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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sigurd" data-source="post: 1951653" data-attributes="member: 19412">In my campaign the financial outlook is1. There are no banks, as such where currency is recognised. All currency is measurred in  weights or valuable metals or promises to redeam for such. Reality of many active realms is that promiseary notes often are used against other promisary notes. For example a promisary note for 10000 gold is used to buy 5000 in product. The holder of the big note must finde someone who can redeam the whole 10,000 and supply enough for the transactions. Bad reputations and mistrust are _very_ expensive.A character, who could not aquire enough gems, has a 10,000 gld note and wishes to buy a 1000gld item. There are immediately at least two points of discussion 1) what is the sale price of the Item 2) what is the immediate value of the note. Bigger notes are notoriously hard to get close to full value for especially from a second source. Some notes stipulate that they may only be redeamed for so much a year and many cannot even be redeamed in coin.The town of your example might be forced to issue such notes as rewards for valour. They might even be non transferable as a way of keeping the characters around to protect the town. Good characters might see it as a duty to buy the towns notes. That would give the town much needed currency for its defences and mercenaries.Successful characters typically have much much more disposable wealth than nobles or even whole cities. My characters tend to use their standing and history with powerful bodies (the church, money lenders, etc...) to try and stay liquid with not too much expense. I don't think its unreasonable for 30% of a coin hoard to be eaten up by confidence games -- even more if the players are stupid. The alternative is to hoard wealth and thats not very safe either (as the characters well know).Interdimensional banks are elegant and easy but they shouldn't be available too easily. I think players must decide to either travel through unknown lands with huge amounts of wealth or buy a note from someone honourable enough and powerful enough that their promis will be honoured when they arrive.Safety for their investment is really relative.No bank is going to guard a vast fortune just in case you want it back - its too risky and expensive. Powerful characters deposit huge amounts of money -- the bank is going to haggle and buy up undervalued promisary notes. When they have enough they are going to travel to the most profitable place to redeam those notes and look around to buy notes appropriate to their return trip.If you are known to have a huge fortune you will attract more unwanted attention -- beggars, spies, thieves, assassins poor nobles etc....If you build a keep and store your loot you have to pay for the upkeep of the keep and leave it behind to make more. If your reputation is not good enough to write promisary notes of any size you will have to go get your money to pay bills. This makes your movements predictable.And we haven't even touched the relative values of different mintings of coins by different realms.At least thats my .02btw The Medieval Christian church held that Usury (that is charging exorbitant fees for changing currency) was a sin based on the story of Christ throwing the money changers from the temple. They frowned on or made money changing illegal. I also imagine that church coffers didnt get much money from the largely secular lenders of the world. Jewish communities, who were not allowed to own land, acted as money lenders probably because they were a relatively large pool of honourable law abiding people who could trust each other to gather money and keep their promises. As a body of merchants and tradespeople they had some money to invest and enough trust to invest it.</blockquote>

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