Currency in a POL setting

[Hussar]

I don't know if age is really a good measure. Our own world has been using coins for thousands of years, but, those coins vary widely. A Spanish doubloon and a Roman (crap! I forgot the word) gold piece are nowhere near the same weight.

OTOH, getting into real world economics in D&D is just far more work than it's worth. After all, magic items aren't subject to inflation. Yes, it's more realistic, but, doing it right would not add a whole lot of fun to the game, IMO. In other words, would you're players really enjoy futzing about with exchange rates every time they enter a new town?

Heck, I don't enjoy it now in the real world.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Barter should very likely be the most common resource of trade for products in an insulated community. Then again, you can simply use the cost tables to determine the price by trade and barter, as opposed to cost by the exchange of gold.

 

[mmadsen]

The existence of a unniversal currency has always been one of those unrealistic things about D&D that most people just accept. [...] The only way to somewhat justify it is of course that these are GOLD pieces, and supposedly gold is valuable everywhere. They might be coins from completely different cultures but everyone sitll accepts them because they are made of gold. Of course realistically different cultures would use different amounts of gold altering the value, but again that's one of those things tha is usually happily swept under the rug.

Perhaps you haven't heard of the Spanish dollar:

The Spanish dollar (also known as the piece of eight, the real de a ocho, or the eight real coin) is a silver coin, worth eight reales, that was minted in the Spanish Empire after a Spanish currency reform in 1497. It was legal tender in the United States until an Act of the United States Congress discontinued the practice in 1857.​

 

[mmadsen]

I really liked the BECMI D&D idea of the "gold piece" being a unit of weight.

I really like the idea of 240 silver coins weighing one pound.

Prior to 1971, the pound was divided into twenty shillings, with each shilling equal to twelve pence, making a total of 240 pence to the pound. The symbol for the shilling was "s" — not from the first letter of the word, but rather from the Latin word solidus. The symbol for the penny was "d", from the French word denier, which in turn was from the Latin word denarius (the solidus and denarius were Roman coins). A mixed sum of shillings and pence such as 3 shillings and 6 pence would be written as "3/6" or "3s 6d" and spoken as "three and six". 5 shillings would be written as "5s" or, more commonly, "5/-". There were also coins called crowns, worth 5 shillings, and half crowns, worth 2 shillings 6 pence, florins worth 2 shillings and farthings worth ¼ penny. The guinea was a gold coin which, between 1717 and 1817 circulated at a value of 21 shillings. Consequently, even after its replacement with the 20 shilling sovereign, an amount of 21 shillings was referred to as "one guinea". Nicknames for other amounts included tanner for 6 pence, bob for 1 shilling and dollar for 5 shillings.​

 

[pemerton]

One real-world issue (that's come up in at least one campaign for me) is that if the "points of light" are too isolated, the values of various precious metals might vary. (For example, the dwarven city next to a huge gold mine might not value it as highly as an area with no local gold resources.) The easiest way to "fix" this in a PoL game is to assume that there are at least a few mid-level wizards out there making their living teleporting around (or flying, or riding, depending on the setting) trading currency to keep things more or less in equilibrium.

In a campaign I once GMed my PCs were those arbitrage wizards, for a little while at least.

As for those mages, if they're Teleporting around solely to take advantage of gold mispricings, then (1) the DM is clearly not giving them enough to do, and (2) Teleport is too easy and safe.

With respect to (2), they were using slightly broken precognition rules which later got reworked. With respect to (1), they eventually got trapped on another plane, which reduced their chances for arbitrage a little.

At the time of their deaths on that plane they also had a number of mithril doors stolen from an ancient pyramid in the Sea of Dust which they had shrunk and stored in a warehouse in Dyvers, but had never got around to liquidating.

even the real world could go back to using gold as money under the right circumstances.

When I think about what those circumstances would have to be, I want to call them the WRONG circumstances!

 

[pemerton]

I really like the idea of 240 silver coins weighing one pound.

Just curious: are you from a Commonwealth country?

As someone who is (I'm from Australia), I can say that having to deal with the absurdities of pre-decimilisation British currency when reading older texts makes me relieved that RPGs have always been unrealistically decimalised.

 

[ZappoHisbane]

Prior to 1971, the pound was divided into twenty shillings, with each shilling equal to twelve pence, making a total of 240 pence to the pound. The symbol for the shilling was "s" — not from the first letter of the word, but rather from the Latin word solidus. The symbol for the penny was "d", from the French word denier, which in turn was from the Latin word denarius (the solidus and denarius were Roman coins). A mixed sum of shillings and pence such as 3 shillings and 6 pence would be written as "3/6" or "3s 6d" and spoken as "three and six". 5 shillings would be written as "5s" or, more commonly, "5/-". There were also coins called crowns, worth 5 shillings, and half crowns, worth 2 shillings 6 pence, florins worth 2 shillings and farthings worth ¼ penny. The guinea was a gold coin which, between 1717 and 1817 circulated at a value of 21 shillings. Consequently, even after its replacement with the 20 shilling sovereign, an amount of 21 shillings was referred to as "one guinea". Nicknames for other amounts included tanner for 6 pence, bob for 1 shilling and dollar for 5 shillings.

Ow.... I think I just sprained my brain...

 

[A'koss]

I really like the idea of 240 silver coins weighing one pound.

I'm actually starting to go the other way, back to when coins had some meat to them (10 coins/pd.). That way a treasure chest or dragon's horde actually looked impressive, rather than a just tiny pile of dimes in a jewelry box.

 

[Raduin711]

... or, Where are all these gold pieces coming from?

I really like the concept of a POL setting as it sounds like great fun to both run and play in. However, the one thing that's really straining my disbelief factor is the issue of currency. Now, I'm perfectly fine with there being a lack of 'Ye Olde Magick Shoppe' franchises everywhere. Especially since we've done away with the Xmas tree effect, I can live with adventurers getting most of their nifty stuff via looting and whatnot. However I still want to be able to get paid for clearing out the barkeep's basement of rats, and not just in free room & board for a couple of nights. I'd also want to take that payment and be able to spend it in the next town or two over.

Any thoughts? How do we rationalize the existance of a common currency without there being an overall government or nation providing that currency?

I wouldn't worry about it.

If you want to get really technical, when you use gold as direct currency, the value of the gold coin is it's weight, not the fact that it was stamped by a government. According to D&D 1gp = 1/3oz of gold. If you found a coin that weighed 1oz, then by D&D standards you could consider that coin to be 3gp. The reason for stamping the gold was because weighing the gold every time you made a purchase could get tedious, so people would make them into flat, easily carried disks.

If it helps your sense of wonder , you can just say that when your character writes down that he looted 52gp from a chest, what he has done is taken (1/3 x 52)oz of gold from the chest.

 

[mmadsen]

I'm actually starting to go the other way, back to when coins had some meat to them (10 coins/pd.). That way a treasure chest or dragon's horde actually looked impressive, rather than a just tiny pile of dimes in a jewelry box.

Well, the silver coin I mentioned that weighed 1/240 of a pound was the silver penny (or denarius). For a heavier coin, simply use the shilling (solidus), which was 1/20 of a pound.

Or consider the other colorful options:

There were also coins called crowns, worth 5 shillings, and half crowns, worth 2 shillings 6 pence, florins worth 2 shillings and farthings worth ¼ penny.​

Or, for simplicity's sake, simply say, "You open the chest and find ten pounds of silver!" That's arguably more exciting than "240 g.p."