Fantasy Currencies

I was putting together a Word of Trade for Godbound the other day (I just kitbashed it from existing Gifts) and it made me think about fantasy currencies.

Fundamentally, currency is an abstraction that makes barter easier.  If I have a bunch of chickens and want to trade some of them for a goat, currency makes it so we don't have to figure out and agree on a chicken:goat conversion factor every time.  Instead, I know how many dollars a chicken is worth and a goat is worth, and that gives us a number of chickens per goat.  It lets us engage in a simplified trade based on our shared understanding of the value of the currency we're using.

Of course, that shared understanding is based on something, and there have historically been a lot of ways for it to grow.  Traditionally, RPGs usually use the precious metals as currency method, something which is believed to have intrinsic value.  (It doesn't actually have intrinsic value; it has intrinsic difficulty.  But we'll get to intrinsic value in a minute.)  This is fine if you don't want to think about currency, because it's similar enough to how it works in the modern world, but this is a post about thinking about currency.

A currency method that I think is more interesting is the banknote era.  Banknotes, used for a long time in various ways throughout various histories in different parts of the world, are exactly what it sounds like; it's a note from a bank.  They're basically bank IOUs; the note says that you can show up at the bank and give them this note, and they will give you the thing it says on the note.  Most often, due to the history involved, this was some amount of a precious metal (1 ounce of gold or whatever).  However, there's no reason that it needs to be issued by a bank, and no reason why it needs to be a precious metal.  The only thing stopping a farmer from issuing chicken notes ("Return this note to me and I will give you one chicken") is trust; in order to work as currency, people who don't know the farmer have to believe that they can actually show up and get a chicken for the note.  (Or, at least, for our purposes they have to believe it.  In reality they can assign a percentage to their belief and offer a reduced value in exchange for the note based on how likely they think it is.  That kind of financial shenanigans is out of scope for this blog post, I'm not reinventing chicken foreign exchange markets or derivaties.  Not yet, anyway.)  As a result of the trust problem, banknotes are more likely to be issued by large or famous institutions; it doesn't have to be a bank, but there's no reason a wizard's guild, trading company, blacksmhith's guild, or other organization can't issue their own IOUs.  (This did happen in history, but not as much as banks, because banks tended to be the organizations with the legal right to do this kind of thing.)

So this brings us to our next question; what kind of things would organizations issue banknotes for?  And that brings us back to the question of intrinsic value.  Because for it to be a good currency that people want to trade, you need to offer them something that they want, and the things with intrinsic value are the most-desired things and therefore a good place to start.  The things that have intrinsic value are the things that people need to live; food, water, shelter, and entertainment.  (Not everyone would include entertainment, but I do; without some form of entertainment or relaxation, people have problems.)  This is why the barl from the Death Gate Cycle (1 barl = 1 barrel of water, and can be exchanged for such) is the best fantasy currency.

The part where it gets fun for worldbuilding in RPGs is thinking about examples of these things, and designing currencies based on them.  

Food: Animals and plants, of course.  1 chicken piece ~= 1 copper piece, 1 goat piece ~= 1 silver piece, 1 cow piece ~= 1 gold piece, for example; or various weights of wheat or rice.  More esoteric food-like needs can be included here as well; weights of blood for a vampire currency, time in sunlight for a plant species, crystallized mana for mana addicts.

Water: Usually this would just be water in various weights, but you can do other things with water access too.  Perhaps it's measured in time with a river, or access to a specific mineral or magical water source (specific sources of water were believed to have magical or medical powers historically, and some of those beliefs were even true due to local water impurities; they could all be true in worldbuilding).  

Shelter:  Like the others, to be interpreted widely.  Not just literal shelter (a house, roof, etc), but can cover clothing, heating and cooling, and other environemntal safety services.  Perhaps a desert people have a currency based on removal of sand from your clothes; give the issuing organization your clothing and a banknote, and they give them back in an hour with all the sand removed from your undergarments.  (And other clothes, but the outer ones are less important to be sand-free, by comparison.)

Entertainment:  Perhaps the most broad and interesting category.  In a pure subsistence situation, entertainment tends to be given less weight, but anything where people have downtime they will be looking for something to fill it.  The exact details of available entertainments will depend on cultural and technological development, but note that this category also includes things like status-seeking behavior or anything else that makes people feel good or like they're having fun.  (Which actually makes gold intrinsically valuable again, as long as the culture values displaying it, because showing off your gold is a form of entertainment.)  I'm sure you can think of a variety of things people might enjoy doing in your campaign setting; and if you haven't thought about it, this is a great opportunity to think about it.

Secret Fifth Intrinsic Value:  We're fantasy, we don't have to limit ourselves to things that make sense.  Maybe a banknote for time; turn it in to the Chronomancer's Guild and get an extra hour.  Maybe go the Life-Shaper's Guild and have them grow you the extra organs listed in your note.  Anything you can think of that people inherently want is a good basis for a currency.

Most of this rambling can be summed up in a single question; currency is an abstraction.  In your world, what is it an abstraction for?  And I think we can come up with more interesting answers than 'gold' or 'power' as have been used historically.  You don't need to have dozens of different currencies issued by all sorts of different issuers (though I think for some games that would be very fun to navigate, most people don't want to deal with that), you can still just do the standard expected one currency thing, just make it a little more interesting.  (Of course, it's not that hard to deal with other currencies as long as you have your one standard currency; just phrase them as treasure.  Instead of saying "You find 17 Joe Farmer chicken notes", just say "You find 4 Universal Currency Units worth of Joe Farmer chicken notes".  That said, after writing this, I also do think it would be a cool occassional challenge to just give them the 17 chicken notes and have the players figure out what to do with them, even if for most players this is a sometimes food.)

I have run out of things to say and am thinking about chicken now.  Following the advice of Sprinting Owl Games, we close this blog post with a link to the recipe that I use for whole roast chicken.  (I never make the sauce in the recipe, I'm saving those bits for stock to make soup with later, but you don't need to make the sauce for the chicken to be delicious.  All you gotta do is spatchcock, dry brine, let rest, oil it up, and heat until temp.  Everything else is optional.)

https://www.seriouseats.com/butterflied-roasted-chicken-with-quick-jus-recipe