Duck and Cover

Ill stick to bottle caps thank you

Rama Stryfe wrote:True.. But there have to be vaults around... And ways, coins, trade and the such help.

small problem -- there's no federal bank around to back the money. Paper money = useless. Notice NCR is the biggest gov't entity in the fallout world and their currency has to be stamped out of gold to be of any value... there would really be no point in keeping the old currency around and keep in mind that Fallout's world isn't ours. So its not like modern day nuked, it's got its own history and it's own habits.

Does anyone else think that everything to be said about this subject has, and that we are now essentially beating a dead horse?

Oh, and bottlecaps have no intristic value, but New Reno (heavy drug trade) and VC (tech) backed gold, and for all i know, NCR (strong military force)supported the system as well. There are strong psycological reasons for choosing gold as main currency. People from before the war had preconceptions of what was valuable, which, in turn, was taught to their children. They passed it along, and so on, until the Vaults opened. For a while (fo1) people realized that guns were worth more than anything they tried to mine, and it wasn't worth it. But, before long, the waste had some rather developed cities which offered safety and maybe a steady job. Once mining operations began (probably after a trial period with coins recovered from old america, as paper would have disintegrated) it was a simple matter to decide that gold did indeed once again have value, as the world changed from the fight for initial survival to relative luxury. Since many have put forth the idea that civilization would have once again collapsed in on itself by fo3, maybe gold coins would once again fallen from favor, and some other material which does not have to be mined or refined step forth to fill the resultant gap.

good way of putting it

Bloodgeon11 wrote: maybe gold coins would once again fallen from favor, and some other material which does not have to be mined or refined step forth to fill the resultant gap.

Like bottle caps? They could be made from aluminum, steel, Iron, copper, lead, or any metal. and they could be salvaged, so assuming that a major trading hub backs it, it would have value near that hub. In other areas (IE. shady sands, Klamath, or junktown) survival would be more important and a barter system would be more sensible.

I think no money might be intresting. You have to trade items, and if you find something worth a lot but no-use to you, you have to decide wether to lug it around for a while, or leave it and see what else ther culd b :DDD

weak chars might struggle though, but diplomats wont have use for expensive guns eh?!?!!?1

Hear, hear! We want bartering!

i like $$$ too much, so bottlecaps have to stay.

Kashluk wrote:Hear, hear! We want bartering!

We? I personally would want some sort of bootle cap or ring pull system (Are there more ring pulls in existance, or bottle caps?) near major trade hubs. People (Gamers) dont want to have to scroll through so many @#$% items, and would much rather sell 'em for BCs/RPs. Thats why BIS would make $ systems!

or they could do it like the fot inventory

you could still have expensive useless stuff, like a desert eagle or something :O

I really like bartering, but I think that people would try to implement a money-based economy after some time. I would like to see a limit on the number of monetary units (be it bottlecaps, scrips or whatever) a person can carry - thus, money should have a weight.

Two anecdotes from a postapocalyptic PnP campaign:

- The characters started to use girlie mags like checkbooks "You want nice pictures for those bats? I give you three nice pictures!"

- One very big trading and manufacturing city had started to create metal coins. They are accepted in the city and its surroundings, and at half to quarter value by many traders who hope to return to that city. Apart from these, the coins are accepted at their material value... There is the plan of having the characters meeting a tribal chieftain/ raider boss who wears an armour made from these coins - he whacked a trader, maybe even knows that the metal plates have a certain worth, but no one is going to trade with him...so he did the logical thing. If the characters manage to get this armour, they will be able to sell it at quite a price in the manufacturing city...

Lets just go back to trading Squirrel pelts and everybody can be happy.

I think bottlecaps and gold were equally stupid. I think it should just be a barter based economy.

Yes, everyone listen to the whacked-out satanist...

Bloodgeon11 wrote:Yes, everyone listen to the whacked-out satanist...

Yep.

All of these ideas are nice... But how about something with true inherent value? While metal coins could *theoretically* have inherent value, this only aplies for those with a forge...

How about bullets? Technically this is bartering, but if it is referred to as money then it becomes money! Eg: common pay for work: bullets. You pay a whore in bullets (As in handing theme to her at less than 15 FPS).

KillaKilla has spoken.

Bottlecaps=Post-Apocalypse fun=Fallout's theme

That's all I gotta say.

Killa-Killa wrote: (Are there more ring pulls in existance, or bottle caps?)

Well, given the 50's thing, you've gotta say bottlecaps.
The thing about the hub backing bottlecaps as a currency is this: they have no control over their production. They'd have to back the bottlecaps anyone made because (as far as I know, anyway) there's no such thing as a forged bottlecap. Any slightly industrialized society could make a bunch of bottlecaps and rob the water merchants blind.
Bullets as currency... Bullets are made out of LEAD. They are not light. Bullets would have to be extremely rare/valuable for a bullet based economy to work.

Or bullets might be made of STEEL or GOLD. None of those would work either?

Everyone saying how bottle caps have no intrinsic value, but you have to realize that gold doesn't have any intrinsic value either. Of course it's pretty and shiny, but other than that it is simply a manufactured symbol to represent value, just like the bottle caps.

The reason societies always end up developing currency is that it makes trading much easier because each person doesn't have to have something the other wants. Also, it's often much more convenient to store than actual goods, and it can be divided easier.

So what the choice between bottle caps and gold really boils down to is a stylistic thing. I vote bottle caps.