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Old 04-29-2021, 08:28 AM   #28
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Grain-based local currencies in medieval fantasy games

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
In my experience, PCs don't need to refuse to deal with people who only have coinage of dubious value, due to adulteration. They just treat such coins as commodities, not currency, and offer to purchase them at discounted prices to account for the risk of adulteration.

Anything that contains precious metals is potentially valuable, it's just not necessarily trusted enough to be accepted as currency anywhere that the ruler's writ doesn't run.
Yeah, I don't expect many players to seriously have their characters reject a quest just because it pays out in a marginally-less-convenient form. Grain scrip is different from precious metal coinage, however - where a pound of silver coins from Whereverland is worth less in Someplaceelse, a pile of Grain Notes from the Free City of Farmersrule may well be worth nothing in both of the previous nations. At best, you might be able to find a merchant who is going to be traveling to Farmersrule soon, but he probably isn't going to give you a very good exchange rate. That said, you can probably find plenty of things in Farmersrule to buy with that scrip, between the goods and services already available and from trading with the merchants there for the post-harvest markets. I certainly could see the characters negotiating for a higher reward to make up for the inconvenience, however, or even accept a bit less of a reward if they can get it in a more convenient form ("This kinda job, now, it would usually run you about 5 Someplaceelse Sovereign gold pieces. The problem is, you're paying in Farmersrule Grain Scrip, and that ain't so easy to trade for us adventurers. I checked with the merchants here, and it looks like your scrip's currently trading for about 20 notes for a Sovereign worth of grain, so this job'll cost you 130 notes. If you can get ahold of some Sovereigns, though, I'll give you a discount - 30 notes off the price for each Sovereign").
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