The Economic System in TFT

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I think that a lot of the criticism of "illogical" currency/measurement systems is overblown. With the exception of chemistry, physics, etc., at least before ubiquitous PCs came along.

Most of those old fashioned systems existed because they worked in the Real World. 12 can be conveniently divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Before fiat currency, I imagine this was quite handy. A "quarter" could literally be 1/4 of a dollar or whatever. Something composed of 10 units can be conveniently divided by 1, 2 and 5 which is less useful.

Anyhow, if you grow up in a culture where 4f = 1d; 12d = 1s and 20s = 1L, you'll have memorized the system as a child and be able to do conversions automatically.

BUT...if you have to learn a *new* system of coinage, a base 10 system is faster to learn. It's also faster when converting "silver pieces" to "gold pieces" on the fly.

This may not be a huge deal, but I use actual coins in my games. I buy old cheap coins and metal washers and paint them gold, silver, etc. That kind of system requires more than 3 denominations of coins to be workable, however.

The normal unit of money is the silver crowns, which is 1 normal silver piece (about the size of a US penny; weighs about 1/10 of a pound).

1 penny (p) = 1/10 crown (in a real money system, these would be 1/100 crown, but such small units aren't used in my campaigns).
1 crown ($) = 10 coppers or 1/100 nobles.
1 noble (L) = 100 crowns or 1000 coppers.

Below are the coin denominations:

Copper coins: 1p; 5p; 10p/$1 (For the 10p/$1 coin, I use a few large foreign copper coins that I got from somewhere).

Silver coins: $1 ; $5; $10; $25; $100 (for the $100 coin, I use a few large nickle plated foreign coins that I got from somewhere).

Gold coins: $100, $250, $1000

Oh, and a bit of real world economics creep in. As the coinage in the GM's "bank" gets low, coinage in treasure hordes decreases, buyers offer lower prices, etc. (Unrealistically, prices charged to the players don't decrease). To keep the economic system working, players have to spend money. Banks exist, but they are risky. The players don't know *how* risky so they tend to eschew them.

Copper value by weight was historically typically 50:1 to 70:1 Copper:Silver.
Silver:gold was between 12:1 and 20:1...

Many "copper" coins were cupro-silver - the value was in silver with Copper as a negligible value bulk.

Many gold coins were debased with copper, too...

For comparison, now, Copper is $3.08 per lb av. (~453 g, so about $0.0067 per g).
Nickel is about $0.013 per g
Silver is $0.53/g
Gold is about $14.45 per g...
But the value ratios have changed drastically in the last 50 years, because gold extraction rates have grown percentage-wise far slower than silver, copper and nickel. (I've not found good historic references for nickel value).

So, you might consider using cupro-nickel or curpro-argentum pennies (with the non-copper metal content being the value)...