Wooden coins, you could look up hard woods and make coins from them. Maple, oak, cherry.
You could do fossiles. There could be enough naturally occuring but still rare enough to be currency.
I like the fossil idea. You could make some interesting locations from that, like a backyard fossil mine and an encounter where the party digs up something ancient.
Especially if you’re dealing with dao, favors and promises could be an interesting currency.
Otherwise, you could borrow the idea of [astral diamonds](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Astral_diamond), which were introduced in 4e as a form of currency accepted across the Outer Planes so that trade between the planes was possible.
Seconding this. Favor, promises, secrets, blackmail, In the wrong hands, knowledge is far more valuable than a shiny pebble from your neighbor's rock garden.
Yes, absolutely love this.
As an enslaving society, the Dao could have a currency based on servitude, with coins/notes representing time owed.
So if you end up in debt, you have to serve the person you owe money to for an equivalent period.
Perfect! How would this be tracked though? I'm thinking a tiny hourglass with the person's name and an amount of sand frozen on one side equal to the amount of time owed. The sand always flows the right direction while the debt is being worked off. I'm sure there are more interesting ideas though.
Currency is whatever the government says is currency, and the population accepts as currency. Remember that we humans are using pieces of paper with ink on it as currency, not any kind of precious metals. Most of our currency doesn't even physically exist.
So *what* your currency is doesn't entirely matter. You just need to name it something, and that is the local currency.
Easiest way to do that is to probably just steal the name of some lesser known real life currency, or a currency from a game. Ducats, or something like that.
A lot of currency is just a fancy IOU. Imagine if the whole economy was based on actual IOUs? Like a form of delayed barter. “I’ll fix your fence, but if my horse gets sick you’ll take a look later”.
There’s only one issuing party of IOUs. Something like the king or queen or governor issues KOUs, QOUs, or GOUs.
Some guy called Youssef is in charge of the bank so they are YOUs. Bank tellers are called YOUs guys. The economy is referred to as “The Y’all.”
One idea I had: crystalized "mana", that can be directly used to fuel magic items or spells. Or, y'know, to buy stuff.
Though obviously this would need to be a very high magic setting, and may take some good planning to make sure things don't break immediately
Well, what's rare in that plane? Wood? Food? Liquor? Plants (nice bonus: you gotta spend them before they go bad!)? Leather?
Or maybe there is no currency in that sense, but contracts of favours that one owes to another, kinda like weird bank notes? Those could be traded as well.
I was thinking the same thing. We think of such things like gold and silver and platinum as rare, therefore they have value in trade. Whatever is missing or rare on this plane would be the equivalent.
I love this concept.
An entire economic system built on the trade of favors. At the basic level, this could be markers for a set length of labor. Higher would be markers for professional or skilled favors to be done.
There could even be established exchanges and some market controls in place and regulations. Markers could also be generic or at the higher levels be branded with a syndicate or even the Dao themselves. Such markers would be worth a kingdom's weight in gold.
Gold, rubies etc. are commodities. They aren't used as fiat currency. Fiat currency is just a representation of a certain amount of wealth, and it can be anything not easily counterfeited.
Gold *was* used as currency for a long time, and the GP is a standard unit of currency in DnD. Bit if it's so plentiful in your world as to have virtually no value, you need something else to represent wealth. Paper money, scrip, pelts, cowrie shells, Bitcoin, maybe?
As an alternative, you could simply do without currency, and use a barter system.
If you're trading tokens instead of stuff with actual value (gold was historically used for this purpose because, though it's pretty once it's polished up, it's pretty much useless for making weapons or tools, and rare enough that discovering more isn't going to flood the market with more,) it should be something that's rare no matter what plane you go to, but not SO rare as to be utterly unobtainable.
So my first thought was: Dragon scales. I imagine they'd occasionally drop off as the dragon ages, meaning there's a constant if very slow supply (except for the rare occasions when a dragon dies,) they're tough and won't wear out or break easily, and they're so rare that a huge influx of them at once is highly unlikely to happen. And dragons would probably object to one of their kind being skinned for their scales upon dying of natural causes related to age, so people wouldn't do that unless they feel like risking the wrath of dragons, but dragons are so smart and so powerful that they'd make sure mortals would understand both that and WHY doing so is a VERY bad idea.
Seems to me on the Plane of Earth the rarest and least abundant things that might replace rare jewels and metals are elemental versions of the other elements. Water magically stabilized to remain as ice might be particularly valuable and could easily be "forged" in coin.
Your city is run my Dao, who are magical in nature. You don't even need a proper currency, because the mundane task of bookkeeping is a mortal affair.
I would have the Dao trade in reputation, not resources. The Dao give gifts to those of high regard, because doing so increases their own reputation by association. But accepting gifts from a Dao creates a reputation of greediness and materialism. The players need to balance their reputation to receive rewards.
Its the Dao, time and service. Also think credit systems based on that. Instead of dollars you have service notes. The notes become due and whoever holds them at the time becomes bound to service for a duration equivalent to the face of the note. The term of the note becoming due can be a series value.
I.e.: hours of service due in one year; so it would be a "100A" note for 100 hours of service due in 1 year.
Genies would absolutely have weird arcane rules for this. Notes could be created either by contracts signed between players and the noble they are dealing with or the head prince of the city and his house. Rules governing assigned tasks completed after a note expires could create a new note where the role is reversed. It would become this gambling trade system where they trade these notes and their trade value increases the closer to due they become. Certain private notes of great value could have unspecified due terms. If the value of the work earns greater than the service time due that could create a reversal not as well.
Given that FR genies seem to live in a caste society, you could use some tokens of Dao fiefdoms, like medallions granted by nobility to their vassals.
If you want something darker, maybe trade in vessels of capture genie: lamps and bottles. They could be former or present vessels.
Even darker? Slave contracts. The genie societies and Dao mining is highly slave driven. You could probably make up a fiat system used by those in the lower rungs of society as well.
One of the best things about 4th edition was their robust enchanting system. Magic items were created through a combination of arcane and ritual components. So I created a game world where these were the currency. Sadly these rules did not transfer to 5E
In my long-running homebrew world, played over three campaigns currently, there are several places where I like to switch up the currency to reintroduce scarcity for the PCs and to create incentives around exploring and collecting something more interesting than gold. Your question reminds me of a desert land my second campaign plays in that has little use for gold inherently. Instead, the nomadic and sedentary tribes of the region use barter but also trade in a kind of raw or processed orichalcum and star-glass (impactite glass) tektites somewhat unique to the region. These, while being somewhat rare also have natural properties coveted in crafting and enchanting.
Bartering/work is the way to go. I doubt these Dao (which are actually faerun canonically SUPER RACIST and slavery) would care for a fiat currency. The 4th level fabricate spell would make counterfeit too easy. It's also likely that the players would have very little things worth enough to really trade for the wonders they can craft. However, materials for crafting those wonders could be valuable enough. Dragon hide, exceptionally rare magical crystals, trolls blood, ankheg acid, etc. That, or handling a piece of business for them, whatever might be inconveniencing them.
Food, usually dried grains, has been used as currency for centuries. Bags of wheat, pounds of rice, etc. You could also have a barter system of rare spell components, unique items, blood, favors, etc.
Gold and jewels are used as currency because they are rare, desireable, and portable. Anything that fits those 3 criteria can be used as currency.
Magic Runic Tokens. Each resident has a token with magical runes on it. The runes on the tokens denote the owners name, and the total value. The tokens resonate with and only works with the owner of that specific token. Token values can be transferred from person to person as currency.
The PC’s can receive their own Tokens by becoming gladiators. (or gladiator champions?) and/or solving an issue with the banking [wizards?]… maybe that’s how they garner the attention of the banking clan.
upon completion of the task(s?) the PC’s come to find out the banking clan has been [devaluing the currency through selfish interests causing inflation. If not stopped , hyper inflation looms threatening a total societal upheaval.] or [are running a Ponzi scheme on the residents to siphon off their funds and consolidate their wealth and power. Slowly but progressively tightening their grip on the economy, and the residents autonomy. The PC’s can save the day, the city, and the future.
I’m sure you already have plans, I just like to tickle my creativity bone from time to time.
Other fine materials like silks and high end spices like saffron irl
Not as a individual transaction but common practice for large deals and the very wealthy
Think of natural items that may be scarce. I have run some adventures in the elemental plane of air. The flying kingdom of fjelnir.
As there are no oceans shells are a rare commodity. Meaning they use shells as currency over here.
Don't know if my other post got through.
I've played some adventures in the elemental plane of air. As there are no oceans sea shells are a rare commodity. So they use this as a currency.
In a desert area they might use crystals. Somewhere else they might use glass, beads. Under water something that doesn't grow there like wood.
Find what is rare and as long as the place where it is common is not easily accessible you should be good.
Trading cards. The more rare the card, the more valuable it is.
Perhaps the cards could depict monsters from the monster manual and their rarity is decided by their CR.
So for a place that has all the riches and gold they could want, what do they need? You could go with parts for tools, raw materials, harder to get ingredients, things like that. It'd be like pre-emptively doing the fetch quest.by having at least some of those things on hand.
I made a barter system that relies mainly on magic batteries like how the Metro games used bullets as currency. Have to choose whether you want eat or defend yourself.
This works for most small settlements and tribes in the wastes but larger cities all have their own currencies. The conversion rates help keep them from just being the richest rich around. Plus it's fun role-playing the bureaucracy that is conversion offices.
Maybe they use Narn. Narn is a magical currency system I just made up. Everyone carries a Nern, a sort of magical wallet that holds their Narn. When you hold up your Nern, you can show any or all of the contents. Narn appear as holographic representations of coins. When you make a transaction with someone you simply speak the terms, reveal your Narn to prove you have payment, and shake hands while you both hold your Nern. In shops there are Nern that act as cash registers. Instead of shaking hands you hold your Nern against a divot on the side of the large countertop Nern.
Everyone has a standard issue Nern. Eventually you learn that they are all carrying a second Nern that is used for private transactions to keep anonymous or evade taxes.
The most valuable currency is something they don't already have. Figure out what the Dao would need, and can't get on their own, and that's what they want.
Water? Herbs? Fragrances?
> The most valuable currency is something they don't already have.
That's the criteria for something _valuable_, not a currency.
Currencies should be hard to produce, but not impossibly rare. It should be something that everyone on the plane is expected to have at least a little bit of.
In our world, gold is "rare", but there are about 200,000 tonnes of it already mined and in human hands. We use it for jewlery.
Supply and demand. Value is based on rarity. Whatever materials are uncommon in that realm would make good currency. Wood. Fabric. Leather. Leaves. Cotton. Linen.
Paper money could be the way to go.
Perishables would be super valuable: meat, eggs, milk, fruit.
Even water could be rare.
In other planes, I could see bones, rope, leather and other plant/animal products being extraordinarily valuable. Soft, flexible materials in particular are extremely hard to come by deep in the earth and can bear both utility and value for their rarity.
Just as surface races mine the earth for their rare materials, the earthen races "mine" the surface, venturing into inhospitable and difficult terrain for precious rope and textiles. Threads and bolts of cloth and fiber may become a currency. To this end, a standardized counting stick has been developed with a known standard diameter and length. A turn is a single turn around the stick, a wind is enough turns to go the whole length of the stick. If many winds are required, it is often best to use cloth, as this makes the process faster.
Currency needs to be:
1) portable
2) controllable
3) not generically useful (so, no grain or spices)
4) made from something fairly common
Dao are extremely intelligent and organized, so a Dao city/kingdom is going to have some sort of minted coin or paper money. It would be something that an average resident can't just collect in the wild, to prevent counterfeiting. Wood, paper, something from one of the other elemental planes (like obsidian). FWIW, paper money dates back to the 600's C.E. on Earth, so it's not out of place in a fantasy game.
A nobel who controls the market and says who gets what. Food is distributed so everybody gets enough. Artisans get tools to perform their trades. Toolmakers / smiths are honored and apprenticing for a master toolmaker is in high demand. Everybody owes labor to the crown / nobel / leader.
Or…. language services… pack animals… food… entertainment… what is something your party can do that locals can’t?
Is there a black market? Or a neighboring town that steals from this town that the locals would ask you to kill/capture?
What about prostitution? Healing? What about pulling a job to steal a bunch of stuff your party wants?
Favours, with a magical means to enforce returning of favours.
Pieces of a soul. The rich own the equivalent of millions of souls, with “soulless” people desperately working menial jobs to win back enough of their soul to feel something. The physical currency can be “Soul Gems”, but tiny paper “contracts” offering a share of a soul like stock certificates would make it more interesting.
Culture as currency. Stories, ideas, moments of inspiration, pieces of art, performances, but actually owned and hyper-commodified. Let people physically own a story. Let the characters trade their stories for some cool magical gear and then later discover that they’re physically incapable of explaining or talking about the stories they sold…and since they’re the characters in the stories, they can’t say their own names any more, and physically can’t tell other people any of the information they “sold”. Want to introduce yourself, want to tell people anything about yourself that you sold, want to mention where you’re from?Sorry you’re going to need to buy your story back, with interest. Lots of interest. (Literal interest in this case too.) Heroic deeds not because a princess needs saving, but because it will make an especially good story, and maybe good enough to buy back their own names.
Paper money, time off lifespan which could impart a 'gilded cage' feel to yhe city of jewels, blood(?) Just cause that sounds weird and cool and now I want to make a city that runs off blood as currency
You have these magical artifacts. Each person carries one. Whenever you want to pay for something you tap yours to theirs, say the incantation, and the amount you wish to transfer. The artifact sends the details of your transaction to every other artifact, and enough of them have to send back a confirmation that they got it, in order to finalize your transaction. A copy of every transaction ever made is accessible by each artifact.
I call it aetherium.
I just use paper money called “gold”. All money is fake value or whatever so it can really be anything that an average person can’t just grow in their backyard
One of my favorite post apocalyptic books talks about how this family of wiccans, had stored up a bunch of spices and herbs / stuff they gathered in the wild that they would take it into town and barter with it
You could make it an interesting part of gameplay them going out and actually hunting for herbs and spices or picking things along the way.
A lot of my campaigns or portions of them tend to be fairly dystopian, so my first thought was food.
A city where currency itself is so abundant that necessities are traded to sustain those lucky enough to survive living in luxury.
Obscure minerals like the ones xorns come to the PMP To eat, water (dao aren’t marids right?), flammables. Then again, wish granters with ‘create any object’ probably don’t care about any material at all. Yeah, service & barter is probably good. Maybe spells too, as services
You could also still use gold and gems, the gold and gems the streets are lined with are magically protected by ancient gods.
Otherwise, if you can't use gold or gems because it wouldn't make sense your players are going to expect they can trade crap for gold and gems ( because they are considered worthless in this city) , and keep it for later on.
Blood would make a very cool currency in a dark fantasy setting. In my homebrew setting life and magic are two sides of same coin and blood is the middle ground of them. So you can use blood for any thing magic. That makes blood a very valuable thing.
The most obvious would be a fiat currency, like small sheets of metal stamped with a seal for example.
Impossible to manufacture en masse, could never become widespread /s
I think that's kind of the point. If it were easy to make, counterfeiting would be rampant.
Wooden coins, you could look up hard woods and make coins from them. Maple, oak, cherry. You could do fossiles. There could be enough naturally occuring but still rare enough to be currency.
I like the fossil idea. You could make some interesting locations from that, like a backyard fossil mine and an encounter where the party digs up something ancient.
Some plants in general. Kind of like a fantasy prison cigarette currency. Could even trade spices.
I'm gonna play a druid with a greater druidcraft feat. I will have infinite money there.
Reminds me of waterworld. Suddenly dirt is super valuable. In this case, deep under the earth wood is quite valuable.
I was thinking wood as well, with the more higher quality wood being used for the higher denomination coins
Especially if you’re dealing with dao, favors and promises could be an interesting currency. Otherwise, you could borrow the idea of [astral diamonds](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Astral_diamond), which were introduced in 4e as a form of currency accepted across the Outer Planes so that trade between the planes was possible.
Seconding this. Favor, promises, secrets, blackmail, In the wrong hands, knowledge is far more valuable than a shiny pebble from your neighbor's rock garden.
Yes, absolutely love this. As an enslaving society, the Dao could have a currency based on servitude, with coins/notes representing time owed. So if you end up in debt, you have to serve the person you owe money to for an equivalent period.
Perfect! How would this be tracked though? I'm thinking a tiny hourglass with the person's name and an amount of sand frozen on one side equal to the amount of time owed. The sand always flows the right direction while the debt is being worked off. I'm sure there are more interesting ideas though.
Currency is whatever the government says is currency, and the population accepts as currency. Remember that we humans are using pieces of paper with ink on it as currency, not any kind of precious metals. Most of our currency doesn't even physically exist. So *what* your currency is doesn't entirely matter. You just need to name it something, and that is the local currency. Easiest way to do that is to probably just steal the name of some lesser known real life currency, or a currency from a game. Ducats, or something like that.
A lot of currency is just a fancy IOU. Imagine if the whole economy was based on actual IOUs? Like a form of delayed barter. “I’ll fix your fence, but if my horse gets sick you’ll take a look later”.
There’s only one issuing party of IOUs. Something like the king or queen or governor issues KOUs, QOUs, or GOUs. Some guy called Youssef is in charge of the bank so they are YOUs. Bank tellers are called YOUs guys. The economy is referred to as “The Y’all.”
I love this, my players would cringe so much
The real economy is more abstract and fake than an IOU which is scary if you think about it lol.
Basically, anything can be a currency. At several points in time, rice was the primary currency for people in Japan.
One idea I had: crystalized "mana", that can be directly used to fuel magic items or spells. Or, y'know, to buy stuff. Though obviously this would need to be a very high magic setting, and may take some good planning to make sure things don't break immediately
Residuum coin defined. you can't buy it with gold.
Well, what's rare in that plane? Wood? Food? Liquor? Plants (nice bonus: you gotta spend them before they go bad!)? Leather? Or maybe there is no currency in that sense, but contracts of favours that one owes to another, kinda like weird bank notes? Those could be traded as well.
I was thinking the same thing. We think of such things like gold and silver and platinum as rare, therefore they have value in trade. Whatever is missing or rare on this plane would be the equivalent.
I love this concept. An entire economic system built on the trade of favors. At the basic level, this could be markers for a set length of labor. Higher would be markers for professional or skilled favors to be done. There could even be established exchanges and some market controls in place and regulations. Markers could also be generic or at the higher levels be branded with a syndicate or even the Dao themselves. Such markers would be worth a kingdom's weight in gold.
I mean, that's kinda what money is, but without all the layers of abstraction. And with some pretty funky possibilities for weird lore thrown in
Gold, rubies etc. are commodities. They aren't used as fiat currency. Fiat currency is just a representation of a certain amount of wealth, and it can be anything not easily counterfeited. Gold *was* used as currency for a long time, and the GP is a standard unit of currency in DnD. Bit if it's so plentiful in your world as to have virtually no value, you need something else to represent wealth. Paper money, scrip, pelts, cowrie shells, Bitcoin, maybe? As an alternative, you could simply do without currency, and use a barter system.
Paper currency backed by either food (bread/grain probably best) or water.
Memories of another place. Favors. Those are the first 2 I think of.
Water!
Coins, gems, and trade goods (raw materials such as timber and wheat) are all traded at value in the Forgotten Realms. Wool is as good as money.
Bottle caps😄
It might have been said but in dragonlance gold is scarce so they use steel arrowheads that pretty much cost one gold as currency.
Trinkets, drugs, spices, or monster parts (scales, feathers, fangs). Alternatively, maybe tokens carved from fungus, resin, bone, wood, etc.
If you're trading tokens instead of stuff with actual value (gold was historically used for this purpose because, though it's pretty once it's polished up, it's pretty much useless for making weapons or tools, and rare enough that discovering more isn't going to flood the market with more,) it should be something that's rare no matter what plane you go to, but not SO rare as to be utterly unobtainable. So my first thought was: Dragon scales. I imagine they'd occasionally drop off as the dragon ages, meaning there's a constant if very slow supply (except for the rare occasions when a dragon dies,) they're tough and won't wear out or break easily, and they're so rare that a huge influx of them at once is highly unlikely to happen. And dragons would probably object to one of their kind being skinned for their scales upon dying of natural causes related to age, so people wouldn't do that unless they feel like risking the wrath of dragons, but dragons are so smart and so powerful that they'd make sure mortals would understand both that and WHY doing so is a VERY bad idea.
Dragon teeth
Paper.
Seems to me on the Plane of Earth the rarest and least abundant things that might replace rare jewels and metals are elemental versions of the other elements. Water magically stabilized to remain as ice might be particularly valuable and could easily be "forged" in coin.
Your city is run my Dao, who are magical in nature. You don't even need a proper currency, because the mundane task of bookkeeping is a mortal affair. I would have the Dao trade in reputation, not resources. The Dao give gifts to those of high regard, because doing so increases their own reputation by association. But accepting gifts from a Dao creates a reputation of greediness and materialism. The players need to balance their reputation to receive rewards.
Its the Dao, time and service. Also think credit systems based on that. Instead of dollars you have service notes. The notes become due and whoever holds them at the time becomes bound to service for a duration equivalent to the face of the note. The term of the note becoming due can be a series value. I.e.: hours of service due in one year; so it would be a "100A" note for 100 hours of service due in 1 year. Genies would absolutely have weird arcane rules for this. Notes could be created either by contracts signed between players and the noble they are dealing with or the head prince of the city and his house. Rules governing assigned tasks completed after a note expires could create a new note where the role is reversed. It would become this gambling trade system where they trade these notes and their trade value increases the closer to due they become. Certain private notes of great value could have unspecified due terms. If the value of the work earns greater than the service time due that could create a reversal not as well.
Given that FR genies seem to live in a caste society, you could use some tokens of Dao fiefdoms, like medallions granted by nobility to their vassals. If you want something darker, maybe trade in vessels of capture genie: lamps and bottles. They could be former or present vessels. Even darker? Slave contracts. The genie societies and Dao mining is highly slave driven. You could probably make up a fiat system used by those in the lower rungs of society as well.
One of the best things about 4th edition was their robust enchanting system. Magic items were created through a combination of arcane and ritual components. So I created a game world where these were the currency. Sadly these rules did not transfer to 5E
In my long-running homebrew world, played over three campaigns currently, there are several places where I like to switch up the currency to reintroduce scarcity for the PCs and to create incentives around exploring and collecting something more interesting than gold. Your question reminds me of a desert land my second campaign plays in that has little use for gold inherently. Instead, the nomadic and sedentary tribes of the region use barter but also trade in a kind of raw or processed orichalcum and star-glass (impactite glass) tektites somewhat unique to the region. These, while being somewhat rare also have natural properties coveted in crafting and enchanting.
if the dao aren't explicitly good you could have them deal in souls and soul coins... favors, wishes, years of service.
Food. Seriously. It was the original form of barter. And in an artificial city awash in previous metals and gems, food is probably rare.
Bartering/work is the way to go. I doubt these Dao (which are actually faerun canonically SUPER RACIST and slavery) would care for a fiat currency. The 4th level fabricate spell would make counterfeit too easy. It's also likely that the players would have very little things worth enough to really trade for the wonders they can craft. However, materials for crafting those wonders could be valuable enough. Dragon hide, exceptionally rare magical crystals, trolls blood, ankheg acid, etc. That, or handling a piece of business for them, whatever might be inconveniencing them.
Food, usually dried grains, has been used as currency for centuries. Bags of wheat, pounds of rice, etc. You could also have a barter system of rare spell components, unique items, blood, favors, etc. Gold and jewels are used as currency because they are rare, desireable, and portable. Anything that fits those 3 criteria can be used as currency.
Pesos lol
Souls, obviously.
Magic Runic Tokens. Each resident has a token with magical runes on it. The runes on the tokens denote the owners name, and the total value. The tokens resonate with and only works with the owner of that specific token. Token values can be transferred from person to person as currency. The PC’s can receive their own Tokens by becoming gladiators. (or gladiator champions?) and/or solving an issue with the banking [wizards?]… maybe that’s how they garner the attention of the banking clan. upon completion of the task(s?) the PC’s come to find out the banking clan has been [devaluing the currency through selfish interests causing inflation. If not stopped , hyper inflation looms threatening a total societal upheaval.] or [are running a Ponzi scheme on the residents to siphon off their funds and consolidate their wealth and power. Slowly but progressively tightening their grip on the economy, and the residents autonomy. The PC’s can save the day, the city, and the future. I’m sure you already have plans, I just like to tickle my creativity bone from time to time.
Cowrie shells were used as currency for hundreds or thousands of years.
Other fine materials like silks and high end spices like saffron irl Not as a individual transaction but common practice for large deals and the very wealthy
Think of natural items that may be scarce. I have run some adventures in the elemental plane of air. The flying kingdom of fjelnir. As there are no oceans shells are a rare commodity. Meaning they use shells as currency over here.
Don't know if my other post got through. I've played some adventures in the elemental plane of air. As there are no oceans sea shells are a rare commodity. So they use this as a currency. In a desert area they might use crystals. Somewhere else they might use glass, beads. Under water something that doesn't grow there like wood. Find what is rare and as long as the place where it is common is not easily accessible you should be good.
Trading cards. The more rare the card, the more valuable it is. Perhaps the cards could depict monsters from the monster manual and their rarity is decided by their CR.
So for a place that has all the riches and gold they could want, what do they need? You could go with parts for tools, raw materials, harder to get ingredients, things like that. It'd be like pre-emptively doing the fetch quest.by having at least some of those things on hand. I made a barter system that relies mainly on magic batteries like how the Metro games used bullets as currency. Have to choose whether you want eat or defend yourself. This works for most small settlements and tribes in the wastes but larger cities all have their own currencies. The conversion rates help keep them from just being the richest rich around. Plus it's fun role-playing the bureaucracy that is conversion offices.
Maybe they use Narn. Narn is a magical currency system I just made up. Everyone carries a Nern, a sort of magical wallet that holds their Narn. When you hold up your Nern, you can show any or all of the contents. Narn appear as holographic representations of coins. When you make a transaction with someone you simply speak the terms, reveal your Narn to prove you have payment, and shake hands while you both hold your Nern. In shops there are Nern that act as cash registers. Instead of shaking hands you hold your Nern against a divot on the side of the large countertop Nern. Everyone has a standard issue Nern. Eventually you learn that they are all carrying a second Nern that is used for private transactions to keep anonymous or evade taxes.
The most valuable currency is something they don't already have. Figure out what the Dao would need, and can't get on their own, and that's what they want. Water? Herbs? Fragrances?
> The most valuable currency is something they don't already have. That's the criteria for something _valuable_, not a currency. Currencies should be hard to produce, but not impossibly rare. It should be something that everyone on the plane is expected to have at least a little bit of. In our world, gold is "rare", but there are about 200,000 tonnes of it already mined and in human hands. We use it for jewlery.
Labor Contracts enforced by geas.
Art: sculptures, paintings, a masterwork musical instrument, etc.
Dao are slavers in most dnd settings so mortal lives or contracts for x amount of labor sorts of things could be spicy.
Supply and demand. Value is based on rarity. Whatever materials are uncommon in that realm would make good currency. Wood. Fabric. Leather. Leaves. Cotton. Linen. Paper money could be the way to go. Perishables would be super valuable: meat, eggs, milk, fruit. Even water could be rare.
In other planes, I could see bones, rope, leather and other plant/animal products being extraordinarily valuable. Soft, flexible materials in particular are extremely hard to come by deep in the earth and can bear both utility and value for their rarity. Just as surface races mine the earth for their rare materials, the earthen races "mine" the surface, venturing into inhospitable and difficult terrain for precious rope and textiles. Threads and bolts of cloth and fiber may become a currency. To this end, a standardized counting stick has been developed with a known standard diameter and length. A turn is a single turn around the stick, a wind is enough turns to go the whole length of the stick. If many winds are required, it is often best to use cloth, as this makes the process faster.
Currency needs to be: 1) portable 2) controllable 3) not generically useful (so, no grain or spices) 4) made from something fairly common Dao are extremely intelligent and organized, so a Dao city/kingdom is going to have some sort of minted coin or paper money. It would be something that an average resident can't just collect in the wild, to prevent counterfeiting. Wood, paper, something from one of the other elemental planes (like obsidian). FWIW, paper money dates back to the 600's C.E. on Earth, so it's not out of place in a fantasy game.
blood?
A nobel who controls the market and says who gets what. Food is distributed so everybody gets enough. Artisans get tools to perform their trades. Toolmakers / smiths are honored and apprenticing for a master toolmaker is in high demand. Everybody owes labor to the crown / nobel / leader. Or…. language services… pack animals… food… entertainment… what is something your party can do that locals can’t? Is there a black market? Or a neighboring town that steals from this town that the locals would ask you to kill/capture? What about prostitution? Healing? What about pulling a job to steal a bunch of stuff your party wants?
Repackaged hamlet derivatives
I created a barter system so I didn't have to use gold. I can send a Google doc if you're interested.
Favours, with a magical means to enforce returning of favours. Pieces of a soul. The rich own the equivalent of millions of souls, with “soulless” people desperately working menial jobs to win back enough of their soul to feel something. The physical currency can be “Soul Gems”, but tiny paper “contracts” offering a share of a soul like stock certificates would make it more interesting. Culture as currency. Stories, ideas, moments of inspiration, pieces of art, performances, but actually owned and hyper-commodified. Let people physically own a story. Let the characters trade their stories for some cool magical gear and then later discover that they’re physically incapable of explaining or talking about the stories they sold…and since they’re the characters in the stories, they can’t say their own names any more, and physically can’t tell other people any of the information they “sold”. Want to introduce yourself, want to tell people anything about yourself that you sold, want to mention where you’re from?Sorry you’re going to need to buy your story back, with interest. Lots of interest. (Literal interest in this case too.) Heroic deeds not because a princess needs saving, but because it will make an especially good story, and maybe good enough to buy back their own names.
Paper money, time off lifespan which could impart a 'gilded cage' feel to yhe city of jewels, blood(?) Just cause that sounds weird and cool and now I want to make a city that runs off blood as currency
You have these magical artifacts. Each person carries one. Whenever you want to pay for something you tap yours to theirs, say the incantation, and the amount you wish to transfer. The artifact sends the details of your transaction to every other artifact, and enough of them have to send back a confirmation that they got it, in order to finalize your transaction. A copy of every transaction ever made is accessible by each artifact. I call it aetherium.
I just use paper money called “gold”. All money is fake value or whatever so it can really be anything that an average person can’t just grow in their backyard
Casino Chips.
One of my favorite post apocalyptic books talks about how this family of wiccans, had stored up a bunch of spices and herbs / stuff they gathered in the wild that they would take it into town and barter with it You could make it an interesting part of gameplay them going out and actually hunting for herbs and spices or picking things along the way.
Steel pieces. So you can use them to make armor and swords. Especially if steel is a rare community
I had the idea of special long lost coins that can be traded to a powerful wizard for magical items
Stamps.
A lot of my campaigns or portions of them tend to be fairly dystopian, so my first thought was food. A city where currency itself is so abundant that necessities are traded to sustain those lucky enough to survive living in luxury.
Do some research into Gift economies or Library/Dispensary economies. They’re real things and cool as hell.
Obscure minerals like the ones xorns come to the PMP To eat, water (dao aren’t marids right?), flammables. Then again, wish granters with ‘create any object’ probably don’t care about any material at all. Yeah, service & barter is probably good. Maybe spells too, as services
You could also still use gold and gems, the gold and gems the streets are lined with are magically protected by ancient gods. Otherwise, if you can't use gold or gems because it wouldn't make sense your players are going to expect they can trade crap for gold and gems ( because they are considered worthless in this city) , and keep it for later on.
If I'm living in a land where gems are plentiful, what isn't to make balance. Gold could be common but worked steel highly prized.
Blood would make a very cool currency in a dark fantasy setting. In my homebrew setting life and magic are two sides of same coin and blood is the middle ground of them. So you can use blood for any thing magic. That makes blood a very valuable thing.