After the collapse - a world without money?
The Wanderer is a little different in how it views post apocalyptic society. In the world of The Wanderer, a social collapse transformed the world rather than a zombie outbreak, a plague, a meteor, or a nuclear war.
In a world where a primary reason for the apocalypse was financial collapse, would we still use cash, or would a fiat currency that has no intrinsic value be discarded in favour of a bartering system?
We’ve always believed it would be the latter. We’ve been using cash in the game because it makes design much easier, but we’ve had a task on our list for a while to trial removing all cash and to replace it with a pure bartering system.
I finally worked on this herculean task this week. I can certainly see why post apocalyptic RPGs favour retaining some kind of currency (whether it be caps in Fallout, or just cash) - it makes everything far simpler to design! However, after working through the issues, we found that a bartering system makes for intriguing gameplay - the player is forced to think strategically about which items to carry, and is constantly weighing up the burden of an item against its trading value.
Perhaps the biggest win is that since it permeates every area of the game, it adds another layer of depth, drawing the player further into a very different world - a world without money. I love that The Wanderer is a game without cash, where you’ll have to barter for everything to survive.
Posted by @GrantTheAnt.
