unusual treasures for scroungers/barterers to find

[Olefin]

Had some ideas the other night when I was reading Lucifer's Hammer again - the scene where the hero dives thru a flooded drugstore for those who have read the book.

You always see people bartering for things like ammo or weapons or spare parts or scrounging for them. But what about having them find other things instead?

Like for instance a crate of toilet paper ("I am not going to be using leaves" from Red Dawn comes to mind)? Or a big cache of Necco Wafers or other similiar candies? Or a working CD player or VHS player and movies? People pay a lot for comfort - imagine going into Krakow not with Reset but instead with twenty rolls of real toilet paper or two packs of Marlboro tobacco cigarettes or two bottles of Chanel or a bottle of pre-war Scotch you found in a wrecked house.

Its also a great way to add to what people could be carrying when you search them after a firefight - instead of the usual useable ammo or food or weapons you find a half pack of Marlboros or a paperback book or toiletry items (there arent going to be a lot of new toothbrushes, razors or brushes being made in 2000)

and those kinds of things can make interesting scenarios as well - i.e. you get into a huge firefight, finally win and find out the reason they opened up on you wasnt that they were marauders or Soviets - instead they were sitting on a hoard of a thousand cartons of cigarettes or fifty bottles of Jack Daniels and thought you were trying to steal it

We had that happen in Gateway to the Spanish Main - we got into a big firefight against what we thought were Cubans -and instead it was against five guys who had found a plane in a swamp carrying a huge amount of cocaine and thought we were there to take it from them -and also in Armies of the Night where we took shelter in a building only to almost get taken down by four hoarders sitting on 500 cans of SPAM

[mikeo80]

In one of the games I played, we liberated a small town from a bunch of desperado's. The village elders were very helpfull with directions and what have you.

Then we went through the bad guy's lair. Some ammo, yes. A few weapons, granted. Some food, ok.

100 gallons of clorox bleach they had liberated from a wrecked grocery store.

We gave the weapons and ammo to the village. We also gave them 80 gallons of bleach. With instructions from our first aid guy on how to use the clorox to purify water. We kept the food.

There were only five of us in our little band. We only had so many jerry cans for water. The rest of the cans were for methanol.

Nice "reward" from the GM.

My $0.02

Mike

[Cdnwolf]

A pound of real coffee. Sugar. From Jericho... bags of salt...

A toothbrush or razor blade

An empty notebook or a pencil.

A canister of unexposed film.

Light bulbs.

Insulin for a diabetic

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

A pound of real coffee. Sugar. From Jericho... bags of salt...

A toothbrush or razor blade

An empty notebook or a pencil.

A canister of unexposed film.

Light bulbs.

Insulin for a diabetic

A 10 day round of Tetracycline

A stray, cute kitten

100 lbs of flour

A sealed box of condoms

2 cords of cut, stacked, seasoned firewood

My $0.02

Mike

[Adm.Lee]

An outboard motor for a boat.

A set of wrenches.

Batteries, unopened.

A box of unopened packs of ball-point pens.

One of my players is asking for a bow and arrows.

[Olefin]

Several cans of black powder that can be used in muskets and rifles.

Bottles of multivitamins and supplements.

A crate holding boxes of good boots and shoes.

Spices like pepper, ginger, nutmeg, etc.. from places that might as well be on the moon for those left in Europe.

[Greylond]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

One of my players is asking for a bow and arrows.

Long Bow and Arrows is covered as basic equipment in the V1.0 ruleset. The "Longbow" skill can be used to make either...

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

A pound of real coffee. Sugar. From Jericho... bags of salt...

A toothbrush or razor blade

An empty notebook or a pencil.

A canister of unexposed film.

Light bulbs.

Insulin for a diabetic

Salt will return to the origin of the expression 'worth your salt'. Yep it's mined, but distribution is a problem and it is 'thought to be' essential for food preservation, which is true for some items and methods.

Insulin while it's a good idea, I seriously, very seriously doubt you would find insulin that is not gone south by 2000. If it's the refrigerated type, give it a few days to weeks to go bad. I wonder what the shelf life is on the other stuff. And by 2000, based on the stuff going bad quickly and the diets people are on, I doubt there will be anyone left to take the insulin unless they are type I.. and their life is short if no insulin is avail muy pronto.

Just a thought, but good ideas.. we subbed antibiotics or pain killers for the insulin.

[Graebarde]

hummmmmm really good ideas. How about a bundle of clean shop rags, you know the ones about a foot square, usually red. I think they are a better deal than the TP, as they can be resued after wash and boil.

Or cloth diapers? Not the landfiller plasitc and absorbent.

Or a barrel of powdered chlorine rather than the washing 5% OTC washing bleach. Even a bucket will make gallons and gallons of the 5% mix, and kept dry last years. Found in hardware stores, swimming pool supply, or any place that sells pool supplies. People looking for food would pass on it, lost in the maze.

[TrailerParkJawa]

How about books about surviving a nuclear war found in a basement full of skeletons? Morbid but darkly funny considering the PCs have survived a nuclear war (up to now at least) and probably didn't do anything listed in the book.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Copies of these three books

Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_lib....html#contents

Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14091...-h/14091-h.htm

The Book of Household Management By Mrs. Isabella Beeton.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/publi.../beeton-00.htm

This last one can be a bit tedious to read as most of the (in our context) useful information starts around Chapter 4

Even if you don't read them for the survival/preparation context, they're interesting just for the insights into what life was like in the 1800s and 1900s (pre-1940s)

[Greylond]

The characters find a collection of movie film canisters and a projector. When they run the films on the projector they find that it is a complete collection of the works of director Ed Wood...

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Pertinent to "scavenged films", here are the releases of 1996. The film-to-video treadmill wasn't quite as rapid-fire back then as it is now (I recall having to wait until sometime in 1999 to get saving private ryan on DVD, for example), so the 1996 releases would probably be the ones everyone was lusting after in 1997.

Ooh, look what was released: Barb Wire! Heh, talk about a weapon of mass destruction. Just what the characters would need: a pallet load of VHS tapes destined for US PX's around Europe - all copies of that movie!

[Bullet Magnet]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

How about books about surviving a nuclear war found in a basement full of skeletons? Morbid but darkly funny considering the PCs have survived a nuclear war (up to now at least) and probably didn't do anything listed in the book.

Or, just one skeleton, who apparently died kneeling in front of a broken pair of glasses.

[Cdnwolf]

Even better and meaner.... a crate of these movies


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrBdDsNWK1M

[dragoon500ly]

browising through a small drug store, on a small shelf next to the toy aisle:

a dozen bags of replacement bowstrings as well as four boxes of bronze hunting arrow tips...

[weswood]

Wasn't there a member of this board whose party was guarding an M113 full of "treasure" only to find out it was full of toilet paper?

[TrailerParkJawa]

Originally Posted by Bullet Magnet

Or, just one skeleton, who apparently died kneeling in front of a broken pair of glasses.

LoL! Yeah that would be a good one!