Postapocalyptic Roleplaying and Wealth

Our monetary system is based on a mix of debt and the government saying that it has value. When the government and debts stop existing, so does the value of your money. What has value when every day is a struggle for survival? How can we quantify the value?

Out with Objective Worth!

In times of desperation we may not say that things have objective value. When writing down the value of an object, we may only do it in the context of the location where it is being traded, and the state of the people who are doing the trading. A cup of water is worth a kingdom if you are dying of thirst. That being said, prices tend to average out in more stable locations, depending on local availability of items. In situations of crisis, when trading, most people tend to use commodity money. The following are example categories of commodities.

A sample system of exchanging commodities

• Candies - small things that people may use up for pleasure. May be candies, cigarettes, snacks, condoms or any other useable goods that store well.
• Bullets - small things that people sometimes need in their life. May be bullets, parts for repairing their gear, universal medicine like antibiotics and painkillers.
• Pills - small and specialist things that most people don't need, but when they do it's life and death. Specific parts for their cars, pills for rare conditions, ammo for rare equipment

1 Pill = 5 Bullets = 25 Candies. Multiply by 2 if the person clearly needs the good they are buying. Then change it by haggling and throwing extra things in, if you want to roleplay it. Now, you may give approximate value of gained goods without using any money!

When to use it?

It is not used within small groups of survivors, who will help each other for free with the expectation, that the others will also help them. It is used only when trading with people you don't trust to either help you later, or whom you don't trust to live long enough to repay their debt. In short - adventurers. It is also used only when there are no authorities who may create their own money.