The caps have value because that is what all of the traders use as currency in Fallout3. So if you live in the DC Wasteland you have to use caps. No way around it . I guess you won't be trading with anyone. Lorewise or not that is the way it is in Fallout 3. Anyway I thought the Fallout universe was a parallel universe to ours so there was no President Nixon to take the US off of the gold standard.

I know all the caravaners use caps in Fallout 3 but why? What makes that cap worth anything? A bunch of people just decided to use caps as money. Money that isn't worth anything.

Fallout is different from our world in that the timeline split after WW2. I just used Nixon as a point to show that money for most of American history represents gold. The money is worth something because it = gold. Just like a cap in the core region = water. Caps in DC = Nothing.

Edit: Also in the countless play throughs of Fallout 3. The only time I ever bought anything from anyone in the whole game, was my first play though. After that I figured out I can get everything I need for free all over the wasteland.

I do accept the reasoning behind your thinking but have to throw my hat in with Styles on this one I'm afraid.

Think of caps more as a credit note from water merchants, it is impossible to carry that many days worth of water around on your back, so much like say modern store gift vouchers,you redeem them as and when you require for convenience, but only participating outlets will accept them. Therefore giving them value. They are not the de facto currency.

There is a finite amount of them but they are not that hard to counterfeit, NV has a quest where you are employed to smash a press to stop fakes being made. Just being rare doesn't mean something will have value, in the anarchy of the DC wasteland, survival is the only concern for most people, weapons, ammo, shelter, clothes, water and food are the only things with any actual value.

Without a government to back it, no alternative currency would ever be instigated and couldn't survive any lack of confidence in it ( just look at the Euro, no single government but a single currency? Was always bound for failure ) so, as there is no governing faction in FO3 a system of bartering would be logical.

I'm not saying caps CAN'T be used as a currency in theory, just in FO3 they shouldn't be because there is no story to explain how starving, frightened, cold people separated by large distances and scary beasties, all suddenly one day spontaneously decided to swap that perfectly good combat shotgun, ammo and what little food they had for a bag of pre-war bottle stoppers?

Ya its odd they have pre-war money wich is worthless except its trade for caps. Doesnt make sense!?!?

I guess the main bugaboo about caps is no one knows what they are backed by and who backs them. One could suppose that Uncle Roe and the Caravan Traders of Canterbury Commons ( the DC Area Trade Hub ) are the ones that back them but with what who knows. Since Moria Brown is the trader in a major stop on the Caravan Trade route was born in Canterbury Commons it makes sense that she would go along with the use of caps. The other stops on the trade route would probably go along with the use of caps for consistency sake. Getting water is not as much a problem in the DC Wasteland as the Core but that still does not answer the question of what backs the caps as currency. Bethesda should have made clear what backed the caps as currency.

They should have made alot of things clear IMO. Its also my opinion that Bethesda doesn't really care if things make sense or not. That and I don't think that they could have forseen fans saying "This doesn't make sense! " This could be because their fan base doesn't seem to ask for much from Bethesda and they don't seem to ask questions. They don't mind that things don't make sense.

They didn't count on the number of Fallout fans still caring about Fallout to be around to ask such questions.

Don't I sound like an elitist ass

That's something that puzzled me too, the pre-war money has value ( 9 or 10 caps? ) and fits any criteria used to explain why caps are used instead :-
Limited supply.
Zero chance of counterfeit.
Light and convenient.

By still having value, they effectively are still currency, when in reality, they should only be any use as toilet paper.

I still collect them though with the zeal of one of those people who repetitively wash their hands 78 times a day and have NEVER sold one as I assumed early in game they were valuable, hung on to them just in case and never got out of the habit.
My god, I need to out more hehehe.

Nice Rant !!



@ WastelandRevival: Same here. I have all of the pre-war money I have found tucked safely away for some unknown use in the future.

The reason that bottle caps were used as currency besides them being hard to counterfeit was because Fallouts style is derived, mainly, from retro-futurism. Retro-futurism is basically just a name for the way people in the 50's viewed the technology of the future, what they thought it would look like. As if style stopped evolving in the 50's while technology kept progressing. The reason this plays into bottle caps being used as currency is because in america in the 1950's there was an absolute boom in the soda market and soda became a national identifier for America thanks to the Coca-Cola corporation.

Hope this helped .

I think I saw what I hope you did there.

People have, and always will, use somethng as currency. Gold coins, paper bills, plastic cards, bottlecaps. You could create your own currency if you wanted. Sure, it'd be worthless, but there will always be an economy for things. Food, ammo, weapons, cosmetics, toiletries, etc. in Fallout 3, bottlecaps are plentiful, but finite (Not really, but you get the gist of this I hope), were apparently a collectors item prewar, and can be found all over the place. So why the heck not use them as money? Prewar bills are more or less used to get drinks from nukacola machines that have yet to be raided, or kindling for fires. I'm sure there was a trade system for a while, but after a while someone said "We need something as currency." and said "I'll give you 50 caps for that hat."

When there is no currency, all it would take to get one started is to get the trade merchants to back the idea of using a specific item as money instead of straight trading items for items.

Gold and other metals have value because people could always take it and melt it down. Sure its a metal and we like it because its shiny (before we learned about electricity). Plasitc cards isn't money, that's credit and really doesn't have value. It costs you to use it. People loan you money and you pay them back with intrest. Credit companies make most of their money off people that have bad credit.

Caps in Fallout made sense because someone gave it value. A cap = water. So someone with a pocket full of caps could give them over for water. Fallout 3 there is no such system. People are giving over items with real value, for wothless bottlecaps.

There was a time when Romans paid people with salt. Hence the term "worth his salt." Salt had value because it was the only way to preserve meat. Money needs to have Value. You can't just pick up a rock and decide to use it as money. It has to be worth something itself such as gold or salt. Or be backed by something with value such as gold or water.

Actually bottle caps arent that heavy, ive carried a bag of $750 of coins to get changed over to notes, they dont take up much space but the weight of that much coin very heavy, bottle caps are pretty thin and light so wouldnt be that much of a problem even a 1000 or so.

Like anything that allows you to carry multiple things that are otherwise too big/heavy, it is because cyber people have Voids in their pockets which hold everything in a part of space that is their own and will fill up with infinte things until the weight spills into the characters pockets and overclumbers him/her.

Voids are the doings of SCIENCE!

Trade Caravans. Trade caravans that go about and collect goods such as weapons, ammo, food, medicine, body armor, need -SOMETHING- in return for this stuff, and I don't know about you, but a lot of people in the CW don't seem to have a lot worth trade. They needed a currency, and i'm willing to guesstimate that about the time Megaton was beginning to be set up as an actual settlement and not a group of people hiding in a hole trying to get into 101, the caravans began backing the cap as currency. Cap= Weapons, food, ammunition, etc. that you no longer have to go out and hunt for yourself, because you can just collect caps, which are -EVERYWHERE- and buy these goods from traders. Scavengers make a killing, and towns that make money off of the caravans can pay people in the town with caps for services around town (Guards, maintenence, shopkeepers, etc.) as well as putting more caps into the caravans to spread to other towns and settlements.

Thats not how it works. A merchant that goes out of his way to get his goods, isn't going to hand over those goods for worthless caps. "What's that? you don't have anything to trade for this shotgun.. Tell you what give me those rusty wothless caps, and we will call it even." Those are some smart people in the DC wasteland

How it worked in the core region is.. "Whats that? You don't have anything to trade for this shotgun.. Tell you what, give me those caps, so that I can take them to the water merchants and exchange them for water."

That -IS- how it works in this setting. Like it or not, theres things left unexplained, and this is one of them. Call it laziness, call it speculation, whatever. Caps are the currency. People use them. Whatever/whoever is backing them, we (As the LW), don't see it.

I know full well caps are used as money in Fallout 3. What we have been debating is why they are using them. What makes the caps worth anything. There is no logical reason given. Bethesda just svcks ass at writing. They don't explain the game words they make. Mostly I guess because they don't expect their fans to ask questions.

As it stands there is nothing backing the cap in Fallout 3. Another stupid thing about Fallout 3. They had people selling junk. Wow, I am going to give you caps for the crap I can find all over the damn place for FREE! That is why I only ever bought things during my first play through. Everyhing I could need or want is common and free.

So its not only that the currency (bottlecaps) are worthless as far as we can tell. There is no need for them. Why buy stuff from people when you can find it on your own everywhere for free?

You could totally carry 500,000 dollars in your pocket. Trust me.

Which is exactly what happened in Fallout 1. A bunch of people decided to use bottle caps as money. Money that wasn't worth anything until they assigned that value to it. Why do the merchants in Fallout 1 get to decide caps are money but the humans of capital wasteland can't come to the same conclusion. There is only one reason, you don't like the game and will take any opportunity to rag on it even if its completely hypocritical.

Except that isn't how it worked, most people would turn around and exchange the caps for other goods. Only a fraction of the caps would have actually been redeemed for water. If the merchants of Capital Wasteland simply agree to back caps for goods the currency has value. You don't need a singular commodity for it to work. In Fallout 3 you trade the shotgun for caps which you can use to then buy microfusion cells from another merchant. Caps have value in Fallout 3 because the merchants back them with goods. Caps have value in Fallout 1 because the water merchants backed them with water. There is no real difference.

It might actually be difficult to pull those stacks apart into individual bills, maybe clumps of two or three but that makes its use as a currency difficult. Pre-war money's value is effected by barter I would suspect its value is as toilet tissue

Well, we could get technical and say: "Wtf it's the waste land, who wants a currency? Lets just trade items for items, and items for work, etc.." But Bottle Caps just feels right.

I am not saying it isn't possible that the people of DC also decided to use caps. The key difference is, caps in the Core Region were worth something. They worth Water. Caps in DC aren't worh crap all. So it isn't logical that people would accept it as payment. It isn't because I don't like the game. I like it when people run out of logical, intelligent arguments, and they pull that card out of their ass "well you just hate Bethesda/Fallout 3."



Call caps equelled water. Just like how paper money was worth gold once. People used the paper money in their every day life but they knew when the time came they could trade that paper in for gold. Same goes for the caps in the core region, but with water not gold. Caps in Fallout 3 have zero value. It doesn't even make sense that people bothered with any form of money because everything you could possibly want is everywhere and free.

I did'nt know there were coins in FO2. With that in mind, bottle caps are rather illogical in FO3. Probabely one of the many sacred cows they should have slaughtered and did'nt.

I suppose the authorites, shops, deal makers back and make caps. But it makes more sense when Alice Mclauferty, boss of crimson caravan company, in FONV says we make more caps when they wear out. Because she's important in the the NCR and a big company. Theres no explanation for FO3, no clear infrastructure, bearing in mind FO2 uses coins.
They should use coins, if the main part of america does.

I think they went overboard with the wildness in FO3. It does'nt ring quite true that things would be that rough still.

As to the carrying, no reason why you could'nt carry 1000 caps round. They're the same size and weight as coins.
Maybe they string they up like chinese coins are or were, I think. Or stack them all together.

And it's a game. You don't question how you carry vast ammounts of money round with you. You just do.

something you said gave me an idea of what they should of made currency. what if metal ingots (totally not getting this from skyrim) were use as currency? since bullets should be rarer than anything and the most needed thing in the wasteland, why haven't people, after 200 yrs, learned to craft bullets, guns, or armor?

They do craft bullets. In the same way people do now. You can make and take apart ammo in Fallout New Vegas. They also craft guns, theres a a whole group of gunsmiths called the Gunrunners. Armour I presume they make because combat armour exists. They must make that and leahter armour. You can modify armour in FONV too. They make lots of armour.

FONV is way better than and many times more logical than FO3.
But it's in the same world. So I presume they do exactly the same in the DC wasteland as in the Mojave Wasteland.

But looking at FO3, without knowing FONV, you would wonder were the maunfacturing places are. I certainly did.