On Killing (Not by David Grossman)

In Dungeon World, the price of a typical murder is apparently 5 coins, and the price of a higher profile assassination is 120 coins. This seems awfully low. Given the price of "A Hearty Meal for 1" of 1 coin, I evaluated a coin to be roughly equivalent to 5 USD (given that McDonalds had as of the time writing this a 2/$4 deal where you could get two double cheeseburgers). This means a murder is 25 bucks and a higher profile assassination is 600. This is fitting with the standard DW status quo that prices are low, but also suggests that life is cheap. It also doesn't account for the mark's threat level. These factors should be considered when evaluating the price of an assassination:

• The number of moves a target has that can be harmful to the assailant.
• The maximum damage a target can bring to bear. This doesn't refer to the damage the target itself can deal, if it can order others to fight for it.
• The HP of the target. or the highest HP of  its body guards. (3 minimum)
• The Armor of the target or the highest among its body guards

For example, a Noble doesn't have any listed attacks, or HP, but they can issue orders and offer rewards to anyone beneath them (2 moves). Often, this is a Knight. which can bring to bear 10 damage, has 12 HP, and 4 armor. Therefore a Noble would be worth 2*10*12*4=960 coins. A King who has  A Whole Damn Army would use 2*19*30*4 would be worth 4560. A mere bandit has 3 threatening moves, can do 6 damage, and has 3 HP, which is 3*6*3  or 54 coins.

If you don't like these you can round to the first significant figure to get a price in tens, hundreds, or thousands. The above prices would become 1000, 5000, or 50. For the purposes of abstract coins, a significant figure 50 to 100 coins is A Chest of Riches, anything over 3 such Chests is a Giant Sack of Loot. 3 of those is "A Small Hoard" which increases the Resource statistic that armies use.

P.S.- It is noteworthy that just because you want someone killed, doesn't mean you're going to get it done by hiring some rando off the street. If you pay 120 coins to them (or 5, or 50, or 1000, or 5000, etc), they might go kill your guy, or they might pocket the money, go brag, and end up on a pike outside the city walls. 

Abstracting Coins

Someone on reddit made me think about not keeping up with specific amounts of coins. They thought of using coins as a sort of +Wealth. The values I thought of for +Wealth were as follows:

+3: A chest of riches

+2: A giant sack of loot

+1: A few coin purses

+0: A small purse

-1: Some dusty old coppers.

You could give them a wt. score equal to their respective score. Then instead of specifying an amount, you can let players lower their +Wealth by one or more to get a bonus to a Carouse, Parley, Recruit, or Supply roll.

For Carouse, sacrifice 1 point to get the full bonus associated with the old level of wealth
For Parley or Supply roll Wealth as noted below
For Recruit you only sacrifice Wealth if their Cost is Money. Otherwise roll Wealth as noted below

If you have them roll +Wealth, use the following results

10+: They get the thing without lowering their wealth or having another incident

7-9: They get the thing but pick one:

• take -1 wealth
• the item is contraband, inferior, or stolen

6-: They get the thing and

• Lose 2 wealth 
• Just kidding, they don't get the thing, but lose -1 wealth anyway (such as by a finder's fee, a local ordinance levying fines against the intended purchase, and so on)
• must do a favor for the seller
• must steal the item

Abstract Warrants
So you've done something against the law, or something that pissed off the powers that be, but might not have been against the actual law... Whenever you have this sort of charges against you if a bounty is to be levied you need to know how many points of wealth you need to even be able to make a roll to pay off any bounty, or fine The list below is a start but is by no means complete:

+0: Minor Assault, Petty theft, Negligence
+1: Battery, Burglary, unarmed Robbery, Swindling
+2: Manslaughter, Impersonating a higher social status, Lewd Behavior
+3: Murder, Theft of extremely valuable property (such as a horse, or the keys and deed to a house), Rape

Weight and Loot

The +Wealth level of  whatever you have for positive values also corresponds to its weight. For the purposes of load, Wealth from 0 to 3 has Load 1 per point, while -1 has Load of .1.

Starting with Abstract Loot
Characters whose playbooks canonically suggest they have any coins (up to about 50 or so) should start with +0.

If they're playing something custom like a Class Warfare build or unofficial playbook that gives them up to 100 coins, they can start with +1 (300=+2, 900=+3). 

Otherwise they will -1

Gaining Abstract Loot

The easiest abstraction of increasing loot would be the rule of threes

Some Dusty old coppers>A handful of dusty old coppers>A lot of dusty old coppers>

A small purse>Two small purses> Three small purses>

A few coin purses>Several coin purses>Many coinpurses>

A giant sack of loot>Two "">Three ""

From a chest of riches, keeping track further seems futile, but it could be fair to say that 3 chests generates "A small hoard". For the purposes of A Whole Damn Army, Resources is increased by 1 point for a small hoard. Beyond that, each additional larger size (Medium, Large, Huge) is an additional Resource point.

Steading Prosperity and Abstract Coins

Dirt: This town won't sell you anything worth more than 5 core coins. (-1)

Poor: One person in the town can sell you something up to 25 core coins. (+0)

Moderate: Less than 10 people can sell you up to 100 core coins worth of stuff. (+1)

Wealthy: Any merchant can sell you up to 100 core coins worth of stuff, one can sell you up to 300 coins worth of stuff. (+2)

Rich: Anything of any value is probably here, but in order to preserve magic items, you may find one specific item in such a place if it has been explicitly mentioned in the fiction. (+3)

Real Estate

A Cottage is 500 coins in the core rules. As per Gaining Abstract Loot, it takes 3 units of a wealth level to move up to the next. As per the starting rules, it takes either A giant sack of loot, + 2 chests of riches, or simply reducing Wealth by 2 points to just buy a cottage. For simplicity, I'll just say how much the party's total wealth needs to be reduced to purchase a particular housing unit

House/Land     Wealth Reduction total         Upkeep

Hovel          A small purse                  N/A

Cottage        2 chests                       a small coinpurse

House          8 chests and a giant sack      a few coinpurses

Mansion        166 chests and 2 giant sacks   1 chest, 2 giant sacks

Keep           250 chests                     2 chests, 2 giant sacks

Castle         833 chests and a giant sack    8 chests, 1 giant sack

Grand Castle   3,334 chests                   33 chests, 1 giant sack

Upkeep

1% upkeep may be difficult to track with this system. so we match 5 coins (the upkeep on a 500 coin cottage) to a small coinpurse. Since that's 1% of 2 chests, we go from there

Haggling

A group of adventurers can pool their resources, and negotiate with Charisma, reducing the price accordingly. The highest charisma score can reduce the cost of the real estate by the Upkeep per point of Charisma, rounded up to the biggest unit (e.g. 8 to 18 small coinpurses for a cottage, 16 to 36 chests for a mansion, 272 to 612 chests for a Grand Castle). It's up to the GM whether this in turn reduces the upkeep based on the haggled price as well.