By that logic we should also be unable to carry large weapons, or powerarmour, or anything which could not conceivably fit in our pockets.

Personally, I'd actually prefer that players were forced to buy a backpack if they wanted to carry anything more than that which could be conceivably worn on their person, and then the inventory was limited by a 'size' grid rather than a weight limit (like in Deuz Ex); I'd also rather that money over a certain amount would be forced to be stored in your backpack, and so take up space that could be held by other items.

Metro 2033 already did this in what is (imo) the best way it could conceivably work; the idea of (pre-war) military-grade ammo as currency, due to the fact it is far superior to what can be made at the time of the game, is fantastic. It also gives a certain dilemma when you run low on ammo - do you use what is essentially your only money in order to kill the mutant beast attacking you? or do you risk it with just a knife?

they probably carry all those caps around the same way you can carry $2,000,000 in GTA and take 2 bullets to the face in COD

Probably like most of today's real world currencies - there's nothing really to back them up except faith in the system.
We sometimes use pieces of paper and cheap metal in my country, but now mostly just a pretend currency that we call "credit".

Make a mod in Fallout to make various bottlecap brands worth different amounts with 1 Nuka-Cola cap worth a hundred Puka-Cola caps.


.... and along these lines just how hard would it be to change the currency in game to three values?
In Morrowind or Oblivion they only use gold so something like a wooden spoon costs a gold coin and a beer costs say 10 gold. It would make more sense if they had copper and silver coins as smaller change.

Another reason why the old bartering system should have been kept. I also agree that Bethesda should have explained what backed the caps as currency. I do like the whole idea of Canterbury Commons introducing the caps but it still wouldn't explain what gave them value. There is this neat little quest where the Lone Wanderer has the option of uniting these caravans into one "organization" under Uncle Roe and the LW (it was expensive as hell to start them all up). It would be nice to hear that Canterbury Commons and Rivet City became the important towns in the Capital Wasteland. Maybe they could have introduced something new instead of caps? <shrugs> I can't really think of something in the CW that would give anything value. The fresh water from the purifier? Vault 101's food from their hydro-agricultural farms? Heaven knows that most people in the CW need fresh food...

If they had a location that was producing a product and that product made the people there wealthy, then that could have been were the value came from. Something that couldn't just be found anywhere in the wasteland. I would say water, but that would just be copying the water merchants in Fallout. But then again Bethesda copied so much already from the first games so why not the water merchants?

Could have been that those people set up many systems to clean the water. Very costly and the people controlling it weren't so nice. So when someone comes along (James) and with an idea to give everyone free clean water with project purity. That faction that controls the clean water gets pissed and they could have been the ones behind Talon Company.

Could have been a way to side with Talon Company and the Water people, for them to gain control over project purity. A good place for this would have been Rivet City. Rivet City is an aircraft carrier after all and aircraft carriers have desalination plants. So doing some changes to that plant and there you go clean water.

If they had plant farming, Rivet City could have also been a place that control most of the crops. If you want to buy seeds for your own farms, you go to Rivet City and buy them.

Word

My Oblivion character carried around more than 200 000 septims, 500 lockpicks, 20 books and assorted swords, bows and shields. Remember kids, we′re talking games here

Maybe the caravan traders can actually make what they sell and don't just scavenge it. Maybe the gun guy can make bullets, and the medicine trader knows how to make the stimpaks, and the armor trader is pretty good with a thread and needle.

If we assume the caravaners can actually make what they sell (sans the junk guy cause he sells, well, junk) it's feasible that they started using the caps as a currency in the C.W. Bartering was getting less and less profitable for them as they didnt need as many goods as the settlements they were trading with did, so they started asking for caps for their services/goods. People then went out looking for caps to trade with the caravaners and eventually everyone started using caps.

That doesn't really work, because if the merchants besides the junk guy were making their items. They would have a store or place of manufacture in a town like Megaton, Rivet City or Canterbury Commons, and have others going out in caravans an sell their product.

A couple merchants selling crappy guns, drugs and food would not be what makes the caps worthy anything. They aren't making those items. We shouldn't assume they are, because it makes an ass out of you and me "ass-u-me." They have no need to make those items because those items are all over the wasteland for free.

you don't need a entire manufacturing plant to make bullets and chems, just enough of the raw materials and a few tools/equipment to put them together. The guy who was making super jet was doing it in what was essentially a bathroom, and wasnt the mechanist's lair a warehouse with tools and things of that sort? They could have been nicking equipment from there before the mechanist arrived to do his robot thing.

Also, the CW has an extremely small population due to the fact that all the vaults were experiements that either killed mutated or drove the inhabitants insane, so it's not that farfetched that the artisans would have to go around hocking their own stuff.

Things in the wasteland are "free" technically, once you get past the super mutants and ghouls. Sorry, but if there are dudes who could make the stuff i needed without me having to risk my life then I would definitely pay for that service. Just because things are able to be gotten doenst mean it is easy to get them.

That condescending Ass-u-me comment doesn't make any sense since this entire thread is based around assumptions. Even your posts are assumptions. "they aren't making those items" is an assumption not a fact. they never state where they get the stuff they sell from; the closest you get is Roe saying they need money to expand. Expanding could mean any number of actions to get a bigger stock.

You're also assuming that everyone has the means go out and get anything they want whenever they want. Just because "it's there in the wasteland for free" has no bearing really on how easy it is to get the thing you need to sustain yourself. I'm sure the elderly, children, sick, and anyone without a weapon would be cringing at the prospect of foraging for their own food and would gladly somehow pay for a service. Hell, I could go hunt down my own food and collect my own drinking water for "free" right now, but why would i when someone is offering me that service for a price.

It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance. If the caravaners stopped bartering and starting asking for bottle caps instead, people would jump at that and start collecting a ton for every time the caravaners came around. then before long you have a currency because enough people have put value into them.

Is this how the cap came into place as the currency? maybe, probably not, but we dont really know how it was introduced as currency in the core region. We know why they became currency; because the water merchants placed value into them and traded them for water, but where/how did they find the thousands upon thousands of caps and introduce them without any sort of real government in place.

It's just that in fallout 3 neither the how nor the why is explained, so all we can do is speculate what it is. I just like to think that the CW caravaners could make their own items and fell back on old sensibilities and used something rare, but more easily accessible than actual gold/coins, since most money vaults/banks were in the city area that was heavily patrolled by super mutants, and so opted for the caps in the nuka plant that is almost out in the middle of nowhere.

Don't even get me started on how completely stupid Super Jet is in Fallout 3. This is what it took to make jet in Fallout 2 ==> http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Stables. A large building with scientists, alot of Brahmin and a lot of slaves. In Fallout 3 there shouldn't have even been Jet. Let alone some ghouls going "hey all we have to do is add some sugar to it!"

The merchants aren't making their own stuff. There is nothing showing that they are. The items they have are all pre-war scavanged junk. As for being hard to get those items. If a 19 year old fresh out of a vault can gather tons of guns, ammo and drugs, than any person born in the wasteland can. The merchants can and its just them and one guy as a guard.

The 19 year old fresh out of the vault had no currency, no knowledge of society or of the trade and barter systems of the wasteland and no real choice but to scavenge and explore. Long time wastelanders would have fallen into more relaxed routines and subsisted via trade. And while there's nothing to show merchants are making their own stuff, there's nothing showing they aren't. I think it would likely be a bit of both (likely paying experienced scavengers and making stuff or playing someone to make it for them), but it's not an outrageous notion that they could be. As the timeline advanced, so to would the command of fabrication and refinement techniques. Lots of books and tools laying about. Really, so many of the particulars of the way things work in all the Fallout games (particularly FO3) aren't adequately explained or even addressed that debates like this are simply sophistry.

But the currency in all the games has bothered me. In the aftermath of the apocalypse, "currency" would almost certainly take the form of raw materials like steel, copper, iron, textiles, etc. (likely more than could be derived from bottle caps). The essence of this is present in all the games since you can trade items, but I am of the opinion that there wouldn't be any currency to speak of, but straight up bartering. A system of currency would emerge eventually, but only once things had stabilized (or maybe in stabilized regions like the NCR or on the Strip). But of what use would bottle caps or paper money be of to all the poor schmucks trying to subsist out on their own or in pockets in the wastes? None, that's what.