Spheres of Exchange

[patchwork]

I've had a game with three tiers of exchange, colloquially referred to as "greens", "blues" and "reds". "Reds" were the "none of the above/most available stuff" category, green was food and blue was infrastructure in an essentially 50-years-post-apocalypse setting. Essentially, it allowed for market-based solutions for labor allocation without allowing anyone off the hook for the society's essentials - the less able earn greens by weeding the fields, the more able by planting, harvesting, standing watch in the fields, butchering, breaking and aerating new soil - but no one who doesn't work the fields gets food, absolutely no exceptions. The blues were the water, sewer and power plant - everyone needs to do their turn there too.

To the players, of course, this was interesting but background - they accepted the fact that their characters were obligated to do these things but only kept close track of their reds. "What do you do to earn your greens and blues?" was a useful question to establish character and not much more. It had been going on long enough that people really weren't listening to the few oldsters who talked about making everything red again - that would just be silly, and the idea that you could buy your way out of taking care of food and infrastructure was a major reason the old society failed, in conventional wisdom. Of course, strict population control could probably return this society to a universal medium of exchange fairly quickly, but having a child was considered a personal rather than a societal decision and so the necessary surplus hadn't come yet in 50 years...

People being people, clandestine attempts to exchange reds for greens did happen. (working in the power plant wasn't so odious that people tried to get out of it, but many people enjoy the chance to eat more and better food and think their other services warrant that opportunity). The penalties for getting caught were steep (exile for the person buying food, usually a beating for the person selling).

Medical services were stickily red; essentially, the medical community was small and tightly knit and their services were red because they forcefully insisted they were red, despite some people's arguments that they should be blue or even green. The doctors preferred to do their time in the fields and be wealthy in crafted goods and services.

Not sure if that's interesting to you since economics wasn't the focus of the game, but - yeah, I've done it ;)

[RGTraynor]

Heck, I run a market-heavy game, and some players have delved deeply into economics, and I still streamline. After running with separate national coinages for much of my campaign's history, I ditched all of that when I restarted in 2003: a generic "gold sovereign," worth 25 of the generic "silver sinver," worth 20 of the generic "copper ob." Different national coinages of different weights, relative values and metals just seemed to me too much of a bookkeeping headache, and I haven't really missed it.

I'm sure I might find a player or who who'd buy into this system, and I'm equally sure that everyone else would find it a pain in the ass and a serious sidetracking to common adventuring.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Not sure if that's interesting to you since economics wasn't the focus of the game, but - yeah, I've done it ;)

Economics doesn't have to be the focus of the game. It's an interesting model for a culture that survived an apocalypse. I'll have to keep it in mind.

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Heck, I run a market-heavy game, and some players have delved deeply into economics, and I still streamline. After running with separate national coinages for much of my campaign's history, I ditched all of that when I restarted in 2003: a generic "gold sovereign," worth 25 of the generic "silver sinver," worth 20 of the generic "copper ob." Different national coinages of different weights, relative values and metals just seemed to me too much of a bookkeeping headache, and I haven't really missed it.

I'm sure I might find a player or who who'd buy into this system, and I'm equally sure that everyone else would find it a pain in the ass and a serious sidetracking to common adventuring.

If you were going to streamline the setting's currency why end up with a 1:25:20 ratio?