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Message: <blockquote data-quote="twwombat" data-source="post: 2386681" data-attributes="member: 33265">Yep.  They're called "Rabid Rules Lawyers". Retrain them if you can.  Specifically, make the players stop relying on their memorized information.  Make whatever they know wrong and have an in-game reason to back it up.  Make what they know hurt them a few times and they'll either leave like the whiners they are, or they'll grow up and start reacting to your world and not the published rules. If you don't want to put in that level of detail, screw it.  Pick a number for coinage, then make vague, "Huh!" noises when they ask about perceived discrepancies and let the characters go crazy trying to figure out where the money went.  I can't imagine how fervent attention to to last copper placed in an adventure is =fun=. It's a =GAME=.  Games should be =FUN=.  Not just for the players, but for the GM as well. The mercenary prices are GUIDELINES.  If reality worked on guidelines, we'd all be rich.  Or poor.  Or both.  Or at least able to predict certain events with 100% accuracy. Do the mercenaries have to pay for their food?  What about equipment?  If so, pay them =in= food and equipment and services instead of having to fall back on the crutch of currency.  Or maybe they're working with the promise of a huge payday.  If any mercenary stockpiles all of their pay, they'd retire in a month, three months tops. Currency was invented as a promise of other life-sustaining goods, and because it's really hard to carry a month's harvest of grain into a shop to directly trade it for a ship's mast.  I rarely have currency as found treasure unless there's a =really= good reason for it to be there.  I take the gold piece value and come up with gems, art objects, or raw materials in that amount.  And there can be some clues in the treasure itself: if the characters defeat a mercenary band in the desert and recover heartwood from a specific jungle tree, there's a possible connection that needs to be tracked down. I don't think many GMs have been exposed to the idea of barter outside of its direct impact on a planned adventure (i.e. "You kill this dragon/save my daughter/perform this other service and I'll back your bid for the Barony/lend you troops/free your friend/owe you a favor/whatever").  And that's what 90% of commerce relies on in a medieval-style culture.  Only the rich have money, everyone else trades the sweat of their brow for food and shelter. When my characters run into a shop and start throwing around magic items and expecting cash, I have the shop owner look at them oddly.  The shop doesn't have a ton of cash lying around, but it =does= have other stock to trade with the difference made up in promissary notes.  The players are learning that there's not a lot of actual currency floating around, but it's a long, slow process. ANYway.  There's another angle to look at the "problem" of actual money found deviating from published guidelines.</blockquote>

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