A simple fix for making Anticipation more impactful?

[painted_green]

I'm starting an Extinction Curse campaign in two weeks but have noticed, like many others before me, that the economy of the circus doesn't really make much sense. The payouts are so small compared to the cost of upgrades that it would often require dozens of performances to get a return on the investment. And in the case of advertising, it's just throwing away money, plain and simple.

Rather than rework the system entirely, I've been thinking about a simple fix and am curious to hear your opinion on it. The fix is as follows:

Every PC, as shared coordinator of the circus, obtains a bonus of 20% of the payout, paid directly to them and to be used as they please, even for adventuring needs, after each show. (Excluding the very first show, where they already obtain a bigger bonus from the professor.)

My rationale is that this gives the players a much-needed way to turn circus profits into PC wealth. Since payout is tied to anticipation, this gives them an incentive to raise anticipation using circus money, rather than just having it sit around. And I feel that the payouts themselves are low enough that this fix won't throw the general wealth-by-level significantly out of whack.

Thoughts?

[Zapp]

The circus economy is just a hodge-podge of thrown-together mechanics without rhyme or reason.

It mimics a set of Paizlo tight and quality ruleset without actually being one.

A missed opportunity.

As for your suggestion, please note the circus operates on a completely different and much lower scale than the PCs.

Your suggestion will, in other words, not break anything. But it won't meaningfully change the players motivation either. The circus will never earn anything but pocket change once the heroes are off the low levels. On the other hand, it isn't much of money sink either. Just purchase the clearly best upgrades (merchandise is grossly unbalanced) and watch the circus performance becoming an utterly trivial challenge.

Nothing is balanced. Trick traits do next to nothing and aren't worth the time and clutter. Non-performer roles are just as imbalanced as well; some useless and a few being used all the time. There's additional clutter you simply don't need.

Which only - again! - proves how thrown-together and inexpert that ruleset is.

Rated as a lean tight rules-expansion that truly integrates with the CRB magic economy system, with the same level of balance and care, the circus economy rules of Extinction Curse gets zero out of five stars.

It's basically twenty pages that are best ignored entirely.