Tell me about your monetary systems

[gilbertocarlos]

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

[Phantasm]

My fantasy setting's currency is as such:

One copper piece = G$1
One silver piece = 12 copper pieces = G$12
One gold piece = 20 silver pieces = G$240

Each individual 'one piece' coin is roughly the size of a US nickel, with 1/2, 1, 2, 5, and 10 piece coins available. A pound of the metal is worth 100 times the price of the coin; G$100 for copper, G$1,200 for silver, and G$24,000 for gold. In practice, this means that people deal more with silver than with gold.

For simplicity's sake, a coin is treated as being worth its weight in its metal, and therefore crossing national lines wasn't much of an issue.

The copper pieces are commonly known as pence (singular penny), pennas, or kol, depending on the region; respectively, in the Western-inspired, Slavic-inspired, and Chinese-inspired regions.

Silver pieces are known as sterlings, silvas, or sul.

Gold pieces are known as crowns, gentras, or rul.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

For simplicity's sake, a coin is treated as being worth its weight in its metal, and therefore crossing national lines wasn't much of an issue.

FYI, that's the definition of bullion as opposed to currency. I understand why you would make it so, just thought you might appreciate the head's up.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

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.

Well, maybe not a complete waste of time, you can use it once in a while for color, but I'd almost never consider doing any actual transactions the players are involved in in anything but a single money of account, which might as well be $GURPS.

Nobody would draw all your maps with hexes in the local zolafs, and make the players do the math for the 1.843 zolafs to the GURPS hex right? It really is the same principle.

[martinl]

I prefer to gloss the details with merchant rolls, but use lots of fun currency terms. Players generally like fun words and odd historical snippets but dislike accounting.

"The goblin had 6 Old Falutin 'Foukatz' in its pocket. They're pretty worn, but in good shape considering the Falutin Empire collapsed over 700 years ago."

(PC A makes his merchant roll by 5)
"They're worth about $80 for the metal, maybe twice that if you can get them to the right antiquitarian."

(PC B makes her history roll by 2)
"The date and Emperess shown are consistent with the 'Lost Treasury' of legend. During the infamous 'Year of Seven Bad and Three Really Bad and One Outright Disaserous Emperesses,' the entire imperial treasury went missing and never resurfaced. It wasn't great times, so the treaury in question was probably small by Imperial Falutin standards, but it is surely beyonds any dreams of averice you might have."

[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).

[Langy]

I'm just going for the tried-and-true 'decimals! decimals everywhere!' method in my DF campaign.

1 GURPS$ is 1 copper, $10 to the silver, and $100 to the gold piece. Anything lower than $1 is just too low to bother with. As for how much they weigh... hell, I don't know. 100 coins to the pound, if I ever bother accounting for it.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

My DF game has $0.10 copper pieces, $1 silver pieces, and $100 gold pieces.

I wanted $10 gold pieces but I did $100 in error and my players don't want to change it. So I've just declared gold pieces are physically a bit bigger so I don't have to re-scale all gold values.

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.

[Dunadin777]

In my current campaign, the main empire has a rate of 1 copper pence is one-fifth of a silver shilling and one silver shilling is one-twentieth of a gold crown. I then fit these to GURPS prices as a pence equaling $1, a shilling $5, and a crown $100. I find it odd enough to feel legitimate, but the single-fiver-hundred rates are easy enough to work with off the top of one's head. For simplicity, I weigh all of the coins at 1/200th of a pound.

To emphasize the non-monetary barter system of most markets, I discourage the players from trying to make change. Whenever change is involved, I normally have IQ/merchant rolled to determine whether any money was accidentally or deliberately lost in the translation.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Langy

I'm just going for the tried-and-true 'decimals! decimals everywhere!' method in my DF campaign.

This is what is ACTUALLY in play in my DF games. I usually do a lot of yak shaving in the background but I don't impose the details on my players. One of them gets annoyed just knowing that I know about that stuff in the background. I think he's got a latent fear I'll make him cope with it.

"under the hood" I have lots of silver (and silver alloys) with some gold or goldish coins at the top end and one or two copper coins at the bottom end. The net effect is a lot like the Canadian and Australian coin systems, only measured in dollars instead of cents.