Alternate Dungeon Fantasy Currency

[johndallman]

In the great big D&D meta-campaign that I still play in occasionally, there's a church that is a banking system. It's the Church of Mamon, aka Bank of Mamon. They have some very useful magics, although they don't tell people how they work.

The thing that gets used is their currency gems. These are somewhat magical, and have a face value, visible as a set of faintly glowing digits within the gem. The early attempts to forge them didn't go well; the church ended up being accepted by everyone as just too useful to mess about with. Being able to carry vast sums in a pouch of gems without having disagreements about values is handy.

[Glimmerman]

My coinage has consisted of

gold ducats (from word duke or duchy): 3,5g; $23 x 130 = $2990, 1 lb
silver rikes (from word kingdom or earldom): 30,24g; $10 x 15 = $150, 1 lb
silver pennies: 3,024g; $1 x 150 = $150, 1 lb
platin rikes: 3,5g; $50 x 130 = $6500, 1 lb

[Godogma]

In our game the Orichalcum coins are backed by the country that struck them and it is their political policy that makes them worth the 10,000$ mark.

Much like modern US "paper" money. It's not exactly worth much more than what the country says it's worth.

US folding money is damn near worthless due to inflation and it doesn't burn well and doesn't have the proper consistency for toilet paper.

About all you could do with the coins is use them for money, or if you had the time and the ability you could make coin scale armor... But that would be ludicrous waste of money backed by a major power to turn it into less than effective armor. And you'd have to worry about thieves deciding to cut a piece or two off and be rich!

[Kilmore]

Much of fantasy currency is minted with the head of the ruler on the front. Perhaps a former ruler whose legacy is distinctly unpopular in a certain area ruled for a long time until about the last ten years and thus his coins are still very common in circulation. After his bloody reprisals in a rebellion in the town the PC's are visiting, coins with his mug on them are less welcome. Gold is gold, they'll take it, but there will be a significant mark up if the players pay blithely with his coins.

And guess what's in the treasure hoard the players just scored in the local dungeon?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Wow. Thanks for all the responses, fellas. I appreciate it. :-)

[GodBeastX]

I didn't go with anything too realistic after digging in.

I went with a fantasy standard base-10 currency.

1 PP = 10 G = 100 S = 1000 C.

And 1$ = 1C for GURPS currency conversion. It's easy enough for people to remember on the fly.