[DF/Fantasy] A few Questions

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nostri

3. How bad/confusing/problematic do you all think it'd be if I listed weapons, armor, and other equipment with copper/silver/gold prices instead of the GURPS dollar? I'd of course have a way to convert things when I needed to but I wouldn't let my players see that side of it.

It will require a decent amount of work on your part, as you'll have to take every single piece of equipment they have access to and work out what it costs in copper, silver, and/or gold. Players might run into some issues if you use non-decimal denominations, which the DF coins use (there are 4 copper farthings in a silver penny, and 20 silver pennies in a gold piece). Prices may end up all over the place. Briefly, an Axe is 12s2c, a Hatchet is 10s, a Throwing Axe is 15s, a Mace is 12s2c, a Small Mace is 8s3c, and a Pick is 17s2c. A Thrusting Bastard Sword is 9g7s2c and a Steel Corselet is 16g5s. Improved versions of these will be somewhat annoying - a Very Fine Balanced Bastard Sword has a +23 CF. That's easy enough when it costs $750 - multiply by 24 for $18,000 and you're good to go. When it costs 9g7s2c, multiplying by 24 gives you 216g168s48c. 48c becomes 12s, for 180s total. 180s becomes 9g, so the end cost is 225g. You could also convert everything back to $, then convert to gsc, but either way you're adding additional steps. When characters find a mixed pile of coins, players will have some issue working out how much it's actually worth.

Some sort of decimal system will be preferable. DnD went with the rather simplistic 1g=10s=100c. WoW expanded this into 1g=100s=10,000c. Either scheme should work fairly well.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I'm personally a big fan of DF 4: Sages, but it's not for everybody.

In low-points games, this includes two "equalizers" for the right kind of group:

1. Scholars who can quite literally use any spell or skill a limited number of times per game session. This is very useful when everybody is short on points and can't cover all of the usual bases. A budget scholar (what DF 15 calls a "sage") with IQ 14 and Wild Talent 1 (No Advantage Requirements, +50%) can still cast the high-level cleric spell or long-chain wizard spell needed to defeat the monster of the week.

2. Universal scrolls, for parties that lack the right caster(s) and decide not to bring along a scholar. Especially good if the scrolls are also charged!

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Nostri

3. How bad/confusing/problematic do you all think it'd be if I listed weapons, armor, and other equipment with copper/silver/gold prices instead of the GURPS dollar? I'd of course have a way to convert things when I needed to but I wouldn't let my players see that side of it.

Problematic? No. But a bit pointless, and a lot of work. Just say that $ means "$hillings" aka "$ilver pennies" or just "$ilver pieces." Or whatever. Then divide by 13 for the amount in gold coins- that's roughly the historical exchange rate by weight.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Nostri

3. How bad/confusing/problematic do you all think it'd be if I listed weapons, armor, and other equipment with copper/silver/gold prices instead of the GURPS dollar? I'd of course have a way to convert things when I needed to but I wouldn't let my players see that side of it.

Unless your players are from pre-decimalization of currency (which would be interesting!) they're most familiar with decimalized money and will find it easier, mentally, to handle. If they are from pre-decimalization, then I'd say totally go with the system they're most comfortable with, although I'd read to the end of this for some logistical caveats.


That can be worked around by decimalizing your gold-silver-copper-whatever currency of course :D I like the World of Warcraft scale, because it's a good excuse for gold coins being the big chunky nearly medallion-like things that people love so much, and because c-notes/dollars/pennies is an easier mental model for me than dollars/dimes/pennies or 10-dollars/dollars/dimes.

People have already mentioned that this might be setting yourself up for a lot of work. It bears repeating. There's a LOT of gear in GURPS, even in just the Dungeon Fantasy sub-set.

The big feature of staying with $ as the unit is that there's a lot of support for it. Do your players like tracking loot in a Google spreadsheet, or Excel? They both speak dollars. Do they use character creation software, like GCA or GCS? they both speak dollars. None of the above speak gold-pieces/silver-pieces/copper-pieces at a 20/4/1 ratio.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Nostri

3. How bad/confusing/problematic do you all think it'd be if I listed weapons, armor, and other equipment with copper/silver/gold prices instead of the GURPS dollar?

Using "silver pieces" (or something like it) instead of "dollars" is a great idea. To me it's odd and jarring to talk about "dollars" in a fantasy game.

But I strongly agree with what other have said about doing it in a really, really simple way.

So let me thrown in my two coppers (see what I did there?) by suggesting this ridiculously obvious and simple system:
Copper Piece = $0.1
Silver Piece = $1
Gold Piece = $10

To me, this gives a sufficiently "fantasy" flavor while being super easy to use. I definitely wouldn't bother with real historical values of silver and gold, differential coin weights, or anything like that.

[mehrkat]

If you are concerned about the costs of things you might consider reviewing Grain into Gold available on Warehouse 23.

They have a system for creating costs a pretty extensive explanation for figuring out your own costs and a basic one figured up for you for easy tweaking.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Joe

So let me thrown in my two coppers (see what I did there?) by suggesting this ridiculously obvious and simple system:
Copper Piece = $0.1
Silver Piece = $1
Gold Piece = $10

I'd set the gold piece at $100 myself. A bit of gold worth 10 $GURPS is somewhere around half a gram. If you insist it is actually coin sized anyway you run the risk of getting into the classic D&D situation where you turn to gold treasure into plate armor or something, since it's lighter that way.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I'd set the gold piece at $100 myself. A bit of gold worth 10 $GURPS is somewhere around half a gram. If you insist it is actually coin sized anyway you run the risk of getting into the classic D&D situation where you turn to gold treasure into plate armor or something, since it's lighter that way.

If using DF 8 at all (which the OP hasn't mentioned), keeping the worth of the jewelry and the like there consistent with the metals they are made is a good idea. As noted in DF 2, copper is $62.5/lb, silver is $1,000/lb, and gold is $20,000/lb. This makes the copper farthing ($1, 0.016 lb) almost exactly the dimensions of US quarter. The silver penny ($4, 0.004 lb) is tiny, smaller than a US dime, but rescaling it to be worth $10 (0.01 lb) makes it a little bigger than a US penny. The gold coin ($80, 0.004 lb) is even smaller; to stick with multiples of 10 I'd go with it being worth $1,000 (0.05 lb), which makes it a bit larger than a modern US dollar coin.

A slight bit of rescaling of the worth of the metals (probably not enough to appreciably affect the DF 8 jewelry, although you could adjust for that as only copper is being reshuffled) could result in $1, 0.01 lb copper pieces (a bit larger than a US penny), $10, 0.01 lb silver pieces (around the same size as the copper piece), and $1000, 0.05 lb gold pieces (around the same size as a US dollar coin).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If using DF 8 at all (which the OP hasn't mentioned), keeping the worth of the jewelry and the like there consistent with the metals they are made is a good idea. As noted in DF 2, copper is $62.5/lb, silver is $1,000/lb, and gold is $20,000/lb.

This is actually somewhat *high* compared to the standard GURPS price point (whatever a dollar bought ca 2003). Though it's certainly true that historically metals were relatively worth more, it's a bit of an odd choice for DF, which traditionally gives coins a higher weight for their value than even modern metal prices.

FWIW 2003 (and hence $GURPS/lb) prices are approximately gold $6000, silver $65, copper $0.8, iron $0.013, platinum $10000, high end gems ($1M to $10M ($500-5000/caret)). Stick within a factor of 10 of those and nothing is going to break, push above or below that and your feel for relative values will be wrong enough it may start to show.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This is actually somewhat *high* compared to the standard GURPS price point (whatever a dollar bought ca 2003).

It's actually repeating Basic Set, page 264.

Originally Posted by Basic Set, page 264

Medieval Coinage: The default assumption is that
$1 is a copper farthing, $4 is a silver coin, and $1,000
in silver weighs 1 pound. Gold coins of the same
weight are worth about 20 times as much.