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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 7645721" data-attributes="member: 6669384">Let's start with a clarification:  You titled this thread using the terms "economy" and "wages", but what you discussed was actually currency, which is something completely different.So let's talk currencies for a moment.Consider the ridiculous presumption in game that, as PCs travel to other lands and even to other planes, all the currencies match.  A gold piece (described as about 1/3 of an ounce) is the same size, weight, purity and value no matter who issued it or when.  Clearly not the way currencies actually work.For example, an English Guinea was about a fifth of an ounce of gold, and was worth considerably more than the Scottish coin of the same name.  That made for some really confusing economics.In the real world, as economies grew and the gold supply didn't, "standard" gold coins got smaller, yet were officially the "same", and of the same value.  It's the nature of a precious metal based economy.  Examples are very clear when looking at Roman era coinage.Now let's talk economies.I still play 3.5 a lot, but even when I play other editions and even other systems, the economies are broken.In just about every D&D edition I've played, the average adventurer, even at levels like third or fourth, would have enough wealth on their person (gold, equipment, magic etc.) to buy many of the small towns they visited.  The wealth gap was so insane that the only way to deal with it was not to:  You just pretended that it wasn't there, and that towns of any real size had the available cash to buy all the loot adventurers hauled in.In fact, the crafting and magical creation rules in 4e were so strange that the only way that the economy could function at all was *because* adventurers were around, hauling in loot and selling it for a fraction of the market value.  (In 4e the market price for an item was always the base cost of the raw materials, so nobody could possibly make a living crafting or selling anyting.)I've played editions and systems where they tried to rename the coins as "Suns" (Gold), Moons (Silver) and "Common" (Copper).  Never stuck.  The players always referred to them as gold, silver and copper.So my best advice?  Use the standard systems of coinage and currency, because the players will still translate and use the simple system anyway.As for the economy?  Best to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  Just pretend that it all works, somehow.</blockquote>

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