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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vanveen" data-source="post: 7751098" data-attributes="member: 6874262">Money in D and D has always been a problem. Most of it was hand-waved in very early editions of the game and never fixed. Gygax based wealth on Conan and Fafhrd/Grey Mouser, in which fortunes were (improbably) "lost in a twinkling." This makes great pulp fiction (and is the basis for every three-camera sitcom script: well, I guess Uncle Norm is no longer a rock star!) but is terrible for continuity. You just *can't do it* in even a barely realistic Medieval European setting. Gygax also said that there was a lot of treasure dumped into a one-horse town, and that's all she wrote. (The treasure was from Greyhawk Castle and the O-HT was of course Greyhawk.) I'm not even going to get into how much gold you'd need to have a pile that a dragon could lounge on. (In the latest Hobbit movie? Literally *billions* of GP. In a non-fiat world...even if that was in *iron* it would still exceed the total historical output of every civilization on the fantasy planet.) Given all this, the literal impossibility of platinum in a fantasy setting is a minor quibble. (The Romans made electrum; platinum comes from the River Plata in South America and was not discovered until the 18th century.) The joy and frustration of serious gaming is that RPG systems are like trying to nail a pillow to the wall. You can finally nail one thing for good--but the rest bulges out all over.</blockquote>