What are we using for currency (apart from cash cards)

Game Talk The Bunker
21

I think the fun of this system would be working out the value of each item in relation to each other item, instead of having any set item be a currency.

Mostly because each individual persons needs will be different. Somebody without items that have positive quench value will value water, drinks, and containers more than somebody who has tons of water. Somebody with who had a gun will value ammunition and magazines for that gun more than other items, especially if they are running out (assuming NPC’s don’t just magic items out of the ether when they run out). Somebody who is hungry and has no food will value food more. Craftsmen will value raw components more than normal (to a reasonable degree, they still want to make a profit on their labour obviously).

Although each item will need an internal and hidden value as compared to every other item for some sanity to be involved. That value could be determined at the start of the game by pre cataclysm values, and perhaps the item type could have a value curb that changes over the course of a few game years. Items that can no longer be produced, except by factions, could go up over time. Some notable items would be gunpowder, plutonium, and luxury alchohol. Other items could drop in value over time as well, like raw food or easy to create food. Of course, this would be ruled by their usefulness or enjoyment value. Stuff like multivitamins and antibiotics, despite being technology that might very well be lost to the ages, may not be valuable because they would be to old to be effective after a year or so.

22
Except that it's WAY too easy to get at the moment.

That’s the problem. All the facilities that keep each drink of water from being a gamble are gone now. Rivers and ponds are certainly contaminated (Swimmers and Zed wildlife) Sewers aren’t being maintained, chemical spills, gasoline leaks etc. Don’t even get me started on what toxic waste dumps and sarcophagi are doing to the water table. One of the games most lenient mechanics is the quality of life players are given as far as ‘clean’ water goes. But that might be another topic all together…

Access to treated water is something that a huge portion of the world doesn’t reliably have. After the cataclysm most of the ways to get it are inherently dangerous. ‘start a fire near the river’ isn’t safe, transporting water isn’t safe, scavenging for fuel or batteries or electronics isn’t safe. So people NEED water but WANT to stay put. Great, let’s say you bring a barrel of clean water to a trader…

Why should he trust that it’s ‘clean?’

Maybe have it so ‘pre-fall’ bottles of water are accepted for full value at factions but unaffiliated wanderers have a hard time selling water in bulk. Faction merchants could have a sort of ‘water bank’ at their HQ, non-transferable of course. So when you trade items they’d tell you how much clean drinking water it’s worth and put it on your tab. This way they force the player into continued trade with them. It’s an old trick they used to pull on miners via a ‘company store’

Water as a currency under such guidelines ensures:

  1. Factions monopolize trade, ensuring that ‘money’ is only worth something when dealing/affiliated with themselves or allied/trusted organizations
  2. It takes the market away from players, whom would otherwise steamroll any economy.
  3. Throwing in with a faction gives players access to more than just missions

Just a thought of course. Currency is only as valuable as the people willing to accept it.

23

[quote=“Labtop_215, post:21, topic:12070”]I think the fun of this system would be working out the value of each item in relation to each other item, instead of having any set item be a currency.

Mostly because each individual persons needs will be different. Somebody without items that have positive quench value will value water, drinks, and containers more than somebody who has tons of water. Somebody with who had a gun will value ammunition and magazines for that gun more than other items, especially if they are running out (assuming NPC’s don’t just magic items out of the ether when they run out). Somebody who is hungry and has no food will value food more. Craftsmen will value raw components more than normal (to a reasonable degree, they still want to make a profit on their labour obviously).

Although each item will need an internal and hidden value as compared to every other item for some sanity to be involved. That value could be determined at the start of the game by pre cataclysm values, and perhaps the item type could have a value curb that changes over the course of a few game years. Items that can no longer be produced, except by factions, could go up over time. Some notable items would be gunpowder, plutonium, and luxury alchohol. Other items could drop in value over time as well, like raw food or easy to create food. Of course, this would be ruled by their usefulness or enjoyment value. Stuff like multivitamins and antibiotics, despite being technology that might very well be lost to the ages, may not be valuable because they would be to old to be effective after a year or so.[/quote]

I do like this, but i’m pretty sure antibiotics and multivitamins can last for a long time. (Around 2 years maybe even more.)

Even then, i’m pretty sure that a while down the line medicine could still be manufactured, however at a obviously diminished rate.

With that being said, I still agree on pretty much everything else. I guess I could make tons of cash by making drugs, weapons and good quality booze.

24

in a real life situation salt would be high on the currency list.

25

Previous discussions:
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=2704.msg36352#msg36352
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=7758.msg178760#msg178760

tl;dr
Old-world money will only be useful for trading with robots or other factions that somehow don’t understand that it’s now worthless.
Primary trading with NPCs will be barter based, the NPC’s needs will factor into the value they place on various things.
Individual factions might issue currency of some kind, but it won’t be accepted or valued equally by all factions.

tl;drtl;dr there will not be a universal currency.

26

Currency in itself is obsolete in all circumstances except within a functional, self-sustaining and self-sufficient economy. Such a thing no longer exists in the game’s universe.

Bartering is thus the only feasible and functional alternative. Goods for goods. Anything in between is just clutter and gets in the way of the transfer of items. Cut the middleman.

27

Historically, this has been the case. Thanks, UnRealWorld!

But water will never be a currency. Why? Because )it evaporates )simply living depletes your supply )if you drop it you can’t pick it up again )it falls from the sky

Barter economies may be difficult to simulate. It may require NPCs to carry on with some abstracted form of existence outside of the reality bubble, where items are both produced and consumed, which in turn, has consequences for how they interact with the local “ecology”. It’ll be really cool to run across an NPC who has dug themselves in, fortified a building, and carved out a niche for itself. They be cooperative or hostile in terms of sharing that territory… for reasons owing to circumstance! (as opposed to RNG)

28

Currency should have, as stated before, little to no usefullness attached to it. The Value currency has is given by the trust of the people in said Currency, and it usually was backed by something else, like rare materials.

That said, essential Items like Water and Food make good BARTERING items because everyone needs them, but they’re bad as currency because the value would highly fluctuate, due to the ease of producing both. (Inflation, anyone?)

Ammunition, drugs and medicine would make sense as Currency because they are somewhat hard to reproduce properly and they are also somewhat rare - There are also so many different kinds of Ammo, meds and drugs that it would be an extremely complicated system for currency (is my 9mm bullet worth more or less than the .357? how about rare ammo, is it worth more? Or less, because nobody uses those guns?)

We also know that products like alcohol, cigarettes and similar commodities are used for trading in times of war ; This could potentially work out better than the aformentioned items, especially because they aren’t necessary to survive, but nice to have - at least if you drink or smoke. And I wouldn’t be surprised if most people in the Cataclysm started drinking, smoking or something similar to cope with everything around them.

If I have to be honest though, I think fallout did it right. They had several different currencies in their games, and they worked out well in my opinion:

  • Bottlecaps. Hard to reproduce properly (as long as you don’t have the necessary machines), fakes can be somewhat easily spotted AND there is a high, but limited amount of them in the world.
  • Ring pulls. Only used in Fallout Tactics, but it’s basically the same idea as the bottlecaps, but easier to reproduce, because they have an easier form and no paint on them.
  • NCR-Dollar ; Legion-Coins, Scrips: Those are handed out by bigger factions (namely NCR, Legion, Brotherhood of Steel), and those fations will back up their respective money, so it’s at least somewhat safe because you know you can trade with this money at least in some locations. They never truly got rid of the bottlecap as secondary currency though.

With that said, it would make sense to use something similar as currency for catacylysm. Some kind of trash you usually wouldn’t really need in large quantities, preferably something with a low weight and volume, so you can carry a lot of it with you, if necessary. To be honest though, I wouldn’t really know what to use - Maybe Bullet Primers? We only have a few kinds of those, but they arent really…plentiful.

29

it’s not like the humongous amount of cash would go anywhere though. People lived their whole lives around it being used. That sort of thing wouldn’t be too far fetched to figure it’d still be used. Plus, Z’s would have a small (or not!) amount on them uncommonly. I’ve got a number of bills in my wallet right now, even. Coin jars, piggy banks, ATM’s and the like all have them and are common (ish) around house holds.

I don’t remember the exact time frame, or if I even knew it at all, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that people would cling to actual cash as a bartering tool, since it both has no actual practical use, people associate it with actual value, and they have done so their entire lives. It’d also give a solution for NPC trading and bartering, not to mention risk/reward for breaking into a bank vault (which may or may not even have cash in it)

Water wouldn’t make any sense, bullets would if items had a base value tied to them and the bullets themselves, and cash cards don’t work unless there’s a powered reader/charge slidey thing anyways.

Just straight cash seems to be a more logical solution to me.

30

Impractical commodity makes sense, but to use any impractical commodity (gold, rare minerals, etc.) others have to agree to trade for them as a commodity. To do so they have to believe that they can re-trade it safely. If its 10 days into the apocalypse and someone walks up to you as your eaking out your survival worried about how your going to eat tomorrow as you’ve only found enough food for today, and some high roller strolls up and offers you a gold bar/ watch etc. For 2 cans of food, your going to laugh in his face.

The fallout bottle-caps only makes sense ~ a year down the road+ or so in my opinion, and probably not even then. I mean, in order to establish something like that, someone has to step forward and place value on something, not knowing if its going to stick or not.

Granted if your doing well enough and throw an announcement out to your camp that you will trade food/water for bottle caps everyone is going to value bottle-caps. But if at any point just a few people refuse to accept it as currency/ don’t want to give up their commodity for caps, your sunk as the circulation grinds to a halt and you now have a stockpile of worthless caps and everyone else has your valuable food. All cuz the gun store owner didn’t accept your new commodity. Its risky to try to introduce a new currency where he may become nonredeemable at any time.

No one is going to run that risk while they are barely surviving with what they have. To establish a new currency, you need a little time for things to settle and for excess commodities to start building up in various locations.

direct barter is the only sensible trade until things settle down and “big” merchants with something approaching a monopoly on a good or service with some guile and wit give value to a specific commodity, having enough excess to make it through the transition until it starts circulating proper. Even then it would only be local, until some group, or faction of traders universally gave value to that commodity. Given the difficulty and risk of travel over long distances between encampments, traveling merchants aren’t going to take that kind of risk, especially since they won’t be able to unify anything until things begin to “settle” and “safe-ish” trade routes open up.

31

I think fuel is a good currency. Its hard to make, there is a limited but vast supply, dangerous to get, useful for most forms of living, the value should remain constant.

32

Fuel “rots” pretty fast.
Ethanol blended gasoline will go bad in 3 months.
Regular gasoline will start going bad in 3 months and by the end of the first year will be risky.
With proper additives and storage, it can be stored up to 4 years, but “proper storage” is not the vehicle’s fuel tank.

4+ year gasoline is risky in modern engines. Old Soviet engines made with kick starting in mind (as in, starting with a kick to the engine) will tank it, but those aren’t made with any form of efficiency in mind (except maybe cost efficiency of the engine itself).

Diesel is bio-degradable, which makes the storage even worse. Biodiesel is even more biodegradable, not to mention more demanding of the engine.

Then there is vegetable oil. Ancient diesel engines can run on it. It is useful for things that don’t involve fueling. It can be turned into biodiesel with proper technology, but it must be relatively fresh (not rancid).

The only fuel that doesn’t “rot” is, ironically, radioactive crap.

33

then its settled…
we make teeth the currency

34

You mean teef?

35

Fuel “rots” pretty fast.[/quote]
Add wood engines to the game, it chugs wood.

Ask North-Korea for blueprints.

Then maybe add saplings so we can plant forests inside cities to cut down for logs to power our wood engine turret.

36

OR use the gajillions of wood that literally makes up every house and most stores.

37

what about something like nails?

38
  • Too useful ; a lot of crafts/constructions use them (40 different recipes that use Nails + 55 different constructions)
  • way too much - you literally just need to hit a door or a chair to get nails. I’d say it’s nearly as common as water.
  • way too easy to craft. It’s a difficulty 1 recipe which uses up just a little bit of steel or scrap metal and some tools.
39

Theres nothing easily portable that doesn t rot which could be used as a currency effectively in the cataclysm(nothing i can think of).
Trading goods directly is the way to go until a large enough community forms to enable enforcing a currency via law.

40

Fuel “rots” pretty fast.[/quote]
Add wood engines to the game, it chugs wood.

Ask North-Korea for blueprints.

Then maybe add saplings so we can plant forests inside cities to cut down for logs to power our wood engine turret.[/quote]

You laugh, but that’s actually a thing, and there are photographs of actual wood-burning vehicles from England after WWII.

NK may well be the only place they are used TODAY, of course, but the technology is quite viable.