Post Apocalyptic Monetary System (Deathlands has the best Idea)

[indy523]

So someone mentioned the issues with monetary systems for Space Opera campaigns but I would like to discuss what would be the most likely system in a world that survives nuclear Armageddon!

 

James Axler's Deathlands books to my mind have the best idea.  Bullets!  Ammunition!

 

In a world where everyone is scavenging the dead husks of nuked out cities with a population less than 10% the world was before the catastrophe the main source of power would be guns.  Guns are useless without ammo so it stands to reason the one commodity everyone would want to barter for would be ammunition.  Finding guns might be easy given the number of gun stores and the guns that would be stored in the homes of people that have been forced out of their homes or who died off but ammunition by default would be a rare and dwindling commodity giving a local baron controlling a town both power and wealth but as that ammo is used up to retain power so to is their wealth.

 

Black Powder weapons then may become more common place as people can much easier make gunpowder than they can the High Explosive propellant that fuels modern smokeless powder.  A black powder charge may be worth a penny while a 9mm round for a modern pistol might be the equivalent of an ounce of gold circa the 1880's

 

Certainly Barter would be a huge mainstay in this land but I would rate the items most likely to have a stable trading value because everyone wants them as

 

1) Bullets and ammo (all kinds including bows and arrows, black powder as well as modern ammunition.

2) Fuel especially petroleum

3) Livestock / Poultry any animal that can either be used for food or can assist in hunting food.

4) Wood / Clay

5) Any modern device that can be made to work. i.e. Junk

6) Glass either intact material from pre war days or current glass made by hand

7) Ore Copper, steel, etc.

😎 Chips, electrical cables, supplies etc. that can be used to make electricity with anything that is a permanent magnet as being a premium.

 

Let me know what list you guys think might be better.

[Chris Goodwin]

Pre-war coins, as long as they're not radioactive.

[Tjack]

48 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Pre-war coins, as long as they're not radioactive.

 
   For smelting down for useable metals or as currency?         IMHO I’d vote yes on one and no on two.

[mallet]

13 hours ago, indy523 said:

 

Black Powder weapons then may become more common place as people can much easier make gunpowder than they can the High Explosive propellant that fuels modern smokeless powder.  A black powder charge may be worth a penny while a 9mm round for a modern pistol might be the equivalent of an ounce of gold circa the 1880's

 

Ammo is a good one. I think though the value should depend on what the most common fire arm available is, plus the most common ammo. 

 

A quick search on google shows that the two most common ammo's and firearms are the .22 and 9mm, so those would be the most common to have lots of (and to be found, both ammo and guns) in a post-apoc world. So they would be lower in value in my opinion. Another factor is how much damage they do, more damage equals more worth. For example, 12 gage shotgun shells are also super common currently and make the top 5 most abundant ammo in the USA today, so while they might not be rare after an apocalypse the fact that they are so deadly makes them worth more.  

 

So maybe a .22 is worth $1.00, a 9mm $2.00, 12 gage shot gun shell $4.00, etc. 

 

Factors like condition, (and is it original or a re-load) might adjust the value of each bullet up or down. 

 

Black powder might be sold by weight. How easy it is to make (certain areas might not have the right natural resources to create it) and how many people are making it, would be a factor on how much it is worth compared to Bullets and to how many people have access to Black Powder weapons. 

 

Depending on the setting, clean water might be super valuable and maybe used as a currency, but most certainly bought and sold. Most rivers and natural fresh water sources are today too polluted to safely drink so imagine how bad they will be after a nuclear war.

[Tjack]

2 hours ago, mallet said:

 

Black powder might be sold by weight. How easy it is to make (certain areas might not have the right natural resources to create it) and how many people are making it, would be a factor on how much it is worth compared to Bullets and to how many people have access to Black Powder weapons. 

     How tough could this stuff be to make....I saw Captain Kirk do it in about in an hour, shoot the Gorn and still have time for commercials.😜🖖

   (Just kidding, I know how finicky the procedure can get in real life.)

[Chris Goodwin]

15 hours ago, Tjack said:

 
   For smelting down for useable metals or as currency?         IMHO I’d vote yes on one and no on two.

 

Whichever the GM wants.  

 

In Gamma World, I assume that domars are pre-war coins that are denominated in 5, 1, .25, .10, .05, and .01, and are approximately the sizes of our current coin equivalents.  If I were running a game in post-apocalyptic America I'd probably use pre-war American coins.

 

But that's me.  Everyone's game is their own.  

[Duke Bushido]

So much of this depends on the campaign itself.  What is the state od metallurgy?  The state od manufacturing?  Are we in general relying on restored PRE-war equipment?  Are we attempting to restore such equipment?  Is this a universal drive throughout the land?  Is it possible to manufacture crude repair parts and impossible to aource -prewar parts?  Is smelting commonly done?  Casting?  Forging?

 

If the answer to most of these is yes, then bits of metal by type and weight.  If the answer to most od these is not yes, then it won t work well.

 

Your currency, if there is no universal society printing and backing something as worthless as a cloth/paper blend with the understanding that it will be treated as valuable, has to have relatively-consistent intrinsic value- it has to be something wanted and needed- or at least understood to be necessary for the continuation or advancement- better still, the _improvement_ of the status quo.

 

Waterworld used _dirt_, for Pete's sake!  Why?  Damned important for growing food, and incredibly scarce.  Everyone knew that.

 

When it lookes like Obama had a chance at getting the nomination, you couldn't find a .22 long rifle round in the southeastern U.S!    (I dont know if this is news to,any of you, but it's true, I am afraid) because the vast majority of knuckle-dragging inbretarded swamp trolls and hill scoggins out _knew_ that society was going to collapse under the gangsta mandates and belt-finches-at-the-knees laws and the outlawing of anythinf but rap music and mal liquor (Dear God, oh Dear God I _wish_ I was making this up.....  For what it is worth, I blame Hollywood, the music industry, and most of all BET for making absolutely certain that ignorance, noise, violence, and ridiculously-dressed circus clown antics are relentlessly puahed as the ultra-coil ideal for all black Americans.  Guess what?!  The black americans aren't the only ones getting that message!  Idiots!)

 

Anyway...

 

The swap trolls and knuckle-dragging hill scoggins and other members of the guns-before-brains crowd one-hundred percent knew that a black president meant a new Boys in the HUD ethic for American life, and we would all,be so busy smuggling weed and crack for our black overlords (again-  I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS CRAP UP!  I _live_ here!  I listened to this unbridled stupidity day in and day out!!  This is what you get when you spend fifty years consistently,cutting education!)

 

Anyway, they all knew that America was going to descend into into a brutal post apocalyptic wasteland, like mid-nineties Los Angeles, wherw human life would be an endless struggle to just barely scrape up subsistence (like Kentucky, if you aren't horse people) and live another day.

 

The .22 long round was the key!  Anyone can fire a 22 rifle, and they can be used to bag all sorts of small game, and to repell the mud-covered, bone-wearing, facially-tattooed survivors of the next town over when they came to steal your canned veggies and make off with your women!

 

In fact, they could be used for preemptive counterstrikes against those redneck savages, allowing you to attack _their_ fortified nightclubs and churches, sex up their livestock, and steal their toilet paper.

 

The 22 bullet, as all these people foresaw, was the absolute _key_ to survival in the post-Obama collapse.

 

(People, did you notice the spike in prepped bull crap on youtube during this era?  I am NOT making this up!  I am ludicrous and entertaining, but I would have thought to myself "no; this is too far.  This is so damned out there that they wont even take it as hyoerbole or bad humor" and nit even _attempted_ to have pursued the insanity required to put such thoughts into words.  Alas, for eight months, it was the only conversation in thw southeast US.....  Damn!  I love it here, but I really hate the people).

 

Stopoing that before it gets even more revealing and heart-breakingly still unfabricated....  But in that particular work of fiction, the 22 long round was foreseen as the currency of the future.  Seriously; _that_ qas why you xoulsnt find them _anywhere_:  everyone decided that he qas foing to do his damnedest to be a 22 Long mullionaire!  (I know way, _way_ to many people who, today, own more 22 Long than they could hope to fire in what remains of their lives, simply because they were expecting to need a couple hundred thousand rounds for barter and trade.....

 

 

 

And you know... Dating, I think, given some of the conversations..   Or something kind of like Dating....

 

 

(And yet, somehow, the mist eloquent, folksy, charming president we have had in a hundred years- _he_ was, _somehow_, "an animal..."

 

"I am going to murder, rape, and steal my way to become king of the wasteland caused by that filthy animal trying to get me better medical treatment..."

 

I hope that comes across correctly- that last but was sarcasm,  ut I havent used it in so long I am not sure I got it right.  😕

 

 

so,..... You know.....

 

your currency is eithet backed by an organization large enough to enforce the great pretending that makes it valuable, or it somethinf that actually _is_ valuable and understood my all to be valuable.  In this case, it should be difficult enough to obtain that you dont have to lug about thousands of units of it to trade for bread, and you need to be aware of things like "this armor is made from sixty to ninety pounds of steel, lots of smelting and firework, and considerable skill.  I bet it is going to cost me more than five strips of hammered steel.

 

do _not_ look at videogames for ideas.  Pop caps and other such popular wasteland videogame currency really and truly _only_ work because you are absolutely forbidden and completely unable to question them.  No one is going say "wow! Fifty arrows crafted from actual brittle marsh reeds?  Man, I have got a full-functioning gieger counter and I will swap you _right now_ for them things!  I just love the way they explode into splinters and paper-like bits when you release the string....!"

 

 

so...  There was probably a point here. Just focus on the idea that whatever it is you use, it needs to be universally valuable to the society using it.

 

 

 

[Tjack]

5 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Whichever the GM wants.  

 

In Gamma World, I assume that domars are pre-war coins that are denominated in 5, 1, .25, .10, .05, and .01, and are approximately the sizes of our current coin equivalents.  If I were running a game in post-apocalyptic America I'd probably use pre-war American coins.

 

But that's me.  Everyone's game is their own.  

     While they may have some value as a perceived basis for re-establishing a monetary system they are useless in and of themselves to back that up. Coins during the Old Western era for instance were made of solid gold, silver or copper.
    However, current American coinage have little to no valuable metals in them.  However they are full of good quality base metals with relatively low melting points. Making them useful for soldering as well as in the making of small cast metal objects like jewelry. 

[indy523]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

so,..... You know.....

 

 

 

You know it is funny, I have met several gun enthusiasts from the south and have never met anyone that matches your stereotype.  I remember some people buying ammo and weapons because there were promises to outlaw them but that was not an assumption by the people making the purchases, it was the rhetoric of the campaign which was pretty damn clear.  They tried to implement what they were saying as well if I remember but were stopped by the courts.

 

I decided I have absolutely no use for arrogant leftists that go around lecturing people on how ist and phobe all the right wingers were when  I saw on twitter the  video a young black kid made in a Seattle or Portland hospital, I forget which exactly.  Kid was maybe 20 and he was talking about the young white BLM Antifa member who, because the young black kid had a red MAGA hat on, approached him called him the N-Word to his face and then stabbed him in the stomach with a kitchen knife.  Luckily this kid survived.  He was pretty calm and reasonable considering what he went through but still did not have complementary things to say about the person that stabbed him.  Of course the cops never made an arrest because you know protesters were making a stand for Die versity.

 

See leftists can talk this kind of talk all they want but all the most terrible racial slurs and complete stupidity seems to come from their side.

 

For myself I would have no issue handing out at a bar with some rednecks who believe in Open Carry.  They tend not to ever pull their weapons or do stupid things with them.  It might be the training they got in all those  concealed carry firearms classes.  You know the ones that Alec Baldwin should have taken. That incident suggests to me it is the leftists that have guns I should worry about.

 

But whadda I know ....

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, indy523 said:

You know it is funny, I have met several gun enthusiasts from the south and have never met anyone that matches your stereotype.  I remember some people buying ammo and weapons because there were promises to outlaw them but that was not an assumption by the people making the purchases, it was the rhetoric of the campaign which was pretty damn clear.  They tried to implement what they were saying as well if I remember but were stopped by the courts.

 

I decided I have absolutely no use for arrogant leftists that go around lecturing people on how ist and phobe all the right wingers were when  I saw on twitter the  video a young black kid made in a Seattle or Portland hospital, I forget which exactly.  Kid was maybe 20 and he was talking about the young white BLM Antifa member who, because the young black kid had a red MAGA hat on, approached him called him the N-Word to his face and then stabbed him in the stomach with a kitchen knife.  Luckily this kid survived.  He was pretty calm and reasonable considering what he went through but still did not have complementary things to say about the person that stabbed him.  Of course the cops never made an arrest because you know protesters were making a stand for Die versity.

 

See leftists can talk this kind of talk all they want but all the most terrible racial slurs and complete stupidity seems to come from their side.

 

For myself I would have no issue handing out at a bar with some rednecks who believe in Open Carry.  They tend not to ever pull their weapons or do stupid things with them.  It might be the training they got in all those  concealed carry firearms classes.  You know the ones that Alec Baldwin should have taken. That incident suggests to me it is the leftists that have guns I should worry about.

 

But whadda I know ....

      There are any number of political websites on the web.  Please do not try to turn this into one.   This conversation is about Monetary Systems in a Fantasy Post Apocalyptic World.  If you want to discuss your views about gun control....take it elsewhere.  At least to a more appropriate thread.

[LoneWolf]

It is really going to depend on how much society has recovered.  Right after the apocalypse it is going to be barter systems with no real currency.   Things that will be valuable will be those necessary for survival. Only after the basic necessitates for survival are plentiful will other things become valuable. Once society has recovered to the point where basic survival is not an issue means of protection and comfort become what everyone is looking to obtain. For a real monetary system to develop you need a stable society.  

[archer]

Ammo shell casings for reloading. It's very difficult to make those on your own.

 

Raw lead for muzzle-loading bullets - most often found "in the wild" as tire weights on old cars.

 

Salt - you need it for health but also for flavoring and for tanning hides

 

Spices - because people crave flavor. Garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, cocoa, honey, bullion, baking supplies. Canning supplies (jars, lids, wax).

 

Brewing yeast, baking yeast

 

Candy

 

Pre-war liquor, tea, coffee, cigarettes

 

Medicine - antibiotics, aspirin, Tylenol, Motrin, multi-vitamin, soap, cough medicine, sunscreen, Chapstick, feminine hygiene products, diabetic supplies if the apocalypse just happened and there's still diabetic people around.

 

Dental floss - also works for cordage/thread.

 

Heirloom vegetable and grain seeds

 

Hand pump and/or siphon to move water or fuel out of inaccessible places.

 

Wool clothing if you're in a cold climate.

 

Matches, fire starters, flint, lighters, lighter fluid, lamps, wicks, candles

 

Decent camping stuff because there'll be more people on the road than available supplies. Pup tent, sleeping bag, space blanket, backpack, crank flashlight, waterproof windbreaker, tarp. The smaller and more lightweight, the better because people will quickly figure out they can't carry a crapload of gear while not eating well.

 

Lockpick gun - for getting into other people's stash quietly or getting into abandoned buildings quietly.

 

Bolt cutters - for when you get into a place a bit more obviously. A lot of the good salvage will be behind padlocks and/or chains.

 

Fishing line, weights, and hooks

 

Books on herb uses.
Books on how to survive.

Books on how to grow food.

Books on how to repair things.

Books on recognizing plants.

 

Paper maps (of other areas, you don't want other people foraging the good stuff within easy riding distance). Yellow pages of other towns.

 

Cheap knives and whetstones. Hand tools will be popular but most people won't be willing to trade an irreplaceable tool.

 

Portable preserved food, particularly meats.

 

Needle and thread. Heavier needles for mending tarps, sails, and such. Duct tape, silicone, scissors, pins, safety pins, super glue

 

Mousetraps and fly swatters, ant & roach killer

 

Chickens/eggs

 

Rechargeable batteries

 

Cloth and mesh bags

[Chris Goodwin]

On 4/9/2022 at 7:10 PM, Tjack said:

     While they may have some value as a perceived basis for re-establishing a monetary system they are useless in and of themselves to back that up. Coins during the Old Western era for instance were made of solid gold, silver or copper.
    However, current American coinage have little to no valuable metals in them.  However they are full of good quality base metals with relatively low melting points. Making them useful for soldering as well as in the making of small cast metal objects like jewelry. 

 

They're also very, very difficult to counterfeit using presumed post-apocalyptic levels of technology.  

[Tjack]

  Robert A. Heinlein’s book Farnham’s Freehold is a very good manual for what might be needed or valuable in a post apocalyptic world.  The first half of the book anyway.  It soon digressed into a weird racial lesson on what’s going to happen to White folks if they don’t make things right with Black America....and damn soon.
 Some have said that this was the book he was working on when his brain tumor symptoms became severe.   Either way the beginning of the book is worth a good read before it gets pulled from the library shelves for saying that America isn’t as free and equal as it should be.

    The 1632 series is also very good at the rebuilding stuff as it’s about an entire modern (late 1980’s) town in West Virginia including people being transported to Germany in 1632.  Kind of like Connecticut Yankee times several hundred plus working firearms.
  Wonderful historical research and the whole “How did this happen” is never explained or part of the story.   So things can stay focused on the townsfolk and their effect on the world instead of becoming this big sci-fi thing.

[archer]

Oh, and if you're close enough timewise to the nuclear event, potassium iodide pills (to block some of the radiation) and water purification tablets (because people won't have had time to set up their own charcoal, sand, and gravel filtration systems).

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, archer said:

Oh, and if you're close enough timewise to the nuclear event, potassium iodide pills (to block some of the radiation) and water purification tablets (because people won't have had time to set up their own charcoal, sand, and gravel filtration systems).

 

Actually yeah!

 

Depwndinf on how close to the bomb you are chronologically, any kind of radiation-free water (and a means to easily determine it to be such) would make dandy capital:  "how much for this flibberty jibber?"

 

"Four ounces, Sir...."

 

 

[SCUBA Hero]

It seems likely that firearms and ammunition would be used as de facto currency.

 

According to one article found in a quick search, the top 5 US sales are:

 

1.  9mm

2.  5.56mm NATO

3.  .45 ACP

4.  12 Gauge

5.  .22 LR

 

At some point you'd also start getting black power muzzle-loading long arms (either rifled or smoothbore).  According to Wikipedia, "The spirally grooved gun barrel is considered German in origin, invented by Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg circa 1520."

 

Another possibility is electrical power.  Water-, wind-, or human-powered, and/or small wood- or alcohol- burning steam engines driving generators.

 

22nd Century Power Station: a Boat Mill – Morrow Project Ideas (wordpress.com)

 

I don't remember the source, but I read somewhere while researching human power that an 'average human' can generate and sustain 75 watts per hour over an 8 hour period.  For fun, assume 83% efficiency and then you get 1/2 a kilowatt-hour per person per shift.

[Duke Bushido]

And then there is the methane byproduct, too. 

 

 

[archer]

On 4/19/2022 at 6:39 PM, SCUBA Hero said:

It seems likely that firearms and ammunition would be used as de facto currency.

 

According to one article found in a quick search, the top 5 US sales are:

 

1.  9mm

2.  5.56mm NATO

3.  .45 ACP

4.  12 Gauge

5.  .22 LR

 

At some point you'd also start getting black power muzzle-loading long arms (either rifled or smoothbore).  According to Wikipedia, "The spirally grooved gun barrel is considered German in origin, invented by Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg circa 1520."

 

 

Firearms and ammo are good as currency in theory. But once a person sells someone firearms and ammo, they can use that to take everything else that the seller owns unless the seller has an army to back him up. Or has easy access to law enforcement.

 

Yeah, everyone is going to want to purchase guns and ammo. 

 

But are sellers going to be stupid enough to sell guns and ammo to people they don't know? Or even to people they do know unless the person is very trustworthy?

 

I've talked to self-described survivalists and preppers who've claimed to have 30,000-50,000 rounds of ammunition stored up for their various guns. None of them thought they had nearly enough if the world as we know it were to end. And all of them would laugh at the idea of using guns and ammo as currency (and have laughed at the idea during conversations on internet forums).

 

I mean, sure we're talking about "for game purposes" rather than for real life. But if you're wanting to model the game on something that's realistic, the people who have guns and ammo when other people don't either were 1) paranoid enough to store it up before the apocalypse or 2) were ruthless enough to go in and seize guns and ammo from all the other people who were looting Wal-Mart, pawn shops, and gun shops.

 

Because the first thing in conversations with most people about what they'd do at the end of the world is that they'd tell you, "I'm going to get...."

 

And by that they mean that they're going to go "shopping", with or without money, along with the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of other people who have exactly the same idea. And they're going to be fighting hoards of other people over the limited amount of food, guns, ammo, medicine, valuables, and everything else that's in the stores. Or looting their way through occupied and unoccupied homes as "the excrement hits the air redistribution device".

 

I wouldn't be shocked if most of the ammo supplies are used up while people who grabbed it are trying to make their way out of the store. And that only the most ruthless, heartless, uncaring, and organized people will make their way out of the store with a significant amount of gums plus ammo. 

 

Those people won't be particularly inclined to provide arms and ammo to potential enemies. 

 

They'd be more likely to gun down someone who brought something valuable enough to try to trade for guns and ammo.

 

(Sorry for the bleak estimation of the human condition as the apocalypse happens but I think that's likely how it'd play out unless the bombs land everywhere at once without anyone having any clue that it's happening until the bombs actually go off.)

[Duke Bushido]

As interesting as this has become, I think it has become clear that we need to know just how far after "the event" the gsme is set- perhaps even what the event was- how society is currently organized (or not), and how stable that organization is.

 

I can see a point-  a time after the knee-jerk rioting and mindless raids to get what the other guy has-  when people are soendiing so much time finding food and material that there is no tine or energy (for most people) to keep fighting for what just isnt there any longer.  A time,when it makes more sense to cooperate than to fight.  Certainly there will always be raiders and warlords (you need adventure, after all),  but as ammo and resources are wasted in war early on, they become more scarce, more valuable, and their value begins to grow as a means to more easily hunt larger game more effectively.  Certainly they will have a place to defend against attackers or provide a facade of being a well-defended community, but at the point I am thinking, only warlords and the like will waste them in assault-  they are too valuable for day-to-day survival: they are tools, and difficult to create from scratch-  at least, the machine brass is difficult to create.  We may have no trouble makinf funpowder or primers, and we may resort to melting any soft metal for projectiles, but the machined she'll is beyond our reach in most places.

 

At that point, I think ammunition will make an excellent bartering tender.

 

 

[Tjack]

   At what point does a “post-apocalypse” campaign start to look like a D&D campaign with no magic but with guns?
”Our band of wandering adventurers travel from town to village to occasional city in search of bad guys to kill, treasure to fill our pockets and fair maidens to woo.”

   Just for grins & giggles I once came up with a list of D&D adventures stolen specifically from old Westerns.

1) Your group must protect a traveling caravan of squabbling passengers thru hostile Orc territory.  (Stagecoach)

2) Your group has taken refuge in a military fort under Orc siege and commanded by an incompetent   (Fort Apache)

3) Your group has been hired by poor farmers to drive away bandits.   (Magnificent Seven)    And many others.

  There are no truly new ideas, just new flourishes and locations.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Tjack said:

   At what point does a “post-apocalypse” campaign start to look like a D&D campaign with no magic but with gun?

 

Ah'm a gonna cast Cloud of Lead Pellets!  Ala- kaBLAM!

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Tjack said:

 

”Our band of wandering adventurers travel from town to village to occasional city in search of bad guys to kill, treasure to fill our pockets and fair maidens to woo.”

   Just for grins & giggles I once came up with a list of D&D adventures stolen specifically from old Westerns.

1) Your group must protect a traveling caravan of squabbling passengers thru hostile Orc territory.  (Stagecoach)

2) Your group has taken refuge in a military fort under Orc siege and commanded by an incompetent   (Fort Apache)

3) Your group has been hired by poor farmers to drive away bandits.   (Magnificent Seven)    And many others.

  There are no truly new ideas, just new flourishes and locations.

 

 

Right.

 

There are, in all of fiction, six plots:

 

Man versus man

Man versus nature

Man versus himself

Kirk in danger

Kirk in love

Enterprise in Danger

 

 

Those first three are probably the most widely-acknowledged.

 

As far as when does game A look like game b-

 

Always.  There are three (six) plots.  The rest of it is the window dressing that the author selects to put his spin on it, and hopefully keep you entertained.  In terms of gaming, "genre" is nothing more than the set of constraints under which you and your friends agree to play Let's Pretend.

 

The "game," be it HERO, D and D, or anything else, is essentially nothing more than the methods you agree to use for arbitratinf (or preventing) disagreement, and while we laud certain "games" for their universality- Champions, GURPS, etc-  the fact is that they are _all_ universal.  Once upon a time, we called it "home brew" or "house rules,"  but eventually we ended up with D20 (use 'D and D to fight space pirates in the wilds of the crab nebula if you want, or pummel,supervillains with fiats of Justice!.), Cepheus Engine (Traveller with infinitely-expanded background options and custom,settings), whatever it is that WEG's old D6 dicepool-based Star Wars running gear is called now....

 

Even within one system, what is true to that system?  killer shrike's website contains _how many_ magic systems?  Which onws resembke HERO "the most?"  How many threads do we have a out emulatinf this game or that?  Does HERO itself now have so many optional rules that it is entirely possible to play three different games,and use different options exclusively in each game?  Which one is HERO?

 

There are three (six) plots under the sun.  The rest is the frivilous details selected by the people writing the story.  Game mechanics exist solely as a means to assure that all the participants agree on the twists and turns of the story they are helping to tell.

 

As a f'rinstance, I helped Chris Goodwin design a campaign that changes genres twice, all in the course of a single story.  It was pretty easy:  there was only one plot. 

 

So yes: your observation is astute.  There is considerable overlap throughout our hobby, and the xloser you look, the more obvious it becomes.   

 

 

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Ah'm a gonna cast Cloud of Lead Pellets!  Ala- kaBLAM!

 

   X number of RKA dice w/ Y number of charges is all the same whether it’s called Fireball or shotgun.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Tjackdid you know that the Magnificent Seven is a remake of the classic Samurai film Seven Samurai?

[Duke Bushido]

57 minutes ago, Tjack said:

   X number of RKA dice w/ Y number of charges is all the same whether it’s called Fireball or shotgun.

 

Yep.

 

That"s kind od the point I was making,