Gold or Silver Standard?

[TwinBahamut]

I think you are missing the point. (following snipped for space)

Err... what? Nonsense. If I want to say that the new silver piece is equal in value to the old gold piece, and that the new gold piece is worth 20-100 times the value of the new silver piece, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that it can't be so.

Setting the new game under a silver standard has nothing to do with absurd twists of fantasy economics and setting verisimilitude, as it simply involves altering the costs in the DMG and the expected value of any given coin. This is a game, after all. D&D monetary systems don't make much sense anyways. I think you are reading far too much into the words "silver standard". No one is meaning it in a literal economic sense, as far as I can tell. After all, few of us here are economists.

I think you are the one who missed my point completely, especially since you try to correct me by saying a few things that I have already said (changing the value of the sp to match the old gp).

 

[S'mon]

BTW IMC standard gold coins (gold pieces) are 1/100 lb and about the size of a dime or British 5p piece. I also have large gold coins (gold crowns) which are 1e style 1/10 lb and worth 10 standard gp.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

It could be enriched uranium cores, and the game won't change one bit fom it.

I like that idea! Gather too much wealth and you explode!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

1/20 gold to silver ratio sounds like a good compromise. Lower than the current inflated gap between the metals but rounded off to a close position to the historical difference for easier math.

Looking in Wikipedia (and we all know Wikipedia is always right) the valuation in pre-1492 times was between 6-1 and 12-1. After that, largely due to the discoveries of huge mines in South America, the value of silver decreased.

For ease of use, and because it stays within the general bounds of historical reality, I'd pick the same 10-1 ratio of silver to gold that D&D currently uses. In real life, the ratio varied of course, but in game I wouldn't worry about that unless it worked for a particular campaign angle I was shooting for - even the 10's of thousands of silver coins the PC's are likely to bandy about won't affect the economy of a large kingdom. It takes the budgets of Kings and Queens to do that (one African King caused the value of gold to be depressed in Egypt for something like 14 years after he passed through, he was spending so much of it).

Gold coins tended to be hoarded, but they did still get used occasionally - I would assume for ease of use that one could easily spend gold on big ticket items like horses and armor. I would probably also have coins similar to the spanish pieces of eight exist (break them into pieces to pay for stuff), although I wouldn't ask my players to track that level of detail!

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, considering I've done away with platinum coins in my game and use different conversion rates (100cp = 1sp; 100sp = 1gp; any prices in gp are sp instead), I'm all for silver coins as the standard unit.

For me, platinum coins break the suspension of disbelief because there's never been any culture using coins from that material (to my knowledge). I'd rather introduce kauri shells.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Looking in Wikipedia (and we all know Wikipedia is always right) the valuation in pre-1492 times was between 6-1 and 12-1. After that, largely due to the discoveries of huge mines in South America, the value of silver decreased.

What they needed was a slick marketing campaign to sustain the perceived value.

Something like, "Silver is forever!" should work.

(Oh, and seize control of the supply, of course.)

Hey 3cat, I really enjoyed your last post about the density/thickness of coins.

What about coin clipping? Nobody could afford to accept coins at face value-- you'd want to weigh them all.

 

[S'mon]

For me, platinum coins break the suspension of disbelief because there's never been any culture using coins from that material (to my knowledge). I'd rather introduce kauri shells.

I agree, hence my Large Gold Crowns at 1/10lb, a relic of 1e days!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

What they needed was a slick marketing campaign to sustain the perceived value.

Something like, "Silver is forever!" should work.

(Oh, and seize control of the supply, of course.)

The Spaniards were woefully unaware of the concept of devaluation. I think they had a pretty strong control of the supply of silver, actually, they just couldn't stop themselves from spending the stuff.

What about coin clipping? Nobody could afford to accept coins at face value-- you'd want to weigh them all.

This is true, but it would be something that happens so often that it would be standard practice to weigh coins, and therefore not really something to deal with in game unless a particular adventure works it in somehow...

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

This is true, but it would be something that happens so often that it would be standard practice to weigh coins, and therefore not really something to deal with in game unless a particular adventure works it in somehow...

Well there would probably have to be two divergent approaches.

The Rat-on-a-Stick guy and other small-time vendors certainly aren't carrying a set of scales with them everywhere they go (although I think they might have a decent Appraise skill to guesstimate weight by hand). But at the same time, they're probably spending their coins at similar vendors, so they don't particularly care whether a coin has been clipped or not. They're just putting it back into the system as fast as they earn it. In the course of the day they might see no more than a handful of coins anyway.

Anybody who deals with large sums of money-- including anybody who wants to grow their wealth-- is going to want a nice set of scales.

I do believe coin clipping was punishable by death, FWIW, but it would seem to be a hard thing to prove. Certainly the possession of a clipped coin is not evidence of a crime. You'd need to find the clipper's shop, coin shavings, and whatever materials he used to melt the shavings down into ingots or lumps again.

 

[JDJblatherings]

The light warhorse in the PHB costs 150 gp. That means you'll have to carry 1500 sp worth of coins (30 pounds of coins).

many people are working with the assumption the prices would go from gold to silver in name so it would be 150 sp for that horse if the game used a silver standard.

That way a fortune in gold IS a fortune in gold.