I’m currently working on a second volume of The Gongfarmer Militia — my DCC zine of hirelings and henchmen — for Mutant Crawl Classics. Translating the NPC system in the first volume to the post-apocalyptic setting of MCC is a challenge. The sci-fi games MCC is modeled on such as Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha didn’t include henchmen in their rules, so there’s no tradition to draw on as there was for expanding the hirelings rules from Dungeon Crawl Classics and its predecessors. But perhaps more challenging is the fact that MCC doesn’t really include a coherent economic system of any kind.
As written, the entirety of MCC’s economic system is contained in two lines: “To barter with fellow tribesmen, the villages of the characters all trade goods using an abstract concept of ancient origin by assigning trade values in terms of ‘creds’. Creds are simply a non-material value system used to barter goods, and not an actual physical currency.”
This lack of any functional economy makes crafting hirelings and henchmen more challenging. For NPCs joining the party, this can be alleviated by focusing on non-monetary rewards for serving a party of Seekers: safety, power, a sense of belonging, etc. But for NPCs offering services it’s not so clear cut. If a tinkerer has the ability to repair broken artifacts they aren’t going to do so for some vague sense of camaraderie with the party. A pilot who’s maintained a functional gyrocopter isn’t going to trade transportation (with its inherent risk and fuel costs) for protection during a journey she wouldn’t otherwise undertake The genre conventions of post-apocalyptic books and movies dictates that they’ll want something more concrete and tangible such as food, power sources, or rare trade goods.
Instead of tying services to an abstract “cred” value, I’m moving instead towards a system based on Andrew Theisen’s blog post on post-apocalyptic bartering. His system relies on creating exchange rates between various categories of goods — for instance, 8 livestock are worth 1 weapon. This level of abstraction gives plenty of room for judges to customize the system for their setting, including inserting their custom equipment into the exchange rate.
The piece I’m working on is adding services to the exchange rate for NPCs offering specialized services such as repairing vehicles or hacking into computer systems. Post-apocalyptic literature is rife with such characters and I want to make sure they’re represented in the zine without making the exchange rate so granular as to make it difficult to use.
If you’ve tried expanding the economic rules of MCC or any other post-apocalyptic rules set, fell free to drop me a line at jonathan@peraspera.games and tell me about it!