by Ice Dragon

Created on: February 05, 2009   Last Updated: February 11, 2009

In the Dungeons and Dragons world, the standard form of currency is based on the gold piece, or gp, as it's abbreviated. That said, there's also the copper piece (cp) that is worth 1/100 of one gp, and the silver piece (sp) that is worth 1/10 of one gp. The platinum piece (pp) is worth five gp. So, to summarize from lowest currency to highest, there is the cp, sp, gp, and pp valued at 1/100, 1/10, 1 and 5 respectively.

For the smaller items like candles, sheets of paper, or a marking pencil, a character might pay about 3 cp or so for a dozen of them. Things like renting a room, ordering a meal at a tavern, lengths of ropethose can go from several copper to a few silver. The bigger items like weapons, armor, horses, and monster-fodder...er...hire-able companionsgo for several gold pieces. The best war-horse in the stable? That can go for a few hundred gold easy.

Those are the bare-bones basics of the economy of the D&D universe. There are several worlds within that universe, and each world has its own version of economics. The Forgotten Realms very closely match the basic D&D economy. Several countries within the Realms have their own nomenclature and base currency, but they all boil down to something very close to the standard. The world of Krynn, however, uses steel as the base currency, with gold down near the bottom in value. The reason for this is tied up in the history of the world, when steel became very rare after most of the alloy was used to make arms and armor.

Old-time gamers might remember the Dark Sun campaign setting, where the main currency used was a ceramic piece. Higher up the value chain was silver, gold, then platinum.

In general, most of the Dungeons and Dragons worlds are (loosely) based on medieval Earth: the technology available, kings, emperors, dukes, lords and ladies. Knights armed with swords, peasants, the working classes that provide the services. However, the D&D worlds toss a rather interesting wrench into the gears of normality: magic. With spells that can turn castles into rubble with one twitch of a finger, mages and priests can significantly twist the standard day to day operations and economics of a city.

Mages and priests both use magic; priests mostly use theirs to heal and help, mages have rather fun spells like "stinking cloud", "grease", "lightning bolt", and "meteor shower". The priests in the temples charge a good bit of coinage if someone wants them to cast a "cure disease" spell on a family member, or "raise

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>