From time to time, the gift economy appears in RPGs - but it’s a niche enough topic that I can probably drag some(?) uncommon advice out of it, after using it in one of my most recent campaigns, set among the Sustainer Cells of the megastructure.
The Sustainer economy works off of personal debt. Goods and services are given away unprompted, and the receiver later reciprocates, getting leaned on if they seem like they’ll never carry out their half of the process. If the PCs want specific items, they have to find someone who makes them, figure out what they want, and go seek it so they can give it away and get their target NPC into their debt.
In this system, it is key that no gift ever quite equals another. To erase your debts with exact returns is to cut yourself from the social fabric.
Above the background noise of the clattering ledger is a system based loosely off Moka exchange as a type of aristocratic conflict. To compete over social standing, two people can give reciprocal gifts, each greater than the last. When one fails to repay, they have lost, losing status as the victor gains it.
Start Your PCs in Debt
Every position in the gift economy offers a hook of some kind except one - the blank slate. If you are in debt, you’re always looking for ways to get out of it. If someone owes you, you’re always looking for ways to leverage that. But since the PCs in the Sustainer game started off without debts, interacting with the economy was optional.
Future campaigns among the Sustainers will tie debt into starting equipment - along with the gear from your background, you can throw some dice on an items table; but for each die you roll, you owe one of the local NPCs.
You Have to Track NPCs, But Not That Much
Having to track personal debts means that you can’t just have the PCs throw handfuls of money at an equipment list in your players’ handbook and then call it a day. But most of what you need is just what they can give, and what they especially want. “Weaponsmith, wants strange metals” will get you far enough. You also don’t need extended, time-consuming shopping sessions - just the time it takes for a player to cross “tapestry” off their inventory and add “gave Kelebek a tapestry” to their sheet.
It’s Best to Stay Local
The benefit of the gift economy is that it entwines the PCs with their community. Even the most bloodthirsty adventurer presumably wants equipment, and if you want equipment you have to consider the people around you instead of slinging a bag of bloodstained coins into a blank void labeled “shopkeeper”. Because of the time it takes to develop PC/NPC relationships, and the extra tracking you need for debts, you benefit from having the PCs return to the same place, with the same NPCs and the same debts. In games where the PCs wander far and forever, never staying in the same town for two nights in a row, there’s no time to tie them into anyone who isn’t moving along with them. This applies just as much in-world - why would I want to have some stranger who just wandered into town today in my debt, when there’s a good chance they won’t be here to give anything back?
Your NPCs Have to Be Active
Running a game with more PC <--> community involvement lets you lead into a game with more PC ambition - not just to accumulate wealth, but to do things with it. A game with PC ambition then benefits from codified downtime, and codifying downtime loops back around and helps you track your NPCs - because they have to be busy.
Your NPCs want the players in their debt - so, when possible, they give the PCs gifts, entirely unprompted. The NPCs then want these debts to be paid - so, when possible, they start standing around and hinting about how much they would simply love one of those dresses they weave up north in Cell Orakbocegi.
Every Gift is a Hook
Or, at least, an excuse to go somewhere. Scrabble through dungeons in order to get the favorite gift of someone you desperately need the aid of, or embark on an overland expedition to find someone who actually wants this pile of gold coins (because, remember - when they aren’t coinage, gold only holds value as an aesthetic trapping. Someone might want two or three to make jewelry with, but nobody around here needs the other five hundred… but maybe in the distant city-states they’ll want some?)
Now - all of this assumes a pretty inabstract system. There are no Debt Points (at least, not that the players can see), no randomized values, no randomized inventories. There are goods, and there are people. There are abstract alternatives - it is a matter of preference.
This post is mirrored on a substack I have, because ???it seemed like a good idea at the time???. It is meant to be a place for shorter, more common posts - but we both know there's no way I'll manage to write short posts.
Addenda (12/7/24)
How do I leverage a debt someone owes me?
If you wait long enough, your debtors will give you gifts in order to flip the balance. As long as they haven't yet, you can ask them to resolve the debts in a way you want - "Hey, if you [give me this/do this for me], you will [owe me half as much / owe me barely / I will owe you barely]", and see if they agree to your terms.
How much bookkeeping is this, really?
Here's a worked example, from the Sustainer campaign:
The topmost four are personal gifts, the bottom pair is the track for a Moka exchange-equivalent in progress. "X owes Y in exchange for Z", and that's all.
If my PCs are outsiders, how do I make them respect the debt owed?
If your PCs just arrived in town and expect to be on the other side of the world next week, they'll absolutely go "Aha! I can rack up a bunch of debts and then run, never to return!" - and your NPCs know this!
Historically, these low-trust systems are one of the situations where you get actual immediate barter - "I'll hand you this grain, you hand me those swords, and then we turn around and walk away". NPCs may demand this mode of exchange, or they may (as happened in the Sustainer campaign once) require that you give gifts in a party first, in order to tie you into the local economics by virtue of you being the one owed, instead of the one owing.
That ledger looks like a lot of pretty major purchases - what do you do for food, or a night at the inn?
For food, this culture is assumed to have a high level of "everyday communism". Assuming you're socially connected and in good standing, people don't indebt you for food - you're a member of the community, and you need food to live. If you're provisioning a large, long-term expedition, you'll be indebted for that - but you don't have "living expenses".
"Inns" aren't really a relevant cultural concept - the expectation is more that, having inserted yourself into the local economics (probably via throwing a party, as above), you are hosted by a local magnate, who wants a good relationship with Adventuring Sorts as a status symbol (and, perhaps, in order to ask you to do something about this local monster...).
What about XP?
Here, I can give less advice and more ideas - the Sustainer campaign had no leveling.
If you wanted, you could retain the hypothetical GP values of extracted loot, and use that as the XP reward for its recovery.
You could mark out particularly strange items as capital-T Treasures and reward huge chunks of XP or entire levels for them.
Either of the above could reward magnificence
- keeping only as much XP as you have in wealth displayed, proving the depth of your pockets and how good an idea it is for others to follow behind you. This also provides a choice between XP and possessions - anything you give away to create or resolve a debt costs you levels.
Or, you could abandon treasure leveling entirely and use boasts - rewarding players with levels and stat improvements for public, heroic deeds.
