We seem to be caught on the horns of a dilemma with deals: in order to present the deal in the tinkertoy text, we require a specific deal, yet in order to make deals manipulable to the needs of the characters, we require variability. How to resolve the dilemma?
The classic solution, of course, is to reduce all double-sided deals to single-sided deals by means of money. This was the solution that got economics rolling some thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, what works in economics doesn't work so well in dramatics. Yet I don't think it will be possible to engage in direct swapping of services. Is there any other intermediary that can be used in place of money? We could use Obligation here. In effect, a deal becomes one-sided: "If you do this for me, I'll owe you bigtime". Later on, such Obligation can be collected on: "Hey, you owe me bigtime, and I need a favor." Indeed, we could come up with something like Indonesian concept of tanagadalang. But how is it measured? And what if the storybuilder doesn't like our concept of dealmaking?
Nonetheless, the standard two-way swap involves too many problems. Between lookahead, the problems of being able to anticipate the player's desires, and the impossibility of getting the player to lookahead, as well as the whole bargaining mess, I think it unwise to impose my own structure on dealmaking.
Nothing in this precludes the storybuilder from devising his/her own dealmaking system at the level of technique. Certainly deals made for money or Obligation can be handled easily. Thus, I am punting on this issue; there just doesn't seem to be any way for me to simplify the storybuilder's task here. I'll concentrate on other issues.