What do you have in your coinpurse?

[Panpiper]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I think that's called 'necro' Blue Jogger, when you resurrect a thread six years dead.

 

It just so happens however that I've been putting together my own currency system for my own world and, well, here it is:

 

I'm building a currency system that is largely based on real world historical values and ratios. In order to keep it intuitive for the players, I am naming the currency units after what they already understand, to some degree.

 

The most common coin used for normal daily transactions would be the penny, which is a large copper coin larger than a US quarter. One penny is enough to buy a small loaf of bread. There are also technically 'tenthpence' which are small copper coins roughly the size of a dime which is used for even smaller transactions and making change.

 

The most common coin that players would concern themselves with is the 'Dime' also refereed to as a 'Silver'. This is a silver coin the size of today's US dimes. It represents one day's wages for a typical unskilled laborer and is enough to buy common room shelter and enough basic gruel to survive. A day's stay in a decent inn with a small lockable private room, three meals, three drinks, and stabling for a horse would cost 3 dimes, 2 if you are willing to slum it.

 

Next up would be a Quarter, a silver coin worth two and a half dimes and sized just like today's US quarters. And finally, there comes the silver Dollar, an unusual coin for the common man on the street, but an oft used measure among the nobility and wealthy merchants.

 

Gold coins exist but are seldom used except for very large transactions. They exist in two denominations, the more common and much smaller coin is the Ducat (sometimes simply referred to as a gold piece) the same size as a dime and finally the much larger Dubloon, the same size as a silver Dollar but obviously worth much more. A Ducat is worth ten dollars and a Dubloon is worth one hundred Dollars.

 

So to restate in perhaps a more legible form:

 

2 Tenthpence = Mug of weak ale. Dime sized copper.

10 Tenthpence = 1 Penny (Small loaf of bread) Dollar sized copper.

10 Pennies = 1 Silver Piece/Dime (Day's unskilled wages) Dime sized silver.

25 Pennies = 1 Quarter Quarter sized silver.

10 Dimes = 1 Dollar (Three day's lodging and stabling at a nice Inn.) Dollar sized silver.

10 Dollars = 1 Gold Piece/Ducat (A month's wages for a skilled craftsman.) Dime sized gold.

10 Ducats = 1 Dubloon (A month's allowance for pampered nobility.) Dollar sized gold.

 

A simplification of the above system, in keeping with actual currency values would be to simply refer to coppers, silvers and gold pieces. Assume that 100 coppers equals a silver and that 100 silvers equals a gold piece. All coins are approximately the same size (I recommend dime sized)

 

Price for a fine suit of heavy full plate, ornate, fully fluted, gothic articulation and gold leaf embossing: 4 Dubloons, or 4000 Silvers.

[Curufea]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I worked out a blazon to describe coinage for the Western Shores

 

Felines used Chinese names are generally based on medieval Chinese and use paper money.

Humans used English names and medieval european coinage.

Lizardmen used Greek and Middle Eastern names. Coinage is large with lots of raised surfaces because of less tactile sense.

Elves used Tolkein elvish names. Coins are thematic according to philosophy, and highly magical.

Dwarves use a modified Tolkein dwarvish. Coins are machine stamped and the strongest currency.

 

The most recent game was set in the human culture areas, so that coinage was used - which is based on the Imperial system of pounds, shillings, pence.

 

Average wage

 

Average prices

 

Western Shores human culture based money

 

1f (Pint of ale) Mug of weak ale.

1f (Bread, Barley or Rye, Loaf - Wheat costs 2f) Small loaf of bread

3f (Labourer) Day's unskilled wages

2s (Room, single bed, private + Stabling, with Feed) Three day's lodging and stabling at a nice Inn

7s 6d (Master Carpenter) A month's wages for a skilled craftsman.

L23 3d (income for a Baronet) - A month's allowance for pampered nobility.

 

f = farthing (1/4 penny), d = penny, s = shilling (12d), L= pound (20s)

[Markdoc]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

All my cultures have their own currencies and also rules about taxation and what is/is not acceptable tender. Some of them even have pictures of their coins! The current game uses a simple gold/silver/crap-metal coin system where the coins are called Crowns/Sails/Oars respectively with 20 Sails in a Crown and 24 Oars in a Sail. The coins get their names because the gold coins are the traditional province of the high nobility (and usually carry their symbol on the face), while silver coins are typically minted by lesser nobility called shiplords - and they are, yes, typically emblazoned with a ship on the face. There are various oddball sizes minted by different lords, which are referred to half-crowns, double sails, etc, but that doesn't change the basic structure.

 

cheers, Mark

[Panpiper]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

Traditionally, in ports where many currencies would often be found, virtually any currency would be accepted, as long as it were known that the currency was of reasonably pure metal. Merchants would simply weigh the currency metal to determine it's actual value and the transaction would proceed. So it is very feasible to have many currencies in use and they all be accepted.

 

No self respecting merchant would turn down perfectly good silver or gold, just because it happened to be an odd sized 'nugget'. The only reason they would, wold be if the ruler had declared that illegal, which would instantly have a massive chilling effect upon trade with any nation other than one's own (virtually freezing it in fact).

[Alcamtar]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I'm thinking of using mnemonic names for coins in my new campaign:

 

gold = guilder

silver = shilling or shield

copper = common (or maybe penny)

 

Its very tempting to use the 12 pence to a shilling ratio, but I'll probably go decimal to avoid irritating my players. ;-)

 

Coins will probably be very large, around 25 per kg, since this world is also shared with a D&D campaign. It's really tempting to use different money systems, with FH on a silver standard, but right now I'm leaning toward consistency.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

Traditionally, in ports where many currencies would often be found, virtually any currency would be accepted, as long as it were known that the currency was of reasonably pure metal. Merchants would simply weigh the currency metal to determine it's actual value and the transaction would proceed. So it is very feasible to have many currencies in use and they all be accepted.

 

No self respecting merchant would turn down perfectly good silver or gold, just because it happened to be an odd sized 'nugget'. The only reason they would, wold be if the ruler had declared that illegal, which would instantly have a massive chilling effect upon trade with any nation other than one's own (virtually freezing it in fact).

 

I know Leo Frankowski put that bit in about weighing coins, and it has probably appeared other places, too, but that's cutting your own throat. Remember that the declared value of a currency is defined by taxation on the one hand, and a coinage fee on the other. In short, it will trade at a significant premium to its value as bullion. So if you take the value of (say) a English coin by weight in Amsterdam, you've just lost some proportion of its value in England.

The question is, can you get it back to England to spend it? Now we are introducing variables such as transportation costs, security, and the availability of English coins in Amsterdam (since a trader bound for England will be buying up English coins at some price between their weight as metal and their face value in England, and the variation will depend on the number of merchants bound for England and the number of English coins in circulation in Amsterdam).

Exchange rates did not just start yesterday.

This is just an awesome book if you've got a knack for currency trading: http://www.amazon.ca/War-Economy-Age-William-Marlborough/dp/0631160698/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259172541&sr=8-3

[Panpiper]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I know Leo Frankowski put that bit in about weighing coins, and it has probably appeared other places, too, but that's cutting your own throat. Remember that the declared value of a currency is defined by taxation on the one hand, and a coinage fee on the other. In short, it will trade at a significant premium to its value as bullion. So if you take the value of (say) a English coin by weight in Amsterdam, you've just lost some proportion of its value in England.

The question is, can you get it back to England to spend it? Now we are introducing variables such as transportation costs, security, and the availability of English coins in Amsterdam (since a trader bound for England will be buying up English coins at some price between their weight as metal and their face value in England, and the variation will depend on the number of merchants bound for England and the number of English coins in circulation in Amsterdam).

Exchange rates did not just start yesterday.

This is just an awesome book if you've got a knack for currency trading: http://www.amazon.ca/War-Economy-Age-William-Marlborough/dp/0631160698/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259172541&sr=8-3

 

In the context of a fantasy game, it is far more dangerous to ease of play in my opinion, if you try to account for the machinations of renaisance and later governments and bureacracies. Yes, all sorts of strange things started to happen to currency in the last five hundred years. But if we focus on the years prior to that, things get 'much' easier to understand.

 

Currency at the level of fantasy is simply a barter mechanism, where the easiest commodity for the barter is precious metals. Only the weight of the metal counts in such a barter economy. Things like 'face value' are relatively modern inventions. Rulers did attempt to fool the public by shaving metal off their coins so as to have more of them, but the effect of that was simply to create an inflationary effect upon the coin price. It had no effect on the metal weight price. For the sake of fantasy, it is best for a GM to assume that the ruler is not shaving coins, lest the GM have to rewrite their price list repeatedly, of factor in an inflation modifier for every transaction made by their players.

 

Economists have done a magnificent job in the 20th century of obfuscating the entire field and magnifying the complexity of the subject so far as to occult understanding by even the best of economists. If economists really understood modern economics, we would not be in the economic mess we are in today. Indeed, it is my contention that we are in the crisis we face these days precisely 'because' economists don't know the first thing about economics. And I've studied economics!

[Curufea]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I'm thinking of using mnemonic names for coins in my new campaign:

 

gold = guilder

silver = shilling or shield

copper = common (or maybe penny)

 

Its very tempting to use the 12 pence to a shilling ratio, but I'll probably go decimal to avoid irritating my players. ;-)

 

Coins will probably be very large, around 25 per kg, since this world is also shared with a D&D campaign. It's really tempting to use different money systems, with FH on a silver standard, but right now I'm leaning toward consistency.

 

It's your choice to balance playability versus worldbuilding. There are other areas this appears too - every time you want something original, you have to guess at how playable it will be, whether the players will like the originality of the setting, or whether it confuses them and stops them killing orcs for too long

 

These things include currency, calendars, languages, names for common items, and of course races. One of the main reasons that fantasy campaigns are so unoriginal is that the designers fear changing things from the stereotypes.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I don't know how far back you want to go to find your unspoiled, pre-economic fantasy paradise, but here is Thirteenth Century Catholic theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas on the theory of money. It's a little hard to follow, being in an apologetic context, but clearly the notion of the "value of money" was no novelty in 1300AD.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=0gOm51etij0C&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=aquinas+on+coinage&source=bl&ots=DWDvpre7rs&sig=pwgSoin-NG6ksjcigNzdk9Z4UrQ&hl=en&ei=q70NS-_uHo-ssgOgz8HJCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CB0Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[Markdoc]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

In the context of a fantasy game' date=' it is far more dangerous to ease of play in my opinion, if you try to account for the machinations of renaisance and later governments and bureacracies. Yes, all sorts of strange things started to happen to currency in the last five hundred years. But if we focus on the years prior to that, things get 'much' easier to understand.[/quote']

 

It goes back much further than that - the difference between precious metal value of coins and the actual value of the coins goes back at least to the age of the greeks and the Romans in particular struggled mightily with debasement of the currency. The Song Dynasty Jiozai, dating from the 600's was made of paper, but convertible for bronze currency: there's an example from well before the renaissance where value had nothing to do with bullion.

 

Personally, I like adding these quirks to the game - and the players don't seem to mind.

 

cheers, Mark

[Lucius]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I've tended to use the gold sun and the silver moon (named for obvious reasons) and the copper buck (named for the image of an antlered stag's head it displays)

I may change the terminology when I run a fantasy game again.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders if it matters what you call money - will it come if called?

[Beast]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

the fantasy PAH I'm in is using shards

Steel

Iron

copper

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

the fantasy PAH I'm in is using shards

Steel

Iron

copper

 

I've always been fond of the idea of "bits" as PA small change, inspired by the scene in Blood of Heroes where villagers are buying their way into a party with various nuts, bolts, washers and other small but occasionally useful pieces of scrap

[Matt Holck]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

endless supply of delicate files and wires to be left inside picked locks

[John-Walton]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I like the title of the thread since it reminds of the dear riddle game in Hobbit.

 

however, on topic:

in our games it was "piece", as in silver piece, which were common.

any duke, town, church or guild could mint coins.

 

and then there were "crowns"; such as gold crowns, platinum crowns, etc,

which were heavier, 10x value of an equiv. piece, and which almost always came from a kingdom's mint.

[Matt Holck]

Re: What do you have in your coinpurse?

 

I ran a communist village as one of my campaign worlds center point called "whistle"

the mayor collected and distributed fairly (hey medium fantasy)

the population was around 300

 

 

I never bothered working out a detailed coinage system for my FH world - which is somewhat surprising considering all the other details I did work out (calendar, zodiac, heavenly bodies, dieties, etc.). I don't keep strict track of money in my campaign. This must come across as heresy to some, but I've always found it too boring to spend time on. I want my players to be adventurers, not accountants. This was one of the things I always hated when I was living in the primordial slime of deendee that we all crawled out of. Money just isn't interesting enough to keep track of every fictitious coin. If I wanted to play Monopoly, I'd play Monopoly.

 

You may say: But how do you regulate what equipment players can buy? Simple: If they don't have the Money Perk, they only have access to standard "middle-class" equipment (assuming it's available at all in the town where they happen to be). In my campaign, there are no "magic item stores" where you can buy fireball wands and invisibility cloaks and talking swords off the rack.

 

I keep the world's economics fairly simple and vague: commoners do most of their trading via the barter system. In urban areas, coins are used. Unskilled laborers (swineherds, woodcutters, farmhands) are paid in copper. Skilled laborers (smiths, bakers, carpenters, craftsmen) are paid in silver. Gold is almost exclusively for the rich.

 

In a medieval-style society almost no one (except the PCs) are "upwardly mobile." If you're born a peasant, you'll stay a peasant. If you're born a noble, you might squander it all away and end up penniless, through gambling, drinking, wenching, etc., but apart from that, you'll tend to remain rich.

 

The two main nations in the central area of the campaign - Virbenland, and Neron - use similar coins which are usually considered interchangable. A Neronian silver piece is the same size as a Virbenlandic silver piece. Only the design engraved thereon is different. In more distant lands, such as Temna, on the far side of the Snake Peaks, other types of currency are used such as electrum. And in some, such as the primitive Boo-Wa-Doki, far to the south, they have no coins at all (and almost no metal to speak of), and sometimes use ceramic beads as a means of exchange.

 

That's about it. No price lists. No inventories of how many GPs, SPs, and CPs each player has. I say to the players, "You're strangers here. Rugged adventurers, not noblemen on a diplomatic mission. You won't be sleeping in the palace. You'll be sleeping at the inn where other common travellers stay. However, unlike most common travellers, you can afford to each stay in your own room (subject to availability) because of the treasure you've accumulated."

 

Well in the case of my noble's lost status, he is a lone survivor of a family line that was murdered.

He is not about to go claim rights to lost property for fear of joining his family in purgatory.