Different monetary standards

[DMH]

This is based on the fantasy world economics thread.

To reduce the amount of valuable metals in a setting to something a bit more realistic, why not change the metal standard and add some more valuable metals (both real and fantasy) and gems? Why not have metals that are valuable not only due to their rarity, but also due to supernatural reasons- metals that act as metamagic feats, that add power for dragon mages from Spells and Magic, that reduce the number of xp needed to enchant, etc.

Has anyone done this?

 

[painandgreed]

Well, I've seen mithril and adamandite pieces before in campaigns, but those really don't count as it's still metal rariety. There are two main troubles for such a currency IMHO. One, it's not durable. Once you use it, it disapears. Gold may get used to make jewery or gild a statue, but it can still be turned back into GPs in most cases. Two, for the demand to be high enough, it would either have to be useful to anyone who has it in their possesion or there must be enough magic for a high enough demand. With the amount of clerics and wizards in a normal campaign, perhaps. I haven't looked ar Eberron, but it has been explained to me as an industrialized magic setting. Thus, someplace like this may have enough of a uniform demand for such a currency.

Another choice for an alternate fantasy world currency would be back to paper money or other forms of token created by magic. Thus, the high level wizard in charge of the kingdoms mint knows the spell to create such paper notes or magic token that the government will honor for a certain amount of gold or silver if turned in to them. The main trouble as with paper currency is counterfitting, but inorder to counterfit it, they'd have to know the spell or duplicate its research and then be a high level wizard to cast it. It might even require that the casting wizard have a high enough forgery skill to do it good enough to pass making it even harder to counterfit.

 

[Tonguez]

Another choice for an alternate fantasy world currency would be back to paper money or other forms of token created by magic. Thus, the high level wizard in charge of the kingdoms mint knows the spell to create such paper notes or magic token that the government will honor for a certain amount of gold or silver if turned in to them. The main trouble as with paper currency is counterfitting, but inorder to counterfit it, they'd have to know the spell or duplicate its research and then be a high level wizard to cast it. It might even require that the casting wizard have a high enough forgery skill to do it good enough to pass making it even harder to counterfit.

I still think my idea of Dragon Marques is good.
Basically it goes that Dragons need a hoard, Adventurers bring in lots of gold which upon flooding the market has the potential to cause hyperinflation. The local good dragon thus offers to take all that gold off the adventurers/kingdom and look after it in his hoard. In return the Dragon offers a token known as a Dragon Marque, which is tradeable and underwritten by the dragon. If anyone steals it they are answerable to an angry dragon capitalist and so everyone is happy. The common folk might use barter and even gp real wealth is measured in the value of your DM.

The other thing could be to remove the gold standard entirely and instead use a Rice standard and wooden tokens...

 

[Quickleaf]

Tonugez, what a great idea! Writs of mark endorsed by a dragon! Ooo...

To reduce the amount of valuable metals in a setting to something a bit more realistic, why not change the metal standard and add some more valuable metals (both real and fantasy) and gems?

I would suggest making avid use of the trade standards presented in the PHB section on equipment, and augmenting it for your own campaign. (e.g. Nyambe african adventures had ivory and ceramic shells as units of trade).

 

[kigmatzomat]

I would suggest making avid use of the trade standards presented in the PHB section on equipment, and augmenting it for your own campaign. (e.g. Nyambe african adventures had ivory and ceramic shells as units of trade).

Also pay attention to the concept of commodity goods. These items are, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to money since virtually all communities of village size will find someone willing to purchase the items in question in reasonable quantities.

IMC large trade houses and the nobility use specially cut gemstones, often wizard marked, to transfer large amounts of wealth between groups.

There are also "commodity lands", properties whose ownership tends to change like the shifting breeze. Used far more rarely, there are a few dozen holdings in each kingdom that are stable income sources traded between nobles. Mines, vineyards, orchards, and sources of exotic herbs tend to be the most common properties as traditional farmlands rarely has the consistent returns.

 

[painandgreed]

Also pay attention to the concept of commodity goods. These items are, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to money since virtually all communities of village size will find someone willing to purchase the items in question in reasonable quantities.

There are two issues with this. One being finding a person who'll accept 15 GP worth of a commodity such as grain or iron for a sword. That's 1500# of grain and 150# of iron, so just carrying it to the store is going to require a lot of work. Still, we could deal with high priced commodities, assume that there is somebody in the village that would accept rare spices (still over three times the weight of gold), and that the exchange rate charged by the merchant is so little we can ignore. The main issue with commodity goods is that grain rots and iron rusts, devaluing the commodity proprotional to time. Gold, silver, and copper all are close to incorruptable. they may tarnish but you are still pretty much assured that a pound of one will still be a pound of metal in a hundred years. For a good currency, we need something that is light with reguard to value and will not devalue in time. The harder it is to exhange value such as by using heavy and bulky commodities, the harder it is for financial transactions to take place, slowing the economy and thus resulting in less value overall in said economy. Gemstones visibley wizard marked with value could be a good curency as the wizard mark would set standard prices for such that can be determined by people other than jewelers, and I think it's reall close to what I talked about earlier.

 

[DMH]

Recently National Geographic had an article on Columbia and in some regions, cocaine is used as money (the author's lunch at one place cost 1 1/2 grams). So why not use expensive spices in place of coinage?

For those worlds without paper, how about sections of hides of specially bred animals. There could be several species with each hide having a different worth.

 

[mmadsen]

To reduce the amount of valuable metals in a setting to something a bit more realistic, why not change the metal standard and add some more valuable metals (both real and fantasy) and gems?

To reduce the amount of valuable metals...add some more valuable metals? I don't get it.

 

[DMH]

To reduce the amount of valuable metals...add some more valuable metals? I don't get it.

Yes, smaller quantities of metals that have greater value. Why bring cart loads of coins to pay for the magic item the PCs have commisioned when a small sack will work just as well? And are there services of people with carts to remove dragon hoards and ancient treasuries?

 

[Pyrex]

To reduce the amount of valuable metals...add some more valuable metals? I don't get it.

I think what he's getting at is that it's rather silly that the GP-standard treasure tables produce so much low-to-mid value coinage that in absence of portable holes the party needs teams of horse drawn wagons to haul the treasure away. By introducing higher-denomination coins you can reduce the sheer physical volume of coinage.

Example: According to the DMG treasure tables, it's possible for a EL 9 encounter to produce 4000 pounds of copper & silver coins.