Different monetary standards

[Whisper72]

Well... one thing I have done is to make use of a silver standard. I.e. all prices and treasures listed in gold, are silver in stead. This essentially makes the money 10 times more valuable. At the same time, make use of letters of credit and special trade bars for even higher values.

Furthermore, large amounts are paid in gems and/or jewelry. Some gemstone may have a 'standard' value at 'standard' carat-weights, thus with the use of a simple scale, ppl can easily determine the worth of these gems....

 

[Staffan]

Eberron makes rather extensive use of letters of credit, aided by the continent-spanning dragonmark houses Kundarak (who provide the banking facilities) and Sivis (who deal with the paperwork).

If you're just looking for more valuable coins, Earthdawn has coins made from True Elements. A Water or Earth coin is worth 10 or 100 gold coins (can't remember which off-hand), and an Air or Fire coin is worth 10 or 100 Water/Earth coins.

 

[Shades of Green]

Not all monetary standards have to be valuable themselves; china, IIRC, had paper money centuries before Europe even thought aboud that idea. Bearer bonds and early version of cheques were used in Europe in the late Medieval times.

My setting has Dwarven Iron Pieces (worth about 5 GP each; the Dwarves are an economical power, and while a few grams of iron aren't worth much by themselves, they are backed by both a large amount of gold back in the Mountains and by the massive proto-industrial might of the Dwarven kingdom.

Also, bearer bonds are quite common - but don't expect them to be of any use in the more remote rural areas.

 

[philreed]

Valuable Documents

One of the things I enjoy is the introduction of documents that have value. Letters of credit, stock certificates, payment vouchers, letters of transit -- all can extremely valuable (and have the added benefit of not being instantly recognizable by PCs as valuable).

David Liss' "A Conspiracy of Paper" is an excellent book for any DM looking to make documents an important aspect of his campaign's economy.

www.davidliss.com

We really need a book on economics and trade for D20.

 

[painandgreed]

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

This isn't exactly unusual as there are reasons for it. I remember in one campaign we had to pay the wereguild of 10,000 SP. They wouldn't accept gold because that would be too easy for a theif to steal. They wanted the large amount of heavy treasure so it could be used more easily and so it couldn't be stolen as easily. Damned barbarians.

 

[kigmatzomat]

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

I think those hoards are reasonable since most of the victims won't carry gold.

I do believe D&D would be improved by instead having a few distribution patterns. I use a vaguely arranged "low/med/high" coin system. Round down to whole coins and dump the odd values into the appropriate coinage.

Low: (copper predominant)
roll d10 to determine percentage of treasure in gp
roll 6d10 to determine percentage of treasure in sp
remainder is copper
Typical 1000gp distribution: 55gp, 3300sp, 61500cp

Medium: (silver is predominant)
roll 1d10 to determine percentage of treasure in pp
roll 6d10 to '' '' '' '' '' '' '' gp
roll 1d6 to '' '' '' '' '' '' '' cp
remainder is silver
Typical 1000gp distribution: 5pp, 335gp, 5800sp, 3500cp

High: (gold is predominant)
roll 4d10 '' '' '' '' '' '' '' pp
roll 1d10 '' '' '' '' '' '' '' sp
remainder is gold
Typical 1000gp distribution: 22pp, 725gp, 550 sp

I'll probably make a "fabulously wealthy" category based on platinum at some point but haven't needed it yet.

This gives a more natural feel to the treasure. It also means the party can loot more weight-effectively. More work on the DM but I'll take the effort required to avoid any in-game dissonance ("16,000sp? Who has 16,000sp without one freaking gold coin? And why are the treasures in such nice, round numbers?").