The monetary system of Dungeons & Dragons sucks; we all instinctively know this. Sure, it’s a game, and sure, Gygax designed it this way for ease of play, but it’s always been a hot mess.
- It’s flavorless.
- It requires a lot of completely absurd assumptions in order to make even nominal sense—the assumption that all coins minted by all societies everywhere throughout history have always had the same fixed weight, for instance (even if that weight has fluctuated wildly between the various editions of the game—a character can carry a maximum of 3,000 coins’ weight of encumbrance in OD&D, 1,600 coins’ weight in Moldvay/Cook, or 2,400 coins’ in Mentzer; coins weigh 10/pound in 1e, 50/pound in 3.x, and 100/pound in ACKS).
- It massively undervalues the precious metals themselves, such that their use as a system of currency ceases to make much sense, as it becomes very difficult to transport enough of a given coin to transact business at the higher levels (in ACKS, a large ship costs 200 pounds of gold, and every other version of D&D is at least twice as bad).
- Finally, it’s not as easy to track in play as it first seems, since you need to record exactly how many coins of a given denomination are being carried at all times, and track their weight separately.
Alex and the other creators of ACKS have gone to extraordinary lengths to revise the economic system of D&D, in order to create a viable model across all levels of play. They left the monetary system alone, however, continuing to track wealth in arbitrary gold, silver, and copper “pieces”. That’s bugged me right from the outset, as they had such a magnificent opportunity to rebuild the system from the ground up. I understand the reasons for their decision, but I’ve never really agreed with it.
Even so, as much as I’ve always wanted to futz about with the system of coinage, too many of the game’s assumptions are based on the gold piece standard to allow for it to be done lightly. If I was going to go to the trouble of designing a new monetary framework, it would have to fulfill at least 6 criteria:
- It would have to provide enough interesting flavor to the campaign to be worth it.
- It would need to do away with the most ridiculous assumptions of the classic D&D system (uniform weight of all coins across all civilizations being the most egregious example).
- It would need to value the metals appropriately, and allow for business to be done at high levels before the invention of paper money.
- It would need to leave the larger economic assumptions upon which ACKS has been based largely intact.
- It had to remain easy to track for accounting purposes, both in terms of value, encumbrance, and XP granted for treasure.
- The conversion couldn’t “punish” the players’ characters in any appreciable way (by reducing their actual wealth or the amount they could carry, for example).
Even so, I’ve finally taken the plunge, and I believe all 6 criteria have been met.
In putting a new monetary system together, I began by identifying the most basic bedrock(s) of the ACKS economic model. After looking at the system from every angle I could devise, I was able to determine that there are two foci around which the rest of the economic system has been built: the fact that 1 sp equals one day’s wages for an unskilled laborer, and the fact that 1 gp of treasure equals 1 XP for an adventurer.
Interestingly enough, if I look at the standard of 1 silver piece = 1 day’s labor, I see that it has historical precedent in the Roman denarius, Greek drachma, French denier, or the Anglo-Saxon penny.
That gives me two data points that I can use to anchor my system to the ACKS economic model, but I need a third. While I now know the value of labor in the game economy and the value of experience in the meta-game economy, I need to tie both to a fixed quantity of precious metal in order to build a monetary system. Given a choice between gold and silver as the standard, I choose silver. Since the base value I’ve assigned to one silver piece (a day’s labor) is relatively concrete, whereas the base value I’ve assigned to a gold piece (1 XP) is completely abstract, this seems the sensible choice. Now I just need a unit of weight in silver to which I can assign a solid value. At that point, I’ll have all three dimensions I need to build outward.
Enter the Libra (aka Livre, Lire, or British Pound). Historically, this is the unit of weight/value attached to a given quantity of pure silver. The unit of weight in question is somewhat lighter than our 16 ounce Avoirdupois pound; it’s usually called a Troy pound nowadays. As it turns out, I can compare the Troy pound to the ACKS stone and wind up with nearly 12 ½ Troy pound to the Stone, almost exactly. That makes math easy.
Interestingly, the Romans, French, British, Dutch, and other European nations of the early Middle Ages based their system of coinage around the Libra, with an added serendipitous bonus. A Libra could be split into 20 smaller units called Solidii (or sous, or shillings, or stuiviers, etc.). A Solidus, in turn, could be broken up into 12 even smaller units, called denarii (or deniers, or pence). We now have a direct link between the Libra and the silver piece. Which means we also have a precise formula to tie the value of a Troy pound of silver to a day’s wages. That in turn tells us how much a traditional D&D silver piece should weigh.
The only problem now is that 12 pence to the shilling, 240 to the Pound, is a mess to calculate. Although 12 makes way more sense as a base for a system of counting (splits evenly more ways, which makes multiplication and factoring a breeze), we are all far too accustomed to base-10 as a matter of practice. No matter. It’s an easy enough thing to adjust the system so that 10 deniers make a sou. Keeping 20 sou to the Livre, that gives us 200 day’s wages for every Troy pound of silver (which devalues silver just a little, but I think I can live with it). As an added bonus to that adjustment, the new Solidus is now worth exactly what a gold piece was in the old system. That means that Libra, Solidus, Denarius now tracks perfectly to my three essential data points.
I think the word Libra is evocative, so I’m keeping it. I’m going to name the other two denominations sols and deners, respectively, but call the latter pennies or pence as a matter of convention. At which point I can adopt the pricing conventions of the old £.s.d. system of Europe wholesale. All values can be expressed as follows: 10 Libras, 2 sols, and 7 pence can be written £10.2s.7d. or even £10 2/7 (I’ll generally stick to the former, for ease of understanding).
The next thing to ensure is that the value of other coins is fixed by weight relative to silver. Compiling information from various ancient and medieval sources then rounding off the edges to simplify conversions, I’ve created the following chart to summarize a set of (reasonably) fixed values for precious metals typically used as currency, relative to one another. To allow for ease of play, presume that the Lawful powers-that-be (kingdoms, trade guilds, churches, etc.) make special effort to hold these values steady. Other metals have value as trade goods, but are subject to market demand modifiers as normal.
|
Gold |
Electrum[1] |
Silver |
Copper |
Gold |
1 |
½ |
1/20 |
1/2,000 |
Electrum |
2 |
1 |
1/10 |
1/1,000 |
Silver |
20 |
10 |
1 |
1/100 |
Copper |
2,000 |
1,000 |
100 |
1 |
At the end of the day, the raw value of each works out like this:
- A stone's weight of gold = £250. (enough to buy a magic sword)
- A stone's weight of electrum = £125. (enough to buy a pair of townhouses)
- A stone's weight of silver = £12.10s. (enough to buy a light war horse and scale barding)
- A stone's weight of copper = 2s.5d. (enough to buy a night in a superb inn and a pint of rare wine)
Or another way:
- An “item’s” weight of gold ≈ £42. (enough to buy a heavy war horse and chain barding)
- An “item’s” weight of electrum ≈ £21. (enough to buy a medium war horse)
- An “item’s” weight of silver ≈ £2.1s. (enough to buy a composite bow and a quiver of arrows)
- An “item’s” weight of copper = 4d., 2 ounces (enough to buy a night in an average inn, with a bit of haggling)
This holds true no matter what particular coins (or even mixtures of them) are contained in a given hoard. Find a bag full of gold coins of mixed sizes and weights, and you can determine its value by weight alone.
And no matter the coins or the weight, 1 sol = 1 XP.
Platinum has no hard value as currency, as no human civilization of an antique or medieval tech-level has ever minted coins or traded in it as a primary mode of exchange—it is too hard to strike into coins and too rare to fix a stable value. I would imagine that it is highly regarded for jewelry and other adornments, however.
Listed below are the common coins of Ranzeal, a kingdom in my homebrew world. Ranzeal forms a loose confederation with four other kingdoms, all five of which mint and circulate the three basic denominations at agreed upon weights, although their names and the values of all other coins may vary.
- Gold sovereign (Libra) = £1. = 20s. = 200d. = 250/stone = 1 1/16” diameter (smaller than a half dollar)
- Gold crown = 5s. = 50d. = 1,000/stone = ¾” diameter (about the size of a nickel)
- Gold florin (half-crown) = 2 ½s. = 30d. = 2,000/stone = ⅝” diameter (about the size of a dime)
- Silver noble (sol) = 1s. = 10d. = 250/stone = 1 5/16” diameter (slightly bigger than a half dollar)
- Silver star = 5d. = 500/stone = 1” diameter (slightly bigger than a quarter)
- Silver penny (dener) = 1d. = 2,500/stone = ⅝” diameter(about the size of a dime)
- Silver sparrow (halfpenny) = ½d. = 5,000/stone = ½” diameter (about ¾ the size of a dime)
- Silver scale (farthing) = ¼d. = 10,000/stone = 5/16” diameter (about half the size of a dime)
- Copper ounce = 1/12d. = 300/stone = 1 ¼” diameter (about the size of a half dollar)
For a PC, all that usually needs be noted is the total value of each metal being carried (and even separating by metals is only necessary if enough is being carried to begin to comprise “items” or “stone” of weight). Most of the time, it’ll be a mix of the various denominations minted in that metal, and can be spent without concern for the particular coins involved.
To convert your current coinage into the new system, note the current value of your platinum and gold coinage together, then divide the value by 20 to convert into Libras. Note the remainder as sols. So a current stock of 24 pp and 1,275 gp is now represented as £69.15s., all of which is now being carried in gold, and weighs approximately 2 “items”. A similar operation is conducted on the silver coins, with a single sp worth a penny in the new system. Ten pence make a sol, and 20 sols to a Libra, so 746 sp converts to £3.14s.6d. Copper pieces are expressed in pence and fractions of pence, so 99 cp becomes 8 ¼d. At your discretion, feel free to dispense with the copper coins entirely, adding the balance to your silver total in the form of halfpennies and farthings.
The upshot for PCs is that gold and electrum are worth 5 times what they were by weight. Silver has also had its value increased, by a factor of 2.5. Alas, copper has taken a hit, now worth only 25% of what it once was. As a result, the coinage listed in the conversion example above, which weighed in at over 2 stone in the old system, now weighs only a little over two “items.” This reduction in encumbrance from coins will hold at any denomination, unless characters elect to travel about with large amounts of copper coin.
[1] Electrum is an alloy of silver and gold, which value is set by the proportion of each contained in the metal. Since no electrum coins are minted in the Five Kingdoms, this estimate of value is set based upon the 47.5%/52.5% ratio of gold to silver that appears in all coins minted by the Old Empire.