Feasibility/fun of a coinage-free economic system?

[MrFahrenheit]

What if we remove coinage altogether? Whether a time before coinage (Greek dark ages), or a time when coinage is superinflated and effectively worthless (fall of Rome) would be immaterial for the purposes of this question. So...

What would a party rely on for a currency replacement? The most obvious answer to me would be livestock, other foodstuffs, and raw material. The problem here is twofold:

1. Those pesky little create food/water and goodberry spells - do you remove them? Bump them way up? If the party has three cows, but all the food they need from spells, why wouldn't a cleric (or more materialistic Druid) set up shop in every village to amass wealth at that rate? It becomes the equivalent of an inflation-inducing fabricate spell.

2. More importantly, what does livestock as currency need? The way a party travels - not just the end point, but how they get there - must be considered, so the animals can find enough of the appropriate food. Watches during camp become more important, and the survival skill becomes more important too, so their "money" doesn't wander off or die of malnourishment. Or does the party settle somewhere and hire NPCs to look after their cattle and such? This is the "fun factor" question: sure the first time a couple of goats wander off it's a funny little side quest, but when it happens the fifth time, the eye rolling would commence for sure. And not just wandering off, but they could be stolen/slaughtered as well.

[JumboWheat01]

I don't think you have to worry about the food creation spells, as they are temporary before the food either goes bad or disappears. While evil parties certainly wouldn't have many qualms about fooling the general populous that way, your average good or neutral parties would probably think twice about doing so.

There's something else that could make an amazing alternative for money, salt. Salt was used a lot in "ye olde" times, heck, there's even an expression about something being worth its weight in salt. It would make a perfectly fine and portable trade item.

And if they needed to instead, they could use it themselves.

[MrFahrenheit]

Interesting. I never knew that about salt. But in this case we would just be refluffing (swapping coins for salt), and it defeats the purpose of overhauling the entire economy.

[JumboWheat01]

No different than swapping it for cows, or hides, or gems. As long as something has an accepted value, it can be exchange for something else that has an accepted value. That's the reason money really exists, to make it simpler and uniform, as a cow may be worth a full set of plate armor in one spot, but barely a night's stay at an inn an another.

[Rysto]

There's something else that could make an amazing alternative for money, salt. Salt was used a lot in "ye olde" times, heck, there's even an expression about something being worth its weight in salt. It would make a perfectly fine and portable trade item.

Fun fact: "Salt" and "salary" share the same Latin root.

[Mellack]

Essentially you would be forcing your players to become travelling merchants. What is valuable in one region or to one person is in abundance elsewhere. Most people would probably be able to feed themselves, but need cotton, or iron, or wine that they don't have locally. I don't see that it would add any fun, it would really just be a lot of recordkeeping and haggleing. If you and your group are into that, go for it. They might enjoy the roleplay of it.

[Erys]

What if we remove coinage altogether? Whether a time before coinage (Greek dark ages), or a time when coinage is superinflated and effectively worthless (fall of Rome) would be immaterial for the purposes of this question. So...

What would a party rely on for a currency replacement? The most obvious answer to me would be livestock, other foodstuffs, and raw material. The problem here is twofold:

1. Those pesky little create food/water and goodberry spells - do you remove them? Bump them way up? If the party has three cows, but all the food they need from spells, why wouldn't a cleric (or more materialistic Druid) set up shop in every village to amass wealth at that rate? It becomes the equivalent of an inflation-inducing fabricate spell.

2. More importantly, what does livestock as currency need? The way a party travels - not just the end point, but how they get there - must be considered, so the animals can find enough of the appropriate food. Watches during camp become more important, and the survival skill becomes more important too, so their "money" doesn't wander off or die of malnourishment. Or does the party settle somewhere and hire NPCs to look after their cattle and such? This is the "fun factor" question: sure the first time a couple of goats wander off it's a funny little side quest, but when it happens the fifth time, the eye rolling would commence for sure. And not just wandering off, but they could be stolen/slaughtered as well.

If you want no "currency" you have to go straight barter across the board.

The thing is, I don't think adventurers would need to be part time shepherds. First the players will find weapons are a go to commodity, since people always need weapons. But there is also food, clothes, boots, water skins, blankets, lanterns, cooking goods, armor, tools, furs, poisons, etc, all around them. Each being intrinsic and trade worthy.

Then the matter of self sufficiency kicks in where you can create your own food and water so you have that much more 'wealth' when you go to town. At this point you can trade a small portion of your goods to a decent area and still have a bunch of stuff left over. On top of that you start finding rarer and more exotic trinkets, pieces of art, jewelry, and maybe even some magic goods.

Before you know it you are not only 20th level, you are a master merchant and leader of your own caravans traveling the silk road.

Could be fun, but at the end of the day coinage makes the trading day easier.

It protects you against the one major pit fall of the trade only society: What happens if you don't want to carry all that stuff? If people around you don't have anything you want, or worse, they do and you don't have what they want? You reach an impasse that coinage can hurdle.

[solidork]

I'm certainly no expert, but some things I've read said that the rise of currency was a prerequisite for the creation of capitalism, so the truth may be something weirder than just using salt or cows instead of gold.

[CaptainSarathai]

I'm certainly no expert, but some things I've read said that the rise of currency was a prerequisite for the creation of capitalism, so the truth may be something weirder than just using salt or cows instead of gold.

Kinda.
When you start trading on a massive scale, you needed to move a lot of materials to the destination. Imagine:

A blacksmith spends a whole year crafting a suit of armor. He needs to trade that armor for enough food to live on for a whole year.
How do you get that much food to a man?

Currency became a sort of voucher. Rather than travel across the kingdom with the entire contents of a small farm, I will travel across the kingdom with gold, which you can then use to buy a small farm closer to yourself.

Originally, to be considered as valid, the coins themselves needed to have value. There was no standard or "backing." A .5oz gold coin was simply worth .5oz of gold. It was valued at whatever the other person valued that gold at.
Eventually they started backing their currency. Entertainingly, most people backed on the gold standard, meaning that non-gold money like dollar bills or copper pennies could be exchanged for a small amount of gold. So you had this 3-tier system:

1. I want to buy armor from you - the value of this armor is enough for you to feed yourself for 1 year.
2. Instead of bringing you a year's worth of grain, I will bring you something smaller (like gold) that you can then trade for a year's worth of grain.
3. Instead of bringing you gold worth 1yr of grain, l will bring you several slips of paper. These slips can be taken to your local bank, and exchanged for gold, which can then be exchanged for the food which I am trading to you for armor.
-----

My group ran a kind of "noble savages" campaign once, and the setting lacked a common currency. So the players would say, clear a goblin den.
They'd take anything valuable enough to be traded, and load it on a cart.
They discovered that lugging a huge, 2-horse cart around, piled full of valuable junk was both risky and impractical.
So they traded the wagon and junk for smaller items that were worth more:
"I'll give you 10 suits of leather armor, for 1 large diamond."
Now they're roaming the realm with a small backpack full of diamonds, instead of a wagon full of looted equipment.
When a diamond was too large for their purchase, they had to break it down into something smaller. The first time this happened, a player wanted to buy a new sword. 10 armor > 1 sword, and that diamond had cost him 10 armor. So he walked to another merchant and traded his diamond for several pieces of jewelry. Now he went back to the blacksmith and traded some of the jewelry for the sword.
Soon, jewelry became a sort of wearable currency for them. This happened IRL all over the world, the most recognizable being Native American beads (wampum) or carrobean tribes using puka shells.

[Cespenar]

Maybe add a favor system on top of a barter system, to better suit those traveling around?

[Notafish]

Bartering might not need to play a huge role, depending on the social structures you bake into a setting. If societies are primarily small tribal bands, there might not be much call for markets. Rather, food and protection would be shared communally while weapons, armor, and other crafts are either created by individuals for their own use or administered by local authorities (e.g., the smiths forge swords and armor which are then given to the warrior caste as needed). A party of adventurers might gain access to more resources as they gain favor with the tribe or other faction. In the event that barter is needed, I'd rather have it be as part of the story ("we need a ship; perhaps King Hrothgar will agree to give us one of his longboats if we kill the dragon that's eating his tribe's livestock"; "we need to drive this herd of yaks through the mountain pass so that we can ransom the princess from the orcs") than an ongoing bookkeeping task. In the event of an open market, I'd rather use gp equivalents to shop than to RP the haggling/barter process. But that's me.

Personally, wealth management is one of my least favorite things to deal with in D&D, so I would prefer a game where resource access is determined more by rank/reputation than the size of the party bank account. I think that 5e makes it much easier to have a game like this, compared to 3.5, too.

[MrFahrenheit]

Thanks for all the input, everyone. I can see my group initially having fun with the barter based system, but tiring of it after a while. Though the practicality of jewelry is very appealing - do they save that diamond in case of a PK later, or trade it now for those suits of armor?

My idea wasn't so much for a "noble savage" campaign, but a Greek Dark Ages one - you still have these villages that are settled, but they're primarily self sufficient and have little contact with the outside world beyond the next neighboring village. I'm not going for post apocalyptic here...more like POST-post apocalyptic: life sucks, death is painful, and people barely trust the traveler from the next town over; they certainly don't trust the traveler from the town beyond that. There's a glimmer of hope on the horizon (that's where the party fits in), but it's still only a glimmer.

[MrStabby]

So do you want coin free or currency free?

So your basic econ 101 on currency is that it has 3 features:

1) A store of value
It has a role for an individual to be able to shift consumption from one time period to another

2) It is a unit of account
It can be used to measure economic value

3) It is a medium of exchange
People can use it to trade with.


Any replacement for coins as currency should meet these three features. Coins can be used for exchange - they are portable, the people on both sides can recognise and agree on their value. They are a unit of account - either by gold mass or by denomination there is a measurable value there. They are a store of value - they are easily stored, do not degrade through time and are not consumed. The value is stored as gold is sufficiently hard to produce that the easiest way to get gold for most people is to produce something useful and exchange it for gold.

Without gold... I guess spell scrolls. They have value, they are portable, they do not degrade through time, their worth is backed by the spell inscribed on them, yes more can be produced by wizards etc but the process is sufficiently costly and time consuming that the rate of growth should be slow.

[VoxRationis]

Alternatively, you could have a coinage-free system in a setting where society is particularly stable: in an Egypt-style setting, where all the realm is consistently unified under a strong central government, you can have the central government dictate who gets what by pure fiat, with all other commerce being small-scale and secondary to the tax and dole system.

Obviously, that's not what you're going for in your own setting, but it is another way to do coinage-free economics.

[JumboWheat01]

Fun fact: "Salt" and "salary" share the same Latin root.

I did not know that (I know ZERO Latin,) will have to jot that down as a funky little bit of trivia.

[Zorku]

If you're just trying to ditch "money" and you're cool with magical means you might use something like transferable tattoos.

This also opens up implications like not being able to take wealth from someone if they die first, and is the local king decked out like Xerxes or does he have a bunch of servants that hold on to and handle his wealth? How much pain is involved in your transactions? Does this mean adventures have to take place on a longer time scale because you need to take a long rest after you purchase that suit of full plate?

[Joe the Rat]

Thanks for all the input, everyone. I can see my group initially having fun with the barter based system, but tiring of it after a while. Though the practicality of jewelry is very appealing - do they save that diamond in case of a PK later, or trade it now for those suits of armor?

My idea wasn't so much for a "noble savage" campaign, but a Greek Dark Ages one - you still have these villages that are settled, but they're primarily self sufficient and have little contact with the outside world beyond the next neighboring village. I'm not going for post apocalyptic here...more like POST-post apocalyptic: life sucks, death is painful, and people barely trust the traveler from the next town over; they certainly don't trust the traveler from the town beyond that. There's a glimmer of hope on the horizon (that's where the party fits in), but it's still only a glimmer.
How are heroes awarded in the old tales? What form does treasure come?
Useful tools
Raw materials (bars of iron were quite popular in The Iliad)
Consumables (wine, oils, grain)
Slaves and Livestock

Of course, you have to downplay a bit, since in the tales everyone is semi-divine or a king (and also semi-divine). Treasure was the things you collect. If you want something, you exchange for something of near-equivalent value. You are going straight from "fancy necklace and a rolled up fleece" to "new armor" without the stop at the money lenders. But you may still talk gold piece value, as that gives the players something to benchmark their trades. Also you give freely to guests, and give gifts as a guest if you can so afford. Hospitality is a big deal.

As a traveling adventurer type, unless I have a stack of hirelings (and as "Greek Dark Ages", I'm assuming your players aren't kings traveling with retinues), I'd avoid killable assets, beyond what I need to feed myself if I don't feel up to hunting. If there are no roads, I'm not taking a cart full of wine and olive oil. I'm going to take things with high value density, that I know someone else can use.

I'm taking weapons.

Any king (glorified village chief) worth his salt will appreciate a half-dozen shortswords of fine make, or exquisite longbows, or the armor of the 12 brigands you killed on the way here. Any quest is less likely to be "Let's crawl through that labyrinth, kill things, and take stuff" and more "Slay this monster, and you will get this awesome thing, and also land."

[ThisIsZen]

I think the biggest issue you run into is that without coinage, trading becomes... complicated, even to get a new sword. Unless you just literally rip coin out and replace it with animal which have a consistent worth, when the PCs have to barter for everything and their set of resources may not be interesting to the merchant, you're basically just introducing a bunch of complications into a part of the game that's usually kept in the background anyway. You have to spend actual table time now on the party trading salt for iron, iron for a few sheep, and finally trading the sheep for spices so they have what the merchant wants for his sword, or etc.

It also makes it even more difficult to do anything interesting with treasure, since it's so much more complicated to spend your wealth. The party would be less liable, I think, to spend their earnings on a fortress or some other group project if they know they'll have to barter for it and spend a bunch of table time.

On the other hand, it would make nonstandard rewards a lot more appealing, and gathering the resources to purchase a stronghold might make for an interesting adventure. Especially if the PCs are doing something untoward to gather the wealth, like a cattle raid.

[MrFahrenheit]

How are heroes awarded in the old tales? What form does treasure come?
Useful tools
Raw materials (bars of iron were quite popular in The Iliad)
Consumables (wine, oils, grain)
Slaves and Livestock

Of course, you have to downplay a bit, since in the tales everyone is semi-divine or a king (and also semi-divine). Treasure was the things you collect. If you want something, you exchange for something of near-equivalent value. You are going straight from "fancy necklace and a rolled up fleece" to "new armor" without the stop at the money lenders. But you may still talk gold piece value, as that gives the players something to benchmark their trades. Also you give freely to guests, and give gifts as a guest if you can so afford. Hospitality is a big deal.

As a traveling adventurer type, unless I have a stack of hirelings (and as "Greek Dark Ages", I'm assuming your players aren't kings traveling with retinues), I'd avoid killable assets, beyond what I need to feed myself if I don't feel up to hunting. If there are no roads, I'm not taking a cart full of wine and olive oil. I'm going to take things with high value density, that I know someone else can use.

I'm taking weapons.

Any king (glorified village chief) worth his salt will appreciate a half-dozen shortswords of fine make, or exquisite longbows, or the armor of the 12 brigands you killed on the way here. Any quest is less likely to be "Let's crawl through that labyrinth, kill things, and take stuff" and more "Slay this monster, and you will get this awesome thing, and also land."

So the Greek Dark Ages were a period of time after Mycenaean Greece fell and before the city states started doing anything of note (that would be the Archaic Age, which would eventually transition to the far more well-known Classical Age). Old roads are still around, but they're in utter disrepair. Ownig any animals (let alone a herd) was a sign of wealth. Most people made do as subsistence farmers.

[CaptainSarathai]

Personally, wealth management is one of my least favorite things to deal with in D&D, so I would prefer a game where resource access is determined more by rank/reputation than the size of the party bank account. I think that 5e makes it much easier to have a game like this, compared to 3.5, too.
Personally, this is something I love about L5R (and most other people seem to hate). Historically, the Samurai didn't really pay for anything. Handling money was 'beneath them.' Instead, it was assumed that their lords would be good for payment - if the samurai was from your own territory, then supporting him was basically a tax. If he wasn't from your own territory, supporting him could be a matter of life or death.
To get a new sword, horse, or armor, a samurai usually had to be given it as a gift from his superiors.
Doing this in L5R games removed the need for tracking wealth, almost entirely.
"Oh, you want better armor? Okay, the daimyo will give you better armor after this quest."


So the Greek Dark Ages were a period of time after Mycenaean Greece fell and before the city states started doing anything of note (that would be the Archaic Age, which would eventually transition to the far more well-known Classical Age). Old roads are still around, but they're in utter disrepair. Ownig any animals (let alone a herd) was a sign of wealth. Most people made do as subsistence farmers.

So, what and who, are your players even bartering with? If most people are just simple farmers, all they're really good for is food and shelter. Anything more complex than that, and you'd need to find it as loot or go and find a place with enough wealth to support those kinds of tradesmen.


If you're just trying to ditch "money" and you're cool with magical means you might use something like transferable tattoos.

This also opens up implications like not being able to take wealth from someone if they die first, and is the local king decked out like Xerxes or does he have a bunch of servants that hold on to and handle his wealth? How much pain is involved in your transactions? Does this mean adventures have to take place on a longer time scale because you need to take a long rest after you purchase that suit of full plate?

This is an awesome idea, and I might have to use that. I imagine wealthy people looking like Maori tribal warriors, covered head-to-foot in elaborate tattoo patterns.

[Arkhios]

I would approach no-money economy via bartering. Items would have their normal value and you would basically trade items you own for items of equal value you want from someone else.

With this system I might consider bartering with the full market prices for simplicity.

[JeenLeen]

If the PCs have enough wealth in the sense of bartering goods, you could give them a 'wealth' statistic that tracks what they can afford to barter for, to a reasonable degree in a certain amount of time, without losing any wealth. If you buy something big, you lower your resources enough that you can't barter for similar things until you get a big boon of treasure.
(This is basically the Resources background from Exalted 2nd edition. BUT it could be more common in a D&D-type game that this fluctuates. Such as Full Plate being a Resources 4 or 5 expense, and even Potions of Healing Resources 2 or 3. But once you hit Resources 2, you can afford daily food, wine, and rooms at a decent inn without really worrying about it.)

That's basically abstracting bartering into a stat. But it should work for both PCs and NPCs, especially if you go with the PHB attitude that magical items (outside of simple potions) aren't generally for sale. You could say some smiths or kings might trade a +1 sword for Resources 5/6, but generally it's a quest (or treasure within a quest.)

If it's fun, PCs are still welcome to track what their wealth is held as, i.e., cattle, gems, trade goods, etc.



Without gold... I guess spell scrolls. They have value, they are portable, they do not degrade through time, their worth is backed by the spell inscribed on them, yes more can be produced by wizards etc but the process is sufficiently costly and time consuming that the rate of growth should be slow.

In the video game Path of Exile, barter is done via magical items that can be used to enchant or identify other magic items. So magic items with broad application could be a high-level non-coinage item, but such would probably be useless when trading for day-to-day things... AND this is just 'currency' that also has utility.

[Sigreid]

I don't think you have to worry about the food creation spells, as they are temporary before the food either goes bad or disappears. While evil parties certainly wouldn't have many qualms about fooling the general populous that way, your average good or neutral parties would probably think twice about doing so.

There's something else that could make an amazing alternative for money, salt. Salt was used a lot in "ye olde" times, heck, there's even an expression about something being worth its weight in salt. It would make a perfectly fine and portable trade item.

And if they needed to instead, they could use it themselves.

At one point in the Roman Empire pepper was more valuable than gold, by weight, as well.

[VoxRationis]

Personally, this is something I love about L5R (and most other people seem to hate). Historically, the Samurai didn't really pay for anything. Handling money was 'beneath them.' Instead, it was assumed that their lords would be good for payment - if the samurai was from your own territory, then supporting him was basically a tax. If he wasn't from your own territory, supporting him could be a matter of life or death.
To get a new sword, horse, or armor, a samurai usually had to be given it as a gift from his superiors.
Doing this in L5R games removed the need for tracking wealth, almost entirely.
"Oh, you want better armor? Okay, the daimyo will give you better armor after this quest."

Frankly, a lot of my recent D&D campaigns have been like that. The party has either been involved with a large organization or been wealthy lords in and of themselves, to the point where equipment fell into two categories: that which was available without issue or cost to the players, and that which was unavailable at any price anyway, on account of being magical items of ancient times (or top-secret magical devices of the enemy we were fighting).

[ericgrau]

Barter is the simplest.
Create food spells won't break the economy any more than usual because food is still cheap either way.
Livestock is fine for commoner trade but too heavy for a rich adventurer.
Gems are the easy cop-out.
Magic items or similar rare items could be used for expensive item barter.
You can also use some kind of made up currency. Something that is worthless outside of its country of origin. I've heard of money sticks where the government breaks a stick in half, signs whatever on it. And in case of forgery you can confirm for sure that the stick is real by matching it to its other half in the castle. Problem is that's not a very convenient way to check, and if the castle gets raided it's financial anarchy. Or use something similar to paper money. Likewise need to consider mundane and magical counterfeiting.



I think for this to not get overcomplicated it will probably end up on gems or valuable magic/rare trade items. That's for the adventurer. Trade goods such as livestock for the poor. And things like smaller gems or potions or minor magic items or rare art figurines for the in between. Still need a system to appraise it all though. Could perhaps be simplified with an appraise spell for the adventurer. The poor have set values for each common trade good. 3 goats to a pig and so on. Of course in your head you could secretly have gp values for it all. Since a goat is 1 gp in 3e, you might likewise conduct all transactions in "goats". As in that is a 1,000 goat ruby. No actual goats are traded, that's just how you keep track of things verbally. Also, baaaaaa.

[MrFahrenheit]

Thanks for the input again, everyone. I'm grinning to myself at the thought of my players' faces the first time the grateful villagers reward them for clearing out a nearby dungeon...with two sheep, a goat and a suckling cow.

Earlier posters have mentioned it - I think I'll go with barter. Still makes the logistics very fun (for me...at least a little while), and the problem of suddenly being "too wealthy" a possibility.

[Arkhios]

Thanks for the input again, everyone. I'm grinning to myself at the thought of my players' faces the first time the grateful villagers reward them for clearing out a nearby dungeon...with two sheep, a goat and a suckling cow.

Earlier posters have mentioned it - I think I'll go with barter. Still makes the logistics very fun (for me...at least a little while), and the problem of suddenly being "too wealthy" a possibility.

Here's a simplistic barterting system including haggling I've been mulling over (because of this thread):

All items have their normal prices as seen in the Player's Handbook (and elsewhere when it applies).

Barter:
Adventurer (NPC) to Adventurer (PC) trade items for their full value ...unless haggled.
Merchants trade their wares at full value, but only accept items from players at half value ...unless haggled.

Haggle:
Opposed Persuasion check vs. Persuasion check. Winner determines the value of traded item(s), which are in favor of him/her (seller's items are at full value, buyer's items at half-value).

All merchants are proficient with the Persuasion checks made to haggle. Some shady merchants might have expertise on this check, or even advantage (subject to DM's discretion).

[Sigreid]

Here's a simplistic barterting system including haggling I've been mulling over (because of this thread):

All items have their normal prices as seen in the Player's Handbook (and elsewhere when it applies).

Barter:
Adventurer (NPC) to Adventurer (PC) trade items for their full value ...unless haggled.
Merchants trade their wares at full value, but only accept items from players at half value ...unless haggled.

Haggle:
Opposed Persuasion check vs. Persuasion check. Winner determines the value of traded item(s), which are in favor of him/her (seller's items are at full value, buyer's items at half-value).

All merchants are proficient with the Persuasion checks made to haggle. Some shady merchants might have expertise on this check, or even advantage (subject to DM's discretion).

I've been thinking about something kind of similar. Adventurer's sell at base 50%, Shop Keeps sell at base 100%. An opposed persuasion contest is made and the ball moves 5% in the direction of the one who wins per point they beat the other person's roll. Other's can use a help action to give Advantage.