D&D 5E Who else uses silver as the currency denominator rather than gold?

[Coroc]

I get that peasants are usually poor. I get that merchants and nobles can be rich. I understand the poor and have a vague idea of how poor. I do not know how rich the rich are. When do PCs threaten an economy or a power structure with their wealth? What good is this money? DMG's for the most part discourage the use of or possession of money. (How to) Tax character resources seems to be THE objective for the DM.

I wax a bit hyperbolic so that the idea I am hinting at might be addressed better by someone else.

All adventurers are poor at the start in my campaigns. In my actual GH campaign they started out hunting rats in the sewers for some silver per rat tail

If you got shops selling everything non-magic and every scroll to copy for wizards and instead of the stupid starting gear they are free to buy anything they can afford then you get a much better grip on the campaign. You can steer the players into a direction by offering silver coins as a reward.

With raw there is not motivation to earn be it gold or silver. The adventurers take their starting gear and get the good equipment from looting mobs and the DM is to lazy to build up a basic economic.

The gold they find is a nice to have but of no further use.

Otoh and to address your question directly:

As some stated in earlier posts in this thread the wage of a labourer is some silver.

In a game where a simple dagger, a every days tool to cut your food is worth gold!

That is 1. ridiculous, 2. not in a healthy relation to anything.

It is like you going to some very poor country as a multimillionaire tourist , say some country with high inflation where you can use the money to light your cigarettes because it is so cheap compared to your dollars. And on the top your toothbrush in your toilet bag is costing 1000 Dollars, and you do not care if you pay 1000 dollars for your toothbrush because you are so rich.
Otoh the taxi driving you to your hotel costs 10 cent and the driver gets 5 as his share. The taxidriver would say:" oh please give me your shabby old toothbrush instead, so I can sell it and be rich"

Do you see what I try to point out.

A sword is worth 100 gold only if the pommel heft and crossbar are made from 333/1000
gold and the whole blade is fire goldened, and if it is made from steel as it should be then its worth 100 silver and that's it.

In some medieval countrys in RL history every able man had to own a sword that means your common labourer / peasant too. He could never afford it if it were 100 gold he needs to pay for that.

Every rogue in a 200 mile circle around the adventurers would rob try to rob them just for their nonmagic equip, because he could live the rest of his life in luxury.

 

[alienux]

We just do away with money altogether and use Ring Pops ®

 

[Coroc]

Knuckle dusters?

 

[BookBarbarian]

Knuckle dusters?

Knuckle suckers.

 

[BookBarbarian]

It looks solid to me, but I just don't care to get that granular. In fact, I've boiled my games down to just gold currency. if the adventure has silver or copper, I tell my players the value equivalent value in gold.

I also assume players aren't carrying around their wealth in heavy metals, but some combination of precious stones and some small coin for day to day expenses.. We just accept it as something that we'd rather handle at an more abstract level.

 

[Shasarak]

How were you implementing it and how was it difficult?

The article was in Dragon 167 "Just Give Me Money" by Peter Trueman.

 

[Yaztromo]

I often used silver coins too as a currency basis.

 

[cbwjm]

The article was in Dragon 167 "Just Give Me Money" by Peter Trueman.

Interesting article and I can see why that would take a fair amount if effort to use.

 

[S'mon]

Most humanoid mobs and some others drop some silver coins, determined mostly random.

Do you do something similar for a better make believe?

No, I keep the Gold Standard. But I do say "you find some coins worth 7gp" - that's probably mostly silver. And the non-adventurer economy certainly runs on a silver standard, since 1 gp is about £100 and 1 sp about £10 in 2017 money, it couldn't be otherwise.

 

[S'mon]

A sword is worth 100 gold only if the pommel heft and crossbar are made from 333/1000
gold and the whole blade is fire goldened, and if it is made from steel as it should be then its worth 100 silver and that's it.

In some medieval countrys in RL history every able man had to own a sword that means your common labourer / peasant too. He could never afford it if it were 100 gold he needs to pay for that.

A sword costs 10gp or 15gp in every D&D edition I can recall. That's a nice new 'long' sword.

Daggers tend to run around 2gp most eds - and that's a combat dagger (may even be throw-weighted), not a
simple peasant knife (1e gave separate stats for knives, d3 instead of d4). Fighting =clubs & staves are apparenly free, rather incredibly.

I find the D&D numbers are generally not *that* out of line with 1gp = $100 or £100,
1 sp a daily subsistence wage for one adult (eg a castle servant) and 5 sp a good
peasant income, enough for a farmer to support a family.

Classic Moldvay & Mentzer D&D tended to have the most plausible mundane equipment prices,
assuming a ca AD 1450 type setting - platemail 60gp, sword 10gp, set of arrows 5gp. Arrows are a bit
of a bete noire for me - IRL the arrows often cost more than the bow, but some editions give
you 20 arrows for 1gp! They should be similar to javelin cost.