Coins, Treasure & Daily Life

[archer]

20 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

If lumber goes any higher, I'm going to start shaving them from oak dowels.

 

 

So you're saying that you'd advise people to take wooden nickels?   

[Ockham's Spoon]

Don't forget pieces of eight either, where coins were cut like a pie into halves, quarters, and eighths in order to make change.  There were also coins called a piece of eight that happened to be worth one-eighth of a more valuable coin, but the octal-base for money systems comes about from the fact it is easy to cut things in half, and an eighth of a coin is about as many cuts as you can reasonably make.

 

In my own games, I don't mind PC's getting large amounts of wealth, because there are always ways to make it disappear.  They might be robbed, taxed, lose their fortune when their ship sinks, or have to buy expensive equipment (often some rare magical spell components or a magical McGuffin, but also horses.  I can't tell you how many horses my players have gone through; they are the red shirts of my fantasy worlds).  My favorite though is donations to charity; what is the point of saving the town from the goblins if their crops were burned and they are all going to starve if they can't buy food?  How can you resist the puppy-dog eyes of that little orphan who tells the PC that they are going to be a hero too and just gave their last crust of bread to their little sister so she wouldn't starve?  To be fair, this only works because my players don't actually care that much about money.  Their characters might care, but the players themselves are ambivalent about it and would rather be noble and generous than rich.

[Christopher R Taylor]

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Don't forget pieces of eight either, where coins were cut like a pie into halves, quarters, and eighths in order to make change.  There were also coins called a piece of eight that happened to be worth one-eighth of a more valuable coin, but the octal-base for money systems comes about from the fact it is easy to cut things in half, and an eighth of a coin is about as many cuts as you can reasonably make.

 

Yeah that's why a foot is 12 inches and pound was 12 shillings?  Something like that.  12 divides up evenly many more ways than 10 (Hence, the speed chart).  My smallest coin is worth "10 cents" and breaks into 5 pieces called "pents".  Anything cheaper than that is usually trade of goods or services.

[greypaladin_01]

Thank you everyone for you input!   I am glad to see I am not alone in thinking on this, and appreciate the shared brainpower to get me started!

[IndianaJoe3]

On 7/3/2021 at 8:54 AM, IndianaJoe3 said:

My current campaign (well, the notes for one, since I'm not playing right now) uses octal instead of decimal currency.

 

17 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Don't forget pieces of eight either, where coins were cut like a pie into halves, quarters, and eighths in order to make change.  There were also coins called a piece of eight that happened to be worth one-eighth of a more valuable coin, but the octal-base for money systems comes about from the fact it is easy to cut things in half, and an eighth of a coin is about as many cuts as you can reasonably make.

 

😁

[archer]

Don't forget Pieces of Eight where a society chops up a classic Styx album and use them for currency.

[DShomshak]

Might be worth remembering that D&D-ish coinage is already a radical simplification to turn money into an easily-tracked game resource. In Medieval Europe, not only did every country have its own money, the value could shift depending on how much base metal was alloyed with the gold or silver. In his Pratica della Mercatura, the merchant Pegolotti lists the moneys of western and southern Europe and the Middle East, and rates them for quality. In a world like that, how much something costs gets kind of metaphysical: In what currency? From what year, because it it could change? Moneychangers were vital. But that sort of chaos is probably more detail than most players want when their characters just want to buy a new sword or whatever.

 

The Pratica has other material that might be inspirational for a campaign set in a trade city, though. Like, one chapter is a list of "Spices," by which Pegolotti meant any relatively high-value commodity that wasn't cloth, precious metals or gems: actual spices, but also medicines, dyestuffs, and much more. One thing that stands out is how Pegolotti distinguishes between the sources for some commodities. For instance, he lists alum (used in dying cloth, so pretty important) from several sources, and rates some of them as better or worse quality.

 

You could use this as local color to show the trade going on in the trade city. Like, suppose you want a bar fight as part of the adventure. Instead of just having some guys start fighting, describe two merchants arguing. "You thief! You swindler! You promised me Karahissar alum, but I got Cyzican alum! Don't try to deny it, I can tell the difference. I want my money back!" "Why, you liar! That was the finest Karahissar alum, you're just trying to cheat me into getting a lower price!" A tankard gets thrown, and the fight is on!

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher R Taylor]

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But that sort of chaos is probably more detail than most players want when their characters just want to buy a new sword or whatever.

 

Ultimately that's what it comes down to.  The easiest way to handle it is to have the money value vary greatly when the PCs go to market, represented in haggling.  Sure, you have 19 gold coins but half of them are from Lower Solbovia and everyone knows their gold content is lousy.  And I have never seen this weird lozenge-shaped coin, I'll have to check its value and time is money, you know?

 

So when they haggle, they get a lower value than they expect from coins as represented in "that sword costs more than you hoped, the merchant drove a hard bargain"

The trick is to make market day interesting and a chance for role playing beyond just "a fight breaks out"

[DShomshak]

Another thought: Conversely, in a Fantasy world a God of Wealth might have ordained the money system and so, well, that's what everybody uses. I don't recall seeing a setting, in game or book, where this is the case, but it's a simple explanation for a simple and uniform system, for GMs (and players) who want to get on with the plot without turning every purchase into a five-minute haggling scene or a Trading skill roll.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Scott Ruggels]

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Might be worth remembering that D&D-ish coinage is already a radical simplification to turn money into an easily-tracked game resource. In Medieval Europe, not only did every country have its own money, the value could shift depending on how much base metal was alloyed with the gold or silver. In his Pratica della Mercatura, the merchant Pegolotti lists the moneys of western and southern Europe and the Middle East, and rates them for quality. In a world like that, how much something costs gets kind of metaphysical: In what currency? From what year, because it it could change? Moneychangers were vital. But that sort of chaos is probably more detail than most players want when their characters just want to buy a new sword or whatever.

 

The Pratica has other material that might be inspirational for a campaign set in a trade city, though. Like, one chapter is a list of "Spices," by which Pegolotti meant any relatively high-value commodity that wasn't cloth, precious metals or gems: actual spices, but also medicines, dyestuffs, and much more. One thing that stands out is how Pegolotti distinguishes between the sources for some commodities. For instance, he lists alum (used in dying cloth, so pretty important) from several sources, and rates some of them as better or worse quality.

 

You could use this as local color to show the trade going on in the trade city. Like, suppose you want a bar fight as part of the adventure. Instead of just having some guys start fighting, describe two merchants arguing. "You thief! You swindler! You promised me Karahissar alum, but I got Cyzican alum! Don't try to deny it, I can tell the difference. I want my money back!" "Why, you liar! That was the finest Karahissar alum, you're just trying to cheat me into getting a lower price!" A tankard gets thrown, and the fight is on!

 

Dean Shomshak

Watching The Medicis last month. There were several plots turning on the the sale of Alum and how important it was to the Pope’s accounts. 

[Steve]

As far as prices go, you also get the wonders of inflation to deal with, which can be a broad or localized effect. Maybe a sword cost 100 silver pieces last year and the year before that, but some adventurers found a dragon hoard and dumped a bunch of gold into the local economy in a buying frenzy. Now that same sword costs 150 silver pieces today but could be 200 next year. Especially since the country is talking about going to war against the goblins again, so the king is buying up swords by the bushel.

[archer]

Don't forget it was very common to shave coins in medieval times.

 

The reason most modern coins are stamped with ridges on the edges is to keep people from taking a sharp knife to them and shaving silver or gold off of the edges, passing the coins off in trade as full coins, and keeping the shaved off silver or gold for themselves.

 

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

The story behind that is really fascinating, and Isaac Newton was involved: he invented the side ridges for that purpose.

[bluesguy]

Most of my players end up taking the Wealth Perk so they don't have to deal with petty purchases and tracking of money.  They also tend to like to buy big things.  Current group bought a large, custom designed and built viking style boat.  The campaign has involved traveling up and down rivers and oceans.  They also bought a bell to summon a wind elemental to 'push' the sail so they can go really fast when they needed to. 

 

I also like to have treasures that are primarily commodities - some coins, gems, jewelry, furniture, rugs, cloth, spices, dyes, alchemy ingredients, potions, weapons, oil, alcohol of various types, etc.  Sometimes the most valuable things are the hardest to transport (if only we could figure out how move the 20 barrels of saurian brandy we would be rich).

[Scott Ruggels]

Really want to mess with the players? Present them with magical furniture. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I had a dragon die and a big battle between several groups trying to get to the treasure, which was made mostly of huge objects like chariots, thrones, etc.  A lot of the rest was valuable but not much use to the player characters, like tapestries, art, carpets, barrels of oil etc.

 

https://oldschoolfrp.tumblr.com/image/40942949700

[tkdguy]

On 7/13/2021 at 9:16 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

Really want to mess with the players? Present them with magical furniture. 

 

 

[Panpiper]

The real world ratio of silver to gold mined is roughly 1/16. It would make sense to have a similar ratio in terms of coin valuation, but that assumes identical weights of coin. If gold pieces were about 60% of the weight of a silver coin, the value of the coins would be ten silver to one gold. Identical to what the Fantasy Hero book postulates, so no stretch of imagination there for me.

The only stretch for me is just how low value all that precious metal seems to be relative to what it is buying. If I were to change anything, I would substitute coppers for what is now priced with silver (which would be relatively large coins) with the lower valuation 'change' being pennies which are a tenth of the weight of full coppers. That would make it more realistic and put gold into the realm of truly rare.