TOPIC: Why did people do token trading?

<br />Token trading at gencon is like the wild west. There are no rules and every once and a while you hear about a trade that's like the equivalent of someone shooting a nun in the face with a shotgun. Sure you feel bad for the nun and heap scorn upon the bandito, but part of you wishes you could have bagged the penguin yourself.<br /><br />The funny thing is, other than trading for ingredient tokens, I don't think I did any big swaps with anyone who didn't already have a huge supply of tokens and was a forumite to boot. About the only other people really looking to trade were those who had gotten gold and gems. Since I'm likely never to participate in an auction, I only end up needing enough to cover any combo tokens I'm making.<br />

<br /><br />Henry, <br />    This is one of reasons I asked.  I was only dealing inside the tavern and very few (about 4) people came up who didn't already have a lot of tokens.  I was hoping going outside like you did might allow me to find more folks interested in the green and lower red tokens.  I did a lot of Green/Low red trading in 2005 and so I wasn't sure if I was trading in wrong place or the market had changed. 

Welp, sometimes the people with few tokens wanted things I didn't even have handy since they had been dumped en masse into the box. Most people tended to want to cling to whatever rare they picked up, whether they could use it or not. The only thing they were willing and eager to trade out where the heaps of gems.<br /><br />Makes me wish I had known that a day later I was going to end up trading away 2700 GP.

On all but one of my runs (the run with smakdown) there were predominantly new players with very few tokens if any beyond the starter pack.  I think it was the lack of knowledge that there were people willing to trade them stuff that kept them away.<br /><br />

Certainly possible. It was only when I was excessively bored that I wandered around soliciting and most times just sat at the table with the binder of doom in front of me figuring that the weight of the tokens would produce a gravitational field sufficient to pull pepople toward me.

The primary reason I traded was to make sure the team I was sponsering had the best gear I could get them.  I know it kinda nerf'd some of the risk when combat was involved but to me I figured I would get more long-term converts when success was within our grasp.  Plus Puzzle runs in many aspects ignore gear and that is what we did.<br />I am still trading with hope to increase the amount of gear for the whole party to give us even a greater edge next year with the hope that a Hardcore run can be done the year after, now that my team is beginning to gel into semi-permanence.<br />

I trade because:<br />

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• I'm only token buyer on my team of friends who run TD every year, I have to trade to balance out the tokens and get the best mix for all 8 players (This makes one a much more open ended trader, all tokens are useful)
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• I'm fascinated by the proto-economy that the tokens represent, I get a kick out of seeing how real the economy becomes (... to the point that I'm trying to push it along with things like token holders for gold )
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• I'm not sure why but there is something down right fun about trading with people about to go into the dungeon.
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<br /><br />This year I had awful time management and only got to sit and trade for 2 hours, (In 06 I was trading for at least 6 hours over the 3 days) but ever time I've done it, its been a blast.  Best I can figure its a mix of "helping the economy go" and "helping other players" that makes it so much fun.<br /><br />As an aside, I don't trade token to collect them, I trade them because I want to use them in the dungeon, or because I think they would be good for trading to others. (There have been one or two exceptions but for the most part, I'm about the utility of the token, not its uniqueness)

I spent a heck of a lot of time in the tavern this year. Partly this was due to laziness. Once settled, I find that I'm loathed to move if I don't have it. It's my own little law of inertia. It's the main reason that though I did less events this year than ever before, I didn't spend a single minute in the exhibit hall until sunday.