Brittanica-6 Currency Question

[Moe Lane]

Originally Posted by wabishtar

I was looking at the wealth section for Britannica-6, and while it says that starting wealth is $7,500 standard GURPS dollars, there's no conversion of that into local currency. Does this mean that the GURPS dollar exchanges for the Brittanica-6 British Pound on a one-to-one basis, or should I be doing some sort of conversion to get prices in pounds? Unless the Britannica-6 pound has been drastically inflated, 7,500 seems like a huge starting wealth for 19th century pounds, or even 19th century dollars for that matter, so it seems like I should be doing some sort of conversion when I want to express wealth in character.

If you have 2nd Ed GURPS Horror, they have prices and costs for Victorian England, which should give you a baseline. IIRC, starting wealth there was 150 pounds / $750 dollars, which means that you could probably just divide all the GURPS prices by 5, call 'em pounds and have prices with the right feel to it.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Moe Lane

If you have 2nd Ed GURPS Horror, they have prices and costs for Victorian England, which should give you a baseline. IIRC, starting wealth there was 150 pounds / $750 dollars, which means that you could probably just divide all the GURPS prices by 5, call 'em pounds and have prices with the right feel to it.

Nope. The pound Sterling in Victorian times was worth five US dollars of that time, not five US dollars of the mid-Eighties (or whenever it was the 24-ounce loaf of bread last routinely cost US$1.)

£1 (1890 prices) = US$58.50 (1986 prices) = US$103 (2004 prices).

To convert GURPS prices to Victorian pounds, divide by 60.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by smurf

Save the math. Keep it simple.

Call it Pounds. If you want to confuse them look up British Imperial Currency (LSD). IIRC there were 240d (pence) to a 1L (£). However, shillings (S) were always converted into 5 new pence and I am not sure how many (old) d was in an S.

12d was 1 shilling.

[Moe Lane]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Nope. The pound Sterling in Victorian times was worth five US dollars of that time, not five US dollars of the mid-Eighties (or whenever it was the 24-ounce loaf of bread last routinely cost US$1.)

£1 (1890 prices) = US$58.50 (1986 prices) = US$103 (2004 prices).

To convert GURPS prices to Victorian pounds, divide by 60.

Sorry, I was unclear: I think that the issue is that Brittanica-6's starting wealth is $7,500, not $750/£150 (3e's Victorian era starting wealth). Absent a list of actual costs for the era, dividing-by-5-and-calling-it-pounds seems a reasonable enough hack.