Gold or Silver Standard?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

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.

Define "fortune". I mean, is it really bothering people that a fortune in gold has to be 10,000 coins instead of a fortune in gold being 100 coins? Is it bothering people that there are few/no real-world precious metals for coins above the value of gold? Is this not what mithril, adamantium, and unobtanium are for?

If there's anything about D&D monetary schemes that bothers me it's the use of gems as a medium of exchange.

 

[S'mon]

The prices need a bit of rebalancing. A horse shouldn't cost ten times a longsword - 150 sp for both would be fine. OTOH full plate armour *was* and should be extremely expensive, I'd be ok with it costing 15,000 sp, though 1,500 sp might be ok.

 

[Pssthpok]

Well, I don't care what 4E does as long as it addresses the issue of average wage.

The way it is now, a laborer earns an average of 1sp/day. Comparing that to a recent US survey which stated that the average American laborer earns ~9.50$/hour and that boils down to a silver piece equaling about 76$ US.

Which makes a gold 760$ US. Being paid biweekly, an average D&D laborer earns 1 gp/fortnight.

Which makes a suit of full plate (1,500 gp) worth 1.14$ million US.

If, as someone earlier in this thread pointed out, the relationship between gold and silver were more accurately represented (i.e. 55:1), then a suit of full plate would 5.5-times more expensive, or 6.27$ million US.

Which is, of course, preposterous. Full plate was expensive, but over 6 million dollars?! No chance.

Putting everything on the gold standard perverts the value of lesser coins, but I'm not sure a simple switch to a silver standard fixes anything. More or less, in order to fix the issue it needs to be reimagined from the ground up.

 

[gizmo33]

The prices need a bit of rebalancing.

I agree. But the 3E DMG lists the daily wage for labor at 1sp. My vague assessment of the wheat and most other commodity prices (except for salt - sheesh) is that they are ok too. So from that perspective, the current prices seem to already been on a "silver standard". At least for things that adventurers don't usually buy.

For things adventurers buy, the prices seem to be either calculated in terms of what will make the PCs go "ouch" or just made up willy-nilly without any thought given to the value of the materials or labor that would go into making the item.

IMO the 3E Arms and Equipment guide is full of really horrendous and arbitrary prices, so I shudder to think of what 4E is going to look like if someone doesn't improve the research on these things. It's not like I expect DnD to be historical simulation, so 100-10-1 for copper-silver-gold is fine and convenient. But 1 gp/lb for barley and 2sp/gallon for ale is an example of just being stupid.

 

[gizmo33]

The way it is now, a laborer earns an average of 1sp/day. Comparing that to a recent US survey which stated that the average American laborer earns ~9.50$/hour and that boils down to a silver piece equaling about 76$ US.

There are two issues to consider here. One is what the DMG means by "laborer". I don't think an American laborer, working in an environment with minimum wage laws and child-labor laws and all of that really is comparable to a medieval "laborer". I would look outside the US for comparisons. I would think that a thatcher would make 2sp/day, and his teenage or spouse assistant probably makes 1 sp/day.

Which makes a suit of full plate (1,500 gp) worth 1.14$ million US.

This is more the issue IMO. 50lbs of silver is worth 250gp. One has to conclude that either armor-quality steel is worth multiple times it's weight in silver (in which case maybe sp stands for "steel pieces"?) Or that armorers make 100gp a week or hour? Basically, I think a sensible look at material and labor costs for producing these items would give a good result.

AFAIK iron and silver were more valuable in Medieval times than they are now, both in general terms and in relation to gold. I'm ok, for bookeeping purposes, with the current 10:1 ratios.

 

[mmadsen]

The way it is now, a laborer earns an average of 1sp/day. Comparing that to a recent US survey which stated that the average American laborer earns ~9.50$/hour and that boils down to a silver piece equaling about 76$ US.

There is no reason to assume that a pre-industrial peasant would have the same wage as a 21st-century American laborer. If anything, the pre-industrial peasant would have a wage similar to a 21st-century African's -- maybe a dollar or two per day.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Actually, the "uttering" (ie passing in the course of a transaction) of a counterfeit coin was a crime in early 19th century Britain - though it was capital, I think, only on the third conviction.

The way it is now, a laborer earns an average of 1sp/day. Comparing that to a recent US survey which stated that the average American laborer earns ~9.50$/hour and that boils down to a silver piece equaling about 76$ US.

As others have said, this comparison will yield no historical information. The wealth of even a low-payed person in a contemporary industrial society bears no historical comparison even to the first half of the twentieth century, let alone earlier periods.

There is no reason to assume that a pre-industrial peasant would have the same wage as a 21st-century American laborer. If anything, the pre-industrial peasant would have a wage similar to a 21st-century African's -- maybe a dollar or two per day.

From memory, about a fifth of the world lives below the World Bank's poverty line of $2 a day purchase power parity (ie they in fact earn much less than $2 a day, but in the measure we inflate that to take account, through a somewhat controversial methodology, of the lower cost of living in the person's country).

Whether these standards of living are comparable to pre-modern ones is a tricky question, because the economies in question are very different from pre-modern economies focused on susbsistence rather than international trade.

There are plenty of economic historians who write on pre-modern economies, whose books will answer some of the questions raised in this thread.

 

[3catcircus]

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.

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).

Why bother changing the value of coins if you are also changing costs in the book? You *have* to do one, but not both, in order to have an appreciable effect on the game.

I'd do the following:

1. There are no gold coins in normal circulation in any quasi-medieval campaign setting. The copper piece becomes a silver penny that represents the basic unit of coinage. Larger transactions can use a silver piece. The only way to have an actual gold piece is to find it in some treasure horde (rarely), mine the ore, or have some other extraordinary means of obtaining them.
2. A 15 gp longsword still costs 15 gp, but you have to lug around 1500 cp or 150 sp to pay for it.
3. Treasure hordes get bumped down one "level" (i.e. if it calls for 1d6x1000 cp and 1d6x100 sp, you simply have 2d6x1000 cp in the horde.)

Basically, without trying to get involved with the craziness of having multiple different types of coins of different denominations, All you have to do is take a cue from the pre-decimal British system - the penny (cp) is the basic coin; 12 pence (cp) = 1 shilling (sp); 20 shillings (sp) = 1 pound (gp) with only the silver penny and shilling (or denominations thereof) being in circulation and no actual gold or silver pounds being minted. Of course, you can use whatever ratio you want (100 cp = 10 sp = 1 gp can still be used).

You *could* have some cultures in your campaign world that *do* use both gold and silver, much like the arab dinar and dirham were used. Interestingly enough, when Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, passed through Cairo on his way to the hajj in the 1300's, spending gold like a drunken sailor, he caused rapid inflation in North Africa that lasted over 10 years to recover from - similar things could easily happen in your campaign world.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Why bother changing the value of coins if you are also changing costs in the book? You *have* to do one, but not both, in order to have an appreciable effect on the game.

Why? I don't see your logic at all...

Again, I don't think you understand what the effect on the game that I want happens to be. Doing what I said results in the exact effect I want.

 

[Roman]

I did not read the thread, but I voted for gold. The gold standard has a D&D tradition to it and has a better ring to it for contemporary gamers. The silver standard was used in much of history, but I still prefer gold for my fantasy RPGs.