Ideas for Using Physical Money in Game.

[whearp]

I've recently started running a 4e game, and my group enthusiastically agreed to my suggestion of using physical money on the game. This is something I had done in the past in my 3.5 games. We would use pennies and glass craft stones to represent the monetary treasure that the party would earn and find.

This was a great system for so many reasons.

It made the treasure seem more exciting and real, and the players really enjoyed carrying around pouches of jingling money. Also, with the money so easy to access and comprehend it led to interesting roleplay situations. It wasn't uncommon for members of the party to toss a few 'coins' on the table to cover drinks or meals for the party or other NPCs, gate tolls and paid transportation became a fun little flavor addition to the game instead of an exercise in erasing and re-writing.

On my side of the table, it was even better. I didn't have to worry about players miscalculating their funds after a transaction, and as gems were given out as physical items, I didn't have to worry about two people writing them down on their inventories. Up until I added this option in my old games, it wasn't at all uncommon for the party wealth to get completely out of whack as rouge gems would suddenly appear in the inventory. No one was trying to cheat, it's just hard to keep up with those things after a while.

For some reason, though, I'm already having trouble doing this in 4e. The sheer amount of gold the players are getting in the adventures is taxing my supply of stones and my player's ability to carry them. I'm not sure, but it seems like the economy might be balanced a little differently than it was in the last edition.

Maybe I'm just forgetting how I managed it in the past, but I thought I'd see if anyone here had an thoughts on the subject or maybe has experience in using this method in 4e.

 

[fr33py]

Are you just using a single value for each type of coin?

1 penny = 1 copper

1 nickel = 1 silver

1 quarter = 1 gold


Something like that? Or some other system?


I use Campaign Coins. They are awesome and the group loves them. However, it is a bit expensive but well worth it. They are made very nicely. Good weight and feel to them.

Anyway they come in various denominations for each coin type.

For instance I have GP values ranging from 1,2,5,10,20,50,100,1000.

With the large denominations its easier to keep the money with out it getting out of hand. The smaller denominations are great for making change. I also picked up several packs of crystal/gems that work great for gem finds.

Shannon



A

 

[fr33py]

Are you just using a single value for each type of coin?

1 penny = 1 copper

1 nickel = 1 silver

1 quarter = 1 gold


Something like that? Or some other system?


I use Campaign Coins. They are awesome and the group loves them. However, it is a bit expensive but well worth it. They are made very nicely. Good weight and feel to them.

Anyway they come in various denominations for each coin type.

For instance I have GP values ranging from 1,2,5,10,20,50,100,1000.

With the large denominations its easier to keep the money with out it getting out of hand. The smaller denominations are great for making change. I also picked up several packs of crystal/gems that work great for gem finds.

Shannon



A

 

[Sunseeker]

IMO, the best solution is to multiply coin values by 10. Since 4e manuals indicate a player starting at 5th level should start with about 5-8k gold(before buying goodies), that's a lot of coinage. Even in pennies, that's a lot of jingle to jangle.

Likewise, as their wallets expand, so should their costs. An adventurer who at lvl1 bought the cheap beer for a copper, now at level 5 buys the "good stuff" for 10 gold...or buys 100 of the cheap beer for 10 gold. So at lvl1, the penny that was one copper now represents 10 gold. IMO, this will help with keeping the sheer volume of coins down, and still allow the players to toss their coins around when they want things. 600 copper now becomes 60,000 gold. Which should last players for a long time in almost any campaign.


Also: I love this idea, I'm going to present it to my friend who's planning to start a new campaign soon.

 

[BobTheNob]

1 penny = 1 copper

1 nickel = 1 silver

1 quarter = 1 gold

What are these things? Penny, Nickel, Quarter? I only know what cents are!

(American Jab aside)

What about using Poker Chips? I have tonnes sitting around the house and they scale up perfectly (I have "5" chips and "1000" chips)

You can buy em just about any gaming shop out there. Just pick a set with high value and low value.

p.s. Its a good idea this players carry money bit, I kinda like it

 

[whearp]

So, after a discussion about this with my wife (Also a seasoned DM), we came to one solution to keep the gold from piling up too much. By switching Platinum pieces to being worth 10 gold it creates a nice intermediate denomination between coins and gems.

So, under this system I'd need.
A few items to represent copper- Often Pennies
A few items to represent silver- Often Nickels
And a hundred or so each of items to represent gold and platinum
Beyond that I can use fake versions of the in-game gemstones at listed values. (Readily available at hobby and novelty shops)

How's that sound?

The idea of increasing the price of mundane items and services works in practice, but I'd rather be up front about it so as to retain the feeling of verisimilitude.

 

[Tsukiyomi]

We did this in our Deadlands game -- except that it involved buying a monopoly game and raiding it for the fake money inside. It worked great.

One thing that we did to take care of really small transactions was give the PCs a pool of "change." At character creation you'd give back 10 dollars of your starting money, and you were considered to be carrying some pocket change which would cover any transaction less than $1 (5 cent whiskey at the saloon, etc). You may want to incorporate something like this, so that you don't need to worry about the small transactions, whether that be 1 cp at level 1 or 1 gp at level 10.

I like the poker chip idea. If we weren't already using copper/silver/gold spray-painted poker chips for something else in our game, I might just try something like this.