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Isomenes
2008-01-23, 06:01 PM
So I have been weaving together a campaign world, and one of its premises is a dearth of precious metals. In that environment, what would be a good drop-in substitute for the gp system?

Dark Sun played with a pottery system, using ceramic as a measure of value, but I don't think that fits with what I'm trying for. The word salary reflects salt's value in antiquity, so that has become a front runner. I guess a barter system in addition to a salt trade could work well, but what do you all think?

VanBuren
2008-01-23, 06:03 PM
Anything can work. Heck, Fallout used bottlecaps. Just something that's backed by an entity that gives it economic value.

Solo
2008-01-23, 06:05 PM
Teef iz gud moniez.

squishycube
2008-01-23, 06:06 PM
I can more easily get into bottlecaps than friggin pieces of paper with numbers written on it. Can you imagine explaining to an alien:
"Yeah, we made this piece of paper saying '100' and it means its worth a 100 units"
The alien would absolutely be like: "Yeah right, now show me the gold..."

Point:
Anything that's backed is viable.

Fax Celestis
2008-01-23, 06:07 PM
Well, this is an old thread, but it's ideas are still relevant. Why not use magic as an economic basis? This post and this post are the important bits.

Isomenes
2008-01-23, 06:09 PM
Teef iz gud moniez.

Creepy if you think of people-teeth, but not so much if you consider difficult-to-approach-much-less-slay-monster-teeth. Better than just wearing them around your neck--they represent considerable effort, and provide an interesting counterfeiting challenge.

Isomenes
2008-01-23, 06:14 PM
Well, this is an old thread, but it's ideas are still relevant. Why not use magic as an economic basis? This post and this post are the important bits.

The setting will have much lower magic than the thread assumes, but it's definitely adaptable within limits. I can see a high-end and a low-end currency, with the high-end revolving around this shell idea.

Isomenes
2008-01-23, 06:19 PM
I can more easily get into bottlecaps than friggin pieces of paper with numbers written on it. Can you imagine explaining to an alien:
"Yeah, we made this piece of paper saying '100' and it means its worth a 100 units"
The alien would absolutely be like: "Yeah right, now show me the gold..."

Point:
Anything that's backed is viable.

Notes are pretty absurd, especially in a self-sustaining population where everyone participates in the process of feeding the community. As to backing, I think trading actual valuable material seems to be more useful. Of course, I'm not exactly sure why gold is a useful standard, considering it's only good as a conductor (and only within the last century anyway).

Arakune
2008-01-23, 06:22 PM
Use silk or rice as base 'money'. Everything are priced in 'amounts of rice' or 'amounts of silk'.

And salt and pepper too.

TempusCCK
2008-01-23, 06:23 PM
I'm in a campaign right now where we run a silver standard, and that works out well.

Any metal will work really.

Copper could be a good choice, as it's a poor material for weapons, and is just as easily worked as gold, and i would hardly consider it a "precious" material. Perhaps your world did once have a gold standard, but for some reason more and of it dissapeared and slowly the economy adjusted to using copper as a currency, similar to the way we use bills today. 10 Copper Piece, 100 Copper Piece, so on and so forth.

VanBuren
2008-01-23, 06:24 PM
Notes are pretty absurd, especially in a self-sustaining population where everyone participates in the process of feeding the community. As to backing, I think trading actual valuable material seems to be more useful. Of course, I'm not exactly sure why gold is a useful standard, considering it's only good as a conductor (and only within the last century anyway).

Simply put, it's shiny and people like that

Therefore, if we accept that if A = B and B = C that A = C then.

People like Shiny Things. Gold is a Shiny Thing. People like Gold.

Prophaniti
2008-01-23, 06:48 PM
Yeah, people like gold merely because it's rare and shiny. Personally, I would prefer silver for decorative purposes.

Notes make perfect sense for a large population. Rare things are used as currency in small economies, but in larger ones there's not enough of the rare thing for everyone to carry (because it's rare) and thus the notes. Now, I wouldn't use it for any society that's supposed to be pre-industrial revolution tech level, because the idea of a piece of paper representing money would be absurd to them, but past that it's perfectly feasible.

If precious metals are even more scarce than in reality, it would only make gold more valuable. But obviously you need something else for common currency. You've just got to find something else that's just the right degree of rare. I liked the Death Gate Cycle novel where the world was covered with giant trees and people lived their whole lives without seeing the ground. They used stones as currency. Water World used dirt, for obvious reasons. Just think of what else is rare in your world.

Emperor Tippy
2008-01-23, 07:05 PM
Bank notes have been around for ages. Pre-Industrial revolution. They were just gold backed (as in you could walk into the issuing bank, hand them the note, and walk out with the gold value).

Fiat money is a post industrial revolution idea (at least mostly). And it arose because the governments of the world wanted to be able to create free money t finance wars and such.

Laurellien
2008-01-23, 07:06 PM
Rupees!!!

Dunh-dunh-dunh DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNH!!!!

Fax Celestis
2008-01-23, 07:09 PM
Rupees!!!

Dunh-dunh-dunh DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNH!!!!

Right, and the primary method of getting rich is not actually providing a service or product that people want but instead chopping down plants that mysteriously regenerate whenever you get further than fifty feet away.

VanBuren
2008-01-23, 07:18 PM
Right, and the primary method of getting rich is not actually providing a service or product that people want but instead chopping down plants that mysteriously regenerate whenever you get further than fifty feet away.

And all high-powered enemies leave hearts that can be consumed to increase your vitality...

...wait. I think we've had something like that somewhere in the real world.

Winterking
2008-01-23, 07:19 PM
If the civilization is at all advanced--in a "we live in something besides mud huts, know how to write and read, and are not all the Barbarian class" sense--then I think letters of credit are your best bet. Most transactions would probably start out as barter, and I imagine that most of a city/town/village's economic activity would still be barter-based. But merchant activity, large-scale taxes, and so on, would be handled by certificates or letters saying that the bearer possessed a certain amount of [commodity].

That's basically how gold-based currency started; gold and silver and other metals just happened to be commodities that were relatively convenient to carry while at the same time highly valuable. Without precious metals, a paper/certificate/voucher-based system is going to develop much sooner. So a letter of credit, deposited at a salarium, might note that the bearer deposited, and had to his name, five hundred pounds of salt. The letter would then be traded back and forth, as if it was the five hundred pounds of salt, only without the carrying. Or replace salt with spices, or grain, or potatoes, or...

Another quick-and-easy type of currency could be gems and jewels. Slightly harder to track and exchange, but a sub-category of jewelers could take on the role of money-changers and bankers in the real world, appraising and trading gemstones.

Even if-especially if- your world is short on metal, you aren't likely to see coins in bronze or copper, tin, brass, or iron. They are all too useful in making tools. That was another reason gold became a valuable currency--it was useless for practical items like spades and axes and swords.

Randel
2008-01-23, 07:44 PM
Trade goods like food would be a nice unit of currency. I remember seeing an article in wikipedia mentioning that feudal Japan had a denomination of currency based on how much rice a person needed to eat in a day.

Koku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku) - the amount of rice a person would eat in a year

Masu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masu_%28Japanese%29) - a box that contains enough rice to feed a person for one day.

Tea Brick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_brick) - a brick of tea that acted as a currency, emergency food supply, or medicinal herbs


This Article (http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=1035&postnum=0) - has the section called "The Turnip Economy" which is a good read.


Basically, you can have a basic unit of currency based on food or calories. The most common unit would be a days worth of food, probably grains because they can be stored for long periods. Higher units would feed people for a week, month, or year. Once you get into the amounts to feed people for a year, then they just put the food in banks (read: a granary) and then maybe have notes or coins or pretty stones to keep track of who has how much. A Japanese Koban is a gold coin that represents the amount of food needed to feed a person for one year.

Once you start trading magic items and such, coins that can be traded for food are more convenient than than lugging several tons of corn around. And once your society reaches the point where people don't starve very often and the granaries can ship food around, then people just start using the coins instead of worrying about food.

Burrito
2008-01-23, 07:48 PM
Diferent currency items.

Carved discs of Ivory or bone. Ivory has been used for trading for a lot longer than gold. From the Arctic to the Sub-Sarahan regions.

Dragon scales, and they are already conveniently color coded for you.


Now less serious sugestions....

Elf ears, the more pointy, the more value.

Kender topknots.

Buckets of honey. Then you really could be someones Sugar Daddy.

Patashu
2008-01-23, 07:52 PM
Creepy if you think of people-teeth, but not so much if you consider difficult-to-approach-much-less-slay-monster-teeth. Better than just wearing them around your neck--they represent considerable effort, and provide an interesting counterfeiting challenge.
Make sure they're sufficiently tough, though, otherwise you run into the money-grows-on-trees problem that plagues many video games with an economy. (Who remembers getting rich from cutting the grass in Zelda games?)

sikyon
2008-01-23, 07:53 PM
I remember reading in a choose your own adventure book that glass could work as legal tender. Given a low enough tech setting, people don't know how to make glass so it's rare. It's eaisily broken, so fractions are simple.

Really either anything non-renewable or anything of value will work. If your world doesn't have a backed economy, however, barter is the only way to go about it. Gold has value because it's basically backed by goods. Ie. you always know you can trade gold for goods. If one day everyone just said "no I will never trade anything for gold" gold becomes worthless.

So basically, you need something everyone sees as valuable.

Citizen Joe
2008-01-23, 07:54 PM
If you have a powerful god/king/emperor notes can be used to represent favours to be granted by this powerful being. You would have to set some standards as to how much certain favours cost. So 1 'Favour' might be the annual taxes on one acre of plowed land within the kingdom. 500 'Favours' might be enough to buy a reasonable sized house.

There should also be another market in commodities like silk, linen, salt, rice, etc. Commoners would deal in commodities while nobles would deal more in favours. This is handy since above about 20K gold value everything is inaccessible to the general population... you just can't carry enough currency to pay for it.

sikyon
2008-01-23, 08:01 PM
You could also deal in... experiance.

That's right, experiance!

The same way it costs XP to craft magic items, you could trade XP points!

Imagine the possibilities!

Chronos
2008-01-23, 08:07 PM
Currencies will spontaneously arise anywhere there's a need for them. My personal favorite? Now-and-later candies.

When I was a kid, there were a bunch of families who would all celebrate Halloween together. We'd pick one house as home base (whoever lived in the neighborhood with the best candy), and go out trick-or-treating in packs of 2-5 kids (organization: Solitary or pack (1d4+1) ). At the end of the evening, all of us, 20 children or so, would sit around on the living-room floor and trade candies. For some reason nobody was ever able to fathom, Now-and-laters became valuable. None of us actually liked them, but everyone would trade for them, because everyone knew that they could trade them to anyone else.

Dervag
2008-01-23, 08:10 PM
I can more easily get into bottlecaps than friggin pieces of paper with numbers written on it. Can you imagine explaining to an alien:
"Yeah, we made this piece of paper saying '100' and it means its worth a 100 units"
The alien would absolutely be like: "Yeah right, now show me the gold..."

Point:
Anything that's backed is viable.Maybe the alien would have an easier time with it than we do. They're weird like that.


Creepy if you think of people-teeth, but not so much if you consider difficult-to-approach-much-less-slay-monster-teeth. Better than just wearing them around your neck--they represent considerable effort, and provide an interesting counterfeiting challenge.That line about teeth is based on Warhammer 40,000 orks. Orks in that setting have a very strange and rather primitive society. Among other things, their teeth always grow back in, like sharks. So they have a potentially unlimited amount of teeth given time. Therefore, they use teeth among themselves as a form of currency. If they want something badly enough, they knock out enough of their own teeth to pay for it. Or they knock out another ork's teeth to pay for it. Ork teeth decay over time, so the money supply is roughly proportionate to the number of living orks, which prevents inflation or deflation.

This is all on Wikipedia.


Bank notes have been around for ages. Pre-Industrial revolution. They were just gold backed (as in you could walk into the issuing bank, hand them the note, and walk out with the gold value).

Fiat money is a post industrial revolution idea (at least mostly). And it arose because the governments of the world wanted to be able to create free money t finance wars and such.This (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=9483527&postcount=5) post does a good job of illustrating the problem.


And all high-powered enemies leave hearts that can be consumed to increase your vitality...

...wait. I think we've had something like that somewhere in the real world.[Theatrical shudder]

Aquillion
2008-01-23, 09:23 PM
Fiat money is a post industrial revolution idea (at least mostly). And it arose because the governments of the world wanted to be able to create free money t finance wars and such.
That... isn't true. The gold standard became impractical for dozens of reasons, and it really died over a long period of time, but the main reason why it was eventually abandoned was the lack of control it left governments for controlling employment. In a pre-industrial economy, unemployment is not a serious issue; but in an industrialized nation it can ruin economies, destroy nations, collapse governments and cause havoc on a global scale. Throughout the 20th century, there were a series of shocks (the depression, the world wars) that eroded the standard one by one, causing it to be suspended and restored several times so that nations could use inflationary policies to try and deal with the spikes in unemployment; but ultimately, it collapsed (and is unlikely to return in the foreseeable future) because it is impractical in an industrialized nation. Modern countries require more control over their economies than the gold standard allows in order to maintain full or nearly-full employment.

(Nearly everyone who advocates a return to the gold standard, incidentally, does so for political reasons based on that exact fact -- they oppose the control that it gives governments over their own economies, and in particular the fact that it allows the use of inflationary policies to fight unemployment. Realistically, though, the gold standard is dead and likely to remain so; modern governments place too much value on maintaining full employment to consider returning to it. Even if a fringe politician managed to get elected and begin a process to temporarily restore it, the first economic shock and ensuing spike in unemployment would see it instantly abandoned...)

As a practical matter, the gold standard depended on its air of inevitability to survive into the industrial age at all. Now that that has been irrevocably shattered, it can't really be regained; no matter how hard individual politicians push for it, or how much individual ideologies declare it to be a cure-all to every problem, the constant knowledge that it has been abandoned in the past and could easily be abandoned again would render it wholly ineffective in democratic societies.

Ah! I'll bet you thought I'd gone off-topic, didn't you? But all this history talk has a point related to the topic. Fiat money is important (and probably inevitable) in any society with a fluid base of workers (like an industrialized society, say) but isn't likely to show up anywhere else. Unless you're campaigning in Eberron, it probably doesn't fit in your world.

Now, Eberron is sort of interesting, even if you're not running a campaign there or anyplace like there. Its economy is really based on two things: Dragonstones and Dragonmarks. Dragonstones are obvious; they're like barrels of oil that are small and easily traded. Dragonmarks are less obvious but probably more important: The great houses have abilities and can provide services that nobody else in the world can reasonably manage, ever. As a result, whatever they say has value, has value; a big part of the value of Dragonstones comes because the Dragonmarked houses value them so much (your typical commoner can't do much with one, after all.)

In general, even in a low-magic campaign, whoever has the magic is going to control the economy in some fashion... level 15 cleric or wizard powers can do things that no amount of work or money could accomplish for anyone else, and if they're rare, that's only going to make them more important.

Sleet
2008-01-23, 09:44 PM
Don't use steel.

I thoroughly enjoy the Dragonlance setting, but when a sword is worth far more melted down and sold for scrap than it is worked into a useful blade, the economic system simply doesn't withstand serious contemplation.

Mewtarthio
2008-01-23, 09:59 PM
Make sure they're sufficiently tough, though, otherwise you run into the money-grows-on-trees problem that plagues many video games with an economy. (Who remembers getting rich from cutting the grass in Zelda games?)

"Don't you wish there were more... troubles in the world? Hey, why don't we let off steam by breaking these pots?"

What I've always wondered: Is the Poe Salesman's location in the future merely ironic coincidence, or did the guard actually become the Poe Salesman?


You could also deal in... experiance.

That's right, experiance!

The same way it costs XP to craft magic items, you could trade XP points!

Imagine the possibilities!

That would have far-reaching effects that I'm too tired to contemplate right now. Suffice to say, the world would end up with a single superpowered evil tyrant while everyone else was stuck as first-level commoners.

Jack_Simth
2008-01-23, 10:21 PM
In general, even in a low-magic campaign, whoever has the magic is going to control the economy in some fashion... level 15 cleric or wizard powers can do things that no amount of work or money could accomplish for anyone else, and if they're rare, that's only going to make them more important.
Hmm....

Arcane Marked wooden minor favor-tokens. A Wizard's personal promise to cast a spell of a particular level at the request of the bearer the next business day (a lot being cashed in at once qualifies as Extenuating circumstances, in which case, the Wizard has a week to fill all "cashed" tokens). "Shop" wizards make them, and favor-tokens from Wizards that don't have a continual, fixed presence are ignored when they hand them out (you'll need to see a professional banker, generally a shop wizard himself, for local conversions for all but the most famous three wizards). In order for someone to make their own, they have to meet three criteria:
1) Personal accessibility of the Wizard (if you can't be easily found, your tokens can't be "cashed", and so are worthless).
2) Trustworthy (if you don't honor your tokens when someone "cashes" them, they're worthless)
3) Known (if someone doesn't know you meet both 1 and 2, they can't accept your tokens).

In practice, this means that there will be a couple of local Wizards who make tokens (and whose tokens are only accepted in that area, except by professional bankers) in any given area, and a very small handful of Wizards whose tokens are accepted basically everywhere.

As, by default, Arcane Marks are personal, there's no real threat of forgery. They're valuable to the Wizard (their open-ended promises...) and the Wizard uses them as payment - so they're valuable to the locals, too, even if the peasantry are never actually going to cash in those cantrip's they get paid in every week.

Arutema
2008-01-23, 10:31 PM
A wikipedia article that may be relevant. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money)

Emperor Tippy
2008-01-23, 10:35 PM
Thats actually a very good currency. I think I'm going to steal that for a game.

F.L.
2008-01-23, 10:35 PM
I'm in a campaign right now where we run a silver standard, and that works out well.

Any metal will work really.

Copper could be a good choice, as it's a poor material for weapons, and is just as easily worked as gold, and i would hardly consider it a "precious" material. Perhaps your world did once have a gold standard, but for some reason more and of it dissapeared and slowly the economy adjusted to using copper as a currency, similar to the way we use bills today. 10 Copper Piece, 100 Copper Piece, so on and so forth.

Yes, copper is a poor material for weapons. UNTIL YOU ADD TIN. Then it becomes bronze, which is ok for weapons, and many other purposes. Even without the need for electricity, copper is very valuable for many purposes, from tableware to lamps to furniture and statues.

Fax Celestis
2008-01-23, 10:37 PM
Yes, copper is a poor material for weapons. UNTIL YOU ADD TIN. Then it becomes bronze, which is ok for weapons, and many other purposes. Even without the need for electricity, copper is very valuable for many purposes, from tableware to lamps to furniture and statues.

Yeah, but it's coming up with bronze that's the issue. What brilliant person said, "I'm going to take Shoddy Metal A and add Shoddy Metal B, and voila, I have Neat Metal C," and had people believe him?

Collin152
2008-01-23, 10:58 PM
Well somebody did.
Besides, we have divination magics.
"What can I do to make this metal more viable for weaponry?"

Rutee
2008-01-23, 11:14 PM
Uh...
Is now a bad time to point out that the default mideivalness (If I missed a clarifying post by the OP, my apologies) is in the Iron Age? They /should/ know about Bronze.

F.L.
2008-01-23, 11:17 PM
Yeah, but it's coming up with bronze that's the issue. What brilliant person said, "I'm going to take Shoddy Metal A and add Shoddy Metal B, and voila, I have Neat Metal C," and had people believe him?

Copper ores frequently are mixed in with tin ores in the raw rock. So, if you cook some rocks in a charcoal fire at high heat, you often get gradations of bronze or brass anyway. While the results aren't repeatable before the invention of a reliable metallurgical theory, you'd still have some bronze implements.

It appears I am wrong. Copper is infrequently mixed with tin ores. However, it's not that much of a stretch to say "I have 2 metals I can melt. What happens if I mix them to have more of a volume of metal to work with?"

SilentNight
2008-01-23, 11:19 PM
You could try steel like from Dragonlance. For those that don't know there was a big cataclsym that either made gold less rare or steel more-so. I can't remember which. It did make for an interesting campaign in that players were more excited to find a pile of non-magical weapons that a mound of gold.

Fax Celestis
2008-01-24, 12:02 AM
Copper ores frequently are mixed in with tin ores in the raw rock. So, if you cook some rocks in a charcoal fire at high heat, you often get gradations of bronze or brass anyway. While the results aren't repeatable before the invention of a reliable metallurgical theory, you'd still have some bronze implements.

Huh.

...I should stick to sounding like a know-it-all about game mechanics, I suppose. This whole "real world" shtick? Not really my thing. :smalltongue:

Neek
2008-01-24, 12:11 AM
Trade goods like food would be a nice unit of currency. I remember seeing an article in wikipedia mentioning that feudal Japan had a denomination of currency based on how much rice a person needed to eat in a day.

The Aztecs mainly used a system of bartering, however there was always a baseline that anyone could depend on: Cocoa beans. They were a ready food supply, drink supply, and could be used to make more cocoa plants. Any plant that can stay for a long period of time could be used as a baseline for bartering (and therefore, a good currency). After all, in prison, cigarettes are used as currency. And why not? They don't go bad, and are always in good rarity.

Dervag
2008-01-24, 03:46 AM
Hmm....

Arcane Marked wooden minor favor-tokens. A Wizard's personal promise to cast a spell of a particular level at the request of the bearer the next business day (a lot being cashed in at once qualifies as Extenuating circumstances, in which case, the Wizard has a week to fill all "cashed" tokens). "Shop" wizards make them, and favor-tokens from Wizards that don't have a continual, fixed presence are ignored when they hand them out (you'll need to see a professional banker, generally a shop wizard himself, for local conversions for all but the most famous three wizards). In order for someone to make their own, they have to meet three criteria:
1) Personal accessibility of the Wizard (if you can't be easily found, your tokens can't be "cashed", and so are worthless).
2) Trustworthy (if you don't honor your tokens when someone "cashes" them, they're worthless)
3) Known (if someone doesn't know you meet both 1 and 2, they can't accept your tokens).

In practice, this means that there will be a couple of local Wizards who make tokens (and whose tokens are only accepted in that area, except by professional bankers) in any given area, and a very small handful of Wizards whose tokens are accepted basically everywhere.

As, by default, Arcane Marks are personal, there's no real threat of forgery. They're valuable to the Wizard (their open-ended promises...) and the Wizard uses them as payment - so they're valuable to the locals, too, even if the peasantry are never actually going to cash in those cantrip's they get paid in every week.So in this case, wizard tokens (we need a one-word name for the things) are the equivalent of classical or medieval currency with the ruler's face cast into the coin. That kind of coin was so valuable not because it was made out of solid gold or silver, since sometimes it wasn't. It was valuable because it was backed by the monarch's guarantee. Its 'intrinsic' value as a hunk of gold made it more than pure fiat money, but the fiat was a part of its value. This is why people would often tolerate a little debasement of the currency, but not much.

The only problem with Marked tokens is that they're prone to inflation if people don't redeem favors fast enough. If they become currency, there will be vastly more tokens in the economy than all the wizards in the area could hope to redeem in a hurry. Since the token economy essentially gives wizards a license to print money whenever they need to, using their future time and energy as collateral for the 'loan,' that can lead to trouble. Many wizards will make tokens faster than they could redeem them by doing favors, because they know most of the tokens will never come back to them and will instead be used as currency for years. The total supply of tokens swells, and things get out of hand.

I'm not sure how to avoid this happening. But don't let that stop you. It's entirely possible to set your campaign in an unstable economy, one that won't last long. Say that the numbers of wizards have risen over the past century, so that there are finally enough Marked tokens to use as currency when there never were before. Or something like that.


Yeah, but it's coming up with bronze that's the issue. What brilliant person said, "I'm going to take Shoddy Metal A and add Shoddy Metal B, and voila, I have Neat Metal C," and had people believe him?Someone clever who managed to pull it off? Once he actually showed people the bronze, they had to believe him. You can't exactly say "no, I refuse to believe you when you tell me how you made this super-hard metal."

The thing is, if your campaign hasn't discovered bronze there will be no good metal weapons or tools- iron is harder to work than bronze, so the secrets of iron working are practically impossible to discover for any culture that doesn't already have a strong mastery of bronze. No earthly civilization figured out iron working without knowing a lot about bronze. And I don't think this fellow wants to set his campaign in the High Neolithic era of preliterate Egypt and Sumeria, although that would be so cool.


You could try steel like from Dragonlance. For those that don't know there was a big cataclsym that either made gold less rare or steel more-so. I can't remember which. It did make for an interesting campaign in that players were more excited to find a pile of non-magical weapons that a mound of gold.As someone pointed out on the last page, when the iron in the sword costs more (and is worth more melted down and used for currency) than the sword itself, your economy dies because it's profitable to melt down swords and eventually your society gets overrun by orcs with clubs.

Steel itself is lousy coinage because the blacksmithing techniques for making iron into steel in a preindustrial society make it hard to make small, finely detailed pieces of steel that all have the same weight. Iron (and steel) are bulky, unless they're so rare that tiny pieces are valuable, in which case there will be no iron (or steel) weapons or armor. Iron (and steel) rust, which makes it hard to maintain a large horde of currency. You won't find old steel coins lying around, or if you do they'll be rusted beyond recognition.

Steel is not a good form of currency, although it can certainly be a mildly entertaining one.

Jack_Simth
2008-01-24, 07:18 AM
So in this case, wizard tokens (we need a one-word name for the things)
Call them Markers, Chits, or Chips (names that have been used in different times and places for money on a gambling table or evidence of a debt of some kind). The exact name doesn't matter until you hit the gaming table. Or just call them "Favors" like you use later.

are the equivalent of classical or medieval currency with the ruler's face cast into the coin. That kind of coin was so valuable not because it was made out of solid gold or silver, since sometimes it wasn't. It was valuable because it was backed by the monarch's guarantee. Its 'intrinsic' value as a hunk of gold made it more than pure fiat money, but the fiat was a part of its value. This is why people would often tolerate a little debasement of the currency, but not much.

The only problem with Marked tokens is that they're prone to inflation if people don't redeem favors fast enough. If they become currency, there will be vastly more tokens in the economy than all the wizards in the area could hope to redeem in a hurry. Since the token economy essentially gives wizards a license to print money whenever they need to, using their future time and energy as collateral for the 'loan,' that can lead to trouble. Many wizards will make tokens faster than they could redeem them by doing favors, because they know most of the tokens will never come back to them and will instead be used as currency for years. The total supply of tokens swells, and things get out of hand.

I'm not sure how to avoid this happening. But don't let that stop you. It's entirely possible to set your campaign in an unstable economy, one that won't last long. Say that the numbers of wizards have risen over the past century, so that there are finally enough Marked tokens to use as currency when there never were before. Or something like that.
It's avoided the same basic way it is for modern printed money (or the same way it is for diamonds). A new guy can try, but it won't work - he's not a known agent; nobody accepts his Favors - they don't know if they can trust him, they don't know how long he'll be around, and so on. It does cause inflation - but only on that particular wizard's Favors (just like with multiple currencies). After a point, nobody accepts that Wizard's Favors anymore.

Alternately, the Wizards who set this up originally (Elves or Elans, you want this stable) have a lot of self-control, and use it as a power-base; they can't afford someone else ruining the system, so they implement an amount of policing that keeps it in check. In other words, there's an organization somewhere that will Scry/Buff/Teleport/Nova you if you go overboard. Possibly using Intelligence and Charisma drain down to 9 the first time, as a warning.

Xuincherguixe
2008-01-24, 07:58 AM
A barter system would be interesting. I'm planning on using one of those, but most of what the players will be dealing with is very low tech, and high magic.

Bartering might be inconvenient, but, it'd be an interesting change.

Isomenes
2008-01-24, 09:08 AM
Fantastic suggestions all--as to the discussion of metal availability, the person who noted that metals wouldn't be used for currency got it best. Bronze (and even some iron, and thence steel) is available, but only for useful purposes owing to the relative scarcity of it. That way, armor and such are still available. In choosing a non-gold economy I'm trying to reflect the general mineral poorness of the area, because it is one of the major factors inhibiting the growth of the settlement that forms the main city. (The premise is that the city is the remains of a crashed seedship, with limited expansion due to poor mineral content, low birth rate, and a deadly ecology with reptilian species at the apex.) With an abundance of metals, the settlement would very likely have taken a radically different course, but as things stand, it's stuck in pre-industrial agricultural diffusion. The ship's hull is no longer able to be melted down--the earlier generations were able to make some use of it, and their legacy remains in the form of legendary mithral/adamantine weapons and armor, but the level of technology is back to the Iron Age.

I really like the notion of a new use for Diplomacy, essentially allowing a Barter check to be made against NPCs. In combination with a stable ivory/teeth/shell currency and salt/grain banks, this could make for a very interesting system.

Beware the Salt Barons!

pendell
2008-01-24, 09:29 AM
Simply put, it's shiny and people like that

Therefore, if we accept that if A = B and B = C that A = C then.

People like Shiny Things. Gold is a Shiny Thing. People like Gold.


More than that (http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/01/what_can_we_infer_from_900_gol.html)



What must first be understood is that gold is a special commodity, unlike any other in the world. Gold has proven during the course of history to hold its value relative to other goods and services better than any other commodity. This is why, ages ago, when the dollar was held constant in gold terms, the price of bread cost the same in 1930 as it did in 1790. This critical attribute of gold, where it holds its relative value better than anything else known to man, is due to its unique physical characteristics. The world's total supply of gold is well known; gold is soft, and thus can easily be divided into different weights; portable; an efficient store of value because it can be easily hidden and transported; durable; and can be found all over the world.


So what you're looking for is an item in a campaign world that has all of these attributes:

1) soft, easy to divide.
2) Portable.
3) Can be found everywhere.

What might fit this profile?

-- Grains.
-- wine.
-- furs, skins.
-- water (if you're on a desert world, it's literally life!)
-- iron (80%+ of the earth is iron)

Respectfully,

Brian P.

F.L.
2008-01-24, 09:30 AM
Come to think of it, in ancient mesopotamia, there was a dearth of... well a lot of things. Rocks were a surprisingly rare and valuable commodity, in particular Lapis Lazuli. The soil in most of the fertile river valleys (where the civilizations were) was mainly sedimentary, which allowed food growing, but had few usable rocks, which had to be imported from the mountains. So, whenever they would get a decent size rock, it was usually carved into some kind of stone sculpture or another, stelea and ewers in particular. So, you could actually have a rock economy, with a trade in moderately sized stone objects of semi-precious minerals.

Further, if people don't readily have metal weaponry, they can always make flint weaponry or shattered glass weaponry. If you have sand or soil, you can always melt it down into glass if you have an available heat source. Such items are labor intensive to make, but are very deadly. It's just that they're only deadly once before degrading...

mabriss lethe
2008-01-24, 03:53 PM
Hmm....

Arcane Marked wooden minor favor-tokens. A Wizard's personal promise to cast a spell of a particular level at the request of the bearer the next business day (a lot being cashed in at once qualifies as Extenuating circumstances, in which case, the Wizard has a week to fill all "cashed" tokens). "Shop" wizards make them, and favor-tokens from Wizards that don't have a continual, fixed presence are ignored when they hand them out (you'll need to see a professional banker, generally a shop wizard himself, for local conversions for all but the most famous three wizards). In order for someone to make their own, they have to meet three criteria:
1) Personal accessibility of the Wizard (if you can't be easily found, your tokens can't be "cashed", and so are worthless).
2) Trustworthy (if you don't honor your tokens when someone "cashes" them, they're worthless)
3) Known (if someone doesn't know you meet both 1 and 2, they can't accept your tokens).

In practice, this means that there will be a couple of local Wizards who make tokens (and whose tokens are only accepted in that area, except by professional bankers) in any given area, and a very small handful of Wizards whose tokens are accepted basically everywhere.

As, by default, Arcane Marks are personal, there's no real threat of forgery. They're valuable to the Wizard (their open-ended promises...) and the Wizard uses them as payment - so they're valuable to the locals, too, even if the peasantry are never actually going to cash in those cantrip's they get paid in every week.

You could take that a step further. Have a single overarching mage's guild that effctively runs the entire banking system. Marks issued by private wizards/sorcerors can only be redeemed at a local level, generally only by the wizard who cast the mark. Wizards and sorcerors who are members of the guild have their personal marks archived in the guild records. Guild sponsored marks can be traded at any guild run bank.

Telonius
2008-01-24, 04:23 PM
More than that (http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/01/what_can_we_infer_from_900_gol.html)



So what you're looking for is an item in a campaign world that has all of these attributes:

1) soft, easy to divide.
2) Portable.
3) Can be found everywhere.

What might fit this profile?

-- Grains.
-- wine.
-- furs, skins.
-- water (if you're on a desert world, it's literally life!)
-- iron (80%+ of the earth is iron)

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I'd put in one more characteristic.
4a) Does not fulfill a critical role in sustaining life/producing useful goods, or
4b) Fulfills such a critical role, but is quickly used; quickly and reliably replaced.

One of the reasons gold was used as the chief medium of exchange was precisely the fact that people didn't need it to eat or build with. If you tried to use (for example) iron as your medium of exchange, iron tools would suddenly become a luxury product. Every bit of iron you used for garden shears would be iron you didn't use to make coins to buy grain, or cows, or whatever. (This is similar to what's happening to the price of corn in the US at the moment. Since it's become more useful as a possible fuel, the price of it for food has greatly increased). Now if people had some time to get used to it, they'd make the adjustment; but that initial mental barrier is always going to be there. Without a strong command economy determined to make it work, it probably wouldn't get off the ground.

If you're looking at a dwarven economy, one possibility would be to use "one beer" as a medium of exchange.

i.e. "Okay, I'll do it, but you owe me five beers!"

This fulfills all of the characteristics:
1. Easy to divide. On the keg level anyway; dividing a single beer is probably punishable by death.
2. Portable. Beer is moderately portable. Kegs can be put on carts.
3. Can be found everywhere. It's easy to make.
4a. It is critical for sustaining dwarven life, but
4b. It is quickly used; quickly and reliably replaced.

Note, that this may explain why dwarves are seen as having vast wealth. Keeping track of all the beers owed and paid could have been the precursor to a dwarven banking economy.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-01-24, 04:27 PM
:smalleek: Someone could die if there was ever a run on the banks, though.

Draz74
2008-01-24, 05:59 PM
I think the Wealth System (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/srd/srd_modern_html/msrdwealth.html) from d20 Modern is a great simulation of a barter economy where lots of things are used as currency and their relative values fluctuate a lot.

Frosty
2008-01-24, 06:15 PM
The arcane mark is actually a good idea. Even if precious metals are very scarce, why *not* have a system of paper currency? Each bill is arcane marked to prevent counterfeiting, and the bill is backed by the promises of a kingdom. Currency has to be backed by *something*, and the total producing power and coffers of a large kingdom will usually do it.