To Hell with Lore

One of my players, doing the Lord's work

Among the D&D community, there seems to be a schism of sorts between those who view the system as a generic ruleset that can be applied to any setting and story, and those who view it as a combined system and setting with its own lore tied to a multiverse of worlds where the same rules apply. For the most part, the OSR community lean heavily toward the former, emphasizing the modularity and customizability of their settings and doing new things with the same rules, while recent releases by Wizards of the Coast seem to favor the second approach. This has led to many new players coming to campaigns with the expectation that everything is going to work like Forgotten Realms, if they don't expect Forgotten Realms in the first place.

I think that's a shame. As someone with a keen interest in worldbuilding, I prefer to see games as a medium to tell stories with some semblance of structure. The tabletop RPG, to me, is really just a game of pretend where we have rules to ensure that everyone has fun, and that no one can suddenly declare that they have a super omega god-slayer sword that kills everything in one hit. The rules aren't supposed to be a literal interpretation of how the laws of physics work in-universe (unless you want them to be, which can lead to some interesting settings, but that shouldn't be the assumption).

The Lunar Lands, while I always intended to use it for gaming, is really a setting first, and an excuse for games second. I don't presuppose that the cosmology works the same as Planescape, or that everyone goes around in-universe talking about spell slots and rings of mind-shielding - those are best served as game abstractions of something that's more mysterious and unknowable in the setting. There certainly aren't magical spaceships. Don't get me wrong, I do love a good beholder or mimic, and they've shown up in my games aplenty, but I prefer to approach D&D lore as a buffet platter to take what you want and leave what you don't, and to create your own stuff to fill in the gaps.

In my campaigns, I allow people to do things that the Player's Handbook or the Monster Manual don't say if I feel like they sound cool and make sense - I've had one very interesting encounter that involved my players throwing rice at a vampire, successfully compelling him to stop attacking them in order to count the grains. I love that - it rewards people for creative thinking and knowledge of folkloric traditions, which anyone who knows me knows I can't get enough of. So what if the Monster Manual doesn't say vampires do that? I'm here to have fun, not to metagame and argue over what the rules say. I've run my setting in multiple different systems, and that doesn't stop with different editions of D&D - for a while in between the releases of 3.5e and 5e, I was using Dungeon World as my system of choice, and, as I discussed on a previous post, I adopted its death mechanics into the lore of my setting, even when I went on to 5e.

Kevin Feige, you ruined everything

I've theorized that the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays a part in this. With the concept of a consistent interconnected setting across multiple film franchises proving a smash hit, everyone and their mother is trying to cash in and make a cinematic universe of their own. With talk of a D&D movie languishing in development hell, I have no doubts that Wizards is trying to get their cut of that sweet, sweet cinematic universe box office. They already treat their products the way Marvel would their movies, with a metaplot that weaves through their published modules, books, and comics - all they need is a movie to tie it all together.

The problem is, in a medium as open-ended and player-driven as a tabletop RPG, it just doesn't work. Since you can only focus on the exploits of canon characters in the lore, and only they can influence future canonical materials, if you're running everything by the book the PCs become background characters in what's supposed to be their own story. What if your players killed an NPC in one module who plays an important role in a future publication? Well, then, your campaign didn't count, sorry. If you think I'm exaggerating, this is actually a potential scenario with 5e's handling of Mordenkainen - and I have my own feelings on that, but that's something for another day.

Perhaps this is changing. The release of Monsters of the Multiverse emphasizes the different settings that can be utilized in a D&D game, and includes tools for DMs to tailor monsters and races for different worlds. And we're seeing Dragonlance receive official support, when it's always been the setting that wasn't afraid to challenge preset assumptions and do its own thing (no orcs, no divine casters, kender instead of halflings, etc.) But for me, I've always preferred to go off on my own way, and I don't let any suits tell me what I can and can't do. That's the way it should be.

Forgotten Adventure Design: Bar Brawls

I probably don't need to wax poetical about the taxonomy of RPG adventures - people have been doing that far better than I ever could long before I began this blog. We all know the difference between a dungeon crawl, a hexcrawl, and a pointcrawl. One thing I rarely seen being brought up, however, is a type of adventure that used to be quite popular but has since all but disappeared - the bar brawl.

Art by velinov

The idea behind a bar brawl adventure is simple: a tavern setting, and a collection of NPCs (or pregenerated PCs) with distinct personalities and often quite differing views, possibly with some being previously acquainted with others. The implication is that sooner or later - possibly as a result of the PC's actions, or possibly independently of them - everything is going to erupt into violence.

In a way, bar brawls could be considered a sort of mini-sandbox. Although the scope is limited to a single establishment, there is almost never any indication for the DM as to how interactions between the characters are supposed to play out, and any conflict is generated by the interplay between their different traits. This has its ups and downs - they can be daunting for some DMs to run, given the vast array of potential incidents and outcomes and the need to keep track of so many different NPCs, their agendas, and their relationships to each other. But that open-endedness gives them replayability, ensuring no two runs will be the same. They can be fun to sit back and watch the chaos unfold, and the fact that the tension results from the interplay of the characters can help the world feel dynamic and remind players that things go on outside of the personal narratives of their PCs. And, because the action rarely leaves a single tavern room, they're easy to drop into an ongoing campaign whenever the party is at a tavern - or just to use as a self-contained one-shot for a night of inconsequential mayhem.

For whatever reason, these sorts of scenarios were especially popular in British publications during the era of old-school gaming. Despite being American, and despite being introduced to D&D with third edition, I find the British old-school tradition to inform my games more than anything else, and I've posited its existence as a unique phenomenon distinct from American old-school gaming in an old Reddit post, which led to some discussion - Uncaring Cosmos has discussed this subject in great detail, and it's a very good read. Right now, though, I'm looking specifically at the example of bar brawl adventures.

The most famous example would have to be A Rough Night at the Three Feathers from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - in fact, it's so iconic that it's been reprinted time and time again, to the point where modern GMs often don't know how to run it since the times have changed and the context in which it originally existed in has been forgotten. However, when it was first published, it was just one of a multitude of similar scenarios for all sorts of games. Many of these came from the pages of White Dwarf - it was doing this as early as the 11th issue, which featured a bar brawl scenario for D&D. Issue 96 contains another one for WFRP called Mayhem in the Mermaid. And while it was perhaps a bit past the classic era, Issue 223 featured a minigame about drunk, rowdy Orks entitled Brewhouse Bash. While it didn't make it into the final magazine, my spiritual liege Dave Morris was writing up a similar scenario for Dragon Warriors, which he was kind enough to post over on his blog.

What I'm getting at is, back in the 80s, a gamer - at least a British gamer - would have no problem understanding Rough Night because adventures just like it were a regular fixture. But for whatever reason, they seem to have fallen out of favor.

Perhaps the decline of gaming magazines plays a part in this - while these short, simple adventures are perfect for taking up a couple of pages in a periodical, most don't exactly have enough meat on them for a full retail book. But there still are a couple more recent adventures in this vein.

The example adventure included in Machinations of the Space Princess is easily recognizable as a classic bar brawl scenario - although it's rethemed to take place in a seedy space station cantina, it still follows the formula of throwing PCs into a chaotic situation, with plenty of interesting NPCs to spice up the mix. James Raggi's Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book - while, yes, a puerile example of rage-baiting in reference to the ongoing community discourse at the time - is a servicable example of this kind of scenario if you can look past its deliberately inflammatory title. The Age of Dusk blog describes this as a "powder keg" adventure in its review and cites Rough Night in the comments, which depending on who you ask may be synonymous with or inclusive of bar brawls. And, while I don't know if any of this was deliberate, the (very good!) Labyrinth Lord adventure The Inn of Lost Heroes starts out with two colorful adventuring parties antagonizing each other at a tavern, with the PCs caught in the middle, before everything descends into survival horror. When running it as a Halloween one-shot last year, I couldn't help but notice that the first segment of the adventure could've easily been published in a 1986 issue of White Dwarf.

Perhaps I'll try my hand at writing my own bar brawl adventure. I'd be quite interested in seeing if anyone reading this has any experiences running, playing, or writing scenarios of this sort, or if they know of any other examples out there. But as a bit of gaming history, I feel it's one that bears a mention.

Rat Men!

There are no drow in the Lunar Lands. I don't like using them for a number of reasons - probably most notably, the fact that they've become so intimately associated with the Forgotten Realms that they seem out of place anywhere else to me (even if they originated in Greyhawk, my personal favorite of the TSR settings, I just can't see them fitting in the lore any more). I also don't believe there really need to be six million kinds of elves for every biome in the world, and if one wants to make an elven villain, you can go ahead and make them your average elf - the old stories of the Fair Folk are a bottomless font of inspiration as-is. That, and I just find them overdone in general.

I do, however, enjoy the concept of vast subterranean ecosystems with their own cities and empires beneath the surface. Dwarves are a good solution (and, in my opinion, duergar are woefully underused, probably due to the aforementioned preponderance of drow). But for the other predominant subterranean race of the Lunar Lands, my eye turns to one of my greatest inspirations, Warhammer Fantasy.

Among the denizens of the World Beneath, the Rat Men are perhaps the most numerous, but far from the most formidable. An able-bodied human could easily overcome a single Rat Man - but a single Rat Man is rarely encountered, as they favor strength in numbers and swarming tactics, sending in hordes to deal with incoming threats with claws and knives while others stay on the sidelines to pick off targets with bow and arrow. They know they aren't the sturdiest of beings, and they prefer to travel in darkness beneath the watchful eye of those around them. But if they feel threatened, they can be vicious indeed, and will rarely surrender unless they know they are truly outmatched.

Nearly every large surface city hides a warren of Rat Men beneath it - they are just as aware of what makes an advantageous location for a settlement as those that live above them, and they take advantage of the refuse their surface neighbors produce as sources of food, salvage, and materials. However, few who walk the surface have seen the Rat Men or their maze-like tunnel networks that honeycomb the earth, ranging from vast caverns with dens hollowed into the walls to twisting passages only large enough for a human to traverse on their stomach. Those who have may be brushed off as telling tall tales - the most famous account of the Rat Men comes from the songs of the bard Jeremy of Elbermark, sung by many unaware of their truthfulness - and the reclusive beings are content to squabble among each other and the other denizens of the underground, rarely risking a journey up to the dangerous and unfamiliar surface world. However, every once in a while a raiding party of Rat Men may risk a journey up from the depths to grab shiny valuables - or captives for slave labor.

The Rat Men speak their own tongue, a system of squeaks and hisses that sounds to many like meaningless chittering. However, their language is mutually intelligible with that of the common rat, and they can commune with each other, often using rats as spies to seek ahead and report back their findings, or dire rats as guard animals. They also raise rats as a food source. For delicate human minds, it is perhaps best not to think too deeply about how they can understand the words of their own livestock, but it bothers them not. Life in the shadows is ruthless.

Accustomed to the darkness and the sunless corridors of the World Beneath, Rat Men fare poorly in bright light - some who have braved the underground realms have misinterpreted this as indicative of the ability to see in the dark. In truth, Rat Men do not see very well in darkness or in light. Much like the average rat, a Rat Man possesses a keen sense of smell and hearing, and they use these to navigate instead. However, if plunged into bright light - especially that of the sun - they can often find themselves in unfamiliar territory and panic. After all, they do see, just not well, and a change in lighting is unexpected for them.

Art by haikai13

Of the unusual traits of Rat Men, perhaps the most puzzling one to surface-dwellers is that they seem to have no upper limit to size. Some are born larger than others, but as they gorge themselves on food they can grow greater and greater. In fact, the social hierarchy of the Rat Men is based more on size than anything else, with the larger individuals using their great bulk as leverage to exert their will upon their smaller and weaker kin. While the average Rat Man ranges from the size of a halfling to a stooped five feet, reports speak of truly massive rodents that tower above the heads of mortal men, some so corpulent that they can only squat immobile in their caverns and shout orders to their underlings. These make up the royalty of the Rat Men, whose subjects pay tribute to them with shiny objects and offerings of food that make them grow larger and larger, some even needing to have wider and wider chambers tunneled out of the earth to sustain their growth. Records speak of wars being fought between Rat Men and dwarves or goblins when the expansion of such rooms broke into those of other civilizations. If such constructions are close enough to the surface, they can even risk breaking through to the outside...

Using Rat Men in Games:

For 5e, Rat Men have the stats of a Kenku (both as monsters and should one wish to play as one), with the following changes:

• Rat Men can be Small or Medium (player's choice).
• Instead of the Mimicry and Expert Forgery features, Rat Men instead have Sunlight Sensitivity (as Drow).
• Rat Men have Blindsight to 60 feet. Beyond this, they must rely on their vision.
• Rat Men have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell, hearing, or feeling with their whiskers. They have Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on vision.
• Rat Men can speak and understand the languages of rats and mice, including dire rats, and giant rats.

I Don't Like Languages

I don't think I've ever been in a D&D game that have used languages in a way I've been happy with. The most common way I've seen them applied is to have inscriptions that only PCs who can understand that language can understand...but then, picking languages when designing a character becomes a game of "guess what the DM is going to do," and if the languages everyone picked at character creation aren't the same ones used in the dungeon the DM developed, you're screwed. That, or the DM specifies what languages are going to be used in the campaign and has at least one player design characters accordingly, but that's not the best solution either - if the DM had to tell you what language to pick, then it's not really a meaningful decision. If it was that important, the DM could just have made sure everyone was able to understand whatever writing or speech was important to the puzzle they designed, and having it in a different language is just an extra step. The only time I could see this being useful is if one PC knew the language, but the others didn't, making it especially important to protect them to ensure that their knowledge could be applied - but, again, if that PC gets incapacitated, and future puzzles count on at least one PC knowing a given language, then the party is pretty much stuck.

Essentially, I can't think of any way to make language mechanics, at least the way they are in D&D, actually fun. And what's the point of playing a game, if not to have fun?

One way I've seen the problem addressed is to give characters a given number of language slots, but not having these filled in during character creation. Rather, when the problem of needing someone to read or understand a language comes up in play, a player could declare that their character would know that language and mark it off on their sheet. They can then understand that language going forward - but once all the slots on their sheet are filled in, they can't understand any more (at least, not without time for training). This avoids the problem of needing to guess what the DM is going to do, but some groups might find it contrived. Others might enjoy the opportunity for emergent discovery about the world and their characters that wasn't planned out at first. It's something that's going to vary from table to table.

In all honesty, I feel like languages shouldn't be handled by codified game mechanics at all. At the very least, I feel like they should be looser than the way D&D handles them. Rather than a list of languages to pick from at character creation, I would have languages be something that one could extrapolate from a character's background.

Under this assumption, players and DMs would work together to determine what languages a character could and couldn't understand as the question came up. Racial languages wouldn't be a feature of a given race statblock - it would be assumed that most dwarves could understand Dwarvish. However, a dwarf raised among humans might not, necessarily, while a human raised among dwarves could. Certain classes or backgrounds might gain accesses to languages as well, such as clerics being able to understand liturgical languages, or wizards knowing whatever languages are used to write about magic (think of all the Latin grimoires you see in fiction). Druids or elves might have access to the languages of animals, and be able to commune with them. If a character is to learn another language, they would need to find someone to teach them or get a translator, but it wouldn't be something tied to mechanical advancement, just progression in the narrative.

I forget where I first heard this story, and I can't verify its accuracy, but apparently this is how D&D used to work (or at least B/X D&D). In the old Mystara gazetteers, each region had its own language, with the assumption being that references to "the common tongue" meant the language most commonly spoken in the area a character was from. There wasn't a single language called "Common" - what "Common" meant varied from character to character, and if they later traveled to another area, they wouldn't necessarily know the language spoken there. But what languages a character knew differed from campaign to campaign.

Now, obviously, the idea of having a single universal Common language does have its benefits - it keeps things simple, so players don't have to worry about their characters being able to communicate with most NPCs. There are some DMs that find this more convenient. But what's useful about this approach is that is doesn't make any assumptions of the languages spoken within the setting, and allows DMs to customize the languages spoken in their world as they wish.

Some DMs might find it unrealistic that all beings would share a common language, or that it would be possible for people to learn the languages of extraplanar beings like Abyssal or Celestial so easily. With languages being handled by DM fiat, they wouldn't have to bring such assumptions into their setting. They could come up with different regional languages for the different parts of their world. They could have multiple racial languages, so that - for instance - one tribe of orcs wouldn't necessarily speak the same language as another. They could have multiple arcane or liturgical languages, which may be more or less common than others (think of the difference between Latin and Ancient Greek, for example) - I can think of some interesting game opportunities if the wizard finds a spellbook written in a language they don't know, and having to find someone to help translate it.

Of course, one could simply present the players with a set of languages for the campaign setting and have them pick from that, rather than the default list. But some players can be averse to being presented with too many unfamiliar options. By treating languages as something assumed about characters rather than tied to a specific build, you can streamline character creation by presenting players with fewer options, but also opening the door for new and interesting opportunities in play that may not have come up under the rules as written.

Pas d'armes

Anyone who's been in a D&D game has probably heard their fair share of quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In fact, you could make a case for it being the real "D&D movie" in terms of how it captures the feel of a campaign (if you ask me, that honor goes to The Princess Bride, but I digress). While the movie is funny enough in its own right, for those familiar with Arthurian legend, there's a whole other level of humor that goes over most people's heads.

Case in point: the Black Knight. It's one of the most iconic, and most quoted, scenes in the movie, and no doubt it's a routine that many a DM has been forced to listen to more times than they can count. However, what most people don't realize is that the scene is a parody of the very real historical and literary phenomenon known as pas d'armes.

The basic concept is this: if a knight so chose, he could take up a position at a narrow point where travelers wouldn't have the option to go around easily (for instance, a bridge, or a city gate) and challenge any other knights who came that way to a duel - conducted on their own terms, which could be anything from swordfighting to an impromptu joust. They could refuse to fight if they so chose, but this was considered a sign of cowardice, and the traveler would be required to leave his spurs by the side of the road.

For women (particularly noblewomen), the rules were a bit different. If a woman passed by the knight without anyone to accompany her, she would often leave a personal belonging - such as a glove, a scarf, a napkin, or the like - that the knight would then guard. Anyone who defeated the knight would then be able to return it to her if they were passing by.

Chivalric romance is full of this sort of thing, and there are numerous records of it happening in real life as well. To history nerds like me, this is a concept that's rich with opportunities for gaming.

The most obvious idea is to make a knight guarding a pass a combat encounter - though one that has some leeway, and thus one that's more interesting than a straight-up fight. You don't have to fight the knight; perhaps the rules would only apply to those with titles, so the average fighter might get by unharmed, but a paladin or someone with the Noble background wouldn't be so lucky (of course, some knights may not be as selective with their challengers). Even a knightly PC would have the option of turning the challenge down, though the threat to their honor could have some very real in-universe consequences; it could impact their interactions with NPCs if the word got out that they refused a challenge, or if you're using an honor mechanic, accepting or refusing a duel could play into this.

There are records of some knights offering to lend horses and equipment to travelers without the necessary gear to meet the challenge on their terms - if you need an excuse to try out mounted combat rules, this could be an all-too-rare opportunity to bring it up. Since some records of pas d'armes included entire retinues of knights battling it out (more on that in a bit), you could even involve the whole party in an impromptu tournament. In a fantasy setting, the rules could be expanded - for instance, a knight might forbid the use of magic or enchanted items (although an unscrupulous one demanding his opponent put aside a magic sword, only to then sucker-mordhau them with one of his own, can provide a fun, if obnoxious, twist). Alternatively, a wizard might set up their own version of the challenge, requiring passing spellcasters to compete in a magical duel.

Samurai Jack

The detail of tributes from passing ladies presents its own opportunities. If a PC manages to defeat the knight in combat, and there's a trinket left from a previous traveler, that's an instant quest hook for the PC to return it. One twist you can throw in is to have the trinket be a magic item, which introduces a dilemma for parties - do they do the honorable thing and return it, or do they hold onto it for their own use?

There's also the possibility of a PC declaring a pas d'armes themselves. The compelled duel spell is a nifty and flavorful option that sadly gets underused when everyone keeps making smite-bots, but it's a useful point of reference. In one campaign, I'm playing as a paladin who uses the compelled duel spell, reflavored to be an appeal to pas d'armes. If a player wishes to settle a combat encounter by one-to-one combat among the champions of each party, they could invoke this tradition, and their opponents may or may not be accepting of it.

Finally, and what I feel is perhaps the most interesting option, the party could stumble upon an ongoing pas d'armes. As stated before, these duels could get massive if each side brought enough men, and since they were often on well-traveled routes, this could run into the obvious conflict. There are records of one particular duel over one bridge on the Camino de Santiago, a major pilgrimage route in Spain, that held up traffic for over a month after the knights pledged not to leave until they had broken 300 lances. To me, this is begging to be a random encounter. The party finds the road is blocked by dueling knights, and other travelers are getting restless. Will they go around it? Attempt to get them to stop? Or will they join the melee themselves?

Overall, I feel like there are many opportunities for interesting encounters and roleplaying presented by the concept of pas d'armes, and it's one of my favorite encounters to use in play. If you want to make your games feel more like they sprung from the pages of chivalric tradition, you'd be well suited to throw in a knight guarding a bridge or two.

Action Time

Despite in many ways being the fabled Career DM, I do play in games too. At the time of this writing, I'm playing in an ongoing superhero campaign using the Modern AGE ruleset. One quirk of the system that stands out to me is, perhaps, not really a difference in the system itself, but in the way it presents its rules. In particular, how it handles initiative.

Like many TRPGs, Modern AGE uses an initiative system to determine the turn order of when PCs take actions in situations when this is applicable. One key difference between this and other TRPGs is that in Modern AGE, initiative isn't tied to combat. It's tied to the broader concept of Action Time - that is, any time it matters what order people get to do things, you roll initiative.

This includes combat, yes, but it can also apply to any other time-sensitive situation in which it's important to figure out who acts before whom. This could apply to a chase scene, or a race, or even a time-based puzzle without any other active party opposing the PCs - if the party is trying to disarm a bomb before it explodes, for example, it can be helpful to establish a designated turn order so that players aren't tripping over each other trying to get their characters to do things, while you still get to build tension and create a sense of danger by having a set number of rounds until the bomb goes off. And how else would you do this but through initiative?

Technically, 5e does support this as well. It has chase rules which work on initiative, but the point still stands that when the DM tells you to roll initiative, you expect combat to occur. I'm willing to be that the majority of TRPG jokes out there use "roll initiative" as a punchline to this effect. But what's so elegant about the way Modern AGE does it is that, without changing anything about the mechanics, it decouples initiative from combat by explicitly grounding it in a system that doesn't necessarily presume attacks being traded.

I was able to use this recently in one of my 5e games. A PC had just alerted the undead guardians of a wizard's hut she was trespassing on, and was trying to reach shelter. She wasn't prepared for combat, and had taken some serious damage in a previous encounter that would have set her back in a head-to-head fight, so she was interested in staying out of trouble if at all possible. But it still would've mattered who would act first - would one of the zombies get a hit on her before she could use her move action to reach cover?

In this case, I had the player roll initiative, but I clarified that I was not necessarily anticipating combat, only trying to figure out who would take the first action. And I'd say it worked out pretty well - it created a sense of tension without anyone's assumptions defaulting to combat right away. If you tell your players to roll initiative, they'll often times expect to fight something, and this can color their actions going forward. But if you make it clear that they don't have to fight, even in Action Time, they can start thinking of other strategies - and in turn, you as the DM will see what other scenarios you can apply initiative rules in.

On Barter

Bone

The Lunar Lands has no system of standardized currency. Most people will trade in coinage because it's a useful trade good - it's simple, portable, and usable in multiple different situations - but the value of a coin is based only on the material it's made of, and if you're trying to buy something off a merchant, it's just as valid to pay them in some wheat, or a bolt of cloth, or a sheep, or the like.

The folks over at A Knight at the Opera have already addressed the nature of bartering and the use of a barter system in their excellent series on economics, so I won't spend too much time on that. Instead, I'm going to discuss how I use bartering in my games, and what possibilities it opens up.

As the link discusses, it was more typical for pre-money societies to have a system of credit, in which everyone kept track of who owed what to whom and made sure that everything was settled in a yearly communal reckoning. After reading the series, I decided that's how it works in the Lunar Lands. However, that's useful for a community small enough for everyone to know everyone else, and where the population of debtors stays stable. If you get into larger cities where it's harder to keep track, or if you're dealing with travelers who might be long gone by the time the reckoning occurs, it makes sense to make sure you get those debts settled as soon as possible so that you can ensure you haven't been cheated. For that reason, it helps to have a way to exchange goods and services up front.

Assuming a barter system in your setting will introduce a few interesting twists to the rules of how buying and selling products is conducted. If you're writing down what equipment a character is carrying, it could help to include the base price for each item so that it's easier to get a sense of how much value it might carry if used for payments (note, however, that the price listed in whatever book you're getting this stuff from is the base price - more on that later). That way, if (for example) a PC doesn't have enough gold to buy something, they could make up the difference by trading in their equipment. This can streamline shopping because PCs don't need to go through the extra step of selling items to get more coins to buy better items - they can just pay with the items they already have.

It also gives a good use for all those art objects in treasure tables that have their value listed. You don't need to get them appraised; you can just pay with them as-is. The listed value works well as a base price, and might not vary too much - most people like having pretty things around - but you may decide that a given NPC would or wouldn't like a given item and can adjust the value accordingly. For example, a wealthy merchant with exquisite tastes might be willing to pay more for the finest artwork; a farmer living in a rustic community that look down upon people putting on airs might not want it at all.

For the most part, the price and value of things will depend on who you're doing business with. Although coins are safe because they're usable by almost anyone, if you're in a situation where you're paying with something else, the price the merchant is willing to accept for it should be tailored to how useful it would be for them. For instance, a blacksmith would be willing to accept more value for iron ingots because he can use those, but he wouldn't be as interested in a book of spells - you'd want to sell that to a wizard. A mercenary would be happy to be paid with a good sword, but it would be useless to a shepherd. Sure, the blacksmith or the shepherd could hold onto the spellbook or the sword in the hopes of trading it to someone else later, but that someone might not show up in a timely fashion, and most people aren't willing to sell off their wares to a stranger if they can't be sure that they'll be compensated (a more friendly buyer might get off easier). In these cases, the DM should adjust the base price so that the same item may be worth more or less to different NPCs when it's being traded to them.

In sufficiently isolated areas, such as small villages not on any major trade routes, locals might not be willing to accept currency at all - they don't see enough trade to have any use for it in buying outside goods. This can be a fun way to introduce barter mechanics to a campaign, and can shake things up for players used to traditional economics by forcing them to think outside the box.

Services can be traded as well - and while paying with these could be as simple as a skill check as the PC works the fields or cleans up around the house, it can also make for a great quest hook that gives your PCs immediate motivation. Instead of having an NPC pay them for recovering some item or defeating some monster, have them require the PCs do it to clear their debts to that NPC - or else, they may risk the ire of the community for going back on their word, and they may be less likely to do business in the future.

An additional detail is that when you don't have standardized prices, there's much more leeway to haggle with merchants. Any transaction, if your players are so inclined, could become an interesting roleplaying exercise or a chance for a Persuasion check to try and get a better price. Not all players may be interested in this, of course, but if they are, under a barter system they have the opportunity to haggle over just about anything. This could allow canny PCs to get away with better prices - or allow merchants to cheat them with impunity.