Selling IG Items for OOG Money

Anyone who follows the NERO National boards probably already heard about all the hub-bub regarding the selling of magic items.

Unbeknownst to the rules team, someone decided to sell items in the National Newsletter and on the national online store. While they were technically selling the phys-rep with the tag as an added bonus, this is clearly against NERO policy.

Here's the excerpt from the NERO General Policy that forbids it:

Selling NERO ® Items for Out of Game Money: Tagged NERO ® Items cannot be sold for out of game currency. This applies to both chapters and players. Any items sold in violation of this policy will be destroyed and the involved players will be suspended from all NERO ® International events for a minimum of 3 months. Physical Representations can still be sold, however the NERO ® tags that represent the In-Game item cannot be sold, nor can they be "included" with the physical representation sale.

I will note that the rules team flagged this incident as breaking policy, but unfortunately policy enforcement is outside of our jurisdiction. But I highly suggest none of the local players purchasing these items, since if this is ruled against policy, the new owners of the items may be suspended as well.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the effect of a game selling IG benefits for OOG cash.

I know, everyone immediately leans towards saying something like this is terrible. To put it simply, people want to compete on a fair playing field. Having some guy pay his way into being a superpower without putting in the time can be devastating for game morale.

But the truth is, "micro-transactions" could be one of the few ways for a struggling LARP to maintain stability and keep running. I know of several instances where players have kept a game up financially through a tough time. Should they be crucified if given thanks in the form of IG benefits?

I might get strung up for suggesting something like this, but I would like to see more LARP games utilize the idea of micro-transactions in order to help support the game. But here are some important rules when implementing those micro-transactions.