How do monsters spend gold pieces?

[Starglim]

A few of the options are close enough:

1. Good-aligned and Lawful Neutral nations have no trade with monsters. That leaves

3a. A great many people, in the wider sense - especially humans and halflings, but including neutral to evil individuals of every race - will trade with anyone who is even marginally more likely to pay for their goods than to kill for them, and

3b. Some nations positively like to trade with monsters - the evil nations - and gold is most agreeable to them. Further,

4. Dragons hoard gold for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with giving it away again to puny humans.

 

[Sejs]

..now a monster who lives in the lands of Iuz, World of Greyhawk, for example may have an excuse..but an orc living in Nyrond or Furyondy would not.

Yeah, you're right. An orc tribe totally couldn't send a few guys incognito, maybe with a half-orc or two (hey look, the whelps are good for something finally!) into a place like Nulb to barter for supplies using the coin they've built up from raiding.

All of the examples you guys are showing me are fine examples of excuses and band-aids. You're all just in denial.

Denial of...?

P.s. the only reason I can see where monsters would have large amounts of money is because their illiterate and stupid-kind couldn't count and if they did go to WalMart-on-the-borderland, they'd get ripped off so badly by even the lowest peasant that they'd need large amounts of money!

The lowest peasant... with the stones to try to hornswaggle orcs and ogres and the like.

That's one ballsy peasant.

 

[frankthedm]

Questionable merchants take weapons that would have been sold for scrap metal and secured situations sell the weapons to to non-demihumans.

IMG Most towns are actively hostile to anything less human to a half orc, centaur or ogre* [and half orcs are slightly less tolerated depending on the areas.]

*IMG Ogres are much more human than the 3E fanged muppet. Close to the 90’s Warhammer fantasy crude hungry mercenary. These Illos represent well my take on ogres.

http://www.heresyminiatures.com/images/hm003_1.jpg
http://www.jacenburrows.com/images/ogre.jpg

 

[Faraer]

Dragons in legends always hoarded money.

This isn't just an incidental but a central characteristic of European dragons. They're a block to the natural flow of the world's spiritual and mundane treasure that must be removed by heroes.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Heh. 3 guesses how I voted.

 

[Bog97th]

wal-mart takes over the world(s)

As and employee I know that wal-mart will soon rule the world(s) and along with low wages....oops I mean prices they can!

 

[Turanil]

This is just a subject dear to my heart: why do we think that monsters place value on gold coins when they have absolutely no use for them?

I never thought about that!!

You are right. I will have to take this aspect into account next time I run a game. Now, only civilized goblinoids will hoard gold. Ogres will now hoard severed heads, by which they achieve social status among their kin... Killing ogres will look les fun from now on.

 

[gizmo33]

No. Bad example. Humans are humans and are COMPLETELY different from monsters. They have societies that are large and sophisticated. Marginal, cave-dwelling monsters like ogres, who happen to dwell in the middle of human lands do not have that privelige.

No. Bad refutation. Seems contradictory to make hazy arguments by assuming that ogres have the same economic motivations as humans and then turn around and say they have nothing in common.

Humans are not "completely" different from monsters. Monsters were invented by human imagination, so they have a lot in common. Dragons hoard gold because people want gold and there's always some "monster" standing in the way of what people want. "Evil" is an actual, tangible force in DnD. By definition, a "fantasy" world turns the hopes, anxieties, etc. of human beings into tangible reality. If a dragon is the creation of people's ideas about greed, then a fantasy world explanation for dragons could be that the God of Greed had a hand in their creation. Sleeping on a pile of gold has the same explanation as why humans need to drink water to survive - it's at the root of their nature as a creature. I could invent something as circular and incomprehensible as DNA or Alignment to justify it.

And besides, it hardly seems like you can dismiss the idea that an ogre in the middle of human lands can somehow survive, and yet not find use or their gold. If they've managed to stay alive, then they can manage to have dealings with non-good creatures where they live. You can imagine that ogres might have an "easy come, easy go" philosophy to money management. It's probably easy for them to bully it away from orcs, and so merchants probably know that ogres spend freely as well - providing incentive for taking the risks involved in dealing with such creatures. They can charge a lot for their bags full of live elves.

That's not to say that people shouldn't take a second look at the circumstances behind a creature's accumulation of wealth. It would be a little strange if an ogre had nothing but platinum coins, for instance.

 

[gizmo33]

and if they did go to WalMart-on-the-borderland,

And what's with all this WalMart stuff? Do you know that merchants, trade, and coins existed before 1970? Of course the risk you would have taken in framing this choice in a non-mocking fashion would have been to make the answer seem as plausible as it ought to have been.

 

[GreatLemur]

No. Bad example. Humans are humans and are COMPLETELY different from monsters. They have societies that are large and sophisticated. Marginal, cave-dwelling monsters like ogres, who happen to dwell in the middle of human lands do not have that privelige.

That's a pretty campaign-specific assumption. Again, I point out that even if ogres are too widely reviled to spend their money in other races' settlements, and are somehow too primitive to value precious metals for the same reasons primitive humans do, they can still spend them among themselves.

Remember, these aren't animals we're talking about. The buggers have an average intelligence of 6, but that's well within the human range. They're a tool-using--and, if they're not able to trade, definitely a tool-making--species, so they clearly they have posessions, and thus a reason to trade. And even a rhesus monkey can grasp the concept of a token economy.