How would you handle a society that has no concept of currency? How do you maintain an economy entirely based around trade and barter?
How does this affect jobs and the basis of rewards to players? How does a person gather riches if the riches do not exist in the first place?
>>44256966
Define "currency", please.
>>44256966
They gather exotic spices, cloth, and dyes.
>>44257097
money in general
gold pieces, silver, any kind of metal, shiny stone, a carved wood circle or otherwise generalized item that is distributed en masse to maintain and regulate value by representing it numerically
>>44257140
So do you view weights of metal as currency, even if they aren't minted?
>>44257235
He's probably trying to solely describe a society with no fiat currency.
>>44257235
>>44257140
What I mean to say is, you might get as your "currency" an expensive good like jewellery, gems, distilled alcohol, precious metal...
>>44257263
As I said, expensive goods would be smaller for a given value than larger goods and therefore more economical to trade in.
Weaponry, tools, spices, fossils, ivory, perfumes... they're going to be less expensive to transport than something larger and heavier like timber, iron, fish...
>>44256966
Atomic Highway actually covers this fairly well, and it's free and a great game, so you should get it. To save you some time, though, here's the three big things about barter economies. At least in post-apocalyptic settings, but the core ideas should be applicable across any barter economy.
Firstly, in a barter-based economy, expect to see a lot of people, or at least a lot of people living in cities, living in what some might consider indentured servitude or even slavery. They do their job, whatever it is, and in exchange they're given food and a place to live. This, of course, assumes that someone is presently working for someone else. If this is the case, however, it makes sense to just cut out the middle man and pay your employees in food and a roof.
Secondly, people's word is a lot more important in barter-based economies than in economies with a standardized medium of exchange. A man's reputation as a trader is an important aspect of his dealings with others in a barter-based economy. If he has a reputation as an honest man, he's likely to find more deals going his way because people trust that he isn't ripping them off.
Which brings me to my third and most important point. In a barter-based economy, there no fixed value. The old maxim "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it" is especially true in a barter economy because, quite simply, different things have different values to different people. If you're bartering with a farmer and you want to trade a shotgun for some eggs, then that shotgun isn't going to be worth too many eggs if that farmer doesn't have shells for it, or if he doesn't know someone who does that he can later trade it to.
What something is worth is utterly dependent on what someone is willing to trade for it, which is then completely dependent on the need or desire for it, and what they actually have to offer for it in return.
Riddles function as magical Bitcoin
You can put a riddle onto any object or store it in your brain. There are constructs plugging through riddle space
>>44256966
>Rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the Inca were masters of city building but nevertheless had no money. In fact, they had no marketplaces at all.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5872764/the-greatest-mystery-of-the-inca-empire-was-its-strange-economy
