'currency' in the wilds

[Elliot]

G'day Travellers

I was talking with the cap'n of my junk line the other day and he was wondering what the standard unit of exchange in the wilds was for traders and travellers like us.

I kinda figured medicine, seeds, machine parts and fusion plants were hot and gold, credits and Hortlez et cie shares were not.

So what is the currency of exchange in the wilds?

 

[mormonyoyoman]

Originally posted by Elliot:
So what is the currency of exchange in the wilds?

Don't know if it's a standard, but I've had awfully good luck using old DGP & GDW books and magazines. The exchange rate is teriffic -- got this free trader for two issues of the Traveller's Journal and a photocopy of the Atlas of the Imperium (a GDW product).

 

[Elliot]

Dear Mormonyoyoman

If only you had rats and cats and cogs and dogs and you could've traded a Kinunir from the saps in the ebay system.

By the way do you have a serious answer to this question as my cap'n want to get down to a series of adventures in the wilds and he is insisting on using my ship for the gambit?

 

[Jamus]

IMTU it is cash, cold hard made of silver and gold cash...its good everywhere and can be used by weight if not by coin.

Primative love gold cause its ooohh soo shiny and can be made into torcs, armbands, and bracelets.

more civilized folk like gold because it has value and can be sold for credits or exchanged for paper money at any banking institution.

basically i would think everyone likes gold and thats not going to change.
IMO

 

[Jamus]

PS trade goods like glass beeds, strong liquer, and pipe weed couldnt hurt if dealing with low tech folks

anything higher tech than the world your trading with should fetch a premium price.

 

[spank]

what ever is needed maybe one world has alot of food, but no petrol, maybe another needs food, and has alot of ore and a third need ore and has too much petrol

 

[Badbru]

Elliot, IMTU there is no longer a galactic standard currency like the Imperial credit, which by the way, has been mentioned by others on these boards, as being a world to world or system to system currency. To put it into an our world perspective, the Imperial credit was something that the UN, the IMF (International monetary fund) or the World Bank might have used rather than US Dollars in the USA, Australian Dollars in Australia, and English Pounds in the UK etc. So for a Traveller TNE campaign what does this mean?
Essentially any world that is doing better than simple barter will have it's own currency, maybe it's gold based, maybe if TL 4 to 8 it's paper face value notes maybe at TL 8+ it's plastic notes. Either way your Traders will land at a starport and either convert some cash to local currency (good luck finding a world that accepts another's currency)or they will sell their cargo for local currency and buy their next cargo with same local currency. So the short answer is each world will have a currency and your Captain will use it. It might mean he has a bank account on every world he visits assuming a non local resident is allowed to open an account
In terms of cargo's I usually just use the quick and dirty tables and rarely elaborate. In my experience TNE campaigns aren't much like CT campaigns where you haul frieght around to pay off your Free Trader, not that this can't be fun.

 

[Theophilus]

The TNE adventure Guilded Lily mentioned several different currencies accepted at Berens, The Guilder (guild currency), Prestwick Dollar (assume its from prestwick), etc. Obviously if there is a trade organization like the guild, then there is trade currency.

 

[TimN100]

I use a system of coins which if I remember was based on a canon reference to the system used in the Long Night.
30grams Gold = 100Cr
30 grams Silver = 10Cr
5 grams Silver = 1Cr
Larger amounts are carried as bullion.
Most governments would mint their own coins or print notes. Unless exchange rate calculations are a particular concern of your players you should be able to get away with handwavium credit transfers.

 

[Straybow]

Hmmmm, [taps calculator keys] 31 grams to 1 oz Troy. Present prices would be

30 g Au = 133 Cr
30 g Ag = 2 Cr

Most historic coins were 4-10 grams.

 

[Elliot]

I was influenced by asking this question by Firefly - most of the worlds on the rim in the 'verse do not seem to be all that interested in gold - they much prefer food, medicine and supplies. Likewise I should think the same is true of the Wilds.

Guilders may be a currency that traders use but I like the idea of 'I've got 40 tons of 3I med packs in perfect conditions, what will I get in return' to put to players (It adds for a bit of adventure!)

 

[robject]

Elliot,

Oh yes, barter is much more fun than credits.

IMTU, I'd say the Imperial Credit is "good" anywhere in the Imperium, and may well be the primary currency in TL C+ worlds with a starport A or B.

Middling worlds would probably have their own currency and have some sort of exchange rate at the starport.

Finally, low TL, frontier port worlds would probably rather barter than get stuck with CrImps.

 

[TheDS]

30grams Gold = 100Cr
30 grams Silver = 10Cr
5 grams Silver = 1Cr

At that rate, I'll trade you all my 10cr coins for 10x as many 1cr coins, then melt those down and cast them into 10cr coins; I'll be rich, nearly doubling my money each time!

If you want to have a consistent monetary base, then be consistent. For instance, if 5 grams of silver is worth 1cr, then 50 grams - not 30 grams - is worth 10cr. Anything else, and people just melt the coins down and convert them to the other and you get rampant inflation.

Also, historically, gold has been worth about 50-100 times as much as silver. I don't know about copper, but it's probably not unreasonable to say it's 1/50-100th the value of silver. This gives you a good, useful rate.

1 copper = 1 cent
1 silver = 1 cred
1 gold = 100 cred

And you can have other denominations by making the coins proportionally larger or smaller.

- - - -

There needs to be SOME standard against which to compare things in an "ideal" environment. Sure, water is going to be worth LOTS more on a vacuum world than on water world, and indeed, you COULD make a fortune shipping it (so long as it's cheaper to go from star to star and not stay in the same star system), but overall, water has a faily low intrinsic value.

Once you know what something is "worth" in a "normal" environment, then you can apply situational modifiers. Some worlds may have a LOT of those, but that is where you find your trade routes.

Now as to the actual question of what a standard unit of exchange would be... historically, gold and silver have been used, because they had very few industrial uses, but looked very nice. Same for jewels. However, in a place where every day is a fight for survival, pretty objects aren't going to be of much value. You have to offer something important. It's going to be all barter. You're going to ask for stuff they consider junk and give them stuff they need to survive.

In a low-tech society, which doesn't value pretty baubels, you have one thing left to compare with: labor. How much effort does it take to make something? There of course will be modifications based on the object's utility, and the amount of skill required to make it (similar to tech level requirements).

But baubbles probably wouldn't hurt either; livening up the mood can be important too.

 

[Telsor]

If I remember my economics classes correctly, Money is called a 'medium of exchange'.

Short version is that money makes it easier to trade (exchange) your 10 tonnes of iron ore for 20 tonnes of wheat.

It only has value is all parties to the exchange think it has value, and is only worth what those people think it's worth. So your 10 kilograms of gold might be worth a fortune on one world, but next to nothing on another. In the larger sense, this is why trade exists.

Similarly, the value of something can change ( with money this is called inflation ( or deflation ). The 'trick' when dealing with money however is that because it's only value is what people think it's worth, this drop in value is purely a case of people *believing* it's worth less..in actually it's still the same piece of paper, with the same printing on it, etc etc etc.

In a TNE sense, the imperial credit probably lost all it's value when the empire collapsed..the credit itself is exactly the same, but the value people think it has collapsed with the empire.

The value of any replacement curency would depend largely on the faith people have in it or, more importantly, those that back it ( the US dollar has a more constant value than the Iraqi dinar for example ).

I would think that, in the wilds, nobody would have much faith in anyone elses currency ( they may not have much faith in their own either! ), so any trade would need to be based on barter...A pocket empire would have it's own currency accepted on most (all?) of it's worlds, and maybe even some of the neighboring worlds possibly at some degree of 'discount'.

Feel free to read up on hyperinflation for an example of what happens when people lose faith in their own currency.

As for 1 gold=10 silver=100 copper

That falls down as soon as you get to a world where copper is rare, but gold is plentiful.

 

[savage]

I recall reading in an MT book that the Imperium credit (perhaps a specific form) held value after the collapse. IMTU I assume it as an alternate when nothing else is agreeable. Many worlds fell to TL7+ where a monetary system would still hold respect.

As a TL8+ monetary systems are plastic cards or TL10+ credsticks within the regency or imperium. As a substitute everything has a monetary value of course. Imperium credits still hold tradeable value on worlds that aren't desperate for supplies.

Savage

 

[Telsor]

Originally posted by Savage:
I recall reading in an MT book that the Imperium credit (perhaps a specific form) held value after the collapse. IMTU I assume it as an alternate when nothing else is agreeable. Many worlds fell to TL7+ where a monetary system would still hold respect.


Technology isn't the issue...primitive societies have had money, modern ones have had it's vaue collapse...Argentina a few years back is the most recent I can remember, although there are surely others.


As a TL8+ monetary systems are plastic cards or TL10+ credsticks within the regency or imperium. As a substitute everything has a monetary value of course. Imperium credits still hold tradeable value on worlds that aren't desperate for supplies.

Savage

OK, so world X accepts Cr for their widgets. a little later, they go to world Y and try to buy wine..they find that on world Y, nobody values the Cr, so they can't buy anything with it...the people of world X aren't going to accept Cr for widgets in future, and so the value of the Cr drops further. The fewer who accept it, the less likely it is to have much value.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I think there's two issues at steak here; primitive verse wilderness. Primitive cultures implies (or could imply) unsettled terrain, or wilderness like conditions. But a wilderness setting doesn't imply a primitive culture. If it's case one, then beads and bobbles are the order of the day (or the high tech equivalent). If it's case two, then the credit is as good as gold, it's just that its buying value will be different.

On an agricultural world the credit might have tremendous value. Consider the case of a city-slicker driving into a backwater town with a wad of hundreds

This verse heading to an undeveloped, but civilized planet (populated by off world hunters, prospectors, archeologists and the like) where the credit has extreme value. Some items that would normally cost a handful of credits (or fractions thereof) might fetch thousands from an unscrupulous vendor. Likewise some items that might cost thousands offworld might be valueless on an unsettled planet (think of a Ferrari in the Andes or Himalayas; it's only worth something if you can get it to someplace where you can show it off).

In short, if you're dealing with natives (tech level depending), then you need trinkets they'll like. Otherwise the credit should be OK, government and population depending

Just my 0.02cr (or fur pelt equivalent )

 

[Telsor]

If by primitive, you're refering to tech level, then it doesn't matter *that* much...the babylonians had money, pacific islanders did as well ( I think they used shells from memory ). So money comes in at tl 0-1. Memory of more civilised times would also help that.

Fully agreed that you'd have a very hard time trying to trade a ferrari to people without roads ( ice to eskimos? ) and that, it some cases Cr could be very valuable, but similarly, try taking a wad of Euros to the backwater town you mentioned and see what you can buy with them.

 

[robject]

This discussion reminds me of Gamma World's "domars": indestructible plastic coins that survived the nucelar holocaust. They were accepted as units of exchange, although they weren't as well trusted as gold. And if anyone came in to town with a bag full of domars, people might decide not to deal with him.

 

[Antony]

Basically in the wilds "currency" only has value if it has value as freight. Ie a ton of silver coins has a value as a ton of silver, nothing to do with the pretty designs on it (except perhaps to a collector).

In my Banners sector campaign Alston League "credits" may be accepted on Delsun but it is for sure that anyone from the Hope Federation would look at both currencies from Alston and Delsun as interesting novelty items, but of new use to him "as a currency."