Comments on: The Gold Standard

By: SD

SD — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:55:52 +0000

The entire coin economy of D&D and a lot of other game systems is mucked up. Mostly because people don’t want to be scrapping for the coppers since focusing on that doesn’t seem to be fun for most people (I’d enjoy the touch of realism, but that’s me). The real distortion isn’t the cost of items in the books or the weight, it’s how freely it’s all handed out. It’s expected that the ‘adventurers’ are going to be uberwealth but the environment isn’t designed to quite handle that. It would be like a team of Trumps or worse rolling through a small town and trying to pay for their beer with $1,000 bills.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:11:42 +0000

Oh, and I see now that 3e does 50 coins per pound as well.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:56:12 +0000

Wow, 4e actually did something right.

I’m amused to see that the google ads on the site have all changed to ads about buying gold since I posted this. I’m very tempted to post something about the random prostitute table in the old dmg just to see what ads come from that.

By: Crater

Crater — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:19:22 +0000

In 4e coins are 50/lb.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:41:49 +0000

Deflate the coinage. Make *silver* the standard measure of value – as it was in the medieval period – and say that gold and platinum worth ten times what they are by the book. That means a chest full of gold remains a big deal for longer, and even a handful of silver gets the respect it deserves.

Astral diamonds? *meh* We already have the gemstone and magic item economies…

By: Asmor

Asmor — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:40:50 +0000

I wish they’d pick a standard and stick with it. They clearly expect you to hand out AD and PP at higher levels in lieu of gold, but all prices are given in gold regardless of level. The net result is that it’s most convenient to track your wealth in terms of gold, and it’s easy to accidentally mess up the math when you add PP or AD, particularly if you’re in a swamp of 0s.

All that said, with respect to the intrinsic value of gold…

1: I think this is much ado about nothing.

2: Your values may be heavily distorted. I’ve heard it said that a sword– not even a particularly nice one– would have cost the equivalent of a year’s salary for a soldier in medieval times. So 10 or 15 gold or whatever a longsword goes for might not be that far off from what it may have cost in real life.

3: You’re assuming that gold is approximately as common and approximately as valuable in [fantasy world of choice] as it is on Earth, and there’s absolutely no reason to assume that.

By: Swordgleam

Swordgleam — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:07:44 +0000

I think the other coins are useless only to adventurers, who are hyper-wealthy for the setting. I recall that one silver is something like a week’s worth of labor for a skilled craftsman. So it’s not a trival sum to the average person – just to adventurers, who plunder dragon hordes left and right and quickly outgrow their ancestral swords.

By: Daniel Anand

Daniel Anand — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:25:12 +0000

In higher levels, specially epic, you’ll ditch gold pieces altogether. Expect platinum became your gps at 16+, and astral diamonds at 25+.

Nevertheless, I agree with you on ditching silver and copper. Usually they are useless.