, and a Smart or Dedicated hero is even worse. The difference between specialized and non-specialized is huge for guns and tiny for talking.
You can't buy the $500 thing unless you have $500, simple as that. We're not talking about a simulation of reality here, we're talking about a system within a game. You can't buy something you don't have the money for.
So, what does it say about you when you portray people as whining, rule-abusing assholes?
Gurps does the same damn thing. You want thing. You pay money for a thing.
>Long term investments
>For a game about modern combat
This is so far off the map it's mind boggling.
I don't think anyone here is trying to simulate life in tabletop.
>At which point you are not really dealing with a modern game.
Becasue you can't use a credit card?
>ou can't buy the $500 thing unless you have $500, simple as that. We're not talking about a simulation of reality here, we're talking about a system within a game. You can't buy something you don't have the money for.
This. Simple as that.
Have you seen people lately?
Also, any good act of design is geared toward preventing common misuses of it. Just like you want to design a plug so it can't be plugged in the wrong way, you want to design a game to make the rules hard to abuse. In a perfect world where nobody fucked up or tried to exploit the rules, there'd be no need for game designers because even the worst system would already provide optimal entertainment.
You're both stupid and naive.
Neither of those are realistic or even remotely close to a modern setting. If I wanted to play someone without a credit card, I'd play myself.
OK, now explain how abstract wealth mechanics are more accurate. This is the equivalent of going "Your explanation of how FTL travel works isn't technical enough. You should say it just works and don't question it"
Nigga, the fuck are you talking? Have you forgotten that at every odd level in a class a character gets a class specific talent? Charismatic Hero gets a fuckload of interaction skill specific talents.
>Becasue you can't use a credit card?
I can't remember the last spy movie that handled money without talking about credit cards in some way.
They are not more accurate but they are more streamlined/less full of logical holes.
I mean one of the examples so far on how to deal with how modern economies works is 'Just don't allow people to use credit cards'.
>they are more streamlined/less full of logical holes.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
So far the talk about using direct dollars has been an utter joke with all the 'Well, how would you work with this part of a modern economy?'
>Neither of those are realistic or even remotely close to a modern setting.
Well finances aren't the focus. Shooting. Combat. Those are the focuses. I think you're looking for a simulation of all modern life, and not just a combat system for shootyguns. And no modern system is going to satisfy your desire to accurately represent your character's Roth IRA
>If I wanted to play someone without a credit card, I'd play myself.
10/10 I laughed.
>I can't remember the last spy movie that handled money without talking about credit cards in some way.
I can't remember a single action movie that bothered with credit cards that wasn't a plot point like "They're hackers who stole millions of credit cards" or some shit like that.
>fixing a system that was entirely meant to be a port of 3.5 D&D with modern shit shoved in
It was never intended to be a pinnacle of game design. Who cares? It's fun as an autistic d20 clone for autists who won't play GURPS. Any minute now SweetSoulBro is gonna come in and shill his abomination of a game.
What if your not playing a spy game?
What if your some fucking hood rat with a rap sheet who needs to get a heater? Think he can use a credit card? Or what if your not playing middle class folks with disposable income and are playing the game in more of a paycheck to paycheck kinda style?
>they are more streamlined
No they aren't. They force you to make actual mechanics instead of just having a simple, easy to understand number you add or subtract from. They're not really "less full of logical holes" either, we just can't talk about them because you keep endlessly repeating "MUH BILLS, MUH CREDIT CARDS"
If you weren't looking for a simulationist game, I wouldn't have picked D20 as the system to go with. It can never decide how abstract or simulationist it wants to be.
I'm enjoying myself far too much watching the discussion of credit cards in a modern RPG to shill anything, user.
Forgot the double hash.
>Credit cards
Interesting take. Never even thought about that for an RPG. Who knew.
The goal was never to simulate a modern economy on any level. The goal was to provide a clear, concise system to measure a character's wealth with minimal book keeping or rules memorization. What do you not understand about this?
>The goal was to provide a clear, concise system to measure a character's wealth with minimal book keeping or rules memorization. What do you not understand about this?
The fact that you made a more complicated version of the rules noone liked anyway.
Also "Do stuff, get money, spend money" is as simple as it fucking gets.
Also exactly what kind of "Bookeeping" are you actually talking about? Lets throw out taxes, stocks, bonds, investments and all that shit and deal purely in cash. Is there a lot of bookeeping involved in cash?
>D20
>Simulationist
D20 is a lot of things, but simulationist is not one of them.
Fucker, I'm on your side.
Oh. shit. Friendly fire,
>What do you not understand about this?
The concise part mostly. As the hard cash a person has in this day and age is only a small fraction of their overall purchasing power/available. Hence my preference for a wealth system (If not the D20 modern wealth system) over precise cash amounts for a modern RPG.
Has ANYONE ever done a good wealth system that was equipment heavy in games as a modern game is?
>You have number of moneys
>Goes down when spend those moneys
>Goes up when get the moneys
>This is somehow not concise and clear.
I'm beginning to think you don't actually want to play a game and would rather spend your time calculating a fictional person's wealth and assets.
This.
>would rather spend your time calculating a fictional person's wealth and assets.
No, I'd rather a system that takes a less hard numbers route so you don't get the cognitive dissonance of 'Why can't I get a loan/use a credit card' and you don't need to spend the time calculating such things.
And yet you're advocating for a different hard numbers system, one with the cognitive dissonance of "I can buy as many flashbangs as I want, but somehow can't afford a laptop."
>No, I'd rather a system that takes a less hard numbers route so you don't get the cognitive dissonance of 'Why can't I get a loan/use a credit card' and you don't need to spend the time calculating such things.
But why though?
Can you explain to me how the inability to get a loan or use a credit card would be detrimental to your playstyle/fun? I'm not seeing it.
>You can't buy the $500 thing unless you have $500, simple as that. We're not talking about a simulation of reality here, we're talking about a system within a game. You can't buy something you don't have the money for.
So what you're saying is you can't take advantage of a major convenience of a modern setting? Why not just fucking play D&D then?
>Gurps does the same damn thing. You want thing. You pay money for a thing.
GURPS has the excuse of being a fucking dinosaur of game design.
>Can you explain to me how the inability to get a loan or use a credit card would be detrimental to your playstyle/fun? I'm not seeing it.
Because it's a modern game and it's weird to not be able to make use of things so common that almost everyone has one in a modern game. It's like a modern game that doesn't allow cell phones as they'd allow people to always be in contact with each other.
>Can you explain to me how the inability to get a loan or use a credit card would be detrimental to your playstyle/fun? I'm not seeing it.
Because it's effectively stripping the game of something that makes it modern.
>simple, elegantly functional rules to play pulp adventures are too boring for this user
You have to be over 18 to post here.
Nobody here has said that the D20 Modern wealth system was good. Just that an abstract wealth system is preferable in a modern setting to one that uses hard cash. All the games that use hard cash are either universal systems where some degree of handwaving is unavoidable anyway, or ancient.
>It's like a modern game that doesn't allow cell phones as they'd allow people to always be in contact with each other.
Cell phones don't cause loads of confusing rules, though.
Here's a thought. Why not include said credit cards and such in the actual purchasing power? Why not just say "This pile of money tokens is your ability to get loans, your credit cards, and your on hand cash."
I mean, that's how I handled it for the most part.
>Cell phones don't cause loads of confusing rules, though.
Only because you aren't thinking hard enough about them.
>Here's a thought. Why not include said credit cards and such in the actual purchasing power? Why not just say "This pile of money tokens is your ability to get loans, your credit cards, and your on hand cash."
Because prices are typically modeled on actual street prices which leaves the only sensible conclusion being that your cash represents actual hard cash.
>I mean, that's how I handled it for the most part.
All the more reason not to do that.
>Only because you aren't thinking hard enough about them.
I mean I certainly could go into the whole "CDMA vs GSM" issue, various towers, service providers and all that, but who cares?
>Because prices are typically modeled on actual street prices which leaves the only sensible conclusion being that your cash represents actual hard cash.
The price of a handgun doesn't change because you're paying with credit as opposed to cash.
>I mean I certainly could go into the whole "CDMA vs GSM" issue, various towers, service providers and all that, but who cares?
Nobody. But the point being that we're content to handwave cell phones and allow their use to be handled through narrative adjudication, but with wealth there's a crowd of clamorous spergs that insist it has to be hard cash, despite the fact this makes vastly less sense than any abstract, largely narrative mechanic.
>The price of a handgun doesn't change because you're paying with credit as opposed to cash.
Unless you're just dumping cash on players willy nilly, you're not going to even come close to approximating what modern buying power looks like. You could go with the spycraft route of saying it's an abstract resource meant to represent requisitioned gear or something like that, but that's not appropriate to all settings.
What do you do when a player says they want to invest, or take out a loan?
lol have you ever bought sold or traded a firearm
>lol have you ever bought sold or traded a firearm
Once or twice.
And yes, I know most shitty gunstores charge 3% for credit card purchases but again, who the hell is modeling that?
>What do you do when a player says they want to invest, or take out a loan?
Invest? I usually play it with them as a side thing.
(As a warning I tend to like to envelope players in the worlds I build, so I'm a bad example)
I let them invest. I let them pick what they want to invest, and how much. I then use some random rolls, as well as things that happen in the universe, to either increase or decrease their investments.
>Loans
Those are handled pretty straight forward. Depending on how much they want, and who they take it from(And the setting of course), I usually give them a specified time to pay it back with an additional amount(the interest). If they want to elect to have it come from their biweekly wealth, they can. If they don't, I'll just let them pay it back. But Loans and such I like to incorporate into the story as well. maybe they take loans from some seedy guy at a bar becasue he's the only guy who will lend them money. Maybe the banker who loaned it to them suddenly needs it right now and he may let it slip if they do a "job" for him. Who knows.
>you don't get to just hide your jar of gold coins under your floor boards.
Unless your floorboards are a small, hilariously corrupt island nation.
Wow that picture is old. I can take a more up to date picture with a timestamp if you want me to, user.
>invest
Money go down, might go up later
>loan
Money go up, go down later.