The Look & Feel - Before The Fall

The world that Ruin Raiders is set in is not the near future grungy post apocalypse of walking dead or Mad Max. It takes place after humanity has reached for the stars and obtained it's utopia. Inspirations for before the fall would be Star Trek: Next Generation, Ian Banks' Culture Novels and the pre crash parts of After Earth.

This was a post scarcity society where anything you could ever want was available just for the asking. They had something similar to Star Trek replicators where any item could be 3D printed on demand if you had enough raw material. Most items are expected to be used a few times and then broken down into the raw materials again. Because of this, items are hardly ever made from natural materials like wood or leather, advanced plastics, vinyl, sythetic cloth and metals are used instead.

Inspiration From Before The Fall

Currency in Ruin Raiders

One of the things I wanted to do differently with the Ruin Raiders world was to make the economy a proper barter system. I wanted prices of items to naturally vary based on the usefulness and availability of items.

But, I also wanted to create a yard stick that people could measure worth by. So I needed at least one fixed point on the economic scale that you could use for reference. The fixed point I used was the amount of electrical energy carried by the most common batteries..

This unit of measurement was the Cell.

These small coin sized batteries have become the backbone of Raider bartering across the ruins. Each one carries a small amount of electricity that can be used to power the various items found in the ruins.

Importantly, they can also be used to power the Protein Spinnners, meaning that they are one of the few items that has an almost fixed price. After all, everyone needs to eat.

There are also larger batteries that carry a charge equivalent to 10 cells. These are commonly called Bats to differentiate them from Cells.