In my next campaign, I and thinking of using a silver standard. The gold standard has always bugged me. But, I want to keep it simple. So, everything printed as a gold piece will now be a silver piece. Every silver piece will be a copper. And every copper will be a new type of piece, the brass piece.
10 brass = 1 copper
10 copper = 1 silver
10 silver = 1 gold
10 gold = 1 platinum
A +1 dagger would cost 2000 silver, or 200 gold.
This makes gold more rare, and a platinum piece very rare.
My head wraps around this better than the current system.
What do you think?
I did this. Campaign didn't last into high levels, but at low levels it worked fine. Makes gold actually feel valuable.
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If you're using a lot of printed materials (like an AP or somesuch), it's going to be very error prone.
The tricky thing it is that you have the same terms in the source as well as the destination. If you made up all new terms, it would be less error prone.
Something like:
10 brass = 1 copper
10 pennies = 1 silver
10 mithrils = 1 gold
10 gil = 1 platinum
That way, if you see an "old" word (or even 'say' an old word in your mind), you'll know that it's from the old system, and need to be converted. But if you hear a new word, you'll know it's converted.
Otherwise, you run into a situation where you get the phrase "2d6 gold" in your head, and you don't know if it's pre-converted or post-converted.
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Otherwise, potato potato, it doesn't make any difference.
Erik, I like your idea of a new name for each coin. There are plenty to choose from, Quid, Shekel, etc.
But I agree so much with Blymurkla, it is not potato, potato. It is more potato, and potato gilded in gold. When I think of gold, I think of something of real value. Something of worth. It looses that sense of worth with the gold standard.
You still need a lower than copper coin type to create the greater sense of worth.
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FWIW, for my Golarion-set game, I use...
golar ==> cp
lunar ==> sp
solar ==> gp
stellar => pp
I find that these are fairly easy to remember.
And at one time, I loved the idea of a standard for coins that at least came closer to a RL medieval or Renaissance standard. Right up until I read an article that Steve Jackson wrote about medieval currency, where he said something to the effect of...
He wasn't advocating one standard or the other, mind you. Just pointing out that players' expectations have been spoiled, and they're not prone to be impressed when a recent patron hands each PC literally a handful of gold coins for their troubles. Even though the PCs themselves should be!
{EtA:} Rather than finding a metal to use below copper, I've broken the copper coins into quarters: 1/4 of a golar or whatever is a "bit."
Coins in Varisia typically were minted in the dwarven stronghold of Janderhoff. While one sees Chelish coinage as well, it’s more suspect of being debased. (The Varisian terms for types of coins -— such as solar -— are used for both mints.) The dwarves mark the front sides of their coins with Torag’s symbol, a dwarven hammer at rest, and the reverse side of copper coins with a mountain (golars), of silver coins with a crescent moon (lunars), of gold coins with a radiant sun (solars), and of platinum coins with a pentacle (stellars).
We’re used to having the size of a coin demonstrate its worth, but here it’s reversed: golars are roughly the size of a quarter, lunars the size of a nickel, and solars the size of a penny. Stellars are significantly thinner and smaller than a penny!
Don't bother renaming everything, just stop referring to gold, and it will stop being the standard. I did this once, and it made sense.
If you decide that gold is rare and the world doesn't contain enough gold to mint into coins, the inhabitants wouldn't talk about gold. The big reason that the game has a gold standard is because everything is made in reference to gp. If you rewrote everything to reference sp instead, gold coins instantly become a big deal. Maybe only royal vaults and dragon hordes have silver coins. If someone pays with a gold coin, he's a baller. It would be like carrying around $100 bills. Not unheard of, but not frequent.
Everyone gets paid in silver, all prices are represented in silver (or copper,) monsters don't usually drop coins of higher value than silver. It's quite easy and effective.
In a normal game paying in platinum is like carrying around $100 bills, and you hardly ever hear platinum mentioned, but frankly I don't expect oohs and aahs from the players when they find a sack of platinum. Money is money is money.
and big denomination is always useful when buying expensive stuff like real estate and magic items
Brass is copper and zinc, no iron. The zinc portion can be pretty large (generally larger than the tin part of bronze).
For the OP: I doubt brass is inherently less valuable than pure copper. But perhaps the brass coins are considerably smaller than the copper coins.
or you could go the way Leiber did in Lankhmar and have iron coins as the bottom rung of coinage... IIRC, Rolemaster did the same.
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Personally I think this will only serve to confuse players and doesn't really add much.
As a player it has never mattered to me what the coin was called, only what I could buy with it. If all you're doing is essentially renaming things it does nothing, except maybe make you feel a bit better.
Green Ronin's Freeport setting keeps the standard coin types, but calls them lords (gp), skulls (sp), and sickles (cp). Most people in town buy and sell things using commonplace skulls and sickles, but calling a gold coin a "lord" nicely reinforces that only the wealthy will have and use that denomination regularly.
Thanks for all the feedback. It was what I was looking for.
In the gold standard, where a gold is like a dollar, a platinum is like a ten dollar bill.
In the silver standard, a silver is indeed like a silver dollar, with a platinum more like a one hundred dollar bill.
The more I think about, the more likely I will make the change. It will make it easier for PCs to carry large sums without as much weight, particularly at higher levels. That is big too. 20 Platinums buys that +1 dagger.
Again, thanks for the feedback.
And though brass may in reality be equal to copper, I think most see brass as a lesser valued metal. And brass coins were heavily utilized from Roman times through the Middle Ages.
This is all about perception anyway.
PCs shouldn't need to carry around big sum of gold. In fact, trade goods (including gems) can be bought and sold for the same price. So most adventurers should be converting their large sums of loose gold/platinum to diamonds, which can be converted to cash as they need to.
Also, the Bank of Abadar is a thing. Once you have thousands of gold to your name, you're probably keeping that in the bank (which has the equivalent of promissory notes between branches).
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That is all well and good if you have banks and a place to convert the gems. But sometimes that is not always available. Again, it is more of a perception thing, than a significant change in game mechanics.
That is all well and good if you have banks and a place to convert the gems. But sometimes that is not always available.
If you don't have that available you probably also don't have any place to spend it either.
As GM I have thrown many wandering merchants in the path of the adventurers. Just recently had a merchant bargeman with a number of useful wares. There were no banks for the PCs to run to.
As GM I have thrown many wandering merchants in the path of the adventurers. Just recently had a merchant bargeman with a number of useful wares. There were no banks for the PCs to run to.
That might be somewhat useful for a few low levels, but honestly it makes no sense to transport incredibly valuable merchandise that way. Remember that moderate level magic items represent lifetimes worth of income to peasants. Obviously we have different viewpoints, but in my imagination people aren't moving their valuable goods about like that because it doesn't make sense (the risk is much higher than keeping them in place).
We do have different viewpoints on this. And again it is mainly about perception of the terms gold and silver. But carrying large sums of coinage do happen in the campaigns I have both GM'd and played.
I was recently in a campaign that I was 7th level before we had an opportunity to spend the gold found. Weight became an issue.
I am currently running a Pathfinder AP where the party is about 8th level and have yet to visit anything larger than a village. They are still carrying everything they have found so far. Thankfully, that is about to change for them. BTW-I he bargeman was in this campaign. I had to add it to give the PCs an outlet for what they have collected to date. They were 6th level about to turn 7th.
But good fortune to you with your gold standard campaigns.
I think our different viewpoints on how the game world works is what is driving on difference in opinion on the "gold standard" and whether or not it matters.
Do your players not get a 2,000 gp Handy Haversack within the first 5 levels and just use that? Plus getting any item from it as a move action is pretty handy when you want to walk about town, and then need a weapon in hand.
This gold piece update seems like a lot of conversion for little gain. If you want to have a currency that seems impressive, just use platinum.
nosig, I agree with you. I'm just different from the OP in being able to accept a gold standard, given that this is a world with dwarves -- that is, with decent supplies of gold. I still try for immersion in an economy based on coins rather than paper or data bits. Every so often I remind my players of how big a copper coin (my golar) is, or how small a platinum one (my stellar) is.
And I've thrown in the detail that Chelish currency is often debased, and dwarven currency is more trustworthy, although I haven't gone anywhere with that yet. Well, I did give out Minkan currency at one point, since we're playing Jade Regent. Because no one local knew who minted it, it was only of scholarly interest in town -- but an NPC gobbled that up and kept it. I'm looking forward to working more with mintages in the future, as the party travels country to country.
One thing I'd love help with is weight. I've thrown up my hands on the subject, and gone with the RAW 50 coins/lb for simplicity's sake. But the PCs recently found a leather sack containing (because... reasons) 8,453 lunars (sp). I've specified that a lunar is a silver coin roughly the size of a nickel. Now, it's an alloy -- sterling silver? And I had to go with RAW on weight because I hadn't done my homework: 169 lbs.
Let's make it simpler; by the book, 1,000 coins in any coinage weighs 20 lbs. What is the weight really, for...
<> 1,000 copper coins the size of a quarter? (10 gp in value.)
<> 1,000 silver coins the size of a nickel? (100 gp in value.)
<> 1,000 gold coins the size of a dime? (1,000 gp in value.)
<> 1,000 platinum coins thinner and smaller across than a penny? (10,000 gp in value.)
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From classic treasures revisited...if you are the kind of GM keeping track of weights and coins:
Bag of Holding type I can have 12 500 coins in it and the Type IV at most can have 75 000 coins. That's it if you only fill the bag with coins...most of the times, adventurers would try to have gems or other ways to transport wealth.
Should be noted that if you use the usual 50 coins/lb(the book doesn't differentiate between the type of coins), most adventurers wouldn't walk around with a lot of coins to say the least, as the weight quickly become a problem or even be able to pick up a dragon hoard (for old dragons and the likes).
I guess by the rules, you are supposed to keep track of it...but that is quite cumbersome.
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Hmmm... needlessly complicated calculations, figuring out density and volume of metals and coins? Sure, why not?
For these, I'm assuming a pure metal, not an alloy of any kind, as those can vary immensely.
Spoilering my calculations, and I really love WolframAlpha.
So, copper has a density of 8.92 g/cm^3. A US quarter has a volume of 808.9 mm^3, or .8089 cubic centimeters. Multiplying that, we find our pure copper Golar weighs 7.215388 grams. Multiplying that by 1,000, we get 7.215 kilograms per thousand coins, or 15.92 pounds.
Silver has a density of 10.49 g g/cm^3. A US nickel has a volume of 689 mm^3, or .689 cubic centimeters. Multiplying that, we find our pure silver Lunar weighs 7.22761 grams. Multiplying that by 1,000, we get 7.227 kilograms per thousand coins, or 15.93 pounds.
Gold has a density of 19.3 g g/cm^3. A US dime has a volume of 340.1 mm^3, or .3401 cubic centimeters. Multiplying that, we find our pure gold Solar weighs 6.56393 grams. Multiplying that by 1,000, we get 6.653 kilograms per thousand coins, or 14.47 pounds.
Finally, Platinum has a density of 21.09 g g/cm^3. A US penny has a volume of 441.8 mm^3, or .4418 cubic centimeters. If we assume it's 3/4ths the size of a penny, that gives us a volume of .33135 cm^3. Multiplying that, we find our pure platinum Stellar weighs 6.9881715 grams. Multiplying that by 1,000, we get 6.988 kilograms per thousand coins, or 15.40 pounds.
Basically, they all come out to right around 16 pounds for a thousand coins. I honestly did not expect that.
Gosh, me neither! Thank you soooo much. 20 lbs/1000 is a bit of a round-up, but not by that much. It looks like it's closer to talk about 67 coins per lb, but it's not necessary to differentiate coinages.
Oh, and I just found out how much silver is in a silver coin, after searching Wiki... for Gold Karats. (Go figure.) 90% silver, 10% copper. Same weight, luckily.
Properly minted gold coins, OTOH, were 23-7/8 K or so close to 100% that it's not worth more math.
Of course, if silver and copper weigh the same in any proportion... why did they use scales? Maybe "debased" coins included nasty things like tin?
Well, not quite. If the coins were the same size, the silver coins would be about 17% heavier, it's just that a quarter happens to have just about 17% more volume than a nickel. So there's that random trivia fact for you.
1,000 90% silver, 10% copper nickel/Lunar would weigh
15.69 pounds, a small, but noticeable difference.
Well, not quite. If the coins were the same size, the silver coins would be about 17% heavier, it's just that a quarter happens to have just about 17% more volume than a nickel. So there's that random trivia fact for you.
1,000 90% silver, 10% copper nickel/Lunar would weigh
15.69 pounds, a small, but noticeable difference.
Another reason to go with 1.5 lbs per 100 coins. Thank you again!!!!!!
Gosh, me neither! Thank you soooo much. 20 lbs/1000 is a bit of a round-up, but not by that much. It looks like it's closer to talk about 67 coins per lb, but it's not necessary to differentiate coinages.
Oh, and I just found out how much silver is in a silver coin, after searching Wiki... for Gold Karats. (Go figure.) 90% silver, 10% copper. Same weight, luckily.
Properly minted gold coins, OTOH, were 23-7/8 K or so close to 100% that it's not worth more math.
Of course, if silver and copper weigh the same in any proportion... why did they use scales? Maybe "debased" coins included nasty things like tin?
they used scales because the most common way to adulterate currency was clipping, which did reduce the weight of the coin.