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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3714704" data-attributes="member: 30001">But that's exactly my point and I'm not sure why you're not understanding this.  IF I travel to some part of the world and live there long enough to instinctively absorb the economic realities THEN I will understand your analogy regarding the value of the gold piece.  Maybe I'm trying to answer a different question than you are.  Taking some traveller's checks to Africa and staying there for a week probably wouldn't do much for my understanding of the situation.Every time I get into a debate with someone on the internet about how "A is like B" or "A is not like B" there's never really any sensible basis for comparison.  One question is where people in ANY economy have a basic sense of value.  I'm not sure why there is a fundemental difference between silver coins, cowrie shells, or bushels of wheat when it comes to value - other than some may be easier to move than others.  Also, the DnD coin AFAIK is not backed by some central bank, it's value is the value of the metal in the coin, making it, as far as I can tell, subject to the same situation as a bushel of wheat (there's no indication that the coins are debased, in fact, considering the exchange rates for basic metals given in "trade goods" it seems to me that a gold coin is 100% pure gold (which is strange)).All of these are cultural-specific details that aren't really addressed in the DnD rules.  I'm not even sure they're applicable for Late Medieval Europe.  AFAIK peasants were paying their rents in cash towards the end of the period.  Who would steal his silver?  They could just as easily steal his cattle or horses, worth far more than a few silver pieces (and easier to find).In answering the question of value, I think it's not inappropriate to assume that peasants can move modest sums of cash pretty readily.  A bolt of wool or cow can be purchased at the local market with the silver.  Again, this is a matter of the cultural details.  Someone selling themselves into slavery is doing so to avoid debter prison (or the salt mines) so that's not exactly a seller's market.  Laborers presumably produce at least 1 sp worth of value or else it wouldn't be worth hiring them - and using the "poor" wealth guidelines in the DMG I could probably come up with a better number - at least 6 gp/month IIRC.  I wouldn't think that a peasant in average circumstances values his life as that of a slave.Once again we're at an impasse with the whole "A is nothing like B" statement.  I go to the store and take a few dollars with me and buy a loaf of bread.  The PHB gives a price for a loaf of bread, only there I'm taking some copper pieces with me.  Even if I pay for the bread with a cart load of wood, there's still a general sense of the value of the goods being exchanged, and IMO it's not unreasonable to translate it all to a currency standard first.  Otherwise you'd be suggesting that one week I'd go to the market and buy bread for one cartload of wood and the next I'd buy it for two - with no drought or other event to explain the difference.  Other than variations in quality I'm not sure how using the term "pre-modern" explains those differences.I agree (somewhat), but I think this is even the case of the value of a dollar, it buys far less designer clothing, for example.  So someone who is rich in the modern world will find that a dollar is worth less in their economy than a poor person.  That's why I was trying to use a $20-30K salary range for comparison.  In anycase, like I've said elsewhere, I think your suggestion that peasants don't use money is overstated for what I think is the appropriate time period.But we're not talking about shares of stock or currency debasement.  We're talking about a peasant trading a few silver pieces to a yeoman farmer for some hams.  The yeoman farmer takes the silver to the market town and buys a bolt of dyed wool.  The wool merchant takes the silver to the docks and buys a vial of spice.  Without weird legal restrictions I don't see how all of this is inappropriate for a historical period that matches DnD.  I would assume all significant agriculture is done within a short distance of a market town - meaning the bulk of peasants live in such a neighborhood. Perhaps ideally, but "noble propoganda" aside, those guys have mercenaries and such to pay and they certainly borrowed a heck of a lot of cash from merchants in the period to be claiming they're not interested in it (edit:  oh, and Scutage?).  And again, it's a fairly general statement in history books that land-owners were more than happy to take cash from peasants as rent payments - no "insult" perceived AFAICT.  In the historical period I think there is a gap between the ideal and reality, and then once you're in the DnD world, those issues are probably particular to the campaign.The core issue IMO is what the perceived value of a silver piece is - that's not something that these cultural issues would address.  So is the noble honoring the innkeeper with 4 cp? or 400 gp?  Without some perception of value, how do people even decide what they're getting/giving as a gift?  The answer to me is that, nuances of "pre modern etc. etc." aside, there IS a perceived value for coins, and that it's as constant across social classes as it would be for the same wealth disparities in modern times (minus some of the social safety net factors that boosts the low end).</blockquote>

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