Interesting examples of barter itens

I´m trying to come up with a big list of items that could be considered "barter", things small enough to be carried around, very useful in  specific situations and easily trade-able.

Also, I´m trying to go towards the realism side here, and many things I see listed in other places don´t seem able to resist 50 years and still work (examples: small rechargeable batteries and latex condoms). Does anyone have concrete links/ideas on how long some of these things last.

This is what I could come with so far (mostly scavenged from the internet):

•   Portable water filter
•   Hand tools including hatchets, saws, machetes and general fix-it tools
•   Fire making supplies, including lighters, matches, flint fire steel
•   Sanitary supplies including toilet paper, feminine products and diapers (**)
•   Disposable razors and razor blades
•   Prescription drugs, painkillers, and antibiotics (**)
•   First aid remedies such as cough syrup, cortisone cream, boil-ese, calamine lotion and topical pain relievers (**)
•   Spirits such as bourbon, rum, gin, and vodka
•   Coffee and tea (instant coffee is okay)
•   Solar battery charger and rechargeable batteries (**)
•   Standard Batteries (**)
•   Reading glasses
•   Paracord
•   Bags, including large garbage bags as well as smaller zip-close bags
•   Plastic sheeting
•   Duct tape (**)
•   Tie Wraps
•   Heavy plastic sheets and tarps
•   Vinegar and baking soda to use in DIY cleaning supplies (**)
•   Condoms [old world latex ones (**) or currently manufactured sheep intestine ones]
•   Latex or Nitrile gloves in a variety of sizes (**)
•   Fishing gear (line, hooks, lures)
•   Knives of various types including fixed blades, kitchen knives, and box cutters.
•   Condiments and Spices
•   Paperback books on a variety of subjects (mostly technical)
•   Tobacco and cigarette rolling supplies
•   Amusements such as playing cards, crossword puzzle books, Sudoku
•   Pencils & paper
•   Pepper spray (**)
•   Garden seeds
•   Flashlights (powered by?)
•   Empty spray bottles and squirt bottles
•   Hand pumps for both air and liquids
•   Mylar blankets and tents
•   Sewing and mending supplies
•   Knitting or crochet needles and yarn
•   Electronics (computer chips, wiring, diodes)
•   Mechanical pieces (rust free valves, gear, wire, ball bearings, pipe or bags of screws)
•   Non-drug medical supplies (syringes, bandages, tubes)
•   Bullets (specific / rare ones)
•   Golden age memorabilia (pictures, maps and other media)
•   Vinyl Records?
•   Can Openers!
•   Candles
•   Compass
•   Precious metals and gems (gold and silver)

(**) these are the items I have doubt about being still operational/usable after 50 years, I´d love some feedback.

I've considered these things in detail, and if you're interested still when I get back to this post, I'll toss up some ideas for you to consider. That said, there is something you should keep in mind when making these lists...

Oddments worth 1-barter is quite beneficial in that it's vague. It represents that lighter with a half-thing of lighter fuel, those two toys, and a nice warm quilt. It means that everyone is carrying around lots of crap that could be any number of things. This works because if you say they pillaged that old store, finding some cache of stuff inside, maybe there's a few items that are really worth barter all on their own, like a really warm and well made quilt, or a bottle of old shampoo; but that the rest of the stuff when taken together is still worth something. This type of vaguery is useful for a number of reasons:

1. Less Inventory accounting (It's not fun to be itemizing everything you found and ever will trade away. Honestly, keeping track of every bullet, nicknack, and condom is really stepping away from the barter system and replacing it with a roleplayed out and direct trade-economy.  I'll trade you 30 screws and a driver for your bread and cheese. If you do that, drop barter entirely. Just focus on equipment lists and ask yourself, is this a fair trade in the eyes of the npc?)
2. Variable values on many objects. (what's worth 1-barter to someone, might not be worth 1-barter to another guy, the ambiguity allows a generalized, "I've got enough oddments that's its useful to anyone")
3. More realistic. (You have 1-barter worth of condoms.. is that like 50lbs? Enough to trade to people over the course of the month for all your food and shelter needs? That's a LOT of condoms. Keeping track of barter on a specific-macro level means everyone is running across old-caches full of just one thing. Far less likely, far less gritty)

If you accept the above premise, then creating specific barter items actually becomes really easy to make use of. For example: If you're playing a desert and blasted apocalypse, and the only water nearby is control by that hardholder. Maybe that hardholder sells water-tokens worth one barter. You've got enough that you can last yourself a month, if you're okay with always being thirsty and taking sand baths. This is a scarcity defined by the setting, and it limited by capacity. (dont drink the well dry, or everyone will die). Then as you figure some things out, maybe in your world there's a drug that's just plain awesome. And when people open their brain on the drug you give them information related to the WHOLE WORLD rather then just that little scene (or any other interesting narrative function). Maybe doing a dose of this is worth 1-barter too. Hell decide it's a drug grown from a certain plant, whose got that plant? Does that have implications for the characters or the world?

Ask yourself, what thing is most scarce in this world, what thing is most needed, what thing is most wanted. How can I frame that in as "valuable enough to be worth 1-month of living". 1-barter = 1 months survival, worth killing over, a single night with the hottest skinner on earth, etc. That's a lot of condoms, razor blades, tie wraps... There is really big difference between the stuff they might pull out of the ruins and stuff worth 1-barter.

The thing to remember is that you're not giving them an item's list of the stuff they have. They have all kinds of stuff, they've picked it up from all over the place. Most of it's junk, sure, but every now and then you find a particularly good thing buried in the rubble or bartered over at the bar. Oddments are designed to be fluid, you're always finding stuff and trading stuff, it happens like constantly. If they say they wanta razor blade, sure, maybe one of these scrappers has one laying around, maybe they've got a straight knife you could buy and sharpen too. Either way, they're not worth a barter, they're just something he's going out ans trading for. If you wanna make that a scene, then zoom in and deal with the trades that aren't even worth a barter, maybe you'll learn something about the characters involved. If you don't think you will though, then dont bother. If they say they went down there and picked up a razor, as an MC you should be thinking more on the lines of "sure" and barf forth apocalyptica... "We've got these rusted mostly-used razor blades that'll fit your razor, some sprockets, dirt-brown once-white string, and a false tooth, too. If that doesn't float your boat I'll tell you where you might be able to get something that'll suit you, but there's a favor I want In return. ... I want you to tell Lordie over there that's she the finest girl I've ever done saw, and then ask her if she'd consider sitting down and drinking with me sometime. ... You will? Great, when you get back I'll tell you where to find a real-straight razor in this rust-pile."

Finally, if you want to have a smaller-scale barter system, consider making a barter 1-week's survival and shelter in a place. Then up the price on the barter system and rewards are appropriate to the established realism of your particular apocalypse.

Edit:
Since I picked on Condoms a bunch of times here, I felt it was necessary to give an example apocalypse where a condom or strip there of might actually be worth a barter. We live in a world where every time a male bumps uglies, the woman always gets pregnant and sometimes she won't die giving birth. (maybe its sometimes it's actually human, or sometimes it wont poison her from the inside) Whatever the cause may be, she's keeping her knees locked unless their's a doctor around to look after her during the whole affair. In these days... when if you want to get lucky you have to settle down with one chick and pay with everything you got to get that angel to watch over her for months... These days, people will kill to get a good strip of condoms for a night of real fun.

I should mention in the above Apoc, with a strong sexual focus, and a sexual scarcity... it'll also not be a game for those overly sensitive to these issues and the social dynamics (or destruction thereof). Do not approach before talking it out with your entire group and making sure you're not playing with or nearby minors.

Keeping in mind what Ebok said above, here are some items used as barter in my games (there is a food scarcity in my current game):

• Alligator jerky (fresh)
• Live goats
• Canned goods, well stored (from a ship that was possibly frozen in time)
• Bathtub's worth of moonshine
• Scavenged teflon
• A mostly intact truck axle
• A drained but otherwise intact iPad (in theory I don't see why it could survive with some tender loving care, might need new batteries)
• A batch of cubical batteries (probably would last that long, but it's not that hard to build your own batteries - see the Bagdad batteries)
• Lightbulbs, intact and unused
• A guitar
• Books
• Maps
• Drugs - freshly grown marijuana, hallucinogens
• Hides

Thinking about it, I feel the need to mention... Human innovation wont stop just because the world blew up. Batteries could be simple to make if you understand the science, as can lots of other things. Inks... Paper... Electricity is actually hard not to figure out considering what's left behind.

Barter needs to be grown from scarcity, but STUFF can come from all types of things. Inventions, whirly gigs, new machines, scrap-works, hand powered electrical cranks, or what have yous. You arent limited by what was, you can also ask what might be.

This is something that is largely dependent upon your particular Apocalypse.  As Ebok pointed out, it's all about scarcity and utility. For instance, the game we just started up last night is set on an enormous space station now long cut off from Earth. Everything is cobbled together, recycled, repurposed, etc.  It came out during play that a (nearly complete) set of metric sockets was worth one barter.  Similarly, because the station does not have artificial gravity and sections of it are a weightless environment, magnets are an important barter item.  Food and power are also important scarcities, so items that address these issues will no doubt be called into service as brter items as well. Trying to put together a list may get people thinking, but ultimately it all comes back to the nature of your particular Apocalypse.

Oddments worth 1-barter is quite beneficial in that it's vague...

Yes, I can totally get behind your thinking, and I was not intending any of these items to be individually worth 1 barter (the sole exception would be a good technical book, but in that case it would be a item with "name" and subject, not barter). Nor did I intend for the players to list exactly what they have as barter.

What got this list started was we (me and my players) trying to flesh out our scenario. Someone asked: "so, what kind of useful junk are these people trading with?" and someone said "rechargeable batteries", to which I answered: "only if your talking about a Car sized battery, those are easy to make. I don't think the cellphone sized ones could survive long or be manufactured still". You can see how that led to us discussing what could survive or not. I still ponder about medicine.

Also, one of my player come with: "suppose I'm alone in the desert with a gun and oddments worth 1 barter, and I step on something a shouldn't and get hurt or, say, see something moving on the distant horizon. Can I just say I have bandages or a spyglass as part of my barter?". And another player suggested we should have a list, and when someone wants to check their barter for something useful we could randomly draw 5 to 10 items from that list. I guess in the framework of AW that would be a move, wouldn't it? "Check their barter for something useful" - kinda like the chopper move with his gang, but more limited.

Edit: as a reference, our apocalypse is as Mad Max-y as it gets. It is our first AW game and we went with our hearts and full cliché   :)

Ah, I see what you're going for.  How about the following custom move to reflect gear that you might have on hand but which doesn't necessarily constitute actual gear:

"When you rummage through your oddments to find something useful to your present situation, roll+Sharp. On a 10+ you have just the thing, or near enough that it'll work more or less like you need it to. On a 7-9 you can make it work if you have to, but using it this way will be acting under fire. On a miss, you try to make it work and something goes horribly wrong in the process."

Obviously, this move is predicated on having oddments to begin with. Characters with no oddments can't trigger this move. It's up to you as MC to determine whether characters can claim to have oddments regardless of whether or not those oddments taken collectively are worth barter. So sure, I might have a single lens and use it and a hole-punched hunk of black plastic to make a pinhole telescope to see something far away, but that lens by istelf isn't going to get me a month's accommodations.

Also note that I tied the roll to Sharp rather than to the "quantity" of the actual barter itself. Clever people will find a way to do more with less, and people who are Sharp are more likely to accumulate useful bits.  ;)  People with lots of oddments aren't necessarily any better off if they don't have a clue how to use those oddments. This also gives the Driver another super-useful role (which also kind of stands to reason, because if anything is going to need serious on-the-spot jury-rigging in the Apocalypse, it's a vehicle).

This gives you lots of flexibility without having to specify what people have on them at any given time. And if they flub the roll, one of your resulting hard moves could even be to take away their stuff, i.e. they break or ruin or "use up" some valuable oddment(s) and what they have left is no longer worth a barter.

Would this work for your group?

I think logic can dictate most of these things. Say for example... bandages, what is that? some fabric. The answer, sure you can tear up some of those rag-shirts you've got tucked away. Although it's not a real fix, and nothing scavenged is going to be sterile.

Spyglass? Well I guess that depends on when you apocalypse is, but seeing as I really doubt these are just laying around somewhere and still in good working order... (the glue that holds the glass lens together can start to separate within that time.) I'd leave most lens-based things at a 1-barter item. They can be replaced, they're scuffed to all hell, they're highly prized, etc etc. But that's really up to you. Either way, I doubt something as notable as binoculars are just going to fall into the oddment's random stuff salvaged. I'd tell him no, he needs to get him some bi-nocs, as they're hi-tech enough no body can make them or fix them just with the stuff laying around. Especially not given the current education levels likely in the world.

I already have a move similar to these however. When you dig around in your pack for something small that you need, and it's neither hi-tech nor worth a barter to anybody, roll+oddments held (max+3). On a 10+ you've got just the thing in your pile. 7–9, mark-off 1-barter and you've got something good enough. 6 or less, you don't have the thing, but you remember a guy that's got something like it.

You can use this or the move Munin put forward, either way.

At least two AW-derived games have rules that touch on this.

Dungeon World has a purchasable item, Adventuring Gear. It comes with 5 uses; whenever you need rope or chalk or a spike or a 10' pole or something like that, you mark off a use.

Early versions of Uncharted Worlds (high-tech space opera) gave every character 3 gadget slots; when you need a wrist-communicator or grappling hook or scout drone, they spend a gadget slot to declare that they have it. I think that mechanic got changed or removed; I don't know what replaced it.