Every so often I come across someone who says they've switched to a silver standard for their D&D economy instead of the default gold standard. For some reason, the idea appeals to me, although I'm not entirely sure why, because I don't know what all it entails. Would someone please be so kind as to enlighten me? Thanks.
I switched to the silver standard out of verisimilitude of realism. There is no compelling reason to do so except (perhaps) to make treasure more portable. If you want to run an economy on a gold piece standard and fantastic amounts of gold, there is nothing wrong with that so long as everyone is on the gold piece standard.
Now, there are - as late as 3e - incongruities in the rules that trace back to problems in 1e AD&D economics, namely that Gygax consciously implemented two economic systems: a silver standard based on realism and his own historical research, and a gold standard based on gamist concerns that arose during play (namely, how to both treat treasure as the score AND also pull gold out of the PC's pockets). As long as you adhere to the economic model of frontier hyperinflation described in the 1e AD&D Player's Handbook, this isn't incoherent. Of course, in practice no one ever assumed that all games would take place during the fantasy equivalent of the 'Klondike Gold Rush' and as soon as you move the setting, the double standard becomes problematic. So part of my reasoning for switching to a coherent silver standard was to fix that, throw out the baggage of a setting dependency, and put PC's and NPC's on level economic terms.
In a nutshell, and in practice, my economic system can be described as follows:
a) Unless otherwise stated, where the rules refer to gold, they mean silver.
b) Price lists are adjusted as necessary with the following conventions:
c) 1 silver piece is about a days wages for a common laborer, with a buying power of about $50 US, in todays terms. Serfs or other ordinary laborers engage in economic activity worth 5-6 silver pieces a week, though they may not necessarily be paid in coin.
d) Silver is worth 1/20th that of gold, so a gold piece is therefore worth about $1000.
e) Manufactured goods are rare. To convert prices of an unknown manufactured good to silver pieces, find a handmade good (hand made furniture, hand tailored clothing, etc.) and divide its price by $50, generally rounding up. When in doubt or when data is available, make sure that price makes sense in terms of 'time to make this' and a daily wage. In general, use the rule 'labor is at least 2/3rds of the price of anything' For example, if you know it would take a craftsman 5 days to make something, it probably should be worth at least 23 s.p. (5 * 3 sp/day / 2/3)
f) The economy is roughly similar to the developing world, or the pre-modern world, in that agrarian goods are comparatively inexpensive and when buying simple goods or food - particularly in rural areas - purchasing power parity applies. Serfs can feed themselves, but can't necessarily afford multiple changes of clothing.
g) You'll very quickly note that AD&D's legacy prices for gems and jewelry are nuts and had more to do with Gygax making a gamist decision about addressing the portability/score problems than realistic gemstone prices.
Except for the problem of how wealth is transported, the problems I'm trying to address here are pretty esoteric as far as most campaigns are concerned. Unless it really bugs you or one of your players, I wouldn't bother.