Re: [HoE] Money?

[Bax <bax1@concentric.net>]

>> Just wondering what people are using as a money system. Without there
>> being any kind of common currency and things being so rare my players
>> need to micro manage down to the $1. Or are you just having your players
>> buy that extra bullet or 2?
>
>--
>Richard A. Ranallo,
>The Man They Couldn't Hang

  I've worked up something I call the Trade Value table; working at a used
book store I've got a good feel of how barter and trade work in the real
world and wrote up a page worth of notes before I started my campaign.
  (aside: one of the only things that bugged me about the HoE rules was the
contradiction between "paper money makes good toilet paper" and the dollar
signs they stuck all over everything- it makes my players think of things
in terms of "how many dollars will it cost?" instead of "what do I have to
scrounge up to trade for this thing?")
  Anyway, I give things a TV (Trade Value): a base TV of one covers things
like a few common bullets, a small simple meal, etc.  And the TV of an item
is entirely context dependant; things like clean food, water and ammo is
fairly universal, but a set of sterile surgical insturments may be
worthless to a savage tribe; you could hold a post-apocalyptic doctor for
ransom using the same pack of scalpels.
  It works pretty well, it's flexible and it's broken my players of the $
habit.

  bax