D&D 5E "Fixing" electrum pieces - looking for a player's perspective

[DEFCON 1]

You're right, you can't force your players to care...but so long as the stuff you're doing isn't actually bothering them, I see no reason you can't include whatever detail you want.

DMs get to have fun too.

Oh absolutely! More often than not, that's what I'm doing between campaigns... deciding on ideas and then fleshing those ideas out. I always have two or three potential campaign ideas in my D&D folder that I constantly open up and look at... adding things to them as I acquire more material, thinking about what I might need to finally decide to bring one of them to the table. That's the kind of work that I find so central to being a DM-- figuring out how I'd like this particular campaign to run-- that makes me always surprised when others talk about wanting products they buy to be a certain way so that they don't have to do that work. That just seems odd to me, wanting to avoid really digging into the material. What better way to get invested in what I'm doing than to actually put in the time and effort to make it how I want it by turning knobs and adjusting dials?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh absolutely! More often than not, that's what I'm doing between campaigns... deciding on ideas and then fleshing those ideas out. I always have two or three potential campaign ideas in my D&D folder that I constantly open up and look at... adding things to them as I acquire more material, thinking about what I might need to finally decide to bring one of them to the table. That's the kind of work that I find so central to being a DM-- figuring out how I'd like this particular campaign to run-- that makes me always surprised when others talk about wanting products they buy to be a certain way so that they don't have to do that work. That just seems odd to me, wanting to avoid really digging into the material. What better way to get invested in what I'm doing than to actually put in the time and effort to make it how I want it by turning knobs and adjusting dials?

Sure, but I feel there's still a line where inspiration is helpful, and lots of folks will come up with cool ideas I never would imagine on my own.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure, but I feel there's still a line where inspiration is helpful, and lots of folks will come up with cool ideas I never would imagine on my own.

We need a "let's build a collaborative setting" thread. One post, one setting detail.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but that would be an adventure, since it's illegal. And bear in mind that you could only spend the marks in the one city, so you are getting rich in one location at the expense of not having any money usable elsewhere!

Except they'd then try to find something they could buy cheap in that one city and sell at a higher price in the other.

Or if that's not possible, convert the marks into gems, take tham back to the other city, sell them there; lather rinse repeat.

I've DMed parties that did this sort of stuff. Never again!

 

[Lanefan]

I'm in support of mercantile ventures in D&D-style gaming. Makes a lot of sense in-universe.

I don't mind the concept but I long ago got to the point where I flatly refuse to DM it in any depth or detail; or at all if it becomes the main focus of play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except they'd then try to find something they could buy cheap in that one city and sell at a higher price in the other.

Or if that's not possible, convert the marks into gems, take tham back to the other city, sell them there; lather rinse repeat.

I've DMed parties that did this sort of stuff. Never again!

You would rather that those kinds of perfectly legitimate and verisimilitudinous economic shenanigans simply not be possible? I understand not wanting to deal with aspects if play you find boring, but for me disallowing it would break setting logic hard.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't mind the concept but I long ago got to the point where I flatly refuse to DM it in any depth or detail; or at all if it becomes the main focus of play.

I was playing ACKS a while back and introduced one of my players to the Venturer class (sort of an adventuring merchant). He got really excited about it. They also make an excellent party face.

 

[Lanefan]

That's the eternal struggle... trying to figure out how much of this worldbuilding that is so important to me that I'm spending all this time working on it and coming up with cool and evocative names and designs will actually matter to my players at all. And more often than not, the answer is "Not really at all." Which kinda stinks, but it is what it is. Can't force them to care.

I found that greatly in my last campaign of Theros... I tried highlighting the 'Ancient Greek' aesthetic as much as I could, but most of it went over their heads or they just didn't pay much attention to it. Even something simple like changing the name of a skill like 'Persuasion' to 'Rhetoric' in order to get just a touch of Greek philosophical flavor, and renaming most of the weapons to their Greek counterparts were pretty much ignored. Like it was with changing the names of months in an in-game calendar... trying to remember these things while playing was just not worth the time. Other parts of the game took precedence.

But oh well... you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Renaming the months only works - but works very well - IME if there's no direct correlation to real-world months.

For my current game I use a calendar of nine 40-day months for a 360-day year. As there's no direct correlation to the real-world calendar they have no choice but to use the in-game one for in-game things, which really adds to the flavour.

 

[Lanefan]

You would rather that those kinds of perfectly legitimate and verisimilitudinous economic shenanigans simply not be possible? I understand not wanting to deal with aspects if play you find boring, but for me disallowing it would break setting logic hard.

I despise market-driven economics in the real world (it's a broken system, is all I'll say) and have no desire to port it over into my D&D campaigns.

And thus, while in theory market-driven economics exist in the setting, if the players/PCs want to get involved in it they can find another DM.

 

[Ancalagon]

As a grognard, I understand the purpose of the electrum piece pre-3E. For those of you unaware, it used to be 1000 cp = 100 sp = 10 ep = 1 pp, with 2 ep = 1 gp as today, which (supposedly) was an approximate medieval exchange rate.

I think this is an example of Gygax just getting it plain wrong. Elecrum was not used much as currency except a certain period in Egypt, that I know of. There has been some historical uses of platinum, but not as currency either.

I also note that the 10x is also not quite right. For a long period we had a 1:20:240 currency division.

When reintroduced in 5E as a half-coin, it no longer really seems to fit anymore

Why? What's different?