Just a little something that came up in the game.
Fang found a tent and stuff worth 1 barter. The stuff worth 1 barter, i then decided was mostly a flashlight wirk working batteries. Then i realised that a tent is probarbly worth 1 barter too.
Barter are normaly just kinda usefull stuff, oddments actually. Has anyone have experience with barter that is actually usefull on it’s own. -> thereby making the trading part more interesting?
I found that once I started applying barter values to “loot” it paved the way for me to keep dropping loot all over the place, because it made sense for it to be there. I’m not sure how to prevent that, but I definitely felt like I was getting too generous with the barter items because I was almost running a Fallout game instead of an Apocalypse World game.
that’s what i fear too. I like having barter to be a thing you care about and don’t just forget but this might not be the right way.
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If you have a Hoarder in play crap becomes important by default
We tend to call barter an expendable resource like food and ammo. Because everybody needs to eat, and eventually somebody wants to shoot their gun.
I give barter values to anything that someone wants. At the moment cement is pretty high value – however given the market fluctuations for this what is big jingle today might be worth less tomorrow. I also can get a bit harsh and have NPCs say “No I do not want fifteen kilos of cement, screw you and your attached strings!” (or similar) if they just don’t want that crap you found.
I’m also a fan of canned food and the like as ‘standard’ barter. Random odds and ends (like screws) also work fairly well, as plenty of Playbooks start with stuff that could use spare parts.
Decorations and pretty things are definitely legit as well, people want to make jewelry / have lucky charms.
In my previous games, we’ve discussed, in the first session, whether there was a “currency.” In the first game i played, it was very Fallout-esque, with pop can tabs or something. Things that weren’t the currency had to be negotiated for. Sure your gun, or your coveralls, or whatever, are worth something, but how much depends on who you’re dealing with.
I like weird currencies too!
In my current game I have two I especially enjoy:
– the main settlement (Rocheford – after a sign) has a form of credit that is mentally tallied by Monk, who runs security for the mysterious hardholder. The fact that Monk is the currency means that people are less willing to mess with him interestingly.
– another important settlement is the market town of Broken Wall (a damaged dam on the Columbia) which uses souvenir postcards of the dam as a unit of exchange within the market-town.
Down in Drowntown (bits of Portland) there is no such expedients though – the local hawkers mock the upland reliance on “non-existent goods”.
If you’re worried about loot turning the game into Fallout, remember even 1 Barter is a lot of jingle. I don’t think it would commonly be lying around unclaimed in a world of scarcity. There’s very little reason to have anything worth anything just lying around without a cost attached.