Fantasy Currency Suggestions

[whswhs]

If this campaign is used the standard GURPS magic system, how about having the currency be powerstones, with each powerstone marked for its capacity?

[Varyon]

What about drops of paut? Paut, at least in DF, is 0.5 lb, $135, and restores 4 FP. Of that 0.5 lb, 0.25 lb is actually the crystal vial (worth $5), and the rest is the paut itself. Assuming it has comparable density to water, that's 113.4 mL, or 3.8 oz. Let's round that up to 4, so each 1 oz of paut is worth $32.5 and restores 1 FP. A drop of water is typically right around 50 uL, or 0.0017 oz. This roughly works out to $0.05 per drop of paut. If items that can accurately determine the amount of paut in a container are commonly available - it would be a very specialized magic detection device - then you could readily use small vials of the stuff as currency. Or maybe you can evaporate the water from paut and use the remaining powder (which can be turned back into paut by just dissolving it in water) as currency, much as gold dust was used during the gold rush in the American West. Yes, it is something that can be produced, and is also something that gets used up, but a) that was functionally true of gold and silver anyway (they could be mined, and then they could be removed from circulation by working them into pieces of art that the owner wouldn't want to sell as bullion) and b) many places in South America used cocoa beans as currency, and those can be grown and are consumed in the form of chocolate (which was a spiced drink back then*).

*Heck, considering it was essentially a drink for nobility, you could even have paut in your setting be chocolate, and simply trade in the beans. Considering the restrictions on magic enhancing magic, that would imply you couldn't use magic to boost the yield of cocoa beans, making them rare enough to serve as currency.

[ronwit]

I had an idea for a TNG episode where the Enterprise runs into a world where RPG style magic works. The Away team meets in a tavern to report to each other, they pay for their drinks and a few minutes later they are surrounded by guys that make Worf look like Steve Urkel. The waitress had taken their money over to the bar threw the money on an iron plate. Where the replicated "fake" money immediately evaporated.

The idea was that the TNG people would constantly try to explain to the locals that this "magic" that the locals had been using for centuries was really a form of psychic power and not some form of fake magic trick. To which the locals would reply Psychic? That just means mind magic.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by ronwit

The waitress had taken their money over to the bar threw the money on an iron plate. Where the replicated "fake" money immediately evaporated.

I don't see why replicated gold would disappear. It's still gold, just as real as any other, not a trick or illusion.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If this campaign is used the standard GURPS magic system, how about having the currency be powerstones, with each powerstone marked for its capacity?

Suffers from the problem of being useful. You don't want useful things tied up in functioning as currency.

Originally Posted by Varyon

What about drops of paut?

Same problem only even worse -- it's consumable, so you're likely to wind up with wild currency fluctuations. Depending on how it's made, it might also degrade with time.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Suffers from the problem of being useful. You don't want useful things tied up in functioning as currency.

If you use powerstones as a medium of exchange, then it seems that every mage will tend to have some, in order to pay for their meals and their housing and so on. I don't see that as making powerstones unavailable for spell casting.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you use powerstones as a medium of exchange, then it seems that every mage will tend to have some, in order to pay for their meals and their housing and so on. I don't see that as making powerstones unavailable for spell casting.

Because people storing amassed wealth will find it difficult to keep all their powerstones charging and have them used efficiently, so you're likely to wind up with a large amount of potentially productive magical capital sitting in a safe doing nothing.

Admittedly they'd have a lot of incentive to advance their financial system so that they could minimize such currency stockpiles...

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If this campaign is used the standard GURPS magic system, how about having the currency be powerstones, with each powerstone marked for its capacity?

Making powerstones is way, way too labor-intensive to use them as a unit of currency. Plus, there's the matter of quirks: what's the exchange rate between a 2 point unquirked stone, a 4 point stone that only regenerates in moonlight, and a 10 point stone that has to be covered in blood to work?

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you use powerstones as a medium of exchange, then it seems that every mage will tend to have some, in order to pay for their meals and their housing and so on. I don't see that as making powerstones unavailable for spell casting.

Most powerstones won't be in the hands of mages who will use them for spellcasting. They'll be in the hands of merchants, restaurateurs, moneylenders/bankers, etc. All the powerstones that are sitting in someone's cashbox are completely useless, an utter waste of all the mage-hours that went into making them.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Admittedly they'd have a lot of incentive to advance their financial system so that they could minimize such currency stockpiles...

Though that also brings up the other issue: at typical fantasy TL 3-4, they don't really have an understanding of what makes good currency, so powerstones being a bad currency doesn't mean it wouldn't be at least tried.

[The Colonel]

I've tended to assume that the ability to magically produce gold is the reason that it's so common and relatively worthless in most fRPGs - in historical terms, gold is already inflated halfway to death.

If you want a currency, perhaps do a "pay the bearer on demand" in magical FP equivalents? Actually back your fiat currency with magical service (sort of like the powerstones idea but theoretical rather than practical).