Sat Nov 03, 2007 12:17 pm by Durgan
Here's my thoughts:
First of all, I like the current resource system. When we threw a wrench into the mix and asked the GM's whether we could skin the armadillos and Rhinos at the Sept. FH event (which garnered us a supply of unique 'researchable' hides), it was really cool compared to something dropping coins. Also, a Rogue's barter is more characterful using resources than coins.
It also gives a feeling of a damaged world. Even though it's around 6(?) years after the cataclysm, things are still going to be up in arms, especially when societies who would be reaching the level for monetary needs (like Haven) are being destroyed soon after finally reaching stablilty. And Winter Haven is right out in this idea, I think. Hell, there we don't even freakin' have an intact town, much less the time to sit down and come up with a monetary system. It's literally a clearing in the woods where people just happen to be living.
And the FH crowd is soon going to be going through this as well. Sure, we are moving to Caldonia, but all our heros are dead, leaving all the refugees on their own to pick themselves up from the ashes. I think we'll be hugely lucky if the Caldonians can even spare a simple out-of-the-way settlement for us to regroup in and rebuild as our own, seeing as Caldonia sounds like it's barely somewhere between WH and FH, society wise.
And this is coming from someone who initially thought coinage would be cool, prior to the death of Haven, because we were reaching that 'stablility point' where a society can finally have the leisure to think of such things. Also, the general ease of use and easy of carrying such things as opposed to resource tags and the space they take up. But then I thought about how by doing so we would be joining nearly all other LARPs, MMO's, video games, and tabletop D&D systems. The resource system makes us unique. It provides an additional emphasis on how we are playing our 'post-apocolyptic' LARP.
The only way I can see coinage coming into game is if it can be purely character-made, traded, and controlled resource (because we are the ones who impact the game world, not a faceless NPC banker), because the whole game is about no GM hand-holding. The problem with that is the assured abuse by some players, and possibly just general apathy towards doing the work a monetary system needs.
Or maybe use the coin system, but represent it like Lambic says, using gems and precious metals.