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Kol Korran
2020-07-06, 02:29 PM
My group will play in a post apocalyptic game. The system is FateCore.
Due to the importance of resource scarcity, and the importance of equipment in the setting (On of it's major themes), weve decided NOT to use the resource skill, but build a simplified equipment system, though more complex than usual to Fate.

It's similar in concept & execution to that of Dungeon world, only a bit simpler. And yes, I know Fate isnt about such resolutions, but I think we're coming to something workable for the game.

The setting relies mostly on barter for commerce, and no actual currency, as it is. (No Bottlecaps , coins, or such). However, the characters may collect some wealth and such, in form of items/ goods to trade.

Which leads me to my conundrum- though there is no actual currency, I'd like to have SOME term, or way to compare/ price items. This may vary hugely due to place, circumstances, and interaction, but I'd like to get some referanceable "trade unit" to compare to... Idealy, it will be something practical and of wide use.

Some initial ideas: "Scrap", "pieces", but those sound awefuly vague and uninspiring (I really liked the coining of "bottle caps", but it just won't do).

Any ideas good folks?

Lacco
2020-07-06, 02:42 PM
Good ideas? Not necessarily, but ideas definitely!

Depending on what's the most scarce thing, you could actually go with Dune-like "jars" or "jugs". Like "how many jars of fresh, filtered, clean, drinkable water do I get for this...?"

Of course, a jug of water would be quite the treasure, but heavy to carry.

Other ideas:
Cubes. Of sugar.
Strips. Of meat.
Cans?

Battery packs? Those things are small, relatively easy to carry, and would help a lot...

Or just inches of metal wire?

Or - an interesting, not necessarily good idea - a measure stick. You know, those "accounting" sticks that were - supposedly - used to transfer information on one's taxes somewhere down the medieval ages.

tyckspoon
2020-07-06, 02:56 PM
'Cals' or 'rats' - a unit based on the number of calories of food energy or meals worth of rations you would be willing to give up to obtain the item.

'Bits' - literally little bits of stuff that could conceivably be useful. Scraps of metal, hardwoods, batteries that may or may not still have a usable charge, lengths of string, etc.

'Utils' - some economics nerd finally got everybody to agree to use their jargon. A hypothetical currency/means of measuring how much somebody wants something based on how much utility it would offer them.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-07-06, 03:10 PM
How about Promises, seeing as it may well be services as well as food/water, materials etc?

Tvtyrant
2020-07-06, 04:01 PM
Scrip is a classic, it literally means a substitute for legal tender.

Specie is the collective term for coinage and metal money.

Paper is still in use for IOUs of varying formality.

If you want to go weirder, Bark could work (wood money is a real thing as a temporary, locally circulating currency.) Current as just a shortening of currency, Bet for betting on the item being valuable as barter, Barts for barter goods. Chumps, Gulls (for gullible), bars, ingots, Glories, etc.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-06, 04:27 PM
I had an economy based on casings.

Anonymouswizard
2020-07-06, 04:38 PM
(I really liked the coining of "bottle caps", but it just won't do).

Hello Fallout.

The original game isn't a bad model anyway. As I remember caps were currency not because they had intrinsic value, but because they were portable,pretty much unforgeable, and backed by water. So if there's something scarce that a single group can get a good hold over, and some sort of token they use to say 'one portion of this resource at a later date' then that essentially becomes a defacto currency.

Otherwise, I like measuring value in meals/rations or litres of water. Take a basic necessity and use it to measure the value of objects.

A weird idea might be currency backed by fat or some other high energy foodstuff, but that's just me thinking weird. But strips of salted meat or other preserved foodstuffs might work, especially if the society has a way to regularly preserve the food but not the capacity to do it in a massive quantity. Strips must be a certain length to be viewed as currency, or if possible you barter in the weight of meat.

Actually emergency ration bars, if the society can still produce them, might work great. Lasts for five years or more, serves as food in an emergency, Most likely not easy for anybody to just whip up but maybe theoretically possible for a larger settlement. You'd barter in bars, rations, or kilocalories ('kals'). Less likely than salted meat or the like, but might work.

Although bevause I was in a discussion about it earlier, I'm just imagining paying for services with jars of sauerkraut.

MoiMagnus
2020-07-06, 05:07 PM
More varied suggestions:

1) Time related.

Taxation in ancient times was in time of work (you own 1 month per year to the state, or something similar).
A day of "standard" work (or an hour of work) could be the base of a currency.

As a non native english speaker, I will have difficulty finding words that sound right, but something along the line of "workhour" or "halfday" could do the job.

2) Water related.

Drinkable water is precious. A "cup" of water could be a unit. With a "tank" being the unit for greater transactions.

3) Influence related.

This assumes the world still has some important personalities, i.e some powerful families around that have the means of reliably giving out favours. Then a "Mr Iamrich's favour" (or a fraction of such) could be a standard unit.
["Well, this golden stuff you found is probably worth 2 favour if I get it to Mr Iamgreat, so 50/50 and we get a favour each?"]

4) Land related.

This assumes that ownership of lands is still mostly existent.
A "garden" (or any small peace of land) could be a unit.

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-07-06, 05:45 PM
Nights.

One Night is the amount of meat/fresh fruit/sugar/spices/tobacco/booze/gentlemen's magazines you need to turn another crappy evening into a night of occasional glimpses on the bright side.

Not everyone has the same preferences, but the amounts have become so standardized that a non-smoker alcoholic will gladly let you pay in sigarets because they know what that's worth in booze. That is as long as the amounts are relatively small. If you're buying say a cow or a car they'll want a healthy mix of goods, no use being stuck with a cow's worth of rum if you're dying of scurvy.

Things like fuel, ammo and salt are often used as Nights as well, as they are common enough trade goods to have a clear established value, despite their lack of making your night less crappy impact.

Xuc Xac
2020-07-06, 05:54 PM
Why not just use the currency from before the apocalypse? Cash might not have any value in itself because it's just bits of paper, but it can still be used as a unit of account, which is what you're looking for. There have been many times in history when goods were valued in a currency that didn't have any coinage or physical bank notes.

Imbalance
2020-07-06, 05:56 PM
Clix Points

Tvtyrant
2020-07-06, 06:00 PM
Why not just use the currency from before the apocalypse? Cash might not have any value in itself because it's just bits of paper, but it can still be used as a unit of account, which is what you're looking for. There have been many times in history when goods were valued in a currency that didn't have any coinage or physical bank notes.

Presumably because there would be far too much of it. Post apocalypse usually assumes populations of billions becoming millions, or even thousands. There would be far too much cash, and arbitrage would wreck trade.

Misery Esquire
2020-07-06, 06:15 PM
The Pound is still in use today, but used to stand for the promise of exchange for a pound of silver* (or gold, at other points - but those coins were usually called Guineas). If precious metals have become unvalued (unlikely), it can still stand for a pound of something else that doesn't decay in value. Or for the economic power of the state in a global economy like it does now - but PostApoc. doesn't usually scan the world-spanning easy trade networks based on information exchange. Guilders, florins, and dollars (etc.) have similar history - Guilder being a sort of cross-speak of gold (in Dutch. I think. Listen, English etymology is tricky enough.), and dollar apparently evolving its way from thalers - silver coins from a particular silver mine that came to mean all silver coinage.

In fact, most coinage traded against gold in history. If contemporary economies have been bombed (irradiated, virused, alien'd, whatever) back into ancient ways, the best thing to check would be how those ancient ways functioned. And assuming you're playing The Apocalypse Happened But We're Surviving, not The Slow Death Of Humanity, then you have to have agriculture back up and running. And soon as agriculture runs, people will want value at a distance, and these nice shiny rocks are premium prestige - so your rich will want them made into things, things which are worth food, but food doesn't travel in circles well, so why not trade the shiny things.

To be fair, it doesn't need to be against gold; the world "ended" you've got these lovely ex-metropolises full of strange materials that only go away slowly if at all.

Also, Crowns and [state]marks are traditionally coinage (or papers) traded on the indicative power of the local government. To use Fallout as a naming example - Vault City could use Vaultmarks, backed by the promise of the city itself. Crowns obviously would mostly only apply where there is (or was) a monarchy of some sort.

Pauly
2020-07-06, 06:56 PM
You’re thinking about it in a way that assumes you need a currency. You don’t. We’ve been conditioned to think that currency is a requisite for civilization based on our cultural heritage.
Pre-Columbian South America (from Chavin, through Paracas, Nasca, Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chimu, Chinchas to the Incas) had advanced city building empires without currency.

As a DM you may have a hidden currency system so that you can have a stable idea as to how much an NPC is willing to trade for an item. The players don’t ever need to find out about this. All they need to know is that a horse is worth 20 wolf skins. If they find out later that sword is worth 3 horses they can infer that a sword is worth 60 wolf skins.

Telok
2020-07-06, 07:04 PM
Twinkies.
Condoms.
Gasoline.
Radios.
Light bulbs.
Bullets.

Mastikator
2020-07-06, 07:22 PM
Low level currency (copper equivalent): water
good because it's universally wanted
bad because it's bulky

Medium level currency (silver): preserved food
also universally wanted, less bulky, more scarce than water

High level currency (gold): pre-apocalypse tech
not universally wanted by individuals but extremely desired by towns which can trade it for large quantities of water and food

Xuc Xac
2020-07-06, 07:58 PM
Presumably because there would be far too much of it. Post apocalypse usually assumes populations of billions becoming millions, or even thousands. There would be far too much cash, and arbitrage would wreck trade.

No. I'm talking about using the previous currency as a unit of account with the cash being worthless. So you can say things like "This knife is $50 and these bottles of water are $1 each. That pallet full of old $100 bills is worth $10 if you need some scrap paper for starting fires." You can use "dollars" to describe the values of things without having any cash. That's how checking accounts and letters of credit work.

So you could use those values to compare different items to make barter easy and prevent situations where one side gets screwed because they can't make change when trading horses or whatever. You can just keep track of who owes how much to whom or pay in installments. For example, if you trade something to your neighbor for 240 fresh eggs, you might prefer to just take 2 eggs per day for 4 months instead of getting them all at once and being unable to use them before they spoil. If you both know how much he owes you, you can keep taking eggs until his debt is paid off. You wouldn't let strangers go into debt like that because they might just run off, but you can give credit to the people you trade with all the time.

Cluedrew
2020-07-06, 08:21 PM
Barter. The fact it is not really any money, just things you can barter is right there in the name. This is from another post-apocalyptic system; Apocalypse World. Similarly you could use words like "trade" or "exchange".

Coin. Even if coins aren't really used anymore the concept still is tied up in the idea of currency. Similarly the name of a defunct currency could be used even if that doesn't have any connection to what is being exchanged. And then I just realized... Xuc Xac already said that. I would argue for coin in this situation because saying "5 coins" changes out the unit.

That is all I have right now.

ImNotTrevor
2020-07-06, 10:04 PM
Not sure if anyone has said this, but:
You're already pulling from Dungeon World. Why not pull from its inspiration, Apocalypse World?

Call it Barter.

What is a Barter, you ask?
It's enough tradeable goods to bargain you into a week of basic living, a night with a beautiful lady in your bed, probably enough to bribe most people into letting something slide if it wouldn't cost them their heads.

But was is a Barter? Dunno, depends on the situation.
Could be a sack of potatoes. A jerry can of gas. A box of ammo. Some MREs. Canned food. It's tradeable stuff. Whatever makes sense for the character to have.

(EDIT: Literally the post above this one. Consider this my agreement with that comment)

aglondier
2020-07-06, 10:38 PM
I kinda like Pern's Mark, where a mark is a carved token issued by a craftmaster as a guaranteed unit of his time and effort.

Nifft
2020-07-09, 01:33 PM
Bitcoins. They're literally coins stamped from bits of metal. Shave and a hair cut? Two bits.

Democratus
2020-07-09, 01:43 PM
The best example we have of this in the real world is Kosovo.

When that city was at its worst, it was essentially post-apocalyptic. The most common currencies that they used were:
1) Ammunition: More common calibers were worth more, since more people could use them.
2) Silver: Silver coinage and silver-by-weight were both used as a trade medium
3) Disposable Lighters: Fire was sometimes hard to come by. People with spare Bic lighters found themselves with a valuable commodity.

Pelle
2020-07-09, 03:25 PM
Jerry cans

Anti-Eagle
2020-07-09, 07:48 PM
I'd come up with a number system things are worth and then just refer to it as barter. So a glass of water would be say... 1 barter.

jjordan
2020-07-09, 09:41 PM
My group will play in a post apocalyptic game. The system is FateCore.
Due to the importance of resource scarcity, and the importance of equipment in the setting (On of it's major themes), weve decided NOT to use the resource skill, but build a simplified equipment system, though more complex than usual to Fate.

It's similar in concept & execution to that of Dungeon world, only a bit simpler. And yes, I know Fate isnt about such resolutions, but I think we're coming to something workable for the game.

The setting relies mostly on barter for commerce, and no actual currency, as it is. (No Bottlecaps , coins, or such). However, the characters may collect some wealth and such, in form of items/ goods to trade.

Which leads me to my conundrum- though there is no actual currency, I'd like to have SOME term, or way to compare/ price items. This may vary hugely due to place, circumstances, and interaction, but I'd like to get some referanceable "trade unit" to compare to... Idealy, it will be something practical and of wide use.

Some initial ideas: "Scrap", "pieces", but those sound awefuly vague and uninspiring (I really liked the coining of "bottle caps", but it just won't do).

Any ideas good folks?
I'm going to suggest, in keeping with the abstract nature of Fate Core, that you create a fairly abstract system.
So instead of defining units you can classify the value of specific goods as Very Common, Common, Scarce, Very Scarce. You can quantify the quantities of the goods as None, One, Some, Many, Lots. That gives you a rough valuation of items for barter purposes. Variations in 'pricing' can be explained by local conditions or the personal needs/desires of the barterer.

For coinage I suggest multiple 'banks'. These are places with the resources to back up the currencies they issue with real goods. IF you want to go Genghis Khan on this issue you can have city-states that require that all trade be conducted with their coins (death penalty or confiscation of goods for failure to obey). The coins might have official names but are frequently named after their characteristics. Early paper bills were called 'flying money', for example. In a post-apocalyptic setting a currency-issuer might use old currency names as a way to gain more acceptance. They might use slang names instead of official names. E.G. Dollars become bucks. A grim sense of humor might see some narcissist mint coins featuring his likeness and referring to them as Charlies. The value of these currencies can be pegged to your quantities and values. A Charlie might be sufficient to buy Some Common goods.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-07-11, 07:23 AM
Presumably because there would be far too much of it. Post apocalypse usually assumes populations of billions becoming millions, or even thousands. There would be far too much cash, and arbitrage would wreck trade.
Coins would last a long time, but notes are a lot less durable - one of the reasons the UK went to plastic notes is they last longer than paper/cloth ones.

You might be able to collect a lot of coins, but you'll have difficulty carrying significant amounts around at any one time, which means you really need money changers and a basic banking system.

But another thing to consider is that coins are a fairly available supply of processed metal, and if you've no longer got a significant source of metals, sooner or later you're going to start melting them down for other uses.

That said, I could see pre-apocalypse currency being used in the early days, before something else comes in to replace it - it may even be that the government mint stays in use (either as one of the last vestiges of the state or taken over by another party) and then has some kind of role in society, be that a local currency in the area around the mint, a trading currency for settlements dealing with one another but which can only be changed by certified money changers, or something else.

Psyren
2020-07-11, 01:48 PM
'Cals' or 'rats' - a unit based on the number of calories of food energy or meals worth of rations you would be willing to give up to obtain the item.


I had an economy based on casings.

Seconding these two - if there's no fiat currency, then the best form of measurement would be one that is based on things that are eminently practical - safety (guns) or sustenance (butter). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model)

Tvtyrant
2020-07-11, 02:10 PM
Seconding these two - if there's no fiat currency, then the best form of measurement would be one that is based on things that are eminently practical - safety (guns) or sustenance (butter). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model)

This is not at all historically accurate. You want a supply of something that doesn't get consumed and has a fairly flat amount (with a very small inflation) which is why gold and silver took off in multiple places. If you consume the good it makes for terrible money, there were many attempts at making crop based currencies over the years and they all collapsed.

Civis Mundi
2020-07-11, 02:27 PM
This is not at all historically accurate. You want a supply of something that doesn't get consumed and has a fairly flat amount (with a very small inflation) which is why gold and silver took off in multiple places. If you consume the good it makes for terrible money, there were many attempts at making crop based currencies over the years and they all collapsed.

I'll add that even in societies with only barter and absolutely no fiat currency, butter would not do the trick, because it's too perishable. Something like pickles might cut it.

Or I'll do you one better. Pickles are nice, but they're heavy, and it takes some time and effort to produce them. It might not be worth it to lug them around at all, in which case you might have pickle banks and pickle credits...but at this point I'm getting silly, though admittedly I kind of love this pickle world.

Why not just cut out the middleman though, and use the thing you use to pickle them?

That's right--salt. Sugar wouldn't do, because it attracts too many pests. But salt can and has been used as currency. In fact, it's the root of words like "salary" and phrases like "worth your salt."

Psyren
2020-07-11, 02:48 PM
Uh, guys? My use of "butter" was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the macroeconomics concept of guns vs. butter (which I even linked to). I wasn't actually proposing that butter be the unit of value here. (I'm not even sure post-apocalyptic societies would have any to begin with.)

Civis Mundi
2020-07-11, 02:53 PM
Uh, guys? My use of "butter" was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the macroeconomics concept of guns vs. butter (which I even linked to). I wasn't actually proposing that butter be the unit of value here. (I'm not even sure post-apocalyptic societies would have any to begin with.)

Whoops. I fully admit, that whooshed right over my head. I could blame it on being half-way through my coffee, but who am I fooling? Not even myself. Just a moment of idiocy.

Any cook will tell you that butter makes anything better. It could be a light in the grimdarkness, not a currency, but the greatest of luxury goods. (Don't even get me started on ghee.)

I still stand by Pickle World to the death.

Tvtyrant
2020-07-11, 03:29 PM
Uh, guys? My use of "butter" was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the macroeconomics concept of guns vs. butter (which I even linked to). I wasn't actually proposing that butter be the unit of value here. (I'm not even sure post-apocalyptic societies would have any to begin with.)

Mad Max probably has butter, but that's a very... Specific post apocalyptic setting.

Yeah that wooshed me, mea culpa.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-07-11, 03:37 PM
This is not at all historically accurate. You want a supply of something that doesn't get consumed and has a fairly flat amount (with a very small inflation) which is why gold and silver took off in multiple places. If you consume the good it makes for terrible money, there were many attempts at making crop based currencies over the years and they all collapsed.
If nothing else, you may wind up with something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut :smallbiggrin:

Although that said, I could see skeins of wool, lengths of cotton, leather and similar materials having at the very least an ersatz value, especially as they're things that would be used, thus maintaining the supply of "currency" in circulation when sheep are sheared and so on.

MoiMagnus
2020-07-11, 04:02 PM
This is not at all historically accurate. You want a supply of something that doesn't get consumed and has a fairly flat amount (with a very small inflation) which is why gold and silver took off in multiple places. If you consume the good it makes for terrible money, there were many attempts at making crop based currencies over the years and they all collapsed.

Though the OP didn't asked for a money-like currency.

He seems to more be asking for a pre-currency loosely used to compare object's value for barter, but not actually used as a currency. So if that "currency" is non viable as a currency and doomed to collapse, that's still fine.

If your society has already collapsed too much, anything which is not useful per itself is not viable for barter, so it's even reasonable for a pre-currency to start by being indexed on consumables or tools of some kind, and be replaced by an actual currency as soon as the society build back enough trust to support one.

Mr Beer
2020-07-11, 04:05 PM
Unless the setting is very primitive, they will probably call the unit 'gold' or a derivative thereof.

Yanagi
2020-07-11, 09:17 PM
Okay, a "sort of" currency in a barter system would be an item that is:

(1) portable
(2) has relatively consistent demand
(3) but an individual unit is not especially valuable
(4) the item is valued across a broad geography distribution
(5) relatively uniform from one unit to the next

...the idea being that the pseudo currency item becomes the reference point against which the value of other more expensive goods is measured, but the pseudo currency item still has functional value that is consumed rather than just abstract value.

Real life examples: weighted measure of lentils and vigna-type beans (in Indus-civilization South Asia); bronze cloak-pins (in Celtic Europe); Choco Pies (in modern North Korea).

On the fly, I'd suggest for a post-apocalypse (and admittedly I'm immediately leaping to Mad Max imagery) that "brass" (in the sense of shell casing) would be a good pseudo-currency term, but also a physical item that would have some functional value on its own (if people are casting their own bullets, saving casings is an important time saver) such that people would keep some around but also not so precious they'd hoard tons.

Civis Mundi
2020-07-11, 09:40 PM
Okay, a "sort of" currency in a barter system would be an item that is:

(1) portable
(2) has relatively consistent demand
(3) but an individual unit is not especially valuable
(4) the item is valued across a broad geography distribution
(5) relatively uniform from one unit to the next

...the idea being that the pseudo currency item becomes the reference point against with the value of other more expensive goods is measured, but the pseudo currency item still has functional value that is consumed rather than just abstract value.

Real life examples: weighted measure of lentils and vigna-type beans (in Indus-civilization South Asia); bronze cloak-pins (in Celtic Europe); Choco Pies (in modern North Korea).

On the fly, I'd suggest for a post-apocalypse (and admittedly I'm immediately leaping to Mad Max imagery) that "brass" (in the sense of shell casing) would be a good pseudo-currency term, but also a physical item that would have some functional value on its own (if people are casting their own bullets, saving casings is an important time saver) such that people would keep some around but also not so precious they'd hoard tons.

I like "brass" a lot.

There's also an option that's more a sideways take on fiat currency: rai stones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones). For those who don't want to open the link, the long-and-short of it is that they're stone disks that are kept in one place or another. The value is based on size, craftsmanship, and the history of the stone. With larger stones, the stone generally never moves at all. Because there's a shared oral history keeping track of who owns what, people can barter with them like they're invisible, intangible coins. This is definitely something that paper money could come out of, but I could see it working in a post-apocalyptic setting. "Yes, I own that disk. Yes, it's been in a radioactive death trap for a century. But it's mine, ask anyone."

On other note, I've been playing some Fallout 4 again recently, and it reminded me of a complaint I had on this subject. I feel there's actually little reason for caps the way they're presented. See, the world is just about as full of "Pre-War Money" as it's full of caps, and each unit of "Pre-War Money" is worth at least a few caps. Wouldn't that make it a more stable currency?

Yanagi
2020-07-11, 09:55 PM
I like "brass" a lot.

There's also an option that's more a sideways take on fiat currency: rai stones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones). For those who don't want to open the link, the long-and-short of it is that they're stone disks that are kept in one place or another. The value is based on size, craftsmanship, and the history of the stone. With larger stones, the stone generally never moves at all. Because there's a shared oral history keeping track of who owns what, people can barter with them like they're invisible, intangible coins. This is definitely something that paper money could come out of, but I could see it working in a post-apocalyptic setting. "Yes, I own that disk. Yes, it's been in a radioactive death trap for a century. But it's mine, ask anyone."

On other note, I've been playing some Fallout 4 again recently, and it reminded me of a complaint I had on this subject. I feel there's actually little reason for caps the way they're presented. See, the world is just about as full of "Pre-War Money" as it's full of caps, and each unit of "Pre-War Money" is worth at least a few caps. Wouldn't that make it a more stable currency?

Hey, rai stones!

When I was a kid I was around of lot of Pacific Islands anthropologists and I always heard about the stone currency on Yap.

Depending on the exact tech sophistication of a post-apocalypse setting, but if it was the "Mr Fusion" (Back to the Future) Fallout portable-reactor equivalent tech, there actually would be a really apt rai stone equivalent in fissable material. While tiny amounts of reactor fuel in shielded containers would be a good luxury trade good; large stockpiles or active reactor devices could be "traded" by handing over the key or password to transfer access.

Civis Mundi
2020-07-11, 10:01 PM
Hey, rai stones!

When I was a kid I was around of lot of Pacific Islands anthropologists and I always heard about the stone currency on Yap.

Depending on the exact tech sophistication of a post-apocalypse setting, but if it was the "Mr Fusion" (Back to the Future) equivalent tech, there actually would be a really apt rai stone equivalent in fissable material. While tiny amounts of reactor fuel in shielded containers would be a good luxury trade good; large stockpiles or active reactor devices could be "traded" by handing over the key or password to transfer access.

Oooh, I love that! Now what would be the shorthand for such a currency? "Stocks," as short for stockpiles? Thus we still have stock brokers, stock traders, "playing the stocks" (by flipping them from buyer to buyer, increasing the mana and value of that reactor by enriching its history), and so on.

Lacco
2020-07-12, 01:35 AM
For my current pseudo-postapocalyptic project I went with $craps.

Satinavian
2020-07-12, 02:01 AM
(1) portable
(2) has relatively consistent demand
(3) but an individual unit is not especially valuable
(4) the item is valued across a broad geography distribution
(5) relatively uniform from one unit to the next
I agree.

And one of my main suggestions would be salt.