Coinage

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

I'd like to see coins stay reasonably close to the same size. Advise me . . .

Hi Steve, everyone.
I would suggest that you keep it simple. 100 coppers = 10 silver = 1 gold is fine with me. I'm aware that it was not this simple in real life. If you wanted to say, 10,000 coppers = 100 silvers = 1 gold (or what ever), that is fine. Just keep the steps in powers of ten, is my suggestion.

In my campaign coins are exactly equal to 10 grams which is a bit heavy compared to modern coins (a Canadian loonie masses 7 grams). I added small coins called 'grotes' which were 1/10 of a copper which were peasant money used for trivial transactions. Adventurers basically ignore these.

Make one coin (the silver) the standard. Then GM's who want to add in new coins, coins of various masses, strange alloys, etc. can go to what ever complexity they want, but if all book values are in $, then it is easy to convert from the rules to what ever they want.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Skarg]

I would say it makes sense to offer a simplistic set of easy coins & metal values, and explain that a GM can either use that literally, or else use it as a guideline for relative values for goods.

GMs who want to do so may translate the listed $ value to whatever coins and metal values they want, and then offer one set of conversion factors that's fairly historical for say 1400 AD Europe or something.

(It can be significant for weight/bulk of treasure.)

[Chris Rice]

I like to have a very simple base currency system. This makes it much easier for me to do calculations on the fly.

100 copper pennies = 10 Silver schillings = 1 gold piece.

I set the value of the copper penny as the pay rate for a day of unskillled labour or the cost of a loaf of bread. It was a large flat coin compared to the much smaller silver and gold coins.

I accepted that there were smaller copper coins of lesser value such as the halfpenny, quarterpenny etc, but they played no part in our games.

[Agemegos]

I'd advise against trying to give Cidri a currency based on that of mediaeval England, or mediaeval anywhere for that matter. Let Cidri be Cidri, and keep it simple.

The early mediaeval penny was a stupid tiny coin: Frankish ones were nominally a shade over 2 grams; Saxon ones after the time of Offa were 1.46 grams, about 16 mm across, and thin. No hero wants to be fumbling out tiny little things like that. Fantasy coins ought to be at least the size of a quarter or of a shilling.

Silver dollars were based on Spanish pieces of eight, which were based on Austrian thalers, where were based on Joachimsthalers, which were based on guldengroschen which were invented in 1483, and they were a standard in international trade for over four hundred years. In fact, the Austrians still do a nice line of business minting Maria Theresa thalers dated 1780, for use in East Africa. The bewildering profusion of dollars, thalers, guilders, pesos, crowns, krøne, korunna, yen, yuan and so forth — now all grossly debased — that are still in circulation demonstrate very clearly what a hugely successful standard "about an ounce of silver" was, once Europe recovered financially from the fall of the Roman Empire. And it got started at a time much in keeping with TFT's arquebuses and petards.

Talers, daalers, dollars, pesos de ocho, pesos, crowns, krónur, kronur, kronor, kroons, koruny, taels, trade dollars, yuan, yen, and other coins of about an ounce of silver, about an inch and half across, are decently heroic things that a chap could be proud to find in a treasure chest and toss to strumpet.

Whether they are divided for accounting purposes into sixty pence or sixty kreuzers I don't care. I'm not interested in keeping track of the change my character has in his pockets.

I suggest that the standard of value in TFT either

• remain the ounce of silver (amounting when minted to a coin the size of a poker chip, an inch and a half across), or
• become a practical-sized coin of about 1/80 of a pound, about the size of a shilling or quarter-dollar

but that the rules not waste word-count on local coinage standards and metallic exchange rates.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

I'd like to see coins stay reasonably close to the same size. Advise me . . .

Abbr.: Cu = Copper; Ar = Silver, Se = Tin, Au = Gold


Assuming a roughly half ounce SP...

and keeping the numbers in 8ths of an inch...

I get a 0.57 ounce, 1/8" thick, 1" diameter, 20:3 Ar:Cu (~0.87 fine) coin. That's about the same as two US quarters stacked.

Using 360:60:12:1 ratios Cu:Su:Ag:Au value ratios...

A gp using an 18:4:1::Au:Cu:Sn 18.7 kt soft coingold, 0.53 ounces, 3/4 inch x 1/8 inch. A little bigger than 2 US dimes, but weighing 6x as much as a dime.

A silver-bronze "CP" of 9:2:1 Cu:Se:Ag is 7/8" diameter 1/8 inch across, and about 1/3 ounce (50 to the pound avoirdupois).

The relative value done by taking 1/(square root of the relative abundance) with silver as baseline and then rounding to a comfortable value, increasing the value of copper a bit due to high utility.

This matches nicely to late rome/early medieval. Thing is, copper drops in relative value over time... as better materials take over from the bronze. (modern is 7250:2041:78.4:1::Cu:Su:Ag:Au - the easily obtained surface gold is largely used up, while copper is now easier than ever to extract in quantity, and has dropped in overall use needs, making the relative value low. Also, silver is almost finished as reserve specie, and common household use is down, thanks to other shiny metals, like aluminum and chrome, becoming economically viable.)

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Abbr.: Cu = Copper; Ar = Silver, Se = Tin, Au = Gold

Ag = Silver. (Ar = Argon)
Sn = Tin (Se = Selenium)

[JLV]

Just for the record, that's what I suggested originally -- a nice simple coinage standard in the rules that the GM can extrapolate from if he wants to make things more complicated for story reasons.

Nobody that I know suggested that some kind of complexity be incorporated into the rule book itself.

[RobW]

[HOWITZER]
Maybe the $ symbol could be replaced for item prices?? It always felt so.... so... hmm, utilitarian in part, like ST battery, but also a very odd mish-mash of modern day reality and fantasy.

Earning $50 a week as a police recruit, buying a spear on sale for $40, found a gem worth $75. I can almost hear the Muzak over the store speakers as Gothar the Disquieted walks through the mall.

[/HOWITZER]

[larsdangly]

I prefer games that have coinage systems that have a certain feeling of versimilitude. I suspect I'm an outlier on this issue, but in the interests of getting a diversity of ideas out there, here is the text on coinage from my long-standing TFT house rules:
______________
The economic systems of most campaign settings are based on metal coinage; different races and cities make their own coins, but sizes are more or less standard. Five standard currencies are copper farthings (f), silver pence (p), silver shillings (s), gold crowns (c) and gold marks (m). These are interchangeable at the following rates:

1 m = 6 c = 120 s = 1440 p = 5760 f

So, 1 crown = 20 shillings; 1 shilling = 12 pence; and 1 pence = 4 farthings. These denominations are assumed in these rules. In a detailed and realistic campaign, there will be several national or regional currencies of each metal type (e.g., dabloons, thallers, pounds, livre, zlotties), and exchange rates between them may vary dramatically. Common business transactions are often performed using sub-divisions of standard coins (pieces of eight or bits; ha’pence).

Peasants rarely deal except in copper; townsmen and soldiers spend silver; nobles, merchants, and great wizards are the only ones likely to see (or to need) very much gold.

In a medieval oriental setting, the basic unit of currency might be the Koku—an amount of rice sufficient to support one person for a year (5 bushels). This is the approximate value given to the most common gold coin, the large, thin rectangular Oban. Common monetary transactions are made with smaller, rectangular silver Bu or small, circular copper or brass Mon, at a unit of exchange of:

1 Koku ~ 1 Oban = 40 Bu = 1000 Mon

If you wish to play Marco Polo (‘Marco!’….’Polo!’), assume that an Oban is roughly the same value as a Crown, a Bu is wroth roughly 6 pence, and a Mon has roughly the value of a half farthing.

A campaign with the flavor of ancient Rome might use these five currencies: the ‘as’ (a small copper coin used for trivial transactions and change; roughly equal in value to a Farthing), the Dupondius (a small bronze coin, roughly equal in value to a Pence, used to buy food and other cheap items; abbreviated ‘dup’), the Sestertius (a larger bronze coin, roughly equal in value to a Shilling, that made up the largest denomination used in daily life; abbreviated ‘Ses’), the Denarius (a silver coin, roughly equal in value to a Crown, that was the standard currency for relatively valuable trade goods, wages, etc.; abbreviated ‘D’), and the Aureus (a gold coin, roughly equal in value to a mark, used only for large transactions; abbreviated ‘A’).

[JLV]

Originally Posted by RobW

[HOWITZER]
Maybe the $ symbol could be replaced for item prices?? It always felt so.... so... hmm, utilitarian in part, like ST battery, but also a very odd mish-mash of modern day reality and fantasy.

Earning $50 a week as a police recruit, buying a spear on sale for $40, found a gem worth $75. I can almost hear the Muzak over the store speakers as Gothar the Disquieted walks through the mall.

[/HOWITZER]

LOL! Still, this is kind of a valid point -- it does jar that "suspension of disbelief" that we all strive for...

However, my assumption back in the day was that "$" was chosen in order to lower the bar to understanding of the monetary system -- if you thought of everything in "dollars" you could more easily relate to the costs and didn't have to waste brain cells laboriously converting "Rodenkrantzes" to a more familiar monetary system in order to get a sense of how much things were actually worth. (Which, while not strictly necessary in game terms, is something that most players are actually doing in FRPGs, I've noticed -- they do so in order to figure out if something is massively overpriced, etc. and the only way they can grasp that is to try and figure out what the purchasing power of a particular coin is in terms they are intimately familiar with.)