Realistic Monetary Systems in FH

[Alcamtar]

Are you sure on those values? Because according to several conversion charts I've seen, a Pound sterling was worth about $5 in the early 1800s, which, with inflation corresponds to about $63.25 in modern dollars, which means a penny is worth about 26 cents. Or is this going by the modern price of those coins?

lol, no not at all! It was a wild ballpark of the purchasing power of money circa 1100, translated to 2012 prices. $50 a bit low for 8 hours at minimum wage, and a bit high for a gallon of microbrew.

I found a reference to both of these as being roughly 1 penny around 1250. I've tried analyzing old price lists before but its really requires serious scholarly work on overall cost of living and quality of life to come up wtih anything meaningful - more work than I can afford to throw at it. Prices of individual products or services have changed too much relative to one another, you have to look at society and economics as a whole. So I just picked something easy. For me, I find it helpful to just assign a rough "modern dollar value" when GMing cause its very easy to estimate prices for things not on a price list. Even if its not accurate, as long as its reasonably consistent its good enough. Players will neither know nor care how you came up with your prices anyway, so its really just to satisfy GM OCD.

[The Weapon]

I've been thinking about something for a campaign setting I'm working on, and I was wondering if anyone has played in a game with a "realistic" monetary system? By that I mean 12 copper = 1 silver, 20 silver = 1 gold, like the pre-decimal Pound Sterling, the French Franc and Livre (which as far as I can tell, was worth exactly the same), the Roman Currency system, and some others, I can't remember. But yeah. I think I like the system in abstract, but I feel it could be difficult to keep up with, compared to the simplicity of the decimal system.

Best thing about 12copper = 1 silver = 1/20 gold is that it comes out to 240 copper a gold, about the easiest number to divide loot (divides by 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10, 12, 15, 16).

[BrilliantHelm]

Read my article in Digital Hero #18. I have a lot of information, monetary values and links there.

[Markdoc]

lol, no not at all! It was a wild ballpark of the purchasing power of money circa 1100, translated to 2012 prices. $50 a bit low for 8 hours at minimum wage, and a bit high for a gallon of microbrew

It's also very worth remembering that the whole "what does something cost" is a very eurocentric, post-19th century sort of thing. In most cases, pre-industrial societies did not have standardised prices. They didn't even have the concept of standardised prices in many cases. The price of a thing was what you could sell it for (assuming you were allowed to sell it all), whether it was labor, tulips, or sandals. When we look at prices preserved in medieval documents, one thing that fairly leaps out at you is that prices on just about everything bounce around from place to place and time to time, often by enormous margins. We had a discussion on medieval prices a little while back (here it is) where I made the point that markups on some goods could run 10,000%. We see the same discrepancy in wages - the same job in 1500's England could literally differ in pay by 1200% from place to place - even though the two places in question (Oxford and the Cotswolds) are not even that far apart. Laws about buying and selling, the general low level of mobility for many people, government-mandated monopolies, etc etc, all made for highly variable prices.

In my game, as noted, I use a "standard price list" based on medieval prices and good ol' rule of thumb and then for local regions use a short modifier list (Livestock food and handicrafts are cheap in the hinterlands of the Martic League: -20% because it's a big agricultural area, standard price in the cities. Manufactured goods are cheap (-10% because of the size of the economy but 15% higher in the hinterlands) Guild produced goods are expensive in the cities (+30%) because of the power of the guilds. Wood is expensive everywhere (+10%) because of the lack of big forests.)

That short description lets me establish base price for pretty much anything in a moment and I then modify it by a skill vs skill roll, plus GM's whim/local circumstance

As for realistic currency, there's noting inherently unrealistic about a decimal currency. If you choose not to go decimal, try and make it memorable. In my recently finished game the currency was 24 copper coins in a silver and 20 silver coins for a gold. Given that it was a sea-based culture, based over an archipelago of many small islands, the coppers were called "oars", the silver "ships" and the golds "battles". People could easily remember that there are 24 oars in a ship and 20 ships in a battle since that was based off the military formation. It let me mint and mention odd coins like "a double battle" or a "half ship" without confusing people and having your own currency helps add atmosphere.

What *is* unrealistic is single currency that is used everywhere: I tend to mix them up, so that players get the impression of different cultures/economies side by side, even as I stick with one main one so that players don't get wildly confused. They also let me slip clues into adventures. When the players catch someone with pockets full of Samadrian Ships, they immediately think of spies and bribes: Samadria was a nearby (and mildly hostile) kingdom. When they catch him with a purse of Tyrannic Bezors, they go "What the hell are these and where did you get them?"

cheers, Mark