Actually I was talking about the In Time, apparently a spin-off of the original Logan's Run. Many thanks for pointing me to this one, as I really have to watch it :)

@OP - sorry for off topic...

As OP doesn't want bullets or so, sole option coming to my mind is kind of a "central authority", something like an army base or local warlord created a safezone and created a local form of money (minted own coin? or have access to something not practically usable or easily reproducible) .

If you set it in Canada, you have two more coins to work with! ( 1$ loonies and 2$ toonies)

Actually we now use polymer bills, so the new $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills will survive fairly reliably, but we got rid of the penny awhile back, so you're only going to find those in caches of thousands of the useless things tucked away in forgotten locations wherever someone stashed the large jar of them and never did anything with them...

Personally I would say that it really depends on your game design, and what is needed.

If you look at real world barter economies that aren't focused on a form of currency then you find that they're not actually the "I'll give you 3 sheep for the cow..." as much as they are "Sure, you've done a lot of stuff for me in the past and you're known to be an honourable person, so go ahead and take these sheep."

So you really don't need to earn 'currency', but rather you can just earn and spend 'renown' or something, which can even vary between different communities. Things can get even more interesting and meta-game when you consider that gaining renown in one community could in turn also affect your status in other communities.

For a proper money system (originally developed to facilitate trade) the two parties involved have to be both producers and consumers. Money which is consumed generally doesnt work (or is simply 'barter')

The 'money' is an agreed unit of exchange which WILL be honored (or people stop accepting it in exchange) - so there is a social contract involved (possibly with a third part organizing/enforcing the system).

Generally the 'money' is something that cannot easily be created (even with strict penalties inforce)

My vote would be for either using ammunition casings or a barter system. A barter system would make more sense in a post-apocalyptic world. Ammunition casings wold be a more unique mechanic though.

Perhaps an interesting/unusual (and maybe simplified) system :

I remember from a sci-fi story onboard a spaceship between crewmembers the exchange of 'favors' between individuals kinda nebulous but valuable in that when owed you could ask for anything reasonable the person could supply (like I said nebulous) When redeeming the 'favor'.

Its kinda like the 'warlord' gives you an important mission and he supplies you with anything you need in exchange (you can only carry so much away...) and you later get ordinary stuff supplied as part of the deal (on retainer?) So you dont haveto buy every little thing (tedious game time) and can get back to the games adventuring.

Generally its not like the 'godfather' type of 'offer you cant refuse' leverage (usually - might have a few in a games plot)

How you arrange this within a game (but then work on the mechanism for THIS is offset by NOT having the usual 'store' and item menues and trading logic part of the game to a high complexity)

I suppose there would be small favors first and then bigger favors with the higher honchos and the player having some leeway as to how they fulfil their side of the 'favor'

I remember from a sci-fi story onboard a spaceship between crewmembers opium dealers and tycoons the exchange of 'favors' between individuals kinda nebulous but valuable in that when owed you could ask for anything reasonable the person could supply.

Jin qua's half coins! That was such a cool plot... unluckily it doesn't really scale so well (at least, I couldn't imagine how to do that).

NOTE: In this post I'm talking about realism only disregarding the game, so not all would be usefull I guess.

1) Cattle :)

That's what would be realisticly used as the base value estimator (a revolver is worth 1/4 of a cow or 2 pigs or 24 chickens). It was used in history frequently since cattle (of any kind) was the base of survival for nomadic societes (like in the "apocalyptic" movies).

1a) Mussels

It's a bit unlikely since it's a luxury good and not a survival good, so not very in theme.

1b) Pre-war cans

A solid currency, cans contain food, expire slowly and are useful as emergency rations. Even better if that was a supply of military rations. Still, a bit bulky.

2) City emited money (paper)

Each city-state (which are likley to emerge, in sense of early Greek cities or the city states in Italy is one period) would surely emit their own currency. Note it require farmlands, at least limited, nomadic society won't be enough for this.

The nice effect is existence of multiple currencies and exchange rates.

Unlikely/impossible currencies:

- batteries - these expire quickly, can't store them. Plus, production of these is quite trivial.

- ammunition - better, might be used in some scenarios, but the ammo consumption for moderns guns is too high, most likely they would revert to older guns (revolvers, muzzle loading guns) where you can quite easily produce ammo on your own (watch old westerns where a lone cowboy was smelting bullets in the middle of a desert using trivial tools and components)

- gold - well, it's not bad... but I'm afraid the stockpiles of gernment gold reserves (Fort Knox) would render it quite risky investment (one discovery of a hidden cache and gold become in a drastis surplus compared to demand/population base)

Personally, I opt for a limited rebirth of civilization with like 3-5 city states emmiting their own money that's used by all nomadic/semi-nomadic groups around.

BTW: apocalypse is an incorrect term, it has nothing to do with armageddon or "bad things happening to the world", but who's going to fight when the term is so commonly misused :)

If you have access to modern firearms and ammo, even if the supply of ammo is limited, then why would you revert to something as crude as a muzzle loading gun? Collect casings and reload them. Primers are a bit of an issue, but working out a solution around that problem and reusing existing modern weapons would still be a more sensible solution than tooling up to build muzzle loaders from scratch. Self loading firearms might give you some issues, but a good modern bolt action rifle with a decent magazine setup would be miles ahead of any kind of muzzle loader. (If you have the resources to cast lead shot sized for a muzzle loader and build a new muzzle loading gun, then you have the resources to cast lead bullets and build tools to reload bullets... or just, you know, use the tools for reloading that already exist.)

If you have the resources to cast lead shot sized for a muzzle loader and build a new muzzle loading gun, then you have the resources to cast lead bullets and build tools to reload bullets