I recently played a game online where I got giant from the black market deck.
Since none of the starting 10 cards were journey cards I didn't have a journey token
So the giant just gave +$1 every time I played it.
I was wondering if that's the desired behavior or is it correct to add a journey token to the game in that circumstance.
It doesn't seem correct to me, but see below. While it's true that the descriptions of Giant, Ranger and Pilgrimage all specifically instruct one to put the Journey token face up at the start of the game, the Adventures rule book also says
"The Journey token (the one showing a boot) is face up at the start of a game. It can be turned over by Ranger, Giant, and Pilgrimage. They turn over the token and then check to see if it is face up or not, and do something based on that. The token can be turned face down with one effect and then face up with another."
so the instruction to put the Journey token face up is not specific to the set-up instructions of any of the cards that use it. Furthermore I can see nothing to suggest that the tokens (or the Tavern mat) are only present in games for which they are required at the outset. Having said all that, I suspect that it might have been Donald X's intention that the tokens were only to be used in games that required them at the outset. When Adventures first came out, I vaguely recall someone asking if tokens were used in all games or only the ones that required them. I seem to recall a somewhat bemused Donald asking in reply why one would 'use' tokens in a game that didn't require them. Black Market proves to be the answer!
I know that Donald asked Stef to keep certain cards, e.g. Young Witch, out of the Black Market deck because they required a special set-up when they were in the game. It could well be that he needs to add Giant, Ranger, Relic, Bridge Troll etc to the list.