Currency

[kalos72]

So I have been thinking bout the type of currency my players are trying to design and thought you guys might have some feedback.

In a T2K world, assuming the area has some central government/authority, how would you handle a currency

You could just use food but thats a very primitive or starter currency I think. Krakow just uses paper notes that hold a certain value. But what if people started to forge those notes Happens all the time in history...

Could mint metal coins or clay coins with your "seal" on them but the same thing could happen with forgeries.

How does your campaigns major settlement handle a currency

[pmulcahy11b]

Something you want to consider with coins (aside from the counterfeiting issue) is ridged edges, like on most world coins these days. This prevents clipping some of the metal off of the coins to re-sell the clipped metal (believe it of not, that used to be a problem until about the late 1800s).

I think, however, that counterfeiting will be rampant in the first few years after currency is re-introduced, and there may be little anyone can do about it. It was a problem in Colonial America and post-Revolution US, complicated by each state making its own currency. One way around it might be to use still-existing prewar currency, and assign whatever value the local government decides to assign to it. Maybe put some sort of mark on it to tell where it was issued. (Many countries have stocks of currency stored up, including the US, who has stocks of currency stored in various places in the world).

Penalties for forgery could be made quite severe (i.e., long stretches of hard labor, reduced rations, or even death).

[copeab]

For currency, you need to use something that has no real value outside of being used as currency. While they may be fine for barter, gasoline, food and ammo make for poor currencies. For the most part, gold and silver are pretty worthless, so they make good currency.

Paper currency is probably too easy to forge; metal coins are somewhat more suitable since a 100 gram gold coin is still a 100 gram gold coin, no matter who made it. OTOH, metal tends to stay radioactive a long time ...

[simonmark6]

I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't sound flippant, but what about something like POGs or bottle caps

What I mean is something finite produced pre-war that would be nearly impossible to replicate after the war. What sort of goods might be suitable, if any

Another possibility is that the government just prints its own money and doesn't worry too much about forgeries as anyone with the resources to forge money is likely to be very rare.

What do you think the economy would be based on I'd suggest linking it to calories, all money is redeemable at government establishments for a requisite amount of food (this is essentially what Krakow does).

[kalos72]

If we are going printed money, I would say value should be one days meal to start.

I was thinking something like the money would be rotated each week. Each week a different color combination, number sequence or something. And then rotate say 8 different patterns every 2 months or something. Also limit the number of "currency" any one person can use per day/week.

Not sure something like that is reasonable in a T2K world but it would help limit the effect of forgeries.

[simonmark6]

To be honest, the amount of time it would take to co-ordinate that a government would probably just wear the loss to counterfeiting. In the FCoK the currency was changed every few months to stop stockpiling and you could also limit how many were exchanged for food every day.

You would still have to exchange notes for ones of teh new design or you'd be choking free enterprise (you may not see this as a negative), or have a way of swapping surplus currency for some other sort of benefit. Capitalism might suck in some ways, but if a government wants a recovery it's going to have to stimulate the economy in some way.

[kalos72]

FCoK was a starting point for our group talking bout this. I dont think there is another published source of a settlement that goes into that sort of detail.

Kinda OT here but I wanna talk bout that too. Economy.

For awhile to start I think most settlements will focus on just getting the basics down. Food/water/shelter/electricity and the industry that supports it. A currency would be used to project a normalcy to the citizen and give them SOME flexibility in what they "buy" with their hard earned "money".

From a command perspective, capitalism is a weight my guys dont wanna bother with for now. They see the way other settlements work, offering protection for the food/products the locals make on their own and wonder why not just take control over the whole thing and paying the civilians for their effort in food

Once populations stabilize and their immediate situations become less "survival" and more "rebuilding", then you might see some true semblance of an economy but not anything supported by the 'government'.

[pmulcahy11b]

I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't sound flippant, but what about something like POGs or bottle caps

Maybe with some sort of special punch shape in it, to stop those who find a bunch of unopened bottles from "making" their own money.

[Raellus]

I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't sound flippant, but what about something like POGs or bottle caps

Have you, by chance, ever played Fallout 3

[kalos72]

Fallout 3 best game EVAH!

[Canadian Army]

S Government's Emergency Stockpile of Paper Money

Here are couple of Links that I found, dealing with the US Government's Emergency Stockpile of Paper Money.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/mt_pony.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...rvation_Center

[Targan]

In my campaign (once it got back to the CONUS) the players were issued MilGov paper scrip as currency, concurrent with gold and silver having a relatively set value and being allowed by MilGov to be used as semi-official currency, so long as it was in ingot form and stamped with its purity and weight (the ingots could be any size and shape and could be smelted by anyone but of course stamped purity and actual purity often varied). I never really came to grips with all the difficulties of that system but hey, when you're running a game like T2K you've already got a million things to worry about as GM to keep things fairly realistic.

[simonmark6]

Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Fallout 3. I'm a total fanboy.

[Targan]

Me too. I played Fallout 3 literally for a year. It is an awesome game.

[kalos72]

Targan - I should probably just do something simple like that. I tend to locked in the details of everything and over think it. :P

Plus if you just know how much money is in circulation, and you see that number increase you know people are counterfeiting and then the 'sting' starts.