Hardholder's gifts (2nd ed)

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Hardholder's gifts (2nd ed)
« on: September 27, 2016, 07:50:40 AM »
So in the 2nd ed you pay 1-2 barter at the start of the session, and most playbooks' barter section reflects this: a barter is worth a few sessions tribute, a sessions hire of a bodyguard etc.

Not so with the Hardholder! Her barter section still counts stuff in months and weeks.
My question is this: should we count it as an error and just use the other plabooks barter sections as reference?

Or is the purpose to describe what the Hardholders gifts are worth for npc's? As in: 1 barter is enough to keep an npc going for a month, but a pc's month is probably more expensive (in my games a session rarely covers an entire month at least). That would line up pretty well with the angels treatment costs for pc's and npc's.

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Ebok

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Re: Hardholder's gifts (2nd ed)
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2016, 07:37:07 PM »
My thoughts on the matter are simple. 1-barter does not equal 1-barter. It is a cinematic element that enables the telling of a story, it represents exactly what what it says it does. For PC's it represents their lifestyle, their appearance, their quality of life, and applies to the player a way to realize scarcity. So that they can feel the anticipation of what would happen if they did not have enough.

If you shoot a player character, even twice, they're probably not dead. An NPC sure is. Are they made of different stuff? Nope. Does the gun do less damage to their tissue? Nope.

An NPC can live well for a month on 1-barter given by the hardholder. But that same NPC could very well pay another PC 2-barter to do something and have it only cover the costs of their living for that session. If that session happened to be just 1 day, I think it's obvious that the barter that represented that npc's 30days, is not used up in half a day from the PC. They aren't living that much differently.

So to answer your question: Do what you want, what you think feels right, what works with the logic of your group. I for one would attribute it as a special power given to the Hardholder. The barter from his wealth can be used for More then the average barter when provided to npcs.