Copper standard

[Finarvyn]

I don't like having prices all given in different coin values. (For example, Grappling hook 1 gp, ink pen 1 sp, flask 3 cp.) I'm a big fan of keeping to the gold-silver-copper standard, although I know that lots of folks like the less usual coins as well, but I don't see the advantage in mixing prices from one coin to another in the cost charts.

Think about this: Gold becomes really special because of its value but doensn't seem as special if all costs are listed in gold pieces. Also, silver and copper piece values become trivialized because they are all fractions of the standard gold coin. I've had players find chests of copper pieces and just leave them behind because each piece is only 1/100 gold.

I would propose the following: consider that a copper piece is a standard coin like a dollar. (Or a pound or a Franc or whatever base monitary unit a person thinks in. I'm in the US, so I think in terms of dollars.) Knowing that a CP is like a dollar helps me to "fake it" when I need to come up with prices on the spot -- if a fast-food meal costs me $5-$10, I can estimate that a cheap meal would run a character 5-10 CP.

If a copper piece is $1, then a silver piece is like $10 and a gold piece is $100.

Go into McDonalds and try to pay for a meal with a $100 bill. In the same way, if the character goes into a tavern and pulls out a GP it's probable that the innkeeper won't have change. Same thing works for treasure on a monster or a person in a city encounter. A basic middle-class person on the street might carry $50 or less at a time, which could be 5 SP or 50 CP or some mix of coins.

Redo the cost charts to post all prices in CP. Using my earlier example the flask is 3 CP, the ink pen 10 CP, and the grappling hook 100 CP. This starts to get a player thinking about the value of a gold piece and the fact that finding a chest of gold is a real fortune.

Just my two cents.

NOTE: I used to advocate a "silver standard" but have realized that a copper standard really makes a lot more sense.

[geoffrey]

I also prefer a copper standard. I do, however, like lots of different coins. I steal Gary's coinage system from his first Gord the Rogue novel:

"The lowest form of currency is an iron drab. Five of these are equal to one brass bit, and ten bits comprise one bronze zee. The copper common is the next most valuable, equal to five zees, and four commons make up the value of one silver noble. An electrum lucky is equal to five nobles, and ten luckies are the same worth as one gold orb. Atop the pyramid is the platinum plate, equal to one gold orb plus one electrum lucky. Thus, for comparison, a silver noble is worth one thousand iron drabs, an electrum lucky equates to one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand bronze zees, and a platinum plate is equal to fifty five thousand iron drabs."

Or, to put it in terms of the copper standard:

250 iron pieces = 1 copper piece
50 brass pieces = 1 copper piece
5 bronze pieces = 1 copper piece
4 copper pieces = 1 silver piece
20 copper pieces = 1 electrum piece
200 copper pieces = 1 gold piece
220 copper pieces = 1 platinum piece

I think of the various coins basically as such:

iron piece = nickel
brass piece = 50-cent piece
bronze piece = $5 bill
copper piece = $20 bill
silver piece = $100 bill
electrum = $500 bill
gold = $5,000
platinum = $5,500

Thus children might carry around a few iron pieces. Beggars might have some brass pieces. A poor man might have some bronze pieces. A common man would have copper. The nobility carries silver and electrum. The coffers of kings contain gold and platinum.

[Finarvyn]

A well-thought-out system, Geoffrey. I guess I like my treasures (and equipment costs) to be simple and a 1-10-100 numbering system works best for me.

Either way, I'd like to see cost charts all given in terms of a single standard coin.

[mushgnome]

I also agree with the move away from gold standard. In my current campaign we are using silver standard, in the past I have experimented with copper standard as well.

I find that with really expensive items like plate armor, warhorses, boats, etc. it makes them seem more special if you express the price in silvers or coppers with a comma in the number (1,000 or more).

[talysman]

May 26, 2012 9:09:47 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

If a copper piece is $1, then a silver piece is like $10 and a gold piece is $100.

Shouldn't it be $5 for a silver piece and $50 for a gold piece?

Not that I'm criticizing. I'm always forgetting the 5 copper to a silver exchange rate, myself.

I think I prefer having all currency being the same coin and converting to a silver standard. Then we could have a farthing -- an actual silver coin cut into four quarters. In your equivalents, a farthing would be a buck twenty-five. Gold coins are gold coins, but no kingdom currently mints them.

[mushgnome]

Players in my campaigns have always gravitated toward 100cp=10sp=1gp as the easiest and most logical conversion rate.

In my current campaign we are using 500cp=50sp=1gp (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) and to be honest it is confusing as hell.

[premmy]

My thoughts related to the matter are the following:

- D&D economy is utter bollocks. Not because it's gold standard instead of silver, or silver instead of copper, or whatever. It's bollocks beacuse the relative values of items (regardless of what coinage they're expressed in) are bollocks.

- There are two types of players: the type who cares about historical verisimilitude at least a tiny little bit, and the type who doesn't. The first type will not be satisfied by moving those silly and internally vastly inconsistent prices from gold units to silver or copper. The second type doesn't care, so whatever.

- Regardless of the above, I see a practical issue with giving prices in copper rather than silver: all the numbers on the price list will be needlessly high for the sorts of items adventurer PCs are interested in buying. They don't care if a pint of ale, a bag of nails or a saddlebag is expressed as 0.1 something. They do care if all the weapons and armour are listed as costing hundreds or thousands of something. To follow up on the OP, the result wouldn't be "the copper piece is the dollar". It would be "the copper piece is the cent, and all the prices everywhere are given in cents".

[Cameron DuBeers]

I've always looked at the monetary/economic system as rather like the combat system. It gives a nod to real life but is too abstract to ponder deeply.

So, better armor equals better protection in combat, just as gold grants more buying power than silver. All the arguments about coin size and weight, or armor protection over the torso versus legs ... I find them interesting but I've never had the notion to revamp the basic systems of the game.

... and I do mean that I find them interesting. There are scholars here giving away all these wonderful pieces of information and I didn't have to sit in a classroom and pay tuition to get them!

[DungeonDevil]

I have never liked the btb monetary system. Ever. I think the best system would be monster-parts. "I'll take that draught-horse for twenty goblin hides, and a hobgoblin's ear."
"I'll give you my old cuirass for a pickled mermaid's tail."

[Finarvyn]

May 26, 2012 10:35:46 GMT -6 premmy said:

- Regardless of the above, I see a practical issue with giving prices in copper rather than silver: all the numbers on the price list will be needlessly high for the sorts of items adventurer PCs are interested in buying. They don't care if a pint of ale, a bag of nails or a saddlebag is expressed as 0.1 something. They do care if all the weapons and armour are listed as costing hundreds or thousands of something. To follow up on the OP, the result wouldn't be "the copper piece is the dollar". It would be "the copper piece is the cent, and all the prices everywhere are given in cents".

Yeah, I was just making that connection. I was tinkering with the cost charts for D&D Next (although honestly it could be AD&D or any other RPG) and find that posting costs in silvers seems to be a lot more reasonable, for exaclty the reason that you mentioned.

I started with armor, which happened to be all posted in GP. This seemed expensive but not impossible. Chainmial, for example, prices out at 10,000 CP. Hmmm. Then I did weapons and again they seemed a bit pricey but not impossible. Until I reached the club, which listed at 5 SP would be 50 CP. Fifty bucks for a club?

So I went back and re-did my tables in SP instead of CP. This moves the price of chainmail to 1,000 and the club is 5. I could see paying five bucks for a decent club if you're looking at something better than just cutting a stick from a tree.

Darn. Now I'm back to where I started, expressing costs in silvers again.

[darkling]

I think that the silver standard seems to work best. So the silver piece is basically a dollar and the copper piece is there for making change.

[talysman]

I havve seen analysis by people into the actual history, comparing prices given in things like the Domesday book, and apparently if you just read GP as SP for everything but horses and armor, no arithmetic at all, the numbers are pretty close to medieval prices.

Of course, I prefer using something close to Zak's penny/nickel/dime/quarter system, which is way more abstract and less historically accurate.

[runeward]

I like the silver standard because it splits the difference. It lets them throw copper as tips without having to actually track anything on paper, but gold still gets to feel a bit special and then platinum takes the elusive $100-bill place.

[gronanofsimmerya]

For a while I used medieval English currency.

12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound.

1/3 of a pound is a mark.

2 French crowns equal one pound Sterling.

To make it more fun, there was NEVER a 'mark' coin, it was purely a money of account in written records. Likewise the shilling, until the time of Henry VIII.

Oh, and a groat equals four pence, for no d**n good reason.

[ralph]

We stopped using 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound as recently as 1971.
I'm glad I'm just young enough never to have worried about the maths!

[Malcadon]

May 26, 2012 9:30:51 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I also prefer a copper standard. I do, however, like lots of different coins. I steal Gary's coinage system from his first Gord the Rogue novel:

"The lowest form of currency is an iron drab. Five of these are equal to one brass bit, and ten bits comprise one bronze zee. The copper common is the next most valuable, equal to five zees, and four commons make up the value of one silver noble. An electrum lucky is equal to five nobles, and ten luckies are the same worth as one gold orb. Atop the pyramid is the platinum plate, equal to one gold orb plus one electrum lucky. Thus, for comparison, a silver noble is worth one thousand iron drabs, an electrum lucky equates to one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand bronze zees, and a platinum plate is equal to fifty five thousand iron drabs."

OK, I just ran the numbers:

	id	bb	bz	cc	sn	el	go	pp
1 ip =	1	.20	.02	.004	.001	.0002	.00002	.000018
1 bb =	5	1	.10	.02	.005	.0001	.00001	.00009
1 bz =	50	10	1	.20	.05	.01	.001	.0009
1 cc =	250	50	5	1	.25	.05	.005	.0045
1 sn =	1000	200	20	4	1	.25	.02	.018
1 el =	5000	1000	100	20	5	1	.10	.09
1 go =	50000	10000	1000	200	50	10	1	.90
1 pp =	55000	11000	1100	220	55	11	1.1	1

==KEY==
id = iron drab
bb = brass bit
bz = bronze zee
cc = copper common
sn = silver noble
el = electrum lucky
go = gold orb
pp = platinum plate

It was a bit of work (figuring-out the platinum values, and the table codes), but here it is. There is an error in the top quote:

"The lowest form of currency is an iron drab. Five of these are equal to one brass bit, and ten bits comprise one bronze zee. The copper common is the next most valuable, equal to five zees, and four commons make up the value of one silver noble. An electrum lucky is equal to five nobles, and ten luckies are the same worth as one gold orb. Atop the pyramid is the platinum plate, equal to one gold orb plus one electrum lucky. Thus, for comparison, a silver noble is worth one thousand iron drabs, an electrum lucky equates to one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand brass bits, a gold orb has the same value as one thousand bronze zees, and a platinum plate is equal to fifty five thousand iron drabs."

Although, the values are irregular for most players, but if they were applied like in real life, one will get wildly absurd conversions and fluctuating unit values, like with the coinage from Harry Potter.

I really like finding coins and values for coins that are less then copper, as well as names for coins in different settings. Thank for the find!

(edit: after some re-calc, zeros were removed form the platinum side of the chart - they come out to .9 to most coins; ones highlighted for clarity)

[geoffrey]

Good catch. Instead of reading "a gold orb has the same value as one thousand brass bits", it should read "a gold orb has the same value as ten thousand brass bits".