Would you play in a setting with no money?

[Engilbrand]

The weaponsmith would make weapons. The Chief would give the weapons to his hunters or protectors. If a group of adventurers was given weapons, they would use them and bring back "Stuff". If they're that good, the Chief would probably give them a magic "Thing" or two. They'd keep things because they were good at what they did. It seems pretty basic. You don't really need to care about the rest of the stuff. "How do NPC Artificers make stuff if they don't adventure?" It doesn't work the same way for NPCs. Just do the same thing with the barter system. You only need to care about the PCs. Even a spellcaster who needs a 5K gem could do it. He has to find someone who has such a gem and then make a deal for it. If it's the Chief, you could include roleplay as he tries to convince the Chief that he should have the really shiny gem in the crown so that he can do X.

 

[Slife]

Magic makes getting food easy. Just off the top of my head...

Once you have access to Stone to Flesh, all of your food needs are solved. You get about 70 cubic feet of meat. The density of meat is about 50 pounds per cubic foot

So you get 3500 pounds of meat for the cost of a single 6th level spell. Salt it to keep it from rotting.


Plant growth is also good, but it takes long-term effort.

 

[Umbran]

By saying "food is available for all" I meant that when there is food, everyone gets a share - it's not like you have to go into a restaurant and buy it, or beg for food on the street. If there's a kill, it is shared (often with those with most status getting first dibs), and if there's rudimentary agriculture, it's also distributed among the people. I didn't mean there was food in abundance, just that it's not restricted by wealth.

I think that's a nice utopian ideal. But whatever happend to greed, or the willingness to let others fall by the wayside in order to ensure one's own survival? Sure, Good aligned characters, and some of the Lawful ones, might abide by such a pattern. But surely someone's going to start stockpiling, or keeping the really good bits for themselves...

With no money, value isn't measured in gp anymore. I suppose I'd need to get around that on a case by case basis.

Change "gp" to "pounds of food equivalent" or somesuch, and you're set to go.

Indeed simply change the word Wealth to Status, decide on a system of gaining (or losing) status and your problem is solved.

While you can do that, you don't even have to. Modern money is only one expression of wealth. In this proposed setting, if you control seven full grain storehouses, you are wealthy, even if "money" per se, does not exist.

 

[Nyaricus]

In such a society there are a few things you need to consider:

The Gods Meant Everything
One god made the sun rise in the morning, another god made sure the rain falls so that the crops can grow, another god makes sure the lands stay bountiful and the soil stayed dark, and rich. In primitive cultures, most gods started off as Fertility gods of the earth, adn evertually gained a more defined role as the cultures became more defined. Taken into context, Ares of the greek god of war was a fertility god who might have been, more specifically and further back into history, a god of war focused on gaining mroe land so more food could be grown, and eventually, as the greek civilizationa arose, lost most of the 'fertility' part of his portfolio, and became more achetypically warlike. Athena might figure out the best ways of argriculture; eventually she is the goddess of Wisdom and riddle-solving. Etc.

So, the gods in this setting would basically all be very earthy deities, with portfolios closely tied to agriculture and fertility.

The World is Brutal
Mankind and it's kindred are just learning the most primitive ways of agriculture, maybe just a generation or two ago. Famines are devastating, starvation is likely, and survival of the fittest menas that if you step up to the challenge you're the one who gets to ive tomorrow. It's kill or be killed; man is just another animal, really. Sure, one with tools, and weapons and gardens, but a dirty, pathetic, weak animal. Cheifs rule the roost, and mentalities are likely like wolves: BIG CHEIF gets his fill first, them the hunters, then big cheifs wives, then warrior wives, then the other men, then the other women, then the children, then the elderly, then the sickly. If the sickly were lucky if therewas a food sthortage, the tribe would bash their head in with a rock before the hunger pangs made their stomach bloat up, their legs tuirn to sticks, their faces turned gaunt and they eventually, after a long and agonizing period, died.

Hunting parties provide the meat and make tools and food from every aviliable resource. Native Americans and the Dark Sun campaign setting are some really good references for this sort of stuff. Native Americans used buffalo stomachs for waterskins, since they would swell up like balloons and hold 1-2 gallons of water or somesuch (If you're a Canuck like me, that's 4-8 liters). In Dark Sun, giant bugs carapaces become useful in crafting armous and the like. Every man would liekly have to craft his own weapons and any protective materials he might wear; there wouldn't be a village smithy or the like (though there would likely be a fellow in that tribe who had a great knowledge of weaponcraft who teaches the rest). Woman and children work in the fields all day, and would run the households. Liekly, they'd have an equal say in what goes on in a village if they're more, ahem, "democratic", although "tyrant" chiefs would be more common, especially in more primative villages with more hunting and less gathering.

Bartering Gets You What You Need
Very few societies in the stone age had an sort of monetary system. Things were traded, ie "a sack of grain for two chickens". This means that if you want something, you'd better have something that the person you are trading needs or wants. Yes, this could mean that Craft: Basketweaving actually becomes useful, since baskets would be useful in the stone age. Primitive clay works would be uncommon, but availible; mostly you'd use animal parts or the land around you to make and get what you want.

Moreso, being a someone becomes more important that making the best trades. If you slay a big, nasty critter, you gain the respect of the tribe. Maybe you get a fourth wife, maybe you are giving gifts of food and words of thanks from the cheif, maybe there is a celebration thanking the gods and praising you for your deeds. Roleplaying becomes essential here, in game terms. You gain respect, and this effects how the rest of society veiws you, and becomes more powerful than anyhting "money could buy". The cheif praises you, and you should feel humbled. The gods sing a joyous song for you, and you should feel like the tallest man in the world. The villages fawns its' mighty warrior, and you should look to the next day, where your life might be ended or your stories and tales of heroics might be told millenia from that day.

Geography Was Everything
Most likely, you should be in a verdant and ferile area if you want to give rise to civilization. History shows us that the Indus Valley (for East Indians), the Nile River and its' delta (AEgyptians), Mesopotamia (Sumerians and their decendants) and the Chinese river valley (forgetting it's name) were all similar.

So, why does this mean that they fostered so much life? See the title of this section.

You see, if you have man, which is turning slowly into a farming civlization from a race of hunters and gatherers, you need an area which is going be able to most easily grow crops, and thus give you back the most food for the effort you put into farming. It's really that simple. Thus, an area with such rich soils as river valleys, is going to be able to give farmers bountiful crops, thus less work, thus happier people with more time to refine and improve their culture. Slaves also help this bit out, and it should be noted that the greek civilization was based upn slavery to a large degree. Ever wonder who Plato and Aristotle had so much time to think upon things in the way their did? Well, they had slaves which made and brought them food, and clothes them, and kept up their quaters, and everything else. So, making that a bit more 'primative', you'd want slaves to farm for you so your wives could tame onagers for hauling, and so that the men could tame wolves for guarding their houses, etc.

In any case, that's about all I have at the moment, but rest assured: I would play in a well set-out campaign like this in a flash, and by no means would this be impossible to pull off. You just need to read a couple history textbooks and the like

cheers,
--N

 

[Terwox]

I've run one full campaign without money, and I'm running another game right now without money. No wealth system, just barter. Neither game is primitive, the first was, ah, random, and the in second civilization collapsed (for the heroes.)

 

[Li Shenron]

The weaponsmith would make weapons. The Chief would give the weapons to his hunters or protectors. If a group of adventurers was given weapons, they would use them and bring back "Stuff". If they're that good, the Chief would probably give them a magic "Thing" or two. They'd keep things because they were good at what they did. It seems pretty basic. You don't really need to care about the rest of the stuff. "How do NPC Artificers make stuff if they don't adventure?" It doesn't work the same way for NPCs.

Yeah, this is quite like in our Rokugan campaign in fact...

You sometimes get weapons and magic items from your family or clan leaders, either as heirloom or the occasional prize.
Whoever sends you to a mission usually gives you either something beforehand to help you, or a reward afterwards, or both.

Treasure collected should be in theory brought back to them who you were working for, instead of being kept by the PCs, but often it becomes the reward.

This money-less method is based on the strong cultural traits of the setting (although we're not exactly playing it "orthodox"), with which it works great.
"Stuff" does not really belong to you as much as it belongs to your family, but in turn your family is supposed to provide you the best "stuff" you deserve.
[There is a similar relationship between each family and the clan to which the family belongs, and between each clan and the empire as a whole.]

 

[Mark Hope]

I am running a barbarian tribe game at present that has no money. Barter is used as a way of getting things from other tribe members, and "kill things and take their stuff" is used as a way of getting things from outside the tribe, for the most part. Works really well, and I'll miss it when the game (eventually) moves on to other places and eras.

My Dark Sun games also frequently don't have money, but that's more because characters get enslaved and some filthy templar takes it from them. Not quite the same...

 

[Bardsandsages]

In reality, most of the time if the party is in an isolated village, gold coins have little value anyway. Small communities in the dark ages and middle ages typically worked on a barter system anyway. If you are a hundred miles from the nearest city, you don't want gold coins. You want food, hides, weapons, tools, etc.

Just because a community doesn't have hard currency, does not mean it does not have some sort of compensation system in place. A farmer would trade wool or cotton to the seamstress in exchange for clothes, who in turn would exchange clothes and blankets to the woodworker to make a cabinet, who in turn would help raise a barn in exchange for having a place to stable his horse. If you didn't have a skill, then you had nothing to trade, and therefore you would be just as impoverished as if you had no money in the city.

In such a game, professions and craft skills become very valuable to the PCs. In reality, this is really how D&D SHOULD be played. Less gold coins, more hard goods and services.