Money & the Economy

[Admin Pete]

Has anyone else used a Silver Economy or something other than the gold standard?  I have been playing around with a Silver Economy for a few months (see Money, the Economy & Equipment down in the Ruins of Murkhill Campaign Forum) but I have yet to get it like I want it.  Some things are like I want them such as:

One pound = 16 ounces = 7000 grains; one silver penny = 25 grains, 280 silver pennies to a pound, the same will be true for copper, brass or bronze coins. Gold, Platinum and Palladium coins are 50 grains and therefore 140 coins to a pound.

I like this, having coins of a smaller size and being able to carry a substantial sum without being encumbered and having Silver and Copper coins worth carrying really works for me. The relative worth of the metals and some other details still needs work. 

Also while going with a simple Penny, Shilling, Crown, Sovereign coinage will work better in play, part of me really wants to go whole hog with something like this:

1= Mite 1/24d
2= Quarter Farthing 1/Quarter Noble
3= Third Farthing 1/12d
4= Half Farthing 1/
5= Farthing 1/4d
6= Ha-penny 1/2d
7= Three Farthings 3/4d
8= One Penny 1d “Copper”
9= Three Half-pence 1 1/2d
10= Half Groat 2d “Tuppence”
11= Threepence 3d
12= Groat 4d
13= Five Pence
14= Sixpence 6d “Half Shilling”
15 Ten Pence
16= Shilling 1/- 12d
17= Quarter Florin 1/6 “Helm” 18d
18= Twenty Pence
19= Quarter Noble 1/8 20d
20= Gold Penny
21= Florin 2/- “Two Shillings” 24d
22= Quarter Angel
23= Twenty Five Pence
24= Half Crown 2/6 30d
25= Leopard 3/- 36d
26= Half Angel 3/4 40d
27= Double Florin 4/- 48d
28= Fifty Pence
29= Half Noble 4/2 50d
30= Crown of the Rose= 4/6 54d
31= Crown 5/- 60d
32= Quarter Guinea 5/3 63d
33= Angel 6/8 “Half Mark” 80d
34= Third Guinea 7/- 84d
35= Noble 8/4 88d
36= Ten Shilling Note
37= Half Sovereign 10/- 120d
38= Half Laurel
39= Half Unite
40= Half Guinea 10/6 126d
41= Spur Ryal 15/- 180d
42= Rose Noble
43= Britannia Sovereign
44= Sovereign 20/- “Pound” 240d
45= Guinea 21/- 252d
56= Rose Ryal 30/- 360d
47= Two Pounds 40/- 480d
48= Double Guinea 42/- 504d
49= Fifty Shilling 50/- 600d
50= Triple Unite 60/- 720d
51= Five Pound 100/- 1200d
52= Five Guinea 105/- 1260d

I fear even having 10 different coins would be too steep of a buy in for the players.

I would love to hear what other people have done.

[Mr Darke]

I went with a simple 'dollar' based idea. Using 1gp as 1 dollar made it easier for me to calculate things in the long run. Plus it helps new players not having keep track of money. This actually came from helping my daughter learn money counting a few years ago and it stuck.

[makofan]

Everytime I get complicated I and my players mess it up. I do try to think of a silver piece as a dollar, and a gold piece as ten dollars

[Von]

I find the abstraction of decimalised and compatible currencies everywhere quite... frustrating. It presupposes a kind of economy which doesn't necessarily exist. Heaps of gold coins buried under the earth are an exception rather than a rule for me, the course of action taken by crazed hillbilly nobles and mad wizards. Civilised persons use elaborate engraved letters of credit or barter and small change. I suppose that amounts to a 'copper standard' really. Realistically it's only the adventuring 1% who are likely to lay their hands on significant wealth in actual currency and for that to be useful demands a city and a letter of exchange. No goblin trader hawking sweetmeats in the street will have change for a sovereign.

[tetramorph]

Admin Pete, this is something I like to keep in the abstract in my campaign. And gold has alchemical, archetypal significance to me. So I am not willing to give that archetype up for the sake of "realism."

I follow folks like Johnson's Planet Eris and waysoftheearth's DD:

1gp = 10sp = 100cp

And, like makofan, I imagine 1sp to be about $1.

[Admin Pete]

Feb 11, 2015 2:55:31 GMT -5 Von said:

I find the abstraction of decimalised and compatible currencies everywhere quite... frustrating. It presupposes a kind of economy which doesn't necessarily exist. Heaps of gold coins buried under the earth are an exception rather than a rule for me, the course of action taken by crazed hillbilly nobles and mad wizards. Civilised persons use elaborate engraved letters of credit or barter and small change. I suppose that amounts to a 'copper standard' really. Realistically it's only the adventuring 1% who are likely to lay their hands on significant wealth in actual currency and for that to be useful demands a city and a letter of exchange. No goblin trader hawking sweetmeats in the street will have change for a sovereign.

I have been playing around with it and I am making copper and silver the common currency with gold being very rare and of extreme high value. No heaps of gold coins for any but the most hazardous and deadly higher level adventures.

[Admin Pete]

Feb 11, 2015 12:36:52 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

Admin Pete, this is something I like to keep in the abstract in my campaign. And gold has alchemical, archetypal significance to me. So I am not willing to give that archetype up for the sake of "realism."

I follow folks like Johnson's Planet Eris and @thewaysoftheearth's DD:

1gp = 10sp = 100cp

And, like makofan, I imagine 1sp to be about $1.

I am not much into "realism" other than, I think making gold rare and special is "realistic".

[The Red Baron]

There is no fixed exchange rate between gold and silver.

They are used by different classes of people to purchase different types of capital. (Just like you wouldn't buy a house with cash, and you can't use a credit card at a gumball machine.)

Silver is the standard for more mundane purchases by people, while gold is used in large transactions of land, jewels, etc by states.

[waysoftheearth]

One side effect of the default gold standard in D&D is that copper and silver are relegated to near-worthless ballast.

The principal issue IMHO is not the economics (although that is still interesting) but the fact that you need to lug around 10 sp (or 100 cp!) in order to earn 1 XP. It simply isn't worth hauling cp and sp around a dungeon.

In my own game I've been using 1 gp = 6 sp = 36 cp and 1 sp = 1 XP for a number of years. I assume that prices and starting money are in silver. This means that gp are real treasure and copper is just about worth carrying. Seems to have worked out okay for me...

[Admin Pete]

Feb 17, 2015 23:51:57 GMT -5 waysoftheearth said:

One side effect of the default gold standard in D&D is that copper and silver are relegated to near-worthless ballast.

The principal issue IMHO is not the economics (although that is still interesting) but the fact that you need to lug around 10 sp (or 100 cp!) in order to earn 1 XP. It simply isn't worth hauling cp and sp around a dungeon.

In my own game I've been using 1 gp = 6 sp = 36 cp and 1 sp = 1 XP for a number of years. I assume that prices and starting money are in silver. This means that gp are real treasure and copper is just about worth carrying. Seems to have worked out okay for me...

This is pretty much what I am doing except spreading the values further apart and going to a silver standard.  Yeah, making gold real treasure is I think pretty cool.

[hedgehobbit]

I've played a ton of Runequest bitd so I'm more comfortable with silver pieces as the main coin. Plus my game is set in a more ancient time-frame so you have the easy basis that 1 silver piece (i.e. denarius) is one day's pay (heck, it's even that way in the Bible). Once you've got that settled, everything else is easy to figure out.

But lately, I've just been going all vague. So, the party finds a sack of coins that weighs 1 pound and is worth 250 sp. The exact combination of coins doesn't matter, just the total value. So one sack might be worth 50 sp whereas another could be 500 sp. A sack of jewels is worth even more.

You won't end up with the players wondering how a silver necklace could be worth 250 gold pieces (or 25 pounds of gold!).

Other games have tied money values to real-life items. For example, in Bushido a copper coins can buy one day's worth of rice. A silver coin one month's worth and a gold coin can buy enough rice to feed one person for a whole year.