How to make cash interesting

marune · Nov 4, 2006

Hi,

In all my experience as DM, players are never excited when they receive monetary treasures that are in different kinds of pieces. Always playing in FR where there is a lot of them, I have tried unsuccessfully to grab my player's attention with those details; sadly all I heard is : Ok, tell me how much in gp when converted so I can write it down on my character sheet.

What have you done about it ?

Treebore · Nov 4, 2006

Had them find rare collectors coins. Then when they were buying dinnner at an Inn, where the barkeep/owner just happened to be a retired adventurer who collected rare coins, noticed that they just paid him with a very rare mulharondi coin, from before the mage/cleric wars. He asked them if they had anymore and they said yeah, about 20 of them.

The inn keep asked if he could trade them in with Cormyrean gold because he liked to collect coins from different parts fo the world. They said "Sure! Be happy too."

After the transaction was finished and the inn keep returned from hiding his new stash he asked the party if they would be interested in buying his Inn. They said no, but asked why he was selling.

"Oh, with all the money I am going to make selling those rare coins I just acquired I am going to buy some good farmland somewhere and enjoy the good clean life of farming."

"What! Those coins were rare?"

"I told you I like collecting."

"Yeah, but you didn't tell us they were worth a lot!"

"I paid you exactly what you considered their value to be."

"So how much do you expect to sell them for?"

"Hopefully about a 1,000 gold each. But the collector market can be very fickle."

"CHOKE!!"

"20,000 gold!"

"Yep. I have to wonder how many other rare coins you boys have just given away."

( good and lawful characters seriosly consider turning to evil.)

"Don't know. But can you tell us how to learn what coins are rare so we don't igve away such wealth again?"

They paid attention to treasure from then on.

Varianor Abroad · Nov 4, 2006

Props. Occasionally pass out wooden coins, foreign coins, or fake gold coins for people to use as real money. But lets face it, until the US government started putting interesting things on the quarters and changed the bills, I didn't really look at my money either. I looked at old money and foreign money.

Umbran · Nov 4, 2006

skeptic said:
What have you done about it ?

Honestly, not much. Cash is useful, but in and of itself, it isn't terribly interesting unless you're a numismatist. Really, if I hand you a fistful of cash, you'll be happy, but only because of what the bills represent, not because of the bills themselves. And that's okay.