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When is a Coin not a Coin?

 

I just bought Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon The Coast campaign which includes a draft of his forthcoming supplement &&&&& Treasure. This is a series of tables for generating treasure hordes, and alongside the expected entries for potions, wands, artefacts, etc, there is a "coins" table. I've written before about my dissatisfaction with the way money is conceived of in RPGs. So Luke's table brought a smile to my face, as it presents coinage as something much more than just some ubiquitous anonymous token used for earning experience, resurrecting old buddies, and building mansions.

Included in the table are aspirational coins, foldable coins, dogs full of coins, coins that can be worn as armour, and several forms of currency that are not quite coins.

The "special coins" listed in the table are intended to supplement, rather than replace, "modern" types of currency - your common or garden pieces of gold, silver, copper, electrum, platinum, whatever - although it's acknowledged that even modern coins will not be of a standard type:

Coins taken from pockets with grubby fingers will be of mixed modern types, and usable as tender unless a polity is actively enforcing its own coinage. Coins discovered in hoards will tie to the time of their origin ...  accumulative hoards as gathered by certain types of inhuman monsters (ogres, bankers etc) will mostly be of local, modern types (as dictated by geography)  but may (20% chance) have one of the below Special Coins. Special Coins can be used as normal coinage or sold to historians, scholars and collectors. 

So "special" coins may be used as a stand-in for modern coins. But most have other uses too, and will be far more valuable if sold to a collector rather than used as a "modern" coin (see noisms post about finding suitable collectors who buy rare artefacts).

Another interesting aspect of the coins table is that it lists the type of things you're likely to find on the obverse & reverse ("heads & tails") of each coin type, whether these be heads in profile, animals, trees, lighthouses, internal organs or, in one case, parts of a larger picture which can only be made out when 500 unique coins are arranged into a specific pattern. The pictures which appear on coins are one of the most prominent things about them, and yet I can remember very few examples of these pictures described in RPGs (here's a nice table, again from noisms, for generating coin descriptions).

A few currency ideas:

1. Monster parts as coinage (e.g. dragon scales: one dragon = HP x 500 coins equivalent)
2. Coins tainted with magic
3. Rubber coins that squeak when you're hit in combat, fall down a trap, etc
4. Coins made from radioactive substances which decay and damage the carrier if not spent rapidly
5. Coins which change their design according to, e.g., the weather, or the mood of the region's ruler 
6. Propaganda coins (for inspiration, see the  early 20th Century German medals designed by Karl Goetz - this one being the most notorious - content warning: explicit racism; naked woman; unfeasibly large penis; doubled-up exclamation marks!!)
7. Coinlings
8. Interlocking coins. What do they make? And where can you find the missing piece of the jigsaw? Don't say that bloody dragon's got it!
9. Translucent coins which show looped footage of glories from long ago
10. Coins which weigh so much as to be effectively worthless
11. Coins which weigh so little as to float away if uncontained
12. Cowrie shells et al
13. Ectoplasmic currency

Coin Magic Taint

I wrote here recently about coinage and treasure hoards in RPGs. Well here's something a little more lighthearted about money...

Magic leakage is a subject that has been long known about, but little discussed as it only happens very slowly, weakly, and only affects very small objects. Its effects are rarely even observable. However when large piles of coins and magic items are placed together for centuries at a time, as in, for example, a dragon's hoard, this leakage may result in coin magic taint.

Coin magic taint, the enchantment of coins through long contact with magic items, can exhibit in many ways. The most common is an attraction between affected coins and sources of magic (most commonly the same magic items that affected the coins, but if these cannot be found then any magical source will suffice). This can get players into a lot of trouble if they pay for goods using tainted coins - the coins will often creep out at night-time and attempt to roll themselves back to the players so they can once more bask in the magical aura of the players' possessions.

The opposite is also the case: in the unlikely event that players get hold of magically tainted coins, perhaps in payment for selling their treasures, they may find these coins gradually escaping from their possession and making their way back to their preferred location.

Other magical properties can be absorbed by coins: perhaps if they have been in contact with a cloak of invisibility, they will be observed to fade in and out of visibility. If tainted by a magical weapon, they may conceivably used as irregular but deadly ammunition for a sling.

What other weird behaviour have people observed from these magically tainted coins?

Fish-maggot Paté

An artifact found in every fish folk settlement, fish maggot paté is almost always stored in a tiny jar of dark blue glass with a lid of marbled precious metals streaked with jade. Inside is a paste which looks a loose liver paté: slightly runny, pink, and homogenous save for occasional veins of deeper red. It smells sweet, sickly even, and tastes surprisingly pleasant, although it leaves a slimy, gritty residue on the tongue and roof of the mouth.