Dungeons & Dragons Coinage

7/30/2019 Dungeons & Dragons Coinage

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Coinage and Old School D&D Rules

©J.D. Neal 2012

All Rights Reserved

Referring to: Original 1974 RulesHolmes Edited Introductory rules ("Holmes Basic") c. 1977.

Moldvay and Cook/Marsh Dungeons & Dragons of c. 1980-1981Frank Mentzer compiled rules and sub-sets thereof.

1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons including the Dungeons Master's Guide (DMG) Monster Manual(MM) and Players Handbook (PHB)

An aspect of early Dungeons & Dragons was theencumbrance system, which was based on coins.There were 10 coins per pound, making it easy tokeep track of character encumbrance and how muchtreasure they could carry.

Eventually I realized the same thing many peopledo: a coin weighing 1/10 a pound is extremely large.In fact, most coins are small, weighing 100 to 150 per pound. Despite an adoration for the simplistic systemof early D&D, I did the same thing other people did,changing encumbrance to pounds and changing theweight of coins to 100 per pound. The fact that somegames used 50 coins per pound was only further annoying because that only made the math for encumbrance wonky and did not jive with the humantendency to enjoy big numbers like 100.

But encumbrance in pounds was not as satisfyingas I thought it would be at first. The tedium of

rounding numbers (was 249 coins 2 pounds or 3?)replaced the simplicity of 10 coins per pound. Whycan't things be simple?

I finally realized that I had fallen for the samemind trap many gamers fall for: an obsession with"coins".

What is a coin?

A coin is a form of currency - a commonlyaccepted medium of exchange. Coins have notalways existed. Before the advent of coinage, peoplehad been trading for centuries. While barter wascommon, they had also used such things as grain,salt, slaves, or beer as a forms of currency.

Coins were invented some 3,000 years ago (theexact dates are murky because our ancestors rarelymade extensive scholarly notes; and what they didwrite was often lost.) That date is interesting becauseit is part of the Bronze Age, approaching thebeginning of the "iron age."

But that only makes sense. After all, the Bronze Age was one of the vaguely defined eras wheremankind began to make wider use of metals; one key

metal being bronze, which is an alloy of copper.The advent of metals eventually led to a trade in

metals. The trade in metals became so important andso common that nations began forming it into easilycounted, uniform weights. These became what we

refer to as "coins".Early coins were often presented with a fiat value

- a value above their actual metal content. Thewillingness of anyone to accept this varied byindividual. Regardless of the acceptance of fiatvalues, these coins were minted from precious metaland hence had a minimum value as bullion. Up untilthe 1970s or so, most coins did indeed contain apercentage of precious metal, often silver. Eventually,most modern coins became pure fiat money, made of base metals and valued as a method of exchange,not for metal content.

Another interesting thing is that jewelery is not

ornamental; the advent of pockets is a rather newthing and for ages past people needed ways of carrying things. So, they took precious metals andshaped them to where they could be worn. The"pretty" factor of jewelry is a matter of findingsomeone who wants to pay for how pretty somethingis.

Chains of silver and gold were money. They wereformed in loops so the owner could wear them; whenthe owner wanted to buy something, they would openthe chain, pry links off, and hand them over asmoney, which is what they were.

The crown and other jewels of state were notpretty; they were a statement: my nation is wealthy;here is a sign of its wealth; I control the nation'swealth. And some leaders did sell and trade the state

jewels, if they were greedy or desperate. An interesting aspect of coins is that many types

were eventually marked with a cross, making it easyto cut them in halves and quarters for small change.

Gold Pieces

The original 1974 publication of D&D used "gold



pieces" for encumbrance. The AD&D (AdvancedD&D; 1st edition) rules also used gold pieces, as didthe introductory book edited by Holmes about 1977.

I noted that my own fixation with "coins" as weighthad begun with the Cook/Moldvay edited rules and itskin, which all specified that weights were in "coins"abbreviated to "cns".

I realized that metallic currency in a fantasy world

would consist of coins of many different types(including pieces of coins torn apart), and variouspieces of jewelery chopped up in trade.

And I realized that merchants had often usedscales to weigh coins. Ordinary people could checkthe weight of coin of using a flat stick and balancing it,then putting a coin on each end to see how theycompared. A merchant could use uniform weights,often marked and shaped like the originals, as well ascoins they trusted. Merchant scales were usefulbecause many coins were light weight; they needed atrustworthy way of making very small weightmeasurements - moreso, with finer weights they

could estimate any differences more accurately. After all: when a merchant posed a price, they

were demanding a certain weight in gold, silver or copper. Many coins had names that related toquantities and weights and others will simply namesfor metals (gilder = gold).

A demand for so many coins of a certain type wasa demand for a certain weight of gold or silver.

What is a D&D Coin?

All of that led to a realization: Gary Gygax tendedto refer to weights in "gold pieces" not "coins" and a

"gold piece" was not a coin. A "gold piece" was a unitof weight equal to 1/10 a pound. Thus, when a pile of treasure had 1,230 gold pieces, it had 123 pounds of gold. The treasure itself would typically consist of coins of various weight and pieces of metal from torncoins and jewelery and random metal items - alltotaling 123 pounds.

I am not saying this is the "right" mindset toaccept. Gamers can play however they want to,including by using systems where weights are inpounds and coins are 50 to 100 per pound or whatever they wish. Indeed, these are games of

fantasy and it can be fun imagining oneself haulingaround big-assed coins and pounds of gold.Instead, this is intended for anyone who wants to

add some fantasy to the game and who is familiar with and enjoys the "10 coins per pound" concept of older games.

The 1974 rules and the other D&D rules thatfollowed tended to have prices such as 1 gold piecefor 6 torches, which could lead players to thinkingeither torches were expensive or gold was cheap. In

AD&D rules, a torch cost 1 copper piece and therewere 200 copper per gold, making gold morevaluable.

In most games, characters start out well off andsoon have thousands of pieces of gold and arewealthy; this makes some gamers think gold is cheapand plentiful.

For some gamers, the annoyance is that acharacter cannot carry more than a few hundred goldpieces of treasure; between gear and the need tomove fast, 500 or so gold pieces stresses their character's capacity. Interesting enough: this makesthings like bags of holding and the floating disc spellvery useful, in their own way.

And it seems to be one reason the game wasdesigned as it was: to reduce mounty-haul gaming("Here's 10,000 g.p. in a pile. Whoops, you can't carryit out?...") Limited encumbrance limits the amount of experience characters can earn, too, unless they areclever.

I was musing on tweaking a game to make goldseem very valuable and to enhance the fantasy of thegame, when I realized all of the above. If I wanted toincrease the value of gold and make "coins" lighter, Idid not need to change the weight of coins - I couldfollow the opposite tack. I divided the prices I wasusing by 10, rounding as I pleased. For the slowwitted: I divided everything by 10, including the costof research, starting money, treasures, etc. Exceptexperience for money, which I changed to 1 g.p. = 10x.p.

The end result is that I could maintain the

convention of encumbrance in coins (actually: in goldpieces) and since "coins" were now worth 10 timeswhat they used to be, they were "lighter". Thecharacters needed to carry fewer to get the samevalue.

The flaw (and reason some people would notaccept such a change) is that some people enjoycarrying around large sums of gold. They wantcharacters finding and carrying 2,000 - 3,000 g.p. at atime or more. (Not they could do so without magicalaide or the DM ignoring encumbrance rules...) In thatcase, they need only use whatever weight systemthey prefer, including 100 coins per pound.

And some people find weights in pounds simpler

to deal with.

Rates of Exchange

A realistic rate of exchange is impossible becausethe values of metals would change in relation to eachother. Prices change all the time and the value of coins is just another price.

Old school D&D often used different rates of exchange:



1974:1 gold piece = 10 silver pieces = 50 copper pieces1 silver piece = 5 copper pieces

Holmes introductory Booklet:1 copper piece (CP) equals 1/50 gold piece1 silver piece (SP) equals 1/10 gold piece

1 electrum piece (EP) equals 1/2 gold piece1 platinum piece (PP) equals 5/1 gold piece

or:

5 copper pieces equals 1 silver piece10 silver pieces equals 1 gold piece2 electrum pieces equals 1 gold piece5 gold pieces equals 1 platinum piece

AD&D (1st edition):1 gold piece = 2 electrum pieces = 20 silver pieces= 200 copper pieces

1 electrum piece = 10 silver pieces = 100 copper pieces

1 silver piece = 10 copper pieces

D&D 1981, 1983, etc. editing credit for Cook,Moldvay, Mentzer, Alliston, etc.:

1 gold piece = 2 electrum pieces = 10 silver pieces= 100 copper pieces1 electrum pieces 5 silver pieces = 50 copper pieces1 silver piece = 10 copper pieces

1 platinum piece = 5 gold pieces etc.

Someone attempting to be a purist will point outthat platinum was not used as a coin until quietrecently, somehow failing to grasp that the gameworld is not Earth and hence what happens on Earthis not directly related to the game. (Trying to force our

reality on the game world is unrealistic.) In the D&Dgame world, people are using platinum as coinage.

Electrum was used for coinage on Earth. It canappear naturally, having varying mixes of silver andgold. The different elements can be separated and inthe game world nations coining electrum coins wouldcontrol the ratio; the assumption is that that they usea mixture that is exactly 1/2 a gold coin in value.

Another interesting and unused item is that coinsthat were a mixture of silver and copper did exist onEarth; they were made to provide a coin with lessvalue than silver but about the same weight as anormal coin (small coins tended to be hard to keep upwith; given that standard coins tended to be small,minting an even smaller silver coin was not asdesirable). By mixing silver and copper they couldmake a 2 or 3 copper coin, for example. The intendedvalue was marked on them in some way.

Oddly enough, some campaign settings andgames use brass and bronze coins which have lessvalue that common copper coins. Making an alloy of

copper (bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, andbrass an alloy of copper and zinc) makes the coinmore costly than copper alone. Copper itself is lesscommon than iron, for example, which is why bronzeor copper items tend to cost more than iron or steelitems. Tin is even more scarce than copper; most "tincans" are actually tin-plated steel, the tin being usedto reduce rust. Not that that is true of the game world;but the tin or zinc content of a brass or bronze alloy isvery small.

That leads to another interesting thing: bronzearmor (said to be immune to rust monster attacks) isusually priced as cheaper than steel armor. That

would have tickled the fancies of many of our ancestors and eliminated the desire to develop anduse iron and steel.

Humans went to the use of iron and steelbecause it was more plentiful and cheaper thancopper and bronze. Bronze armor would cost morethan even the best steel armor, not less.

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Dungeons & Dragons Coinage