Currency

[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'.

[simonmark6]

Originally Posted by kalos72

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'.

From my reading of this, your PCs are talking about taking over a community, by military force if necessary, and then making the community work for them and turn over all of their production in return for "pay". In effect they are replacing the government with a military junta.

If this is the case, forgeries are the least of your worries. The PCs are going to have more issues with dealing with what effectively becomes a slave population such as sabotage, low production and pilfering if you're lucky and out right insurgency if they aren't.

Such a set up might work in the very early days when having the PCs is the difference between life and death, but very soon after that the local poulation would probably start to want more independence. "Ban the 100% tax" and "No taxation without representation" could well be their rallying cry.

Again, interesting times for your PCs.

[kalos72]

Thats something we have spoken about a few times actually Simon...

To us, until things settles down some our thinking was it would be better to control all aspects of production to ensure things go smoothly.

Its has always baffled me why a unit would simply trust a population to 'give' it enough food to survive when you can simply take over the production and ensure that happens.

Now they aren't all "use the slaves to clear that radiation rubble" or what ever but they think times are so tough that its better to have tighter control over the population. IE - martial law

[simonmark6]

To he PCs of course it makes perfect sense. Of course as a GM somebody needs to think about how the population would react to this.

At the very beginning, they will probably be too concerned about living day to day to worry about such things although you will always get some people whose principles outweigh their survival instincts. Almost as soon as the basics become stable however they'll be looking for more.

Even the majority of the large scale despots in the TK2 canon have a semblance of representation for the people whether it's the Krakow council or the Barons of the Margravate of Silesia. Even then there is an opposition that causes the regimen serious trouble with that trouble rising proportionately with the amount the rulers exert control over the population.

Now, if your PCs are relatively benign and share and share alike as well as possibly having a method of people giving their views or airing issues they think are unfair, they may get away with it for a long time. Maybe even long enough to achieve their goals. In teh long run however, people will want to keep the majority of the fruits of their labour in order to have control over their own lives. A totalitarian government no matter how benign is still a totalitarian government.

I think that one of the reasons why some large military units do 'trust' populations to give them food in return for protection is that they are reluctant to use martial law to sieze all assets and seek total control over the populace in case it leads to an insurgency.

It's your game however and you are more than welcome to run the game in any way you feel realistic, in the end the game's all about having fun. I know you don't need to have my permission to do that but I hope you do have fun anyway, especially as you sound as if you have an inventive group.

[kalos72]

Good post Simon!

I am sure that once my campaign settles down, food becomes more regular and the ever looming threat of starvation seems a distant memory, this will need to be addressed.

One idea they had was something I posted a while ago. A manor system, where select people are 'given' land and tasked to manage it. Keeping a certain percentage while giving the majority to the 'government'. More like feudalism really.

But at some point the system will need to mature to meet the ever improving soceity the PC's have created, if it goes according to plan. /wink

[simonmark6]

Having their own land would surely help once the inital crisis was over. You'd find that over a period of time, more people would want to keep more of their produce with less feudal oversight. This would be years if not decades so isn't a major issue unless you skip lots of time in the campaign.

I know it took many centuries historically but most people would want a quicker transition. Of course, many major war leaders often become politicians in later life.

But then TK2 stops being fun and becomes "P&P" (Politicians and PR Flaks), not my idea of a good game.

[SirBlase]

Hi all,
For what it's worth, here's my view on currency.
We've played quite a few campaigns in Poland and most of the time barter was very important, especially if you're not in any sort of regular army.
All sides of the conflict used some sort of "official currency", be it Soviet Rubel, US Dollar, British Pound, German Mark or Polish Zloty, but they were quite useless outside your zone of control. The same goes for coupons issued for meals, petrol etc.
Of course almost all countries had coins, but using money has more of a sentimental value than actual worth. The only coins in use in our games were gold and silver Rubels, Dollars, etc. Basically, precious metals keep their value, mostly because of their rarity.
But, as I said earlier, the main way of trading was barter. First of all, a clip of 5,56mm ammo is worth pretty much the same to everybody. It also gave some players or NPCs opportunity to gat some extremely good deals (at least that's what they thought then), because a can of spam is worth much more to a hungry man than a case of ammo he doesn't have a gun for.
And since most of our games were out of the regular armies, the PCs had to travel between different cantonments and trade whatever they had to spare for anything they might need.
Hope this helps,
Blase