I am having some difficulties understanding how Barter works in Apocalypse World.

I am used to having money (or wealth in general) treated in two kind of manners in rpgs:
1) Games where you count every single copper piece, and there is a price for everything (D&D, for example)
2) Games where there is a stat (or a advantage, or a bonus, or something character sheet) that say that you are "wealthy" (or "poor") and you can afford  (or not) to buy things that other characters can't, without counting coins.
Sometimes the "wealthy" stat can change following a exceptional payment, but it still remain a stat, non a number of coins.

"Barter" is confusing to me because sometimes it has to be counted like (1), other times its like a stat like in (2). When the player create his character, barter is used in a very abstract manner ("and you have two barter"). A lot of characters get some barter at the beginning of a session, without having to play getting it. But then there is the price list, and the "make them pay" MC move...

From my reading of the rules, the characters are supposed to keep track of the barter they gets and spend during the game session, and the MC should "make them pay" sometimes to keep track of what they spend  simply living and eating. But it seems to me overtly complicated for the results (it's even more complicated that counting coins, and less precise), and I think I am missing something here.

Apart from the general problem, I have some particular ones in my game.

All the other PCs work for Marco, the Hardholder.  So they should get the listed amount of barter every month? (4-barter the Battlebabe, 1-barter the driver, etc.)? If the Hardholder negotiate a different amount, this mean that Marco can keep the difference (if she pay them less) or has to pay the difference (if it's more) from the barter she gets at the beginning of every session?  (I am thinking that would be very easy to keep that barter, instead of losing it at the end of the session: all she have to do is lend money to the other characters, as "advance pay"...)
If the Hardholder increase her gang  by hiring other guys, she get the barter to pay them during the following sessions, or she has to pay the difference from the surplus? In this second case, how can she save to increase her gang, if she can't keep the surplus?

The 1-barter and 4-barter that the Driver and the battlebabe are getting are counted in their total barter, or it's assumed that they spend the same amount every month?

Where is the battlebabe getting 4-barter a month from?

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:
Where is the battlebabe getting 4-barter a month from?

Remind me, where is Marco getting the Barter to pay the other PCs in the first place?

Eero wrote:
Remind me, where is Marco getting the Barter to pay the other PCs in the first place?

Cool. Got it.

From my reading of the rules, the characters are supposed to keep track of the barter they gets and spend during the game session, and the MC should "make them pay" sometimes to keep track of what they spend  simply living and eating.

Oh, to add: it's ALSO perfectly reasonable for you to say, "Marco, your holding can support its gang and its population and maintain its structure and its gigs, but dude, no way it can also maintain a battlebabe. You're going to need to come up with 4-barter a month, and not from your surplus, or you can't pay her. What's your plan?"

-Vincent

A little more clear, but I have still some doubts.

lumpley wrote:

From my reading of the rules, the characters are supposed to keep track of the barter they gets and spend during the game session, and the MC should "make them pay" sometimes to keep track of what they spend  simply living and eating.

Correct! So:

It's not your responsibility to give anybody barter. You can give people barter if you want to, to follow the fiction.

The hardholder, the battlebabe, and the driver can negotiate whatever pay and rent between them they want. It's not your responsibility to abide by their agreements, or to make their agreements make sense or be possible, that's up to them. Their agreements don't have mechanical weight.

"Make them buy" and "take away their stuff" both give you direct access to the characters' barter, or you can threaten it by announcing future badness. "I dunno, Marco. You're going to have to do something about the waste in the manufactory or you'll have to cut your peoples' pay," with significant looks at the battlebabe and driver. If the holding's providing the barter, it's perfectly appropriate for the barter to follow the fortunes of the holding.

The hardholder can, conceivably, improve the holding by buying better, hiring new gang people or buying better walls or whatever. His surplus isn't suitable for this, precisely because he can't save up to make major purchases. He'll have to figure out some other way to get a big mess of barter.

In fact, here's a thing you can say, if you want to: "Marco, sure, you can go over into the barrens and hire enough thugs to bring your gang up to large, just by promising to pay them, but making good will strain your holding's resources bad. Change your gang to 'large,' add 'want: desertion,' and now on a 7-9 on your wealth roll, you have to choose two wants, not just one." You can say something similar if he wants to pay the battlebabe and the driver extra too.

In general: as MC, don't be distracted by the fact that barter looks kind of like money. It's not money. It's a thing you can use for misdirection for your moves, that's all.

How you use it in play! That's the question.

Never use fractional barter. If something isn't worth at least 1 whole barter, it's not worth your tracking it. "Sure, you can buy that, no sweat." If somebody's buying a LOT of small stuff, and you feel like future badness could come of it, create it as a threat (naturally). Use a countdown clock to track it, not fractional barter.

Never worry about how much barter the PCs have, ever. It's their job to track it, not yours. If they want more barter, it's their job to come up with ways to get it, not yours. If they want to spend it, there are a couple of moves for that, so that's easy, and otherwise they should just say what they spend it on. When they say that they buy something, tell them how much barter it costs them, and if they have enough, they subtract it, and if they don't, they have to do whatever they're going to do about that.

Once a month, have everybody subtract 1-barter for their living expenses, unless they've got unusual circumstances, like the hardholder or the maestro d', or unless something else weird is going on. Just at the start of the session: "oh, hey, it's been about a month, yeah? Everybody subtract 1-barter for living expenses. Marie, you've been living awfully luxe, as you've made clear, so you subtract 3-barter."

If they don't have the barter to cover it, you get to make a move. Put them in a spot, take away their stuff, announce future badness, whatever makes sense to you.

If an NPC is employing them, have the NPC pay them when he pays them. If the holding is employing them, have the holding pay them when it pays them. Sometimes the NPC or the holding won't be able to pay; they'll have to deal with that when it happens. It's your job to tell them when, and if you're looking forward and you think it's going to happen, start announcing future badness about it now so that when it DOES happen, they believe you.

If they have 100-barter, hooray for them! All the above applies just the same. It's their job to figure out what to spend it on, not yours. Don't worry about it.

Follow your principles and agenda. 1-barter is SO MUCH money, a month's food and rent, and so untied to any real economy, precisely so that you have all the wiggle room and abstraction you need. Make their lives interesting, don't bore yourself counting beans.

-Vincent

Moreno, it might be useful to consider Barter with a simile from a very similar game you know: in Solar System terms Barter is an ultimately arbitrary point of contact between the fiction (flow of wealth from and to a player character) and the mechanics (a way of counting that wealth and determining when they run out). The concept of wealth, as mechanized by Barter, is utilized by the GM in dramatic coordination (is it interesting to bring Barter into this fiction, now?), setting consequences (this event, does it inspire loss or gain of Barter?) and driving new content (PC has a lot of Barter or none at all, and either implies possible new scenarios to consider). In terms of when and where to utilize it, whether to ignore it or not, Barter is the same as something like the Instinct Pool SS characters have.

About players trying to maneuver for character benefit by establishing favourable fiction, that's happening because you have a contentious social dynamic in the group, which seems to me to be unrelated to any specific game mechanics (except perhaps mechanics that allay these problems, but Barter doesn't have anything to do with that). Ideally in this sort of game your baseline exploratory activity, detached from any game mechanics, is neutral of character interests simply because the players are not yet aligned for or against anything in the fiction: you can just establish stuff like whether characters are employed or not together, with no conflict of interests, because you're not yet struggling - you're just setting up the scenario, discovering what the world is like for the player characters. A modest example of this is when you establish that the hardhold is dirt poor because that's interesting, not because the GM won a shouting match; a more extreme example is when the players of Trollbabe, say, plot to begin a scenario with the Trollbabe washing up on a beach alone, poor, tired and hungry, all because everybody finds it dramatic and exciting. The struggling part should come about later, when the fiction is robust enough for it and the scenario is wound tightly enough to make the character spring into action. Having the player detached from the character fighting the GM over whether his character's house can have a wire fence is a dysfunction of some sort, because by default these sorts of decisions are either shunted off into the fiction (does your character buy one?) or agreed upon amiably in the interests of dramatic coordination (does the scenario need that fence to be interesting?).

I'll also give a shot on the issue of PC hardholders paying PC professionals. My understanding of the method would indicate that the PC hardholder may, indeed, hire folks and have the community pay them, but the GM is the one who can tell the hardholder that the community can't afford the wages he's slinging out. Specifically, I again cite dramatic coordination: don't think that just because you established a prosperous community that obviously can afford a battlebabe, and just because she got her wages last month, don't assume that just because of those facts she will obviously be entitled to having that situation go on forever. No, you fuck up the situation to make it interesting: what will the hardholder do about the worsening economy of the community, will he maybe stop the payments to that expensive battlebabe? Could be, could be, and putting pressure on the players to resolve these sorts of economic deficiencies is interesting; allow them to prove to you that their community, indeed, can pay everybody "book wages". It's easy to start the game with a community that has been able to do so in the past, but the only proof of present capability and future prosperity is ultimately in playing the game, going to the dice and seeing what's what.

As far as I understand the above is exactly what Vincent said: the hardholder is fictionally positioned to sling around paid positions in his staff, but the GM is enabled by the rules to threaten this status quo in whatever way he finds entertaining. Bad harvest, trouble in the manufactory, evil robbers taking all the trading goods, whatever. The economy of the community itself is not even simulated, as it's all a playing field for the GM's imagination in the interests of producing interesting situations (dramatic coordination, in other words).

Finally, because there might be some misunderstanding of nuance here: that price list that says that battlebabes get this or that amount of money for working does not indicate an entitlement - the default assumption of the game is that nobody's getting Barter from anywhere. The players have to establish the fictional position that provides them Barter, whether by doing jobs or stealing or whatever. Moreno's description of the situation sounds a bit like they're reading that list of "what things are worth" as the default situation of a player character. Of course it's possible to begin the game already salaried, that's just fictional positioning. And of course the GM can threaten that position.

Eero: Exactly! Right on, top to bottom.

-Vincent