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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 4031398" data-attributes="member: 7394">Why not ask one of the designers? Charles Ryan contributed to the barter system, so we share that credit, and in all honesty, I forget which one of us wrote exactly what, but I was the one who took his material and wrote a ton of my own, mixed them together, and came out with something somewhat coherent.I'm currently running a Darwin's World game with bits of D20 Apocalypse thrown in and the car question has come up. Basically the thinking is this. First, as was mentioned above, the EMP is one small factor. The larger factor is that in the real world, cars that are not protected or maintained tend to fail. Sure, you can protect them in a garage, but the problem with a PA setting is that garages and other structures are quickly reclaimed by nature. Structures fail, so cars that were parked in a fairly protected area tend to have a slightly longer life expectancy than ones that are not protected, but they are still subject to failure. Guns are smaller and easier to protect. A waterproof safe box can have a perfectly intact gun, even if the structure around it has failed. Guns have very few moving parts, whereas cars have moving parts that all must be properly functioning in order for it to actually run.Your character might be able to walk down the street and see a dozen pre-apocalyptic cars, but some of them will be metal skeletons, others will look somewhat better, but when you go to start it, you'll likely have a dead battery. If the battery somehow works after all this time, then chances are that some other part no longer works, the end result being that it will simply not start. Cars that run are in high demand, while cars that are quietly turning to dust make effective walls when stacked up.By the way, there's a very good program from the History channel called Life After People. I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to inject just a little bit of reality into their post apocalyptic game.Of course if the setting is immediately after the apocalypse, the cars probably would be in better shape than 5, 10, or more years afterward, and the barter charts should be adjusted accordingly.</blockquote>

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