Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
i never throw out currency completly but i have made significant use of trade goods especially animals.
Always use coins but oftentimes trade is barter when characters get outside of big cities/planets. In fantasy or sci fi settings, anyway.
Decades ago, some RPG magazine - Dragon I think, but I'm not sure - had a fun article about running an Ice Age campaign. Tribes, pre-civilization, hunter and gatherers. It may have been Shadis though. Or Different Worlds. Definitely not Pegasus because I remember it being glossy.
I really, really loved the idea.
Wow. Maybe it was me, maybe it was my players, or maybe it was the concept, but the campaign fell flat especially around the issue of wealth. The players did not want to capture slaves (or sex slaves) as wealth, nor were they impressed with how many furs or shiny rocks they found.
The bastards wanted gold.
I run a more post-apocalyptic RIFTS than presented in the RAW, so there I encourage a barter economy, where "money" is only accepted in local areas. AKA, the Coalition State Credit is worth far less as you travel beyond its borders.
In Mechanoids Invasion, there is no economy because the freaking planet is being chopped up. So negotiations to borrow extra gear for a mission can be interesting. I've had PCs decide the "needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few" and go so far as to rob the local armory before a mission.
Barter barter and more barter.
I've had areas that traded with gems, one that traded in a wedge shaped piece, like the old pieces of 8. Barter for services and spells is common.
I ran Mythic Greece campaign that used barter. There were some nominal exchange rates for how many oxen a bronze bowl was worth which was kind of necessary for gifting. Travelers gave host gifts to their hosts and hosts gave guest gifts to travelers and that stuff needed to more or less balance else one would either insult or create an unwanted obligation.
Our Balazar Runequest campaign (Griffin Mountain) used skins, furs, bronze arrow heads, and beer as alternate currencies to the silver coins desired in more civilized kingdoms.
There's a reason money was invented.
Oh sure, you could play a game without it, but you could also play a game where you couldn't talk, you had to grunt or use gestures
Both my Vinland campaign and my Korean dragons campaign worked on abstracted barter. We didn't track how many cows someone had, but just had a measure of general wealth that was sufficient for certain needs, and could be reduced if they made purchases beyond their means. Here were my wealth levels, for example:
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/vinland/rules/wealth.html
To me, this sort of approach seems pretty natural, since very few ancient or medieval trades worked on coinage.
Quote from: jhkim;823639To me, this sort of approach seems pretty natural, since very few ancient or medieval trades worked on coinage.
But they most definitely counted their cows and oxen along with any sheep, goats, and pigs. ;)
Depends on the game. L5R, as run at the assumed social rank, runs on the gift system. VtM runs on boons, influence, & intel as modern human money becomes redundant after awhile. IN SJG similarly runs outside cash with Essence, relics, intel, and geases. Birthright runs on Realm Points and Gold Bars (2000 gp @).
I try to incorporate art treasures, awards, and trophies in my fantasy games. The currency often switches if you travel far, but items with good workmanship, stories, and prestige built-in become more valuable. Also becomes harder to part with them.
In my 5e PbP game here I am diversifying coinage into wampum beads, good medicine (tobacco), and baskets as much as pieces of silver ingots. That said, I keep the abstraction for player convenience, otherwise it might be too much at once. It's really up to the GM to make the economy feel alien and wondrous.
edit: Barter, however, is not that prevalent in my games. There is a standardized valuation to commute over long distances, essentially a concept of debt. Barter just doesn't work that far or for that long — it fluctuates too heavily from buyer to seller to work as a portable means of value and still game. Violence monopolized will eventually agree to a standard measurement within its borders, and as it encounters other spheres of power will negotiate terms of exchange rate.
Quote from: RPGPundit;823579Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
My Land of Ice and Stone supplement for Legend has no coins, as it is set in the Old Stone Age. It uses barter, but gives representative amounts, to make bartering easier.
Most of my games use coins, though, as it is far easier to operate in a coin-based economy. Even settings such as Glorantha, which has down-played coinage recently, I still use coins almost exclusively - No buying a sword with 10 cows, for me.
i would imagine coins are a lot easier to tax and in my games most goverments do not care that your money is loot they still want there share
of course if you wander from country to country you will be able to avoid tax for a while but word will get around that you dont pay your taxs and it may well come back to bite you in the arse
I had occassionally fantasy barbarian areas where coin-minting hasn't been invented yet. For easyness I usually have some quantifiable and homogenous standard trading goods that can be used in exchange for a relatively steady exchange ratio, such as glass pearls, certain rare dried herbs or live chickens.
Cyberpunk games of mine also often have barter, especially when cash has become suspicious and electronic money gets monitored by the government. Drugs make for the preferred trading good there by being light relative to their value, quantifiable and homogenous. Krügerrands and other quantified precious metals serve a similar purpose.
In the Tribulation setting from 218 Games! They use chip implanted electronic transfer of wealth. And like any good post rapture setting, players who wish not to get the implant trade in goods and services.
In a test game we had a Merc providing protection to a convoy for a list of supplies the team needed.
It is harder without coins, but can work well with open minded players.
I haven't actually used this in any of my games but I imagine one could have loads of fun with special purpose money.
In a hobby where quite a few players consider the mere premise of encumbrance a fascist imposition of power-mad GMs (let alone keeping track of it) -- by way of example -- while a number of us can come up with citations, who out there really thinks that as many as one in a hundred campaigns does anything like this beyond a one-off?
The One Ring has wealth ranks (e.g., poor, martial, prosperous, etc.) and treasure ranks (e.g., 5=princely gift, 10=goblin hoard, 500=silver and gold enough to last a middle age hobbit a lifetime).
Copper, silver, gold pieces exist, but all of that is purely descriptive text and non-mechanical.
One high magic city campaign I ran for about a year had magic as the currency.
Pretty much every citizen had at least one magic wand, staff, etc and you payed for stuff either by transferring spell slots into a wand, or from one device to the other as charges. Non-casters could use the charged devices either as the equivalent of a coin purse, or spend the stored charges for various household utility spells, healing, or recreation.
Quote from: JeremyR;823635There's a reason money was invented.
Oh sure, you could play a game without it, but you could also play a game where you couldn't talk, you had to grunt or use gestures
The fact that you consider either some great sin of Bad Fun only speaks unkindly of your own imagination, on a forum dedicated to games of inventiveness.
I've used a barter system before. I boiled it down to Barter Units. 1 BU was equivalent to the value of the food required to feed a family of 4 for 1 day. So, once you've figured out the monetary cost of feeding 4 people for 1 day, you can determine the BU cost of anything in the equipment list that has a monetary value. It can lead to some interesting trades if you're into that sort of thing. Hmm, i need this length of rope and it's worth 6 BU. I've got some glass beads worth 1/2 BU, 2 chickens worth 1 BU each and a copper necklace worth 3 BU. Good enough? Sure.
Quote from: RPGPundit;823579Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
While I almost always include some kind of base coin value in my games, I generally assume that no everyone is conducting trade with coinage. So when players make deals with NPCs, where they are and who they are dealing with will matter a lot. They might get offers of bolts of silk in exchange for goods or services, or they may find themselves paying for things in pigs, for example. In order to wrap my head around this though I like having the base coin system to work off of.
Quote from: One Horse Town;824245I've used a barter system before. I boiled it down to Barter Units. 1 BU was equivalent to the value of the food required to feed a family of 4 for 1 day. So, once you've figured out the monetary cost of feeding 4 people for 1 day, you can determine the BU cost of anything in the equipment list that has a monetary value. It can lead to some interesting trades if you're into that sort of thing. Hmm, i need this length of rope and it's worth 6 BU. I've got some glass beads worth 1/2 BU, 2 chickens worth 1 BU each and a copper necklace worth 3 BU. Good enough? Sure.
One thing I did in my last campaign was tie the base unit of coin to a handful of rice grain. Between those two things I could easily gauge barter exchanges.
im not entirely sure how barter system implies abstracted wealth but i will never touch abstracted wealth with a 10 foot pole.
to be clear im not saying ohts barter unit idea is abstracted wealth the barter unit is fine i was refering to eariler in the thread
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;824250One thing I did in my last campaign was tie the base unit of coin to a handful of rice grain. Between those two things I could easily gauge barter exchanges.
Rice as a basic unit for wealth was actually an RL thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku
It fits also well with the measurable and homogenous basic trading good I spoke about earlier.
Quote from: Skyrock;824261Rice as a basic unit for wealth was actually an RL thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku
It fits also well with the measurable and homogenous basic trading good I spoke about earlier.
Yeah I got it from some stuff I was reading about Imperial China. It is pretty easy method to grasp because if you've ever made rice you know what a handful of it means in real terms.
Quote from: RPGPundit;823579Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
One GM runs their setting with explicit assumption that references to coinage are abstractions with the actual exchange taking place in other ways like barter and haggling unless specific coinage is referred during the role playing and narration ("You search the bandits and collect a total of 130 silver Royals"). it seems to work well for them but I'm not sure that's close to what you were thinking.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;824249While I almost always include some kind of base coin value in my games, I generally assume that no everyone is conducting trade with coinage. So when players make deals with NPCs, where they are and who they are dealing with will matter a lot. They might get offers of bolts of silk in exchange for goods or services, or they may find themselves paying for things in pigs, for example. In order to wrap my head around this though I like having the base coin system to work off of.
This expresses my view and practice perfectly.
Quote from: Nexus;824268One GM runs their setting with explicit assumption that references to coinage are abstractions with the actual exchange taking place in other ways like barter and haggling unless specific coinage is referred during the role playing and narration ("You search the bandits and collect a total of 130 silver Royals"). it seems to work well for them but I'm not sure that's close to what you were thinking.
well probably mostly what he was thinking i doubt the pundit was expecting so much abstraction of barter
i dont see the point of having barter if your just going to abstract it with gold but as long as you have a well defined amount of barter resources it should work fine
like i said though if you try and abstract it without a system to work on it just does not work which is a shame because d20 modern was promising until i noticed how money was handled tomorrow im going to see if they ever published a variant that has actual money
Quote from: tuypo1;824273well probably mostly what he was thinking i doubt the pundit was expecting so much abstraction of barter
i dont see the point of having barter if your just going to abstract it with gold but as long as you have a well defined amount of barter resources it should work fine
Mainly for flavor and a sense of verisimilitude.
fair enough if i was going to do barter i would do it with detail but nothing wrong with doing it that way
Pretty much all the fantasy campaigns I've run have used a form of currency, but there are certain areas in the world where currencies are pretty much useless.
Then such things as equipment, food, useful stuff is much preferred or currency is not accepted at all.
Usually in wild, remote, primitive areas or places totally alien, such as extra-planar places etc.
Quote from: rway218;823726In the Tribulation setting from 218 Games! They use chip implanted electronic transfer of wealth. And like any good post rapture setting, players who wish not to get the implant trade in goods and services.
Oh, lord... you know that whole deal was esoteric metaphor, right?
Since it's all just words and scratches on paper, what practical effect does it have if you call one unit of wealth a sheep, a keg of beer, or a gold coin? In play at the table, it functions exactly the same: player records said units of wealth and keeps them until they want to trade them for something else.
Unless someone wants a game based around detailing that Bob the fighter has to run his goats to New City in order to pay the trainer (or whatever), then to me all this type of stuff is just distracting play from the fun parts.
I might as well roleplay studying the Voynich Manuscript - that's something that would be pretty realistic for lots of RPG characters to be doing.
Quote from: EOTB;824415Since it's all just words and scratches on paper, what practical effect does it have if you call one unit of wealth a sheep, a keg of beer, or a gold coin?
One practical effect is it's feasible for wandering PCs to carry around 100 gold coins. Unless they are sheep herding nomads or a wagon train caravan the other forms of wealth are going to have to be traded, given away, or abandoned before they move on.
Now if the GM ignores the practical differences, then yeah there is not effect. But it would be a really weird thing to both include the composition of the loot while ignoring the practical implications. Who would do that?
Quote from: Bren;824417One practical effect is it's feasible for wandering PCs to carry around 100 gold coins. Unless they are sheep herding nomads or a wagon train caravan the other forms of wealth are going to have to be traded, given away, or abandoned before they move on.
Now if the GM ignores the practical differences, then yeah there is not effect. But it would be a really weird thing to both include the composition of the loot while ignoring the practical implications. Who would do that?
Which is my point - usually these types of changes are made in an effort at "realism" that chews up the time people have to game because they're trying to find out how their pastoral wealth can be watched over so they can go back and do that kickass stuff that players actually remember years later over beers.
I have no issues with a variety of treasure found, that might provide challenges to convert to gold. But I see that effect as quite different than that of perpetual herder-adventurers. No thanks to the latter.
Quote from: EOTB;824422Which is my point - usually these types of changes are made in an effort at "realism" that chews up the time people have to game because they're trying to find out how their pastoral wealth can be watched over so they can go back and do that kickass stuff that players actually remember years later over beers.
Yeah some players like all kickass all the time and that's all they want from their gaming. On the other hand, some people like some realism in their gaming. Which is one of the points of actually tracking wealth and the forms that wealth takes. You don't have to track it or you can track it using money of account rather than specie or goods, but choosing to track it and choosing not to use money of account and then complaining about it seems weird.
Think of it this way, the rules for writing poetry and for writing free verse are different. Iambic pentameter places restrictions on what the poet writes. That's the point of writing in that style after all. Skipping the rules because they restrict what you can write misses the point. Same thing with "let's just ignore X" for any X in gaming. Yeah you can do that, but not everyone wants to do that.
Quote from: EOTB;824422Which is my point - usually these types of changes are made in an effort at "realism" that chews up the time people have to game because they're trying to find out how their pastoral wealth can be watched over so they can go back and do that kickass stuff that players actually remember years later over beers.
I have no issues with a variety of treasure found, that might provide challenges to convert to gold. But I see that effect as quite different than that of perpetual herder-adventurers. No thanks to the latter.
My experience is roughly the opposite. I find that in many games, a large amount of time in many fantasy games is spent on searching for treasure, opening chest locks and traps, tallying up and dividing treasure, calculating encumbrance, appraising and selling gems, finding stores in town, going over price lists, and so forth.
In my vikings game, for example, the characters were all in some sense herders, since they were generally part of the landowning class who owned houses, cattle, and ships. However, it's not like there was any time taken up by herding. That's just part of the background. Instead, they just geared up and went a-viking in their ships. (Or off to hunt down an outlaw, or to broker a deal, or some other adventure.) They had whatever gear was reasonable for their wealth - which was judged quickly and simply. If their raids were successful, then at the end of the adventure, their wealth level got bumped up a little.
Obviously, experiences differ. I'm sure there are GMs who eat up time with non-coinage economics, but I don't think that's universal.
Quote from: RPGPundit;824397Oh, lord... you know that whole deal was esoteric metaphor, right?
Esoteric metaphors make great RPG worlds.
Easily portable wealth tends to trump barter unless you are a settled craftsman or traveling trader with some sort of support structure. Barter gets harder when you are wandering adventurers and tend to travel light.
Quote from: RPGPundit;823579Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
Yes, in Prof. Barker's Tekumel campaign. We were out to the east in the islands on the edge of the map, where they don't use currency. Everything was done by barter or social interaction, and we had a great time.
Later on, Dave Arneson (Captain Harchar, the Honest Seafaring Merchant) created a sub-routine for Phil's meta-game where he rolled up thirty-some sea captains and their ships; the system he did handled the trade routes and barter systems for ship-loads of cargo. The idea was that players could go down to the docks in a city, and the sub-routine would generate who was in port, where they were going, and what they were carrying as 'plot devices' to get the players off on adventures. It worked fine, and we had a lot of fun.
Quote from: chirine ba kal;824606Yes, in Prof. Barker's Tekumel campaign. We were out to the east in the islands on the edge of the map, where they don't use currency. Everything was done by barter or social interaction, and we had a great time.
Later on, Dave Arneson (Captain Harchar, the Honest Seafaring Merchant) created a sub-routine for Phil's meta-game where he rolled up thirty-some sea captains and their ships; the system he did handled the trade routes and barter systems for ship-loads of cargo. The idea was that players could go down to the docks in a city, and the sub-routine would generate who was in port, where they were going, and what they were carrying as 'plot devices' to get the players off on adventures. It worked fine, and we had a lot of fun.
A subroutine like that sounds handy.
Quote from: rway218;824452Esoteric metaphors make great RPG worlds.
Ok, granted.
Quote from: RPGPundit;823579Have you ever run (or played in) a setting where the economy doesn't generally run on gp, sp, or cp, but on some totally different system (be it barter, or something weirder)?
What was it? How did it go?
In Atomic Highway and Apocalypse World games I was in, there were no money. In AW, it's just called "barter". In AH, your equipment list was your purse, too.
In Exalted's setting large parts of the setting don't run on silver coinage (and practically nowhere is gold used for money, I believe - using it as treasure was fine). Then again, you have different systems in different Directions.
You could try and buy what counts as money in the West using silver. The gods of trade and currency would take a dim view on that, though, and on your trading enterprises in general.
I'm pretty sure that in my own version of Mars it was a certain kind of diaphanous cloth that served as money. The people needed it for sails for skyships, but the only method of producing it was water-intensive.
However, since cutting it in pieces reduced the price, they also had elaborated an extensive system of credit.
Well, the players didn't use that fact, so it didn't impact the game much, other than for underlying that wasting water is a capital crime.
Quote from: EOTB;824415Unless someone wants a game based around detailing that Bob the fighter has to run his goats to New City in order to pay the trainer (or whatever), then to me all this type of stuff is just distracting play from the fun parts.
Once again it comes down to what your group thinks is fun.
Our Wednesday night group recently acquired some loot in the form of a magical fountain... a very cool thing we had no use for (and are unable to move) but figured would be a lot of value to someone somewhere. Whole sessions have transpired regarding finding a buyer for the thing and dealing with complications of owning it in the meanwhile. All of them loads of fun.
When we finally did find someone who would/could take it off our hands he gave us some land in exchange for it... and if we keep the land we are expected by local law to improve it and pay taxes... so more adventures are peeling off of that bit of barter.
We haven't run a combat in weeks and AFAIK nobody is complaining.
Anyway, I can totally see the fun to be had in barter, even just livestock or crops... and fun complications that can spin out of it that wouldn't come up if it was all just down to coinage.
Quote from: Simlasa;836470Once again it comes down to what your group thinks is fun.
Our Wednesday night group recently acquired some loot in the form of a magical fountain... a very cool thing we had no use for (and are unable to move) but figured would be a lot of value to someone somewhere. Whole sessions have transpired regarding finding a buyer for the thing and dealing with complications of owning it in the meanwhile. All of them loads of fun.
When we finally did find someone who would/could take it off our hands he gave us some land in exchange for it... and if we keep the land we are expected by local law to improve it and pay taxes... so more adventures are peeling off of that bit of barter.
We haven't run a combat in weeks and AFAIK nobody is complaining.
Anyway, I can totally see the fun to be had in barter, even just livestock or crops... and fun complications that can spin out of it that wouldn't come up if it was all just down to coinage.
That is exactly how it works with a good GM, IME!
Why not have both?
For some things people pay in coin. But for others they pay in barter. And the barter could be tasks rather than trading goods.
The merchant will trade you that suit of armour if you will guard his caravan to the next town. The potion maker will hand over one or more potions of healing if you go into the monster haunted forest to collect some ingredients.
Or the dreaded barter chain. The merchant will give you the sword if you can get the potion of heroism from the alchemist who wants some blue mushrooms from creepy farmer Jones who needs some graveyard moss collected at midnight... But you have to persuade the specter hanging out at the grave to let you, but it wont unless you fix its headstone so it can rest peacefully.
Or the party ends up helping facilitate the barter between two other parties. Showing the "behind the scenes" daily life the PCs usually arent privy to. A farmer needs help collecting or transporting eggs to pay off the baker.
People still use coins to pay for things. It is easier to transport in your pocket than a chicken... But barter is going on regularly.
Quote from: Omega;836575Why not have both?
A great suggestion, people used all sort of monetary systems and barter, combining them and whatnot.
I'm doing currently research on medieval Mali for my master's thesis, and the sheer magnitude of different trade goods and coinage used along the Niger River and the surrounding lands is staggering.
The pastoralists would use cattle, and sometimes slaves, as their main unit of barter, having a barter economy that was independent of any state. Having a good that didn't encumber you while moving was imperative to their lifestyle.
Then there was gold, which was mainly exported and didn't really have much use in the economy as coinage - it was a trade good to be sold off for the northern Arab markets.
Salt was another hugely important good. The great loss of salt through perspiration in the southern jungles made a food supplement of salt the key to keeping healthy. Salt was worth MORE than gold, pound for pound, in some places.
When trade with India started through Portuguese intermediaries, imported Indian cowry shells became such a priced good of such relatively uniform character that they became almost universal as coinage - without any central government to back up their value! Human ingenuity is boundless.
As a side note: What's the most common currency in Somalia? Somali Shillings, a currency officially not tied to any government and with no national bank behind it since the collapse of the state in the early nineties. The simple facts of human habit and practicality means the Shillings just stayed in circulation though having, in traditional economic sense,
literally no value.
Wouldn't cowrie shells, like gold, have an intrinsic value based on its popularity across tribes, nations, or cultures for jewelry or ornamentation so that no government backing is required?
One of the many bits of period trivia in Neal Stephenson's books in The Baroque Cycle is his mention of the value of cowrie shells dropping suddenly due to news of the arrival of a trade fleet from India carrying a huge quantity of shells. Something that should probably happen with gold or gems in many a D&D town whenever a successful party of adventures returns from robbing tombs.
From a quick glance at free market exchange rates for the Somali shilling the value against the dollar seemed to take a huge nose dive after it lost government backing and a glut of counterfeit bills were produced. More recently a central bank was established and the rate of exchange seems to have returned to pre civil war levels or better. So it's not like the loss of government backing didn't have a drastic effect on value. But then it's not like natural diamonds have any intrinsic value over artificial diamonds. People are not especially rational about economic matters.
Quote from: Bren;824417One practical effect is it's feasible for wandering PCs to carry around 100 gold coins. Unless they are sheep herding nomads or a wagon train caravan the other forms of wealth are going to have to be traded, given away, or abandoned before they move on.
More to the point, what if you travel somewhere where your gold has no value?
Having 100 gold in an England-like location would be impressive wealth, but Mayans would just shrug and ask again how you were going to pay...
I've seen salt and rice used, as they were historically, as alternatives for wealth. One of the better alternatives I saw, used seashells as a form of currency (the occupants were *NOT* easy to kill, so it's a form of money all the PC's came to respect).
The other players have wondered if I was simple in the head, since I often spent gold buying property, businesses, and livestock in our campaigns, rather than a shiny +2 new magic weapon. Then the villains came to kill us one night, and the townspeople alerted me (not the rest of the party), since they didn't want "Daddy Warbucks" to die... :p
Quote from: Novastar;836848The other players have wondered if I was simple in the head, since I often spent gold buying property, businesses, and livestock in our campaigns, rather than a shiny +2 new magic weapon. Then the villains came to kill us one night, and the townspeople alerted me (not the rest of the party), since they didn't want "Daddy Warbucks" to die... :p
Investing your loot gives you the chance that your invested gold will earn you more gold. It has the disadvantage that crops can fail, shops and factories can burn down, and invested loot loses its liquidity.
Being tied into the social network of the setting can be an advantage, as you mentioned, as well as a plot hook for further adventures focused on defending and expanding one's holdings. Of course in some settings and depending on their social class, characters may not be able to buy land or run a business.
Oriental Adventures had some nice uses of that too. The land-owning characters wealth was not just coin, and a bad year could diminish your total wealth.
Quote from: Omega;836952Oriental Adventures had some nice uses of that too. The land-owning characters wealth was not just coin, and a bad year could diminish your total wealth.
Sounds like Pendragon.
Or Flashing Blades (1984) which included purchase prices and rates of return for different types of land e.g. farms, orchards, and vineyards and other investments.
Quote from: Bren;836970Or Flashing Blades (1984) which included purchase prices and rates of return for different types of land e.g. farms, orchards, and vineyards and other investments.
Anybody recall if Bushido covered this? Another great FGU game. Seems like it should if it doesn't have rules for this stuff. Love Flashing Blades; in fact I have a copy of it here in my bag at work as I type this as I am thinking about trying to use it for a game set in el Siglo de Oro.
I've been looking up salaries for Shi during the Song dynasty and a lot of it is a blend of cash and goods. For example the dean of an academy in one instance has a monthly salary of 100 strings of cash and 2 piculs of rice. In some cases I'm also getting sections of land, firewood and clothing listed.
Yes, I've had various settings and situations where barter or deals of various types were mainly how arrangements were negotiated. Also, games set in cultures where a lot of gifting and hospitality is done (e.g. Celtic), where one gains honor by gifting generously, but return gifts or favors or service or sacrifices are expected sooner or later, or on certain holidays, etc.
I find that these sorts of exchanges and situations, whether limited or taking up most or even all of the trade (for example in settings which have no real abstract currency, such as post-apocalypse or other practical situations), can be very interesting and attention-getting. They can make people think about the actual value and use and rarity and need for items, instead of having numeric values and nearly-unlimited supply assumed. Even in games where currency is used for most things, there are always some sorts of transactions that aren't monetary, and those can be pretty interesting, particularly because different things have different value to different people, and some things are unique or have certain consequences that can't be absolutely valued (such as performing a task, unique/rare items, information, allegiance, gratitude or blackmail situations).
It does call for a pretty strong GM to support such things. If not, a crafty player can get a not-so-prepared GM off balance. :-)
Heres the OA entry on Barter.
QuoteIrregular Currency and Barter:
Coins may or may not be minted. If they are, they are often irregular
in size and shape. Coins from foreign lands are used without prejudice. All coins are only worth the amount of precious metal they contain. Paper money is useless.
Goods and services are often bought by barter. There are often semi-fixed units of barter - a sheep is known to be worth so much, a horse has a general value, etc. The bushels of rice a man harvests or collects in a year are seen as personal worth since he can use these to buy things. However, since items of barter are unwieldy to carry around, written contracts are often made, the buyer signing over a certain portion of his harvest to be collected at a later date. Thus, a man's wealth is measured by the goods he owns, the goods he can make or grow, and the contracts he holds. Legal systems are designed to enforce the honoring of contracts and the fulfillment of obligations.
Pure Barter:
A man's wealth is measured purely by the goods he owns and can trade for other things. This is most common in the uncivilized lands. Contracts are generally not drawn up (either written or verbal). Purchases are made by giving the seller something of equal value. Haggling is a must, since nothing has a set value. The value of any item is only set by how much the buyer is willing to give and how little the seller will accept. Legal systems are generally not very formal. A man's reputation as an honest dealer, cheat, simpleton, liar, or hard bargainer greatly influence how much people are willing to pay or receive from him.
A sheep or goat was worth 3 tael. 5-6 bussels of rice was 5 ch'ien (About 50 tael). and so on.
Quote from: Matt;836977Anybody recall if Bushido covered this?
Not particularly; I was in a Bushido run for a while, and I don't recall the price list/economic system taking up as much as a page.
I will have to check my Bushido later...I can't recall at all but sounds like you would know better than I.
Now I want to re-read "Mushashi" and play Bushido.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;836979I've been looking up salaries for Shi during the Song dynasty and a lot of it is a blend of cash and goods. For example the dean of an academy in one instance has a monthly salary of 100 strings of cash and 2 piculs of rice. In some cases I'm also getting sections of land, firewood and clothing listed.
How often would the goods exceed what the person hired could personally use? That might have occurred because it shielded both parties from fluctuations in the prices of things that they would need to buy anyway.
In D&D, characters might be more inclined to barter if the value of the gold they were offered was less certain - fixed prices in the rulebook and goods always available undercut a barter economy. (Although the important economy in D&D is generally non-coin, with the experience point being the measure of value. :))
Quote from: rawma;837466How often would the goods exceed what the person hired could personally use? That might have occurred because it shielded both parties from fluctuations in the prices of things that they would need to buy anyway.
I don't know. A lot of what I have is lists from appendices without a whole lot of commentary or analysis on how the allocations, salaries and stipends were used (the salaries are not the focus of the sources, they just include them). It is tough to judge that from the lists alone and I am no economic historian. My main concern is putting together a price list. I imagine some of it could be used in this way, but that is just speculation. A lot of the stuff is quite practical though, so I think that is an important consideration. Much of it you can literally eat and wear. There are also stipends given in many instances for specific needs that someone serving as an official might have. Also I know that it was generally frowned upon for scholar-officials to engage in commerce and if they did they would be expected to go through middle men. I imagine that a scholar-official selling bolts of silk he acquired as part of his salary might be considered engaging in commerce.
I've only played in two games without keeping track of coins/money.
One was D20 Modern with its odd Resource system.
In Fantasy games, Shaintar has its own Resource die system which assigns characters a wealth die (Rated d12-d6 with d4 being destitute/poor). Characters roll their wealth die to acquire goods with penalties or bonuses based on the availability and rarity of an item (up to -12). Charisma applies to the roll as well. After the attempt to find the item, a second wealth roll determines if the character's wealth die goes down (Usually one to two steps downward towards d4). Its an odd system, but works for higher end goods. I decided to add additional petty cash to the game so characters could buy low-end items after a few sessions. Rolling for stuff like drinks, inn stays, etc. becomes tedium at some point (rather quickly for me).
AD&D DMG did mention the possibility of coin value devaluing of there was a glut on the market all of a sudden. Not sure if that is mentioned in other editions?
Quote from: Omega;837592AD&D DMG did mention the possibility of coin value devaluing of there was a glut on the market all of a sudden. Not sure if that is mentioned in other editions?
IIRC its in the 2e DMG as well -- along with the value of taxation, alternate representations of currency, currency exchange rates, et al.
The Midnight d20 setting had a barter economy.
Precious metals & stones were basically useless except to produce magic items.
And since magic was mostly controlled my the god of darkness...
Quote from: Omega;836952Oriental Adventures had some nice uses of that too. The land-owning characters wealth was not just coin, and a bad year could diminish your total wealth.
Dark Albion will have semi-abstract wealth values for Noble houses.
Quote from: RPGPundit;838299Dark Albion will have semi-abstract wealth values for Noble houses.
Can you elaborate?
Also, in Dark Albion, the egg is listed as a form of currency. It's valued at 1/24th of a penny.
In Mutant: Year Zero, bullets are used as currency, which I find pretty cool.