From a forum post I made earlier in response to a question about price lists in Star Wars gaming...
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I think prices in Star Wars are best handled like this:
"It costs more money than you have. You'll have to sell something big like your landspeeder to pay for it. Or do a favor for a local crimelord/politician/aristocrat/etc. that will lead to adventure (or, at the very least, some hijinks)."
or
"You'll have to pay for that." "Ok, here's some cash. Now, on with the adventure!"
Paying for something is either a plot point like paying for a high-speed, down-low ride on the Falcon or buying Anakin from Watto (in which case the actual amount doesn't really matter) or it's just a throwaway bit of color like tossing some credits on the bar and saying "Sorry for the mess" after slicing off a customer's arm or shooting a bounty hunter. The action and adventure should never grind to a halt because the PCs need to argue about who had the steak and who had the salad when they divide their lunch bill.
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I included some mention of this in Impressions. It seems that counting credits is a holdover from the early days of D&D copper counting. In most settings that inspire gaming settings (or, at least, the ones that inspire me), money doesn't really matter. It might be a key motivator for the characters, but the actual amount of cash they have never matters. The crew of Serenity needs money to keep the ship flying; Han Solo needs a big score to pay off his debt to Jabba; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser need fat sacks of loot to pay for wine and wenches; Dr. Jones needs to sell his latest artifact finds in order to fund his next expedition; and so on. In all of these cases, it never matters how much money is involved beyond vague descriptions like "a massive debt" or "a major haul" or "enough to limp to the next planet and look for more work". What is gained by counting the pennies?
In my old college gaming days, I have only a few vague memories of adventures where counting money was important:
- In one particularly excellent impromptu AD&D2 session, the adventure began with the PCs being hired--one by one--for 5 gold pieces each to act as caravan guards for a really shady merchant. I remember this because we all thought 5 was pretty cheap but the GM (an odd fellow named Straka) explained in an aside that 5gp was a lot of money in his setting. I happened to negotiate a better deal and got promised 10gp. The actual amount didn't matter. The important thing was that we were getting a suspiciously great wage and I was getting double. (We never did get paid anyway.)
- In the long-running D&D game (run by the inimitable Alan), penny-pinching was the order of the day. Everyone hated it but Alan demanded exact accounting so our good comrade Kevin took it upon himself to squeeze every last drop out of the treasure that we could get. I think he took it as a personal challenge to keep the party from getting cheated by any NPCs who might overcharge or rob them. My fondest memories of that game are just of hanging out with the other players and chatting while Kevin and Alan haggled over every little thing the party wanted to buy. They seemed to like it even though it frustrated them. Looking back, we probably should have just said "Hey, let's just assume that we always get a fair price unless otherwise specified. If there's a greedy merchant or thief who wants to rip us off or rob us, let us know and we'll play out that negotiation or robbery attempt. The rest of the time, let's just skip it."
- In a short-lived AD&D2 campaign (run by Grote), we effectively "won". In the introductory adventure, Grote wanted to give us each a magic item appropriate to our class or background as our reward for completing the adventure instead of just some random treasure. I don't remember what my character (Skank Mcgonigal) got, but I think Sir Roderick Lanternjaw the paladin got some kind of shield or sword. Our friend, Sellers, was playing some kind of third-party Alchemist class that we found in a pamphlet in our gaming club's library. Sellers got a philosopher's stone for his reward and then he revealed that it was much more efficient than normal because of his class' special abilities. When we calculated how much base metal he could transmute into gold, it turned out to be a ludicrous sum beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. We went from struggling adventurers one day to wealthier than kings the next. We decided to buy titles from the king and fund an expedition to colonize a new territory for our country. We hired an army of soldiers, laborers, farmers, engineers, and even some wizards, then we set sail and started to build a town and a castle and we set about taming the wilderness. Money was no longer an issue but we still had a lot of fun and motivation and adventure. We couldn't instantly solve our problems with the money but we quickly gave up on asking if we could afford things. We all agreed that there was no point in keeping track of our money anymore. Instead of asking if we could afford things, we had to ask "how long will it take?" That was usually more interesting anyway.
