Barter works fine when both sides have something that they want to trade that the other side wants. This system becomes more difficult when one side is providing a service over an extended period of time. The second problem with barter comes when one starts to think about portable wealth. More on that in a minute.
I took a look at how other PA game handle this problem. Most have a similar approach that I have, mainly a barter system. Each item has a "price" and other items of similar worth can be used to "pay" for them. As Wayne also mentioned in the comment, many of these also miss the profit motivation for the merchant. Many often overlook the fact that the worth of something is also dependent on the person's individual needs. It is great that I have 10,000 rounds of .50 BMG but what I really need at this moment is some antibiotics in a bad way. I have tried to simulate that a bit. It may not be perfect but it works for me.
Labor & Services
Let's talk about the problem of people providing services. With wide scale electrical nets and most fossil fuels a thing of the past, a lot of things have been replaced by manual labor. Any large scale project, be it building, farming and such, is now going to be very labor intensive. The field you plowed in two hours with your tractor is going to take a lot more time by hand and do not even get my started on harvesting.You also have a work force that is going to contain a lot of people at two very different ends of a scale. The first group will contain those with specialized knowledge that is valuable in the PA, such as bakers, doctors, mechanics and such. Some of those jobs may have been looked down on before the war but this has more to do with a general feeling in our society today that associates education with the worth of a job. That lawyer there enjoys a better standing than that butcher over there. We have forgotten the people who actually facilitate the very existence of our "civilization". That has changed in the PA, as many jobs, such as the lawyer's, have lost their importance in the day to day survival of the human race. Sure, that lawyer helped you out that time in court but the butcher is the one that provided the food that your family needed to get through the winter.
Still, a lot of people with nothing to trade are going to have to find some kind of work they can do in exchange for the basics like the food needed for survival. Others, with a specialized skill, will also offer their services in order to survive. Others will offer to provide protection for anyone and anything, such as the guards that accompany merchants, and they in turn will expect something in return.
Reading through D20 Apocalypse I discovered the term Trade Unit (TU). The TU was the games equivalent of money and used to price both items and services in the game's "barter" system. A TU was equal of one day's rations for a person. This can be directly translated to T2K, as we know the daily requirements for a person as well as the "cost" of food.
Let's look at the "price" of food.
Food Type Price / kg Availability Daily Requirements/person Total Price/Day
MRE $8 (S/S) 1.5kg $12
Soviet Field Rations $6 (S/S) 1kg $6
Domestic $5 (C/C) 3kg $15
Wild $3 (V/V) 4kg $12
MREs and Soviet Field rations are desirable for their weight but literally no one is going to want to eat them all day, every day. Been there, done that and know why no one is going to want to.
If I where to chose a basis for our TU, then it would probably be domestic food. This is something that is usually tasty and may even be preserved to allow someone to put something away for the winter. This is definitely our gold standard as far as food goes.
I am not really happy with the TU term, so I am going to just call it a ration ticket (RT). You can call it anything you want, script, credits, etc. It is just a name. I am going to stick with RT.
We cannot, however, forget the "profit" motive here. Working a day to eat a day is fine, as I will survive, but I cannot put something away for a rainy day, which might be quite literal in this case. To support this idea, we can increase the value of a RT of domestic food to $20, allowing the person to put away a quarter ration to trade or eat later. Now we have something that we can use to judge the value of labor.
For simplicity sakes, we can divide laborers into three categories:
- Simple Laborers: people performing the back breaking, monotonous work that does not required skilled labor. Porters, farm hands tending crops, workers clearing rubble, etc.
- Skilled Laborers: people performing work that requires some type of specialized training that is valuable in the T2K world. These will include butchers, chemists, construction workers, etc.
- Specialists: These are individuals with specialized, advanced training. These will include individuals such as doctors and other professionals, etc.
For guards, ORMO soldiers and the like, you can use the same basic categories. A barely trained ground pounder may be classified as a simple laborer while a trained mortarman may rate the category Skilled. An engineer officer with many years of experience would probably be rated as a Specialist. I am purposely keeping this list and categories vague, as how you choose to divide the laborer into these groups is up to you based on the current situation.
Let me give you some practical examples. Tomas was an accountant in pre-war society. After the war and the collapse, Tomas has been forced to turn to manual labor to keep himself alive. He spends his days tending crops of turnips and potatoes on the farm of Mr. Marek. He is grateful for the job, although the work is back-breaking. Still, it puts food on the table. Tomas will be classified as a Simple Laborer.
Marie was a baker before the war and nothing has really changed since then. Sure, the flour may not be as fine as it was before the war and she has had to substitute honey for refined sugar, but she is experienced in her job and provides the basic services the community needs. Marie is a skilled laborer.
Pavol is a former Major in a Polish parachute regiment. He has extensive experience in military matters and is responsible for the creation of the town militia and the defenses that now surround the town. Pavol has also implemented a training regimen for the militia and oversees the regular patrols into the surrounding countryside in order to nip potential bandit problems in the bud. Pavol is a Specialist.
So, how much is each group getting paid? Tomas will probably get the standard wage of one RT a day. Marie on the other hand will probably get at least twice as much, in the form of actual RT as well as having a share of what ever is not sold on that day. In the end, it may even be three times as much.
Pavol has a key position in the community. He is literally tied to its survival and he is probably going to get 3-5 times as much. This is dependent on the government of the town but one is wise not to bite the hand that protects them. Better to pay the man than lose it all to bandits.
So, we know what they make a day, but how does that work in a day to day setting? It is doubtful that some on is going to be waiting at the end of the day to hand out ration packets as the workers leave work. It may work small scale, but when several thousand people are involved, it would be difficult to keep this up. A common form would be some kind of ration ticket that could then be traded for food. These will generally be local in scope, as they depend on an organized community and some way of ensuring that they will be respected by all parties. A small family farm could simply have one or more common meals to pay their workers. A city of 2000, with people coming and going at all hours, cannot implement a common meal easily, so they may have community warehouses where the workers can draw rations or the rations ticket may be a form of currency or barter items. Now the system comes together.
Pavol has been training his militia for a while but decides to take some of the rations tickets issued by the town and do something good for himself. Taking the trip down to the market, he gathers his evening meal at a vendors stall and even manages to snag a local bear to wash it down (1 RT). Wandering the stalls, he comes up a new bike and manages to haggle he price down to 4 RTs. It the merchant had not looked so hungry, it may have cost him more. Still he traded something he had but couldn't eat for hot meals for four days. Finally, Pavol runs into Rita, a working girl. He knows of her reputation and they haggle but Pavol still hands her the 2 RTs. Looking back the next day, Pavol has to admit it was worth it. So, for a total of 7 RTs, Pavol has had an eventful evening. Good thing he saved some up.
Using this ration ticket system, a list of common services can then be established. These will generally be standardized within the community so as to prevent discussions or problems when purchasing these services.
Portable Wealth
Ration tickets will probably not be respected outside the community. When travelling from one town to another, you need some form of portable wealth. Actual items are good, but depending on the items, may be rather bulky. That tanker of ethanol is a good mine, have to admit, but you actually have to move that wealth over 160km of hostile territory. Anyone seeing the tanker will probably immediately know what it is and you are going to receive a lot of attention. Other things such as livestock or a large still are also going to be a problem as well.Merchants have to transport their items but say you want to travel to the next town to buy 10 tons of grain for your community. Your community produces sailing boats and equipment but the town you want to buy from is landlocked. Your product has not value there so what is the alternative? This is going to be a common problem. One solution is an old concept called Hacksilver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksilver).
This allows communities to trade for items with its own population or with an different town without have to transport tons and tons of material. In a previous post, we put the price of a gram of gold at $50. This was based on the current market price for gold. Silver itself today was trading at $0.62, but of play purposes we could set the price at $1. So, to buy 10 tons of wheat (we will consider it domestic food and leave the price at $5 a kilo or $50,000 for the lot. If we were to trade an equivalent amount of ethanol ($15 a liter), we would be looking at transporting 3,333l or ethanol or an almost full 5000l tanker truck. Hart do move and very obvious.
Consider our example with the sail boats. The price is the same as 10 small sail boats but the other community does not need them. We would have to transport them to someone that does, trade for something the first town needs and transport them back. Very hard and very dangerous. Maybe we do need a system of gold and silver.
The same amount can be paid in gold (1 kg) or silver (50 kg) with less trouble. A saddlebag or pack horse are sufficient to transport the items. You can easily trade the gold and silver for RTs or barter for items at your destination. The system of Hacksilver would probably be replaced later by minted coins of standard weights. This would probably be something that large cities, such as Krakow, or organizations, such as merchant guild, would probably push for or obvious reasons.
Organized trade between major towns and cities may also be conducted by letters of credit guaranteed my large merchants and city governments. This is dependent on a certain amount of trust between the parties. A letter of credit can be given from a party for a certain amount (say $10.000) and can be cashed in at the other end by the second party. This would likely be something that large merchant guilds would practice and is a precursor to banking systems.
Either system diverges from the pure barter system but allows you to transport wealth from one place to another easily.
Slavery
As we mentioned, the world in T2K is much more labor intensive. It will bring back the spectre of slavery because you will need a lot of cheap labor to get things done. Assuming you were just feeding them the bare minimum but they are producing a full load of crops for you, you would be making a handsome profit. I am in no way condoning this practice but one can understand how this practice would come back into existence.Slavery adds a lot of potential for conflict and adventure. The characters can set off to rescue towns people kidnapped by slavers or maybe the encounter a group on the road willing to sell their fellow human beings. The potential is there. It is also there for those players of "flexible" moral codes to also join in a slaving operation.
The price for a slave would vary greatly, depending on many factors such as the health and age of a slave as well as the general availability of slaves and the communities acceptance of slavery. I am not going to try to put a price tag on a slave but a GM should try to work a price for slaves in their campaign based on those factors. A healthy male working on a farm for 365 day will require food and upkeep but has the potential to produce a lot of work in that time. A scrawny slave may be worth less as a farm laborer but if he had a working knowledge of leather working, he would be worth more when used for that purpose.
Conclusion
Wealth comes in many forms and work has an intrinsic value that can be measured and compared with other items. Using the system above you can work to earn rations tickets to trade for gold that you use to travel to the next city with.In one of my next posts, I will be looking at an economic model for towns and villages.
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