[OD&D] Halenar Frosthelm: Money, the Economy & Equipment

[ThePerilousDreamer]

Here I will be posting all things regarding Money (Treasure), the OD&D Economy & Equipment. I will be posting information from many different times periods in my campaigns and different things I have tried or thought about. I usually stick with a Gold Economy as it is in the rules, but I would like to switch to a Silver Economy and make Gold and the other more valuable items even more valuable and special.

This is not to imply that there are Adamantine or Adamantite or Osmium or Iridium or Mithril coins, this is just to show the relative value and rarity. My most recent thought is to do it as follows:

1 Adamantine/Adamantite/Osmium/Iridium Piece is equal to 10 Mithril Pieces
1 Mithril Piece is equal to 10 Platinum/Palladium Pieces
1 Platinum/Palladium Piece is equal to 10 Gold Pieces
1 Gold Piece is equal to 100 Silver Pieces
1 Silver Piece is equal to 100 Copper/Bronze/Brass Pieces

So right now I am pretty much just thinking out loud and all is subject to revision and tweaking, I will also be adding coin names, likely using historical British coin names.

I have much to say on this subject and given time to do so, I will!


Disclaimer: Please note that anything I post in any thread I create here in the Workshop is solely intended to illuminate what I do IMCs and, where applicable, the reasoning behind it. Anything I post here in the Workshop, is not intended to comment in anyway on anything you do in your campaign or on any opinion or belief that you may or may not hold in regard to anything, but to solely and exclusively be my opinion as it relates to my campaigns and game worlds alone.

[ThePerilousDreamer]

In some parts of the world where there are many allies and major trading partners the various nations have standardized their coinage as much as possible by adopting standard coin denominations and weights, even though each nation has it own coin names and designs, the coins in some areas are freely used in trade and commerce. These nations, along with their dwarven neighbors have agreed on standards of purity and composition for the alloys and metals used for coins and it greatly facilitates commerce. This standardization is gradually spreading as the price of joining in the trade and commercial growth.

The nation by nation coin designs for the Obverse and Reverse sides, the Edge and the Rim are very important because clipped coins are not legal tender and when found are forfeit and must be re-melted and re-struck. Non-standard coins and metals obtained in treasure hoards by adventurers must be sold, after testing and replaced with approved coinage and or trade bars. Trade bars are used for higher value transactions and for banking of large sums of money.

In the majority of the world there is no standardization of coinage and transactions are more based on the amount of precious metal and tests for purity. The most common metals for coins are sliver, copper, brass and bronze. Much less common is gold and rarely platinum and palladium.

Coins in the standardized areas start with at least 99.9% purity and then is mixed in the case of silver, gold, platinum and palladium as follows 9 parts precious metal and 1 part copper, for the purpose of strength and to reduce coin wear. This is standard and acceptable for the agreed values.

[Alex]

1 Platinum Piece is equal to 1000 Gold Pieces
1 Gold Piece is equal to 1000 Silver Pieces
1 Silver Piece is equal to 100 Copper Pieces

Normal exchange rate btb is 1 gp = 100 cp and even at that exchange rate I find it nearly impossible to get cp hoards collected by adventurers. 8,000 cp? That will encumber half the party and buy a single suit of armor. Imagine how laughable that treasure pile is at your exchange rate of 1 gp = 100,000 cp! 8,000 cp? That might get you a stick of gum, if you don't have sales tax in your setting!

[ThePerilousDreamer]

To repeat: I plan to switch to a Silver Economy and make Gold rare. Under a Silver Economy, Silver and Copper will be the common coins and both will have the value that they should have. When a PC obtains a Gold Piece or very rarely a Platinum or Palladium Piece, it will be something to be hoarded for a future large purchase. I will be posting a revised equipment list with new pricing in this thread.

Unlike the real world I will have one system of measure, the same for precious metals as for grain. The coins will be properly sized so that the following will be true:

One pound = 16 ounces = 7000 grains; one silver penny = 25 grains, 280 silver pennies to a pound, the same will be true for copper, brass or bronze coins. Gold, Platinum and Palladium coins are 50 grains and therefore 140 coins to a pound.

The value of silver and copper/brass/bronze coins will become more clear once the revised equipment list is completed and posted.

For example a dagger instead of costing 3 GP will cost 1 SP and a 10' pole instead of costing 1 GP will cost 10 CP. These are not final numbers but are in the ballpark of the new numbers, all prices will be adjusted and some will go up relative to others and some will go down relative to others. A cheap meal can be had a for about 20 CP and 1-2 SP will get you a good meal. Once this thread is more fully complete you will see that the PCs will not leave a single copper behind and with the encumbrance made realistic for weight versus value where 8000 CP weighs just about 28.57 pounds they will be able to haul off the copper and the silver.

Not all coins will be of standard size and that will be handled in game, but with anything other than copper/brass/bronze and silver being properly rare, the PCs will not pass up a thing.

[ThePerilousDreamer]

Some of the coin names I am kicking around right now are Farthing, Halfpenny, Penny, Quarter Shilling, Fourpenny, Half Shilling, Shilling, Half Crown, Crown, Noble, Royal, Half Sovereign, Mark, Guinea, Sovereign, Double Guinea, Double Sovereign, and Treble Sovereign.

I am most likely for simplicity to go with these:

Penny (Copper)(or Brass or Bronze)

Shilling (Silver)

These will be the common Coins that everyone uses and with the ration of 100 Pennies equals 1 Shilling that allows for the minimum price to be one Penny and no further divisions are needed.

Crown (Gold)

Sovereign (Platinum or Palladium)

These coins are both rare and not in general circulation, being used almost entirely by royalty, the nobility, rich merchants and high echelon adventurers. About 99+% of things that the PCs could buy will be priced in Pennies or Shillings and only high end things, such as, a ship or building a stronghold would be paid for with Crowns or Sovereigns.

While these are all subject to change and not in final form yet, these are my current thoughts on how to fun the money system. While I could also come up with different names for each countries coins, in practice I will not since any changes need buy in from the players. Just calling CP - Pennies, SP - Shillings, Gold Pieces - Crowns and Platinum Pieces - Sovereigns is not too big of a change and the buy in should be smooth. Where having dozens of coin names would not be smooth or easily done. Especially not when we play once or maybe twice a month, for about four to six hours at a time. And bitd when we played 20-28 hours per week, we would not have wanted to do anything complicated because it would get in the way of playing D&D. A more complicated system is fine for books, but not for games.

Again to be clear this is not to imply that there are Adamantine or Adamantite or Osmium or Iridium or Mithril coins, this is just to show the relative value and rarity. Think of the values as follows:
Penny equals 10 cents

Shilling equals 10 dollars

Crown equals 1000 dollars

Sovereign equals 10,000 dollars

Mithril Piece equals 100,000 dollars, so if you want Mithril Armor you are not going to buy it, you need to impress the Elven elders as being a true Elf Friend and maybe, just maybe you have a slim chance of getting some.

Adamantine/Adamantite/Osmium/Iridium Piece equals 1,000,000 dollars, so if you want something made with these materials you need to do something like save an entire dwarven community from a horrible death, (more than once ) and maybe if they have ever obtained any they might make you something or you need to go deep, deep, deep into a dungeon and live to tell the tale and having a slim chance of finding some.

That is how rare platinum and the other precious metals are in the world, very rare.

[ThePerilousDreamer]

So of the next thing we need to address is how much of a given coin can a PC carry?

I am not too picky about encumbrance and try to not to let a lot of bookkeeping intrude into the game and bog things down. I like to go by it this way, give your players reasonable guidelines and trust them to follow them reasonably well. After all, hopefully you are gaming with friends and if they deliberately cheat, they are not very good friends, if you want to consider people who cheat as friends.

Belt Pouch holds 2 pounds of coins which is 280 or 140 depending on the coin, but again you are not going to get 140 Crowns or Sovereigns outside of an extreme high level challenge.

Small Sack holds 20 pounds of coins or 5600 coins

Large Sack holds 50 pounds of coins or 14,000 coins

Back Pack holds 60 pounds of coins or 16,800 coins

Small Saddle Bag holds 20 pounds of coins or 5600 coins

Large Saddle Bag holds 50 pounds of coins or 14,000 coins

[ThePerilousDreamer]

This is a list that I had in my notes, not sure now where it came from, but it sure makes a complete list, although way too detailed to use in a game.


1= Mite 1/24d
2= Quarter Farthing 1/Quarter Noble
3= Third Farthing 1/12d
4= Half Farthing 1/8d
5= Farthing 1/4d
6= Ha-penny 1/2d
7= Three Farthings 3/4d
8= One Penny 1d “Copper”
9= Three Half-pence 1 1/2d
10= Half Groat 2d “Tuppence”
11= Threepence 3d
12= Groat 4d
13 Five Pence
14= Sixpence 6d “Half Shilling”
15 Ten Pence
16= Shilling 1/- 12d
17= Quarter Florin 1/6 “Helm” 18d
18 Twenty Pence
19= Quarter Noble 1/8 20d
20 Gold Penny
21= Florin 2/- “Two Shillings” 24d
22 Quarter Angel
23 Twenty Five Pence
24= Half Crown 2/6 30d
25= Leopard 3/- 36d
26= Half Angel 3/4 40d
27= Double Florin 4/- 48d
28 Fifty Pence
29= Half Noble 4/2 50d
30= Crown of the Rose= 4/6 54d
31= Crown 5/- 60d
32= Quarter Guinea 5/3 63d
33= Angel 6/8 “Half Mark” 80d
34= Third Guinea 7/- 84d
35= Noble 8/4 88d
36 Ten Shilling Note
37= Half Sovereign 10/- 120d
38 Half Laurel
39 Half Unite
40= Half Guinea 10/6 126d
41= Spur Ryal 15/- 180d
42 Rose Noble
43 Britannia Sovereign
44= Sovereign 20/- “Pound” 240d
45= Guinea 21/- 252d
56= Rose Ryal 30/- 360d
47= Two Pounds 40/- 480d
48= Double Guinea 42/- 504d
49= Fifty Shilling 50/- 600d
50= Triple Unite 60/- 720d
51= Five Pound 100/- 1200d
52= Five Guinea 105/- 1260d

[ThePerilousDreamer]

First we will look at the original table and think about adding or deleting items: Thoughts!

Items of equipment. Selection of items is strictly up to the players, and Gold Pieces are taken away accordingly (players may sell to one another, of course, and then Gold Pieces would be transferred).
Prices in Gold Pieces
Item -----------------------Cost ----------Item -------------------------Cost
Dagger -----------------------3 ------------Leather Armor ----------------15
Hand Axe ---------------------3 ------------Chain-type Mail --------------30
Mace -------------------------5 ------------Plate Mail --------------------50
Sword ------------------------10 ------------Helmet ----------------------10
Battle Axe --------------------7 -------------Shield ----------------------10
Morning Star ------------------6 -------------Barding (Horse Armor) -------150
Flail --------------------------8 -------------50' of Rope------------------1
Spear ------------------------2 -------------10' Pole ----------------------1
Pole Arm ---------------------7 -------------12 Iron Spikes---------------1
Halberd ----------------------7 -------------Small Sack------------------1
Two-Handed Sword ----------15 -------------Large Sack -----------------2
Lance ------------------------4 --------------Leather Back Pack -------5
Pike --------------------------5 --------------Water/Wine Skin---------1
Short Bow --------------------25 -------------6 Torches-------------------1
Long Bow --------------------40 -------------Lantern --------------------10
Composite Bow ---------------50 ------------Flask of Oil ----------------2
Light Crossbow ---------------15 ------------3 Stakes & Mall------------3
Heavy Crossbow --------------25 ------------Steel Mirror ---------------5
Qu iver of 20 Arrows ----------10 -----------Silver Mirror, Small ------15
Case with 30 Quarrels ---------10 ----------Wooden Cross --------------2
20 Arrows/30 Quarrels ---------5 ----------Silver Cross -----------------25
Silver Tipped Arrow ------------5 ----------Holy Water/Vial----------- 25
Mule -------------------------20 ---------Wolvesbane, bunch --------10
Draft Horse ------------------30 ----------Belladona, bunch--------- 10
Light Horse ------------------40 ----------Garlic, bud ------------------5
Warhorse, Medium ------------100 ----------Wine, quart -----------------1
Warhorse, Heavy -------------200 ----------
Saddle -----------------------25 ------------Iron Rations (for
Saddle Bags -----------------10 ------------dungeon expeditions)
Cart -------------------------100 -----------1 person/1 week ------------15
Wagon ----------------------200 ----------
Raft -------------------------40 ------------Standard Rations for 1
Small Boat -----------------100 -----------person/1 week ---------------5
Small Merchant Ship ----------5000---------
Large Merchant Ship -------20000 -------Other items cost may be
Small Galley ----------------10000--------calculated by comparing to
Large Galley ----------------30000--------similar items listed above.

[ThePerilousDreamer]

Now for a rough first Draft of a revised table based on the Silver Economy. The exchange rate is as follows:
1 Platinum Piece is equal to 1000 Gold Crowns; 1 Gold Crown is equal to 1000 Silver Shillings
1 Silver Shilling is equal to 100 Copper Pennies
Relative value for reference is:
Copper Penny equals 50 cents, Silver Shilling equals 50 dollars, Crown equals 50,000 dollars
Items of equipment (Revised)
Selection of items is strictly up to the players and Copper, Silver or Gold coins are charged accordingly (players may sell to one another, of course, paying each other the agreed price). Only the most expensive items will be priced in Gold.

Prices are in Copper Pennies, Silver Shilling or Gold Crowns and all prices are in Silver Shillings unless otherwise noted.

Item ---------------------- -----Cost ----------Item ----------------------------Cost
Dagger ---------------------------3 ------------Leather Armor -----------------15
Hand Axe ------------------------3 ------------Chain-type Mail ---------------30
Mace -----------------------------5 ------------Plate Mail ----------------------50
Sword --------------------------10 ------------Helmet --------------------------10
Battle Axe ----------------------7 -------------Shield ---------------------------10
Morning Star -------------------6 -------------Barding (Horse Armor) -------150
Flail -----------------------------8 -------------50' of Rope------------------------50 Pennies
Spear ----------------------------2 -------------10' Pole ---------------------------40 Pennies
Pole Arm -----------------------7 -------------12 Iron Spikes---------------------40 Pennies
Halberd ------------------------7 --------------Small Sack-------------------------35 Pennies
Two-Handed Sword ----------15 -------------Large Sack ------------------------50 Pennies
Lance ---------------------------4 --------------Leather Back Pack ---------------80 Pennies
Pike -----------------------------5 --------------Water/Wine Skin----------------20 Pennies
Short Bow --------------------25 --------------6 Torches--------------------------40 Pennies
Long Bow ---------------------40 --------------Lantern ---------------------------1
Composite Bow --------------50 -------------Flask of Oil -----------------------80 Pennies
Light Crossbow ---------------15 -------------3 Stakes & Mall------------------1
Heavy Crossbow -------------25 -------------Steel Mirror ----------------------2
Qu iver of 20 Arrows --------10 -------------Silver Mirror, Small ------------15
Case with 30 Quarrels -------10 ------------Wooden Cross -------------------2
20 Arrows/30 Quarrels --------5 ------------Silver Cross ---------------------25
Silver Tipped Arrow -----------5 ------------Holy Water/Vial--------------- 25
Mule ----------------------------20 -----------Wolvesbane, bunch -----------10 Pennies
Draft Horse --------------------30 -----------Belladona, bunch-------------- 20 Pennies
Light Horse --------------------40 -----------Garlic, bud -----------------------10 Pennies
Warhorse, Medium --------100 ------------Wine, quart ---------------------40 Pennies
Warhorse, Heavy -----------200 ----------
Saddle -------------------------25 ------------Iron Rations (for
Saddle Bags -------------------10 ------------dungeon expeditions)
Cart ---------------------------100 ------------1 person/1 week ---------------15
Wagon -----------------------200 ----------
Raft ----------------------------40 ------------Standard Rations for
Small Boat -------------------100 ------------1 person/1 week ----------------5
Small Merchant Ship------1 Crown---------
Large Merchant Ship--- --4 Crowns ------------Other items cost may be
Small Galley ------------ --2 Crowns-------------calculated by comparing to
Large Galley ----------- ---3 Crowns--------------similar items listed above.

Again this is a rough first draft and many refinements will likely be made over time. Suggestions are welcome.

[Scott Anderson]

I'm partial to L.s.d. Notation, and £1 = 20s = 240d. Wikipedia "L.s.d." for a really nice overview of the old money.

The other thing is, I have the coin weights and values standardized based on the coinage of the First Empire. Dwarfs mint theirs in polyhedrons, elfs mint theirs as leaves, and the several countries of Men all mint their coins with different obverse/reverse and sometimes in different denominations. But all coins are based on the weight and purity standards set in the First Empire, so you know what you've got.

[ThePerilousDreamer]

Care to post an example of your system?