I got a bit curious, and went a bit overboard the other week when thinking about money in D&D. Suffice it to say, the money makes no sense.

I'm not posting the whole homebrew here, but more like the interesting highlights:

1) The coins in D&D are too big. For 50 copper coins to equal 1lbs, they'd need to be bigger than a US 50c piece. Not only is that HUGE, but it would take up waaaaay too much of the valuable metal required to print that many coins. Heck, if you change the rules to 100 coins =  1lbs, then Gold comes out to slightly smaller than a dime, while a copper is Nickel sized. And if you're curious, this does mimic the actual coin sizes used in the classical and ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese world, as they are on average the size of a dime to the size of a penny.

2) Gold values don't work. Downtime in your own house costs more than staying in a hotel and eating there. A deck of woodblock print cards costs the same as a sharpened stick; or leather pouch; or one night in a "clean" hotel.

3) Gold doesn't work because of the 1:10 ratio used to simplify D&D. You can pretty easilly follow the prices written in for adventuring gear and services as written, then convert all gold pieces for weapons into silver to balance them out. As for armour it's up to debate. Anyway, if you want money to make more sense, the following values are more like their actual worth (and coincidentally similar to Rome's value). Treat alloy coins as things only accepted within the city that minted/struck them:

Tin 1/10T

Copper 1T

Bronze 2T (CuSn)

Shibuichi 5T (CuAg)

Silver 20T

Shakudo (CuAu) 50T

Electrum (AgAu) 100T

Hepatizion (CuAgAu) 200T

Gold 500T

Platinum 10,000T

You can play around with quantities in alloys tongivr players adventure hooks and resources.

I appreciate your observations and the research you shared with us.

I lean toward staying with the system we have before I read it, and the system created has the benefit of being fairly simple.

Your study and conclusions have left me with the impression that the system they created for the money is more accurate than I would have guessed.  Based on your numbers, the conversions would be ...

20 gold = 1 platinum

25 silver = 1 gold

20 copper = 1 silver

I don't fool about much with electrum, but that is just me and my group.  So I am surprised the values here as as close as 10:1 used in the game as a standard conversion.

I like your observation that the coins in D&D are heavy, and that you believe there is historical precedent to believe they could be significantly reduced.  So reducing the weight of a coin to 100 per pound is a convenient number as well, although carrying about a bunch of dimes doesn't quite fit my romantic image of a chest of gold.

The prices are altogether another issue.  But once again, I would tend to stick with the system before trying to sort it out with in depth research.  The players are usually showered with enough gold that prices start to have little meaning at most games I suspect.  And with the little comparisons I have made I am again shocked the numbers come out as close as they do when it is only a game.  If I were to study this in depth, I would begin with the normal wage for a laborer, assuming a days wage would provide food enough, a roof and dry bed, and there would be some provision for clothes and a tiny amount for personal possessions.  Above that, a skilled laborer can save money to have better clothes and his own cottage, and be married.  A craftsman would be able to earn enough to be married, and own his own shop and living spaces, and dress in a manner to demonstrate he has some station in the community.  Once I had an understanding of what these wage rates would be, then I would try to back into the prices for food and the like.  It would be a very involved study to try to fix the prices in D&D, and then some players would find a way to break the game with it.  I feel it is best just to be satisfied the prices are as good as they happen to be.

But I enjoyed reading your conclusions.  It does give me something to think about.

You've got a pretty good understanding of it all. If I remember right (no research here) Pieces of 8 and Crowns were bigger, but they were also from the Age of Exploration.

The easiest conversion here is that each 1T is about = 1 USD, so you need far less research.

EDIT: Oh! I forgot one big point. You said you don't use Electrum. I haven't yet either. The 1:10 is just easier. However, in order to make Alloy Coins useful, you need to make them interesting. As an example, let a player with an Alchemist's Kit know that they can break down 15 Electrum coins ($15,000) into enough gold to strike 4 gold coins and enough silver to strike 11 silver ($22,220). Something that makes them want Electrum, but you get to control how much they get.

Oh, Dungeon and Dragons is best when you don't think about it too much. Look too closely and you'll realise none of it makes sense. The economy would be suffering from hyperinflation. Dwarves would have rendered all gold to be nearly worthless. Beyond that, any sort of technological advancement would be practically impossible in a high magic setting, and most races live so long as to cripple them in the face of any change.

At least 5th edition has made it so you can't outright buy and sell magic items-- the price of one of those traditionally could have destroyed any given economy.

Quote from At least 5th edition has made it so you can't outright buy and sell magic items-- the price of one of those traditionally could have destroyed any given economy.

 I didn't know that was a feature. I have a new found respect.

I've come back to read this a couple times while I think about it.

If I understand, on the prices side of things you indicate the costs for most mundane items is about the right for scale?  Correct?

What is your scale factor for $ = 1 gp to make the prices scale properly to coinage?

I mentioned the different wage rates where the lowest wage rate has to at least provide a roof, a bed and adequate food for a day.  This was back in the day when everyone worked every day unless the weather prevented it.  What is the value you would place on a single days work for a laborer?  What about a skilled worker?  What about a craftsman (blacksmith or such)?

Another scale I like to figure in is the wage rate for a basic soldier, a sergeant and a low level officer.  I always scale these as laborer, skilled worker and craftsman, but the "army" provides their food, bed and uniforms, so they have a chance at a lower level skill to really save some money, but unfortunately the common soldier spends his money on frivolous pursuits.

Dungeons and Dragons, like most tabletop games, has an economic system that was written by an English major.

But if you think the standard D&D setting has issues, check out Dragonlance, where they use steel coins instead of gold.  First off, being a low fantasy setting that's recovering from an apocalypse that took place a couple centuries ago, there isn't enough steel for tools, weapons, or armor, so it makes no sense to further decrease the supply by making currency out of it.  Second of all, the prices were ridiculous- you could buy a steel sword, then melt it down and reforge the steel it was made with into coins and end up with significantly more than you started.

STEEL COINS?! Oh dang, that's dumb... I mean, your reasons are the most valid (keep that in mind), but steel makes AWEFUL coins. It can't be cold worked, and takes WAAAAAAY too much effort to shape, and can't be easily remade into something fun, like jewelery. Steel coins ruin steel dies used for striking coins. You can't even stockpile them well, because they don't patina, they rust, and rust is like metal cancer. That's what makes the verdigris on copper so nice.

@MusicScout: I actually did the math a while ago and have it written down somewhere. If I remember correctly, converting cost of living from silver to Troins actually works out really well.

As for labor, unskilled hirelings earn 1sp, which is about $100. Consider minimum wage is around $8 per hour. 1 day of work is then $64... but you're also getting them to go out and eat and paying those expenses... so about $100 a day. Skilled labor is typically closer to 10x that. Just look at how much redoing a kitchen or bathroom costs.

I'll tell you when I find it and post the actual conversion. I'll likely do that tomorrow.

If nothing else, I'm working on "King Faber's Alloys and Allies" for pwyw on the DM's Guild. You'll be able to find it there.

So you estimate a copper piece is worth $5 and a tin piece is worth $0.50?

I'm curious how you get to these numbers.  Are you starting with the price of gold per ounce and working back from that?  I guess you would also be working from the price of silver per ounce too?  If this is the case, then your cost analysis makes more sense to me.

But it seems an economy like the one we participate in couldn't exist if the smallest money denomination were $0.50 (and $5 if we stop at coppers).

While it doesn't do anything for other folks trying to enjoy D&D, I find these discussions interesting.

I don't know much about metals, however, I can see the logic of making steel currency-- if you ignore all of those good reasons why it's absurd.

Or rather, having a scarce resource that you could hypothetically reforge into high quality goods makes some sense (if it actually worked.) From a practical sense, as long as a coin was in proportion to the amount of steel going into steel goods, it doesn't seem like a terrible idea. It would be hard to counterfit because fraud would be obvious when steel goods start breaking and it would have a natural mechanism to fight inflation.

I'm not suggesting that steel coins COULD work, but if they DID work, there would be some advantages that one wouldn't see in a gold based economy until the invention of electronics.

While this is kind of off topic, I would like to explain two things about coins.

First, Gold and Platinum are the primary metals for measuring wealth because they don't oxidize (corrode).  You can put a thousand pounds of gold in a vault and in a hundred years you'll still have a thousand pounds of pristine gold.  If you do that with steel, well you know what you'll find.

Second, a coin never has an amount of metal in it that equals the value of the coin, and certainly never more.  This is because folks would melt down the coins in a heartbeat to get the metal.  Since it costs money to mint a coin, the amount of metal in the coin has to be substantially less than the value of the coin to make it sensible to mint the coin and to avoid giving folks a reason to melt the coins down.

A US penny does not have a penny's worth of copper and zinc.  Unfortunately the mint says it costs more than a penny to make a penny.  So the minting cost is significant.

Actually, in systems where currency is based on precious metals, the amount of gold or silver in a coin is what determines its value.  A gold coin won't be 100% gold because gold's too malleable a metal for it to retain its shape for long, but the value of the gold coin is determined by the amount of gold in it.  It's not a fiat currency, which is when money has value because a government says so, like the aforementioned US penny.

@6th ...

I disagree with your interpretation of gold coinage not being fiat currency (a token that is valued at what the government says it is worth).  Gold bars and other forms of "pure gold" are not fiat currency.  But because it costs money to make coins, they don't have enough metal in them to be a 1:1 conversion.  The same is true for other metals including silver, nickel, brass, ...

I agree with you that coins are typically not a pure metal, but an alloy.

However, there is another dimension to this.  A coin can have different value in different countries.  Just because the Celedons say their gold piece is worth 2gp, that doesn't mean the Therovins honor that value, and they may only accept it as being worth 1.5gp.  Protectionism comes in many forms.

Gold coins CAN be fiat currency, but that would seem like an odd choice considering that the term "fiat currency" differentiates currencies who worth are linked to a commodity standard and those whose value only comes from fiat.  There is no reason that gold couldn't be the material the money was made out of, but the idea of gold currency is that you are actually exchanging a small measure of the valuable commodity. The coin was just the standardised measure but the form of the coin didn't have value in itself. It's just-- unless debasement reared its head-- a guaranteed that each coin had (approximately) x grams of precious material. This is why you could spend coins from foreign countries with minor issues due to the composition of the coinage. This is precisely why bank notes had a difficult time becoming the standard currency in Europe, because paper was not worth anything while gold and silver were.

You seem very well educated on the topic, so let me know if I'm missing something.

Coins are minted for a variety of reasons.  One reason is to provide currency for the economy.  Currency allows an economic concept called specialization.  A worker may produce more of what he needs and exchange it for money, and then trade his money for things he needs.  Without currency, an economy has to operate on the barter system.  In that instance, the monarch has to take goods from the people and redistribute these goods to his guards and scribes and the like.  That leaves almost every worker in a position to be either a farmer or an employee of the government.

The minting of coins also has two key goals.  First to establish the coin is "real" and is supported by the state as having a set value.  The second feature is that it supports the government by spreading the idea that the sovereign is the only person that matters in issues of power.  The rulers image was the most frequent image depicted on the coinage.  In the earliest eras, coinage had a much greater political meaning to the people than it does today.  The US used their first coins to cement the idea there was a strong government by depicting impressive government institutions on the coins and paper money.  Other countries, in their history, did much the same thing.

However, the minting of coins is also impacted by the type of metal alloy used to make the coin.  If a coin gets even close to the value of the alloy, folks have no reason not to melt down the coin if they need the metal.  Foreign countries would melt down your coins just to cause you to lose money making new ones.  With typical exchange rates, another country could melt your coins down and mint their coins at a profit.  Because the operation of minting coins costs money, countries have to be mindful of not putting too much metal into the coins.  It may seem to some that this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but the stability of a country's money supply is critical to the military strength of that nation.  If another nation can undermine the confidence in your currency, you are screwed.  The major players on the international stage have plans in place to do just that to their enemies if they ever need to go to war.

Yes, but D&D doesn't bother with that level of economics, which is why a gold coin that was minted in Rashmin has the same purchasing ability as one that was minted in Waterdeep.

Also, the other reason for city-states switching from barter to currency is because it significantly simplifies transactions.  If you've got a basket full of tilapia to trade and the man who makes copper tools wants some but you don't want any of his copper tools at the moment, you can't wait on the transaction because then the fish will be spoiled.  So instead you have to find someone who wants copper tools and will trade something that you want for them.  Currency meant that you could just trade fish for coins, then when you found something you wanted you could trade coins for that.  Much easier, especially for people who produced goods that had limited shelf life.

@6th ...

I agree with both of your points.  Generally speaking, D&D should be simplified except when it improves the story.  Money simplifies many things in the economy for everyone's benefit.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out weird game-logic. The game won't change just because something makes IRL sense, but it can be fun to imagine "What if it was like IRL?"

One of my favorite series is about the weirdness in RPG video games. One episode is videogame loot drops. Another is about the binary nature of encumbrance (which applies to D&D in simply two or three states of being overburdened depending on which rules you're using).

So, imagine that the rules of currency encumbrance are turned on with realistic currency in D&D.

@Eric ...

I wrote a few posts in another thread about this (how would you handle money if it was an IRL circumstance in a D&D World?).  The central theme of those posts was that there are some institutions (Governments, Temples, Guilds, ...) that would have an interest in supporting a stable currency.  They would form methods of banking that would allow the players to travel without carrying around all their wealth.  There would be fees for their services, but they would have a system that would provide security and stability.  Even in towns, when my Mayors, magistrates, whatever, award the players with "money" it is usually in the form of a letter of credit they can spend in the town.  These officials are loathe to go down into the vaults and bring up real gold for the players.  The players "spend" their money and the government allows the citizens to use these as credits against their taxes.  The vault never had to be opened.

Also about encumbrance, I often carry gems to reduce my encumbrance.  

That sounds like something the church of Waukeen would set up.