Tell me about your monetary systems

[Amra]

I would suggest looking at Harn price lists if you want more detail in your monetary system. lythia.com has several good free downloads available.

Also, if you google "GURPS Sadurian" you'll find an unofficial game world resource. His Marketplace download is a Harn influenced gurps monetary system/price list that you may find useful.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I could give them weights for everything and if I couldn't Craig (player of Aldehar the Incendiary) could have. We're both good at trivial kinds of math like that. I think I used 50 coins to the pound like late AD&D anyway. It's not a horrible number. I believe Craig weighed quarters once and got 67 or something like that.

Quarters are not made out of gold, which is what leads me to compulsive yak shaving on this topic (1/50th a lb of gold is a much smaller coin than I want to deal with... ever basically).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by mhd

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 didn't. Sagatafl simply uses farthings, quarter-pennies, for all purchases. When necessarily, kilofarthings, megafarthings, gigafarthings and so forth are used. Nobody cares about what terms the characters use (because nothing is gained by caring about that - it never makes any difference), although the players must record their characters' valuables in terms of currency, e.g. this amount of Carolingan farthings, that amount of German farthings, such and such a quantity of hack-silver, because that matters to some NPCs (some NPCs may not legally accept foreign coin, meaning you have to find a money changer who takes a "percentage". Others may distrust some or all forein coinage, and others again may refuse to accept coin at all, taking only hack silver (although you can of course bypass that by turning your coins into hack-silver)).

Also, some currency may have a significantly higher value-density, typically because it is gold coins (or hack-gold), and some currency is "atomic", meaning it is in the form of jewelry which has a market value slightly above its silver or gold mass (until the point where you hack it up, or if you trade it to an NPC who sees it only as potential hack-material anyway).

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

When I speak of trivial math I can figure out that if gp and sp have the same number of coins to the pound but gold is twice as dense as silver then gp have only half the volume of silver. That could be something as simple as gp only being half as thick or more complex such as gp being equally thick but having only 70& of the diameter or so on.

Oh, okay. I play that way too. "Let's pretend all these coins weigh the same and are about the same size unless I say otherwise" is our basis of play too. So copper are 250/pound, so are silver, and gold is a bit bigger (to account for its 100x value) but no crazily so. That's easy enough.

I haven't given out enough gold in this game to require wagonloads or magical bags. In the last game I gave out a lot, but by then the party had Teleport-25 or something and Beacon and a base, so when they scored $1,000,000 or something at one point they just casually transported it back with magic. Hauling it around wasn't the point of the game anyway.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

1 Qa = 1 liter of barley. Coincidentally, many things on my price list cost as many Qa as they cost G$ in the Basic Set.
1 shekel of bronze = 3 Qa
1 shekel of silver = 300 Qa

You do need to be able to talk about currency in character, and dollars breaks the mood (especially since a G$ doesn't correspond directly to any real world currency at any time).

That's one reason why I opted for farthings in Sagatafl (originally pennies, but I found that prices of small items had to be fractions of pennies, e.g. a liter mug of strong beer, so at some point I decided to multiply all prices by 4 and get rid of decimmals and fractions). It'd make more sense for in-character talk, right up until the point PCs and NPCs need to negotiate mega-farthing deals. And using farthings for a modern or future campaign is as incongrous as using GURPS $ for a medieval game.

Another reason, though, was that what else should I use? Kroner would be fairly obscure, euros makes no sense, dollars makes even less sense (that's a very foreign kind of currency), and credits sounds too science fictional. Besides I like the quirky "medievalistic" "farthing" (or "penny" as I originally used). It does have the benefit of being divorced from any present day currencies, and matching reasonably well to early medieval prices (insofar as we have sources for those).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

My players only convert to a single scale to determine who gets what, but otherwise they happily track by the coin. It adds flavor ("The troll has $17 in copper and silver" bugs me) and no one seems bothered by it. To them, it's like their AD&D days but easier.

"in copper and silver" doesn't make much sense in my Ärth setting. Coins (and hack-silver) are by definition in silver. Anything else, gold coins, copper or brass coins, or hack-gold, is exotic (except if you're Greek or from Moslem lands; then gold/silver currency is the norm, mabe with some sub-silver metal thrown in as well). That's a nice simplicity, "silver unless stated otherwise", and happens to be historically correct.

Most found sub-silver coins probably aren't even worth taking (not worth the encumbrance, compounded by the fact that away from where they were minted, such coins have no mutually agreed upon value), and I'd assume (although I don't know for sure) that finding huge amounts of sub-silver coinage would be quite unusual.

Maybe a barbershop or something, in an affluent city. Or a bathing facility. But if a liter of strong beer (strong for medieval standards) costs about a farthing, a tiny silver coin, there aren't many goods or services that are so cheap they need to be paid for in copper, brass or bronze.

On top of which early TL3 people were stupidly self-sufficient anyway. The only "civilized" places, in this sense, would be the Greek Empire and (some of) the Moslem lands. So they might have some use for sub-silver coins to pay for very cheap services or for tiny amounts of stuff.

[Purple Haze]

The official (legal tender for all depts public and private) currency in my usual campaign area is the ox or a cow with calf, though law speakers general hold that three sheep are an acceptable substitute.

In practice the most useful things to carry for barter purposes are tools, weapons, and armour of bronze. Iron working is beyond the ability of most local smiths, and knives, spear-heads, rings for mail, etc. are always useful.

Portable wealth is kept in precious/semi-precious stones and jewerlry but is often not liquid. A wise character will have as skill to quickly and accurately value such things. Player characters often make a game of trading these things with each other and with NPC's.

Real wealth is of course in the herds, reputation, and most importantly embodied in loyal thanes.

There are imported silver coins. They weigh 2/3 of an ounce and are worth 4 G$ (silver was around 6.30-6.40 USD in 1988 when GURPS 3ed hit). There is almost always a makers symbol stamped on them. Some clever people track trade and political influence by watching the marks. They are most useful for trading with foreigners.

Gold coins are very rare. They are "coincidentally" the same size as silver ones, thus weigh 4/3 of an ounce, and at the historical 20:1 conversion rate are worth 80 G$. There is only one foreign source so they almost always have the same design: a sunburst/wagon wheel. This is useful because it simplifies making change by halving/quartering/eigthing them with a chisel.

Coins of other metals exist but are either not used for trade or have no value outside of their home areas. One might see a copper or lead coin as somebodies lucky charm, or used as sling bullets.

[Dwarf99]

I have coins all at 80% of the primary metal with the following coins:
Copper Farthing (100/lb) $1 per coin (mostly pure copper is $125/lb)
Silver makes $4 Marks of the same size ($400 per pound of coins) at $500/lb.
Gold is 20 times the value of silver ($10,000/lb) but is minted at 20 coins to a pound each worth $400 the gold coin representing a pound of silver currency is called a Pound.
Platinum is 1.5X the value of gold ($15,000/lb. A number gleaned from the 1.45 ratio of IW) and is minted in one ounce "Sovereigns" each worth $750.

Edit: Sovereigns are illegal to carry if you're below status 3.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Quarters are not made out of gold, which is what leads me to compulsive yak shaving on this topic (1/50th a lb of gold is a much smaller coin than I want to deal with... ever basically).

I've seen modern gold coins as small as a 1/10th ounce, or 1/160th of a pound. Very small.

[jason taylor]

Ducats which are a bit under 2/3 of an Imperial Credit are the main currency in my character's home. I probably should work a little more on the details for that.