D&D 5E Money System in D&DN?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The economy that people think they're imitating with a silver standard is one where the GREAT majority have little or nothing of value. With a gold standard, if you hand a peasant a gold piece in most D&D editions you've still given him an amazing sum of money. He won't be changing his social or economic class but it's otherwise still a life-affecting amount. That doesn't change if it's a silver standard and you hand the peasant a silver piece because the relative value of what that silver piece will buy hasn't changed. Changing the coin standard doesn't do much if you don't also change what the CHARACTERS are going to be able to buy with that standard.

That being the case then I'd rather have gold as the standard - because it's LESS realistic. It's more like a fantasy environment for player characters, but for the great bulk of the population their lives DO still revolve around the more realistic silver piece. I DON'T want my characters dealing with silver like 98% of all the peasants in the world. I want my characters to be rich. At least TEN TIMES as rich as the average man on the street - and that means that if the man on the street is dealing with a silver standard MY CHARACTER is paying for things with GOLD.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Silver standard 10:1.

As I'm playing an adventurer... I want the gaining of treasure to be a cool experience for me... and I don't care about the experience for any of the peasants in the game world.

If most peasants live their lives around copper pieces and occasionally the silver, and someone tosses them a gold piece and blows their mind... why are we wasting that experience on non-player characters? *I* want to be that character that finds a gold piece and goes "HOLY CRAP!" Or finds a couple platinum pieces and absolutely freaks out.

That's what makes treasure such a treasureable experience.

But that doesn't happen if I start the game with 100 gold pieces in my pocket right out of the gate. And every treasure pile after that I find more of these gold pieces that I already have jingling around in my belt pouch. There's no awesome experience there. And even a platinum piece (at 10 to 1) doesn't exactly make me do backflips over it either.

Having gold coins used to be special, back when the game was first produced and we hadn't had decades of seeing them become commonplace. But now that we've had 40 years of board, roleplaying and videogames use gold coins as a basic currency... it's like handing out water. It no longer has any meaningful power over our emotions.

And I'd love in just a small way see if we can slightly get back to that. And removing gold as the basic currency is a possible first step.

 

[Dausuul]

Dang, silver standard beating the gold standard 8 to 1. I had no idea sentiment ran so strongly in that direction.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Dang, silver standard beating the gold standard 8 to 1. I had no idea sentiment ran so strongly in that direction.

Neither did I, though ENWorld tends toward an older audience who likely has real life experience with precious metals.

 

[CAFRedblade]

I wouldn't mind the Gold standard at 10sp to 1gp if the general assumption was that most the the rest of the world ran on silver, and coppers were for the truly destitute.

But most merchants and nobles should deal in Bars of Copper/Silver/Gold for big purchases, and Promissory Notes, backed by the local kingdom or alliance of kingdom's depending on the world.

I've just recently finished reading Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear, and the monetary spectrum for both political and general living has very strong consequences throughout.

 

[zoroaster100]

I can live with any of the options laid out in the poll (my preference was silver standard, 10 silver to 1 gold), but the one thing in terms of monetary system that threw me in the playtest packet was that plate mail was 5,000 gp, which compared to the value of the magic items in the magic item section, puts it as expensive as a LEGENDARY magic item. Surely a standard issue plate mail should not be more expensive than most of the rare and wonderous magic items one can find in the game.

 

[Blackwarder]

Not possible in your standard D&D, where PCs effectively mint money every time they haul hitherto-out-of-circulation currency out of the dungeon.

I disagree. I give you ACKS, the game I bought only because it got the a meaningful and consistent in-game economy.

Check out (by order):
Starting from the Ground Up...Literally
Starting from the Ground Up, Part II
The Demographics of Heroism
The Secret Ratio
Law & Economics, or Players Respond to Incentives
Experience for Treasure & Fetishizing Balance

I vote other, because I really don't care what you call the coins, I'm converting everything to Shekels, Drachmas and Dragon Poop, what I'm most interested in is a system with a logical and consistent economic model that can be easily scaled to resemble anything from Dragonlance to [FONT=arial, sans-serif]forgotten realms to Dark sun.

Personally I'm anxious for Autarch to publish a book that deals only with economic play in D&D like games.

Warder[/FONT]

 

[Stormonu]

Silver 10:1

However, I'd personally keep weapons and armor at their current GP cost and move just about everything down the scale on cost. The idea being that arming oneself comes with a lot of tax/tariffs to keep the peasantry from getting any ideas about revolting or otherwise arming themselves.

 

[n00bdragon]

Well, if we're going for verisimilitude here why not just make it 4 iron pieces to the copper piece, 12 copper pieces to the silver piece, and 20 silver pieces to the standard imperial gold piece. Orcish guineas are worth 0.8 imperial gold pieces each while Elven dubloons are worth 2.1 imperial gold pieces each and gnomish silver cogs are worth 5.6 silver pieces.

I mean really, that's the point here right? To play with all the cool monies?

Maybe they can even include an economics rules module with monthly random metal value fluctuations.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Well, if we're going for verisimilitude here why not just make it 4 iron pieces to the copper piece, 12 copper pieces to the silver piece, and 20 silver pieces to the standard imperial gold piece. Orcish guineas are worth 0.8 imperial gold pieces each while Elven dubloons are worth 2.1 imperial gold pieces each and gnomish silver cogs are worth 5.6 silver pieces.

I mean really, that's the point here right? To play with all the cool monies?

Maybe they can even include an economics rules module with monthly random metal value fluctuations.

I know it's sarcasm, but with the right group of people I would really enjoy that.