Money

 

While not everyone needs cash in a pre-industrial society, adventurers certainly do. When you're on the trail of a band of evil necromancers, you don't have time to stop and use your capentry skills to repair wagons or build a table in exchange for food, shelter, potions or repairs to your gear - you need to keep moving; and that's where cash comes in. While travellers may not always be welcomed with open arms, travellers with cash are at least usually welcomed with open hands.

The Silver Standard

Mythmaster uses a simplified protocapitalist economic system that is intended to be easy to use, and to make the task of buying, selling, trading, and transporting money simple and straightforward.

The silver standard is a base 10 currency system that relies on portable coins stamped in precious metals. In this system, the silver coin is considered the standard, and is the basic unit of exchange. The dollar symbol ($) is used to represent the silver coin.

In terms of size and weight, a silver coin in this system is about the size of a dollar coin, or a two euro coin, and weighs 10g. Gold and platinum coins are smaller in size, but have the same weight, so 100 of any of these coins weigh 1 kg. Copper coins are generally less reliable, and are often simply small dollops of metal, of uncertain purity, with some kind of sigil pressed into them. They have the same weight on average as the other coins - making for a terribly inefficient way to haul treasure.

A secondary unit of currency is the ingot. Ingots are forged from purer metal and have twice the purity and twenty-five times the weight of a coin, and are thus worth 50 times the value. A platinum ingot is worth $5,000 silver coins and weighs 250 g. A third form of currency is the bar: bars are massive, and extremely valuable. A bar is a 10 kg block of pure metal. A platinum bar is worth $200,000, a gold bar is worth $20,000 and a silver bar is worth $2,000. A copper bar is worth $200, though copper bars are not normally minted as currency, and are generally just considered to be a raw material with the same value as an iron bar. An iron bar, forged into steel, provides material for about six long swords.

Coins, ingots and bars are entirely fungible due to measurable standards of weight and purity. A coin, ingot or bar minted by one city, region, state, family, or bank is worth exactly the same amount on the opposite side of the world. There are no currency exchanges or stock markets to account for. That said, transporting metal is an inefficent way to pay the bills of a kingdom or any army, so other, more advanced forms of financial exchange are frequently used by factions or governments.

Currency and Bulk

Individuals typically conduct their transactions in coins or ingots. Business will usually use ingots or paper documents, backed by ingots or bars, when making larger transactions. Governments or large organizations almost exclusively conduct financial transactions on paper, and formalize the rebalancing of accounts through a quarterly exchange of bars if needed.

For individuals, transporting large amounts of currency (ie: treasure) can be a problem. Metal is heavy, and loose coins are cumbersome. Carrying a large amount of currency will add to your character's Bulk, reducing their Movement and interfering with the use of some skills. Each sack of 100 loose coins has a Bulk of 1. Four ingots also have a Bulk of 1. Bars are unwieldy, heavy and dense. A single bar of any kind has a Bulk of 5.