Natural 7

Wasting Money in the UVG

I'm currently running a weekly campaign called Beyond the Purple Haze using Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City. We're about 2 months into the game and not very far into the grasslands themselves (they have visited 3 out of 32 destinations). I'm enjoying the campaign, and my players have nothing but nice things to say about it. Recently, I realized that the group would be coming into the possession of a great deal of money, and I wanted to help frame the types of things they could spend money on. Using the goals set up in the book, and my own intuition, I came up with some fun ways to waste money in the UVG. You might find them useful for inspiring additional goals in your own campaigns.

The UVG is a science-fantasy Oregon Trail-meets-Monopoly roleplaying game. Your goal as a player is to survive the grueling trails and roads that connect Destinations in a chaotic wilderness all while mastering the trade economics between distant peoples. Each player is in charge of their own caravan of beasts, wagons, vehicles, pets, and friends. Together they make up a mobile caravanserai that collectively goes on adventures in the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

(My group has a more specific goal to build a spaceship and leave the planet, but that's a story for another day.)

The UVG Rewards

By looking at how a game rewards players with experience and level-ups, we can determine what type of gameplay is expected and encouraged. In Nuclear Angels, characters gain new abilities by rolling dice and failing. In Old School Essentials, characters level up when they collect gold and kill monsters. In the UVG, players (not characters, but players) gain experience by doing any of the following:

  1. Exploring cool locations (called Discoveries)
  2. Going on quests (often assigned by NPCs)
  3. Being a fun person
  4. Attending a session
  5. Returning treasure to civilization (I personally do not use this one)
  6. Wasting Money (aka Carousing)

Pasted image 20260406092926 (Leveling and Growth, Vastlands Guidebook (beta), p. 30)

When I was describing the UVG to my friends before the campaign, I said:

"This is a game about amassing unspendable quantities of wealth and wasting it on junk you do not need."

My favorite of the six ways to earn experience is the sixth option: spending money in order to gain experience and nothing else. This is important for the players because they can earn a lot of money by trading expensive goods between Destinations in the UVG. Over time they'll amass more money than they can spend on upgrading their character's equipment or caravan, and eventually it becomes important to max out their character experience above all else.

In other old school games (the ones about collecting treasure for XP, usually) I find that there isn't always a lot of stuff to spend your money on. For example, in Old School Essentials you might run out of things to purchase after your second dungeon delve because you've gotten all the cool mundane armor and weapons and now just need some uncraftable magic items. Your GM might invent a way for you to spend money on magic items, or you might pay for a million retainers or mercenaries to fight wars for you, or you might literally build a castle. All three of those options feel like stuff for late game Domain Management (see my post Levels High and Low for more on this topic). Regardless, the book doesn't really have great solutions for your influx of cash.

The UVG has more than OSE, including the spend money for experience option, but it doesn't have everything. Plus, some people might not want to stick to those types of activities for experience and may want something even weirder, sillier, or wackier to try. This led to the fabrication of 10 Ways to Waste Money in the UVG, a bunch of options for wasting money on things you do not need in exchange for a little bit of experience and a lot of aura.

10 Ways to Waste Money in the UVG

In the UVG, wasting money is paramount to the caravanner experience. Some caravans waste so much money that they unlock a higher mental state, ascending into the sky to become whistling clouds.

The following 10 objectives can be thought of like achievements in a video game. When you complete them, you get a small, almost insubstantial, reward. You can only complete each objective once. You may grant yourself a unique title related to the objective as well, and force others to use this title when addressing you, such as "The Master of Odd Fruits" (attained by wasting $5,431 on creating a monopoly on the odd fruits trade good).

If you don't know how much money to waste on an objective, $2,000 + 1d6 x $1,000 is a good ballpark estimate. Every time you complete an objective, you immediately gain 1d6 x 100 XP. Very few of these objectives may have beneficial (or negative?) side-effects after the XP gain.

  1. Monopoly. Spend at least $5,000 on sacks of a single type of good across at least 3 destinations before selling any of it.
  2. Executive. Finance the entire "political" campaign of a less-than-optimal candidate.
  3. Veteran. Throw money at refugees of war (for example, aiding the refugees of the Hundred-Fold Legion's porcelain drone draft).
  4. Adopt a Road. Adopt one of the few roads in the UVG.
  5. Voyager. Finance the creation of an Other Gate (a teleportation portal to this plane or the next) with the post-master builders, Djuram and Sakraboldt.
  6. Walking Cemetery. "Employ" significantly more Undead creatures than Alive creatures in your service (at least 12 bodies).
  7. Padishah. Employ a venerable legion of aids to maintain a near-permanent sense of luxury, even on the road.
  8. Shepherd. Collect at least 10 local varieties of mules to carry sacks of goods.
  9. Disneyland? Visit every ride in an amusement park or circus run by the golems or post-mortals of Long Ago.
  10. Suspicious Grant. Fund the research of a doctor, scholar, or master wizard.

Another way to waste money (that I did not think up) is proposed in the UVG itself:

Final Thoughts

We briefly examined the gameplay mechanics of Ultraviolet Grasslands and what activities the experience rewards encouraged. I then went a little overboard with one of the encouraged activities, wasting money, and creating a bunch of horrendously inefficient ways to waste tons of money on things you will never, ever need. But, I ask you this, is it more fun to become the "Chameleon-Eagle (Mule) Manager" or to stare at your 5,000 gp wallet and have no idea if you even have enough to fund a legion of mercenaries to fight those goblins.

Don't get me wrong, building castles is great, but sometimes it's nice to be able to waste money on things that don't matter.

Thanks for reading!

Things on my radar: