Tell me about your monetary systems

[mhd]

In most fantasy campaigns, you've got your usual 10/10/10 copper/silver/gold monetary system. Which wasn't really all that historic and probably (depending on supply, of course) doesn't reflect the exchange rates between the base metals properly, never mind differing coin sizes…

We started a new fantasy campaign recently, and I mostly hand-waved the money. But now that I need to write the price lists down properly and make the players take care of selling loot and buying stuff/accomodations/favors, I'm tempted to experiment with a slightly more involved monetary system.

So who did something similar, either by using a background that already went a different route (whether fantasy, sci-fi or simply pre-modern UK) or by, erm, minting your own system? Coin sizes/weights, exchange rates, bits/groats/doubloons…

I'm thinking about using the common coin metals, nothing exotic (electrum, mithril, iron etc.). Minting technology is no problem (TL 5^). Given that we've got a few smartphones/ipads available, I can always throw together a simple JavaScript form on a web page to make conversion easier, so the maths doesn't really scare me. I'm personally tending towards rates of more than 10 between copper -> silver and silver -> gold, but still devaluing the metals by quite a bit, so that the actual weight of money is more on the levels of (early) D&D, not historic weights, aka. the caravans of gold route.

[Gef]

Handwaving always worked for me. Prices in dollars, some mention of counting out coins without stating denominations or quantity. Silver coins if the counter is wealthy, gold if immensely wealthy, so it literally was "local color." -GEF

[Grouchy Chris]

The official GURPS rates are $4 = 1 silver penny, there are 250 pennies to the pound, so 1 pound of silver is worth $1000, and gold is worth 20 times as much.

For my world, I wanted more metal to circulate, so I set $1 = 1 silver penny, 240 pennies to the pound, copper worth 1/10th as much as silver, gold worth 16 times more. That gives me $0.25 = 1 copper farthing, a coin nearly the same size as a US cent or Euro 2 cent coin. 1 silver penny is very light at about 1.5 grams, much smaller than a US dime. A 2-penny coin is a bit smaller than a US dime, a 12-penny coin is a bit larger than a US half dollar, and substantially larger than a 2-Euro coin.

A gold coin worth 120 pennies, or half a pound of silver, is about 11.7 g, somewhat smaller than a US nickel and about the size of a Euro 5 cent coin. A gold coin worth 240 pennies, a full pound of silver, is about 23.3, and a bit larger than a US Sacagawea dollar or 2 Euro coin.

At these rates, copper is $24/pound, silver $240/pound, and gold $3840/pound. I assume an economy without much change in the relative prices of these three metals over the campaign period.

[kaulesh]

My main group is playing some 7th Sea at the moment, so I'm stealing the monetary system for the Intro to GURPS game I'm going to run next week with all-new people.

7th Sea, for those who don't know, uses guilders and cents, 100 cents to a guilder. I suppose that means I'm basically using the copper/silver/gold system mentioned in the OP minus the silver (or replacing gold with silver - I'm not sure if the coin was ever actually minted with solid gold).

[Celti]

My personal fantasy setting (inspired heavily by Jurgen Hubert's wonderful Doomed Slayers setting) uses the following coins:

Brass bit; $0.5; Over half an inch in diameter, weighing 1/200th of a pound.
Brass farthing; $1; Nearly an inch in diameter, weighing 1/100th of a pound.
Silver penny; $5; A half an inch in diameter, weighing 1/200th of a pound.
Silver mark; $20; An inch in diameter, weighing 1/50th of a pound.
Gold penny; $200; A half an inch in diameter, weighing 1/100th of a pound.
Gold sovereign; $1000; Over an inch in diameter, weighing 1/20th of a pound.

These use the standard Fantasy/DF values of $62.5/pound for copper (and I used the same value for brass), $1000/pound for silver, and $20,000/pound for gold. The coins (except the sovereign, which is solely a trade coin) are all slightly impure for improved wearing qualities, but accepted at full value due to the guarantee of the Empire that issues them. For an issuing kingdom that's less trusted, you might knock about ten percent off the value of each of them. The thickness of the coins is not listed, and I don't want to bother recalculating them, but is enough to make them usable as coins, rather than foil.

[Rendu]

Historical note: The main reason most ancient monetary (and other measurement) systems relied on the "Unit X=this many Unit Y's" model is that most ancient numerical systems didn't handle fractions well, so it was easier to sub-divide into smaller units. Specifically, into units which had a number of divisors. Nowadays, these are called "highly composite numbers". Even more common are "practical numbers". This is why so many old systems rely on 12, 20, or 60 subdivisions, and why the "29 Knuts to a Sickle, 17 Sickles to a Galleon" used in Harry Potter seems so bizarre.

Gaming note: Unless your players are really into game economics, I would continue to hand-wave. Use GURPS $ for prices, and names of coins for flavor, but anything more just becomes extra bookkeeping that adds nothing to the game. YMMV, of course, but my Steampunk players balked at my attempts to use Victorian currency for anything but flavor.

[Fnugus]

My fantasy setting has separate currencies in each culture, mostly, but the on the players are currently in, the currency is simply called "Shillings". So there are different coin types representing different amounts of shillings. 1 shilling equals one GURPS $. There are copper coins, representing 1, 3, and 10 shillings. Then there are silver coins for 20, 50, 100 shillings. Further, there are gold coins for 1000 and 2500 shillings.

Some countries share this currency, but has a different actual coinage. A neighbouring country has, for example, gold coins worth 100 shillings, and uses papers of value for larger amounts. Some countries also has a system of "trade bars" to represent larger values.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Gef

Handwaving always worked for me. Prices in dollars, some mention of counting out coins without stating denominations or quantity.

This. Look, I like historical coinage systems, and I'm very much aware of the ahistorical simplicity of RPG decimal coinage systems. But the sad truth, in my experience, is that players don't care about the details of currency beyond 1) what's the total amount and b) how difficult is it to carry, and (b) comes in a distant second to (1) and is rarely a significant issue anyway. And they hate having to work through a currency system ("Seventeen half-stars is...wait, is that a quarter-cash or an eighth-bit each?") in order to get to that single grand total figure which is the one thing they really want to know. Yes, someone can code up something to make calculating that easier, but you know what's even easier than that? Not bothering with it in the first place and telling your players "You get $x," and maybe, in exceptional cases, saying "...and it's all in copper so it weighs y lbs." or "...and it's all in gold, so if you sneeze too hard you might lose it." Coming up with a detailed system of currency is not just a waste of your time but an obstacle to the players' enjoyment of the game.

[Anaraxes]

I once played in a game where the party were merchants, travelling between countries. So, we had three or four different monetary systems, only occasionally with a factor of ten between a coin and its neighbor, and with coins of all different sizes. We actually got pretty good at negotiating in any system, developing a sense of value in all the systems without having to actually work the arithmetic down to two decimal places.

But that was a gimmick for one particular campaign. In most cases, it's extra trouble. Nice flavor, but only do it if your players enjoy it.

[gilbertocarlos]

Silver Coin=$10
Gold Coin=$200
Copper Coin=$1