Fantasy Currency Suggestions

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Kept meaning to mention this - there's a thread for grain-based currencies, though based on the medieval version rather than the one from Sumer. The discussion there might be useful here.

Ah, thank you for this. I was actually thinking of this example when I was searching for grain-based money and came across the mention of barley being thought to be the first official currency. I feel that thread gives a decent overview of the benefits and pitfalls to such a setup.

[mburr0003]

I'm surprised that in 6 pages no one mentioned just doing what DF/RPG does, shift a bunch of spells over to Duration: 24 hours.

Sure you're Wizard can gin up a bunch of gold, and have it forged and stamped into coins... but it's basically equivalent to "fairie gold", it will disappear relatively quickly. Great for a mage who needs to roll into town, stock up on goods, and then never step foot in that town again...


But top answer the initial question: "So the question arises: how does magic fit into the economy?"

It's a service. It's not going to replace anything other non-mages already do except in some niche areas, where either the mage can do it faster, or cheaper, or can perform the work of many. And most mages will not be cheap, even if theoretically their labour should be. In which case you'd find them in the employ of nobility (as per common fantasy tropes) and the military, where the assets of "fast and replace many" can be well compensated with "very expensive".

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

I'm surprised that in 6 pages no one mentioned just doing what DF/RPG does, shift a bunch of spells over to Duration: 24 hours.

It has been suggested.

Another option is what Full Metal Alchemist went with, although that requires mages capable of creating gold to be rare as well as that no State with access to such mages become desperate enough to flood the market - creating gold with magic is extremely illegal and the government is very meticulous in hunting down those who break this law. At least, that's the feeling I got out of FMA - in that it was more just "It's illegal so nobody does it" (despite all the other law-breaking done by characters - including alchemists - in the setting) with no real explanation on how the State policed it. Indeed, the only times it comes up are when it's mentioned in passing as being one of the few forbidden uses of alchemy (right up there with human transmutation) and when Ed does it to bribe a corrupt official into surrendering the rights to a lucrative mining operation to him (and once he has the deed transferred to his name, with it explicitly stating it's a gift, he converts the gold back into the rubble he originally made it from).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Varyon

creating gold with magic is extremely illegal and the government is very meticulous in hunting down those who break this law.

Of course a universal government [able] to police something like this is also capable of dealing with all the jobs adventurers get hired to do, which tends to limit that option for an RPG.

And if the PCs can come in with 100 pounds of gold they claim to have panned from streams in the Wilderness of Certain Death, or secretly looted from the horde of the human hating Invincible Dragon of the Inaccessible Mountains, how does the government know if it is created or not? For that matter even if it is, if it was created 10,000 years ago by Invincible Dragon's grandmother, to brighten up her lair, is that different? I think you're eventually going to end up back at a fiat currency - gold itself is worthless, but this particular bit of it is worth something because it has a government stamp on it that declares it is "real".

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Of course a universal government [able] to police something like this is also capable of dealing with all the jobs adventurers get hired to do, which tends to limit that option for an RPG.

An option here would be that the government typically uses adventurers as their enforcers - perhaps there's a quest to put a stop to The Gilded Wizard and confiscate his illegally-manufactured gold for the State. The adventurers will be tempted to keep a little for themselves, but that just risks another group being sent to deal with them later if the State finds out. Another option would be that the State is busy dealing with big problems like demon invasions, counterfeiters threatening the economy, etc, and thus the adventurers take on the smaller tasks that slip through the cracks (this is basically how any published setting with large numbers of high-level heroic NPC's has to function anyway).

Originally Posted by malloyd

And if the PCs can come in with 100 pounds of gold they claim to have panned from streams in the Wilderness of Certain Death, or secretly looted from the horde of the human hating Invincible Dragon of the Inaccessible Mountains, how does the government know if it is created or not?

Such a government would likely have policies that would require adventurers to declare any treasure they acquire (and pay appropriate taxes on it), and in a setting where magic is relatively-common you'll have them subjected to questioning while under some sort of magical compulsion to tell the truth any time they bring in a large haul (or maybe even any time they return at all, if there's an enchanted interrogation room or similar that makes it relatively easy to do the questioning). There would be ways around this, certainly, but having such barriers in play might be able to prevent gold from being overly devalued (you may have it still be fairly devalued, like how it is in That Other Game, but still far from worthless).


All that said, I personally likely wouldn't use the above schemes, as I prefer settings where the relevant governments are relatively hands-off when it comes to adventurers, and also not as powerful as they'd need to be to manage the above. I'm simply listing it as a possible option, if it would mesh with the type of setting someone is already designing.

[Whitewings]

In FMA, the creation of gold is illegal, but the law is irrelevant and needless because alchemy cannot transmute elements. Nobody creates gold because nobody can.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

But top answer the initial question: "So the question arises: how does magic fit into the economy?"

That wasn't my initial question. My initial question was and is "what might make a good currency in a world with these assumptions," which I laid out in the first post.

One suggestion I made is the use of coins made of various gemstones, stamped with an enchanted die. Gems have value both because of their beauty and for their utility as magical conduits, but only stamped gems are generally accepted as currency. Non-stamped gems have to be appraised for their value, and aren't as generally accepted.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

In FMA, the creation is illegal, but the law is irrelevant and needless because alchemy cannot transmute elements. Nobody creates gold because nobody can.

... except Ed does exactly that. Also, while there are some references to elemental transmutations at least being difficult (he realizes Greed is coating himself in a diamond analogue and transmutes it to something like graphite, for example, from the former noting his body isn't very different from a humans and Ed realizing that means he's using his body's carbon), the way Ed is able to regularly create large amounts of iron and steel from materials that should contain relatively small amounts (steel spears, iron walls, and even iron cannons from chunks of Earth of equivalent mass; an ornate iron door from a wall that appeared to be made of stone; etc) strongly indicates at least some elemental transmutations are possible. Making organic materials in this fashion seems to be a no-go - they had to collect elements for creating a human body (although it should be noted they were much less competent alchemists back then, even if they were prodigies), and IIRC there's a scene where Ed contemplates turning his leather boots into rations as he can't just turn rocks into grain - stuff like turning rubble into gold, stone into steel, and so forth seems to be entirely possible, if perhaps difficult.

Originally Posted by Whitewings

One suggestion I made is the use of coins made of various gemstones, stamped with an enchanted die. Gems have value both because of their beauty and for their utility as magical conduits, but only stamped gems are generally accepted as currency. Non-stamped gems have to be appraised for their value, and aren't as generally accepted.

My only objection to gems is that you noted in your first post that you allow Earth to Stone to create gemstones, which makes them roughly as valuable as gold or any other metal that can be created with magic (provided they are comparable difficult; if gems are one step above rare metals, generating half as much per energy point, they'll be worth roughly twice as much). Or is there a way to determine if a gemstone was magically-created and only natural ones are used as currency?

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Varyon

he realizes Greed is coating himself in a diamond analogue and transmutes it to something like graphite

Diamond and graphite are carbon allotropes. Most of the rest, I think falls under artistic licence.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Or is there a way to determine if a gemstone was magically-created and only natural ones are used as currency?

That's why the stamped gems are the main currency: the die and striker sets are few and far between, so the size and quality of the material in the coins is known. It's not 100% reliable, but it's sufficiently reliable. Oh, and the coins are usually about the size of a dime. I imagine the coins to run in value from red through to violet: ruby, orange citrine, amber, emerald, sapphire, amethyst

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

That's why the stamped gems are the main currency: the die and striker sets are few and far between, so the size and quality of the material in the coins is known. It's not 100% reliable, but it's sufficiently reliable.

If gems can be created in the same way gold can, you're largely looking at them being a fiat currency (albeit one that has some true intrinsic value*, as it can be used as a magical conduit as you noted), at which point gold coins would also work. Don't get me wrong, a gem-based currency would be neat - The Stormlight Archives uses one, with the gems suspended in glass near-spheres (one side is flattened a bit so it doesn't roll when placed on a table) - but it doesn't seem like it gets you away from the central problem that mages can readily create the valuable material your coins are made of.

*Technically, modern paper currency has true intrinsic value as tender/fuel for a fire, but that's generally very little and you need some pretty extreme devaluation of your currency before it becomes more economical to literally burn money than to buy more appropriate fuels (although I think I've heard this happened with the deutschmark post-WWI).