Quote from: rawma;837466How often would the goods exceed what the person hired could personally use? That might have occurred because it shielded both parties from fluctuations in the prices of things that they would need to buy anyway.

I don't know. A lot of what I have is lists from appendices without a whole lot of commentary or analysis on how the allocations, salaries and stipends were used (the salaries are not the focus of the sources, they just include them). It is tough to judge that from the lists alone and I am no economic historian. My main concern is putting together a price list. I imagine some of it could be used in this way, but that is just speculation. A lot of the stuff is quite practical though, so I think that is an important consideration. Much of it you can literally eat and wear. There are also stipends given in many instances for specific needs that someone serving as an official might have. Also I know that it was generally frowned upon for scholar-officials to engage in commerce and if they did they would be expected to go through middle men. I imagine that a scholar-official selling bolts of silk he acquired as part of his salary might be considered engaging in commerce.

I've only played in two games without keeping track of coins/money.

One was D20 Modern with its odd Resource system.

In Fantasy games, Shaintar has its own Resource die system which assigns characters a wealth die (Rated d12-d6 with d4 being destitute/poor). Characters roll their wealth die to acquire goods with penalties or bonuses based on the availability and rarity of an item (up to -12). Charisma applies to the roll as well. After the attempt to find the item, a second wealth roll determines if the character's wealth die goes down (Usually one to two steps downward towards d4). Its an odd system, but works for higher end goods. I decided to add additional petty cash to the game so characters could buy low-end items after a few sessions. Rolling for stuff like drinks, inn stays, etc. becomes tedium at some point (rather quickly for me).

AD&D DMG did mention the possibility of coin value devaluing of there was a glut on the market all of a sudden. Not sure if that is mentioned in other editions?

Quote from: Omega;837592AD&D DMG did mention the possibility of coin value devaluing of there was a glut on the market all of a sudden. Not sure if that is mentioned in other editions?

IIRC its in the 2e DMG as well -- along with the value of taxation, alternate representations of currency, currency exchange rates, et al.

The Midnight d20 setting had a barter economy.
Precious metals & stones were basically useless except to produce magic items.
And since magic was mostly controlled my the god of darkness...

Quote from: Omega;836952Oriental Adventures had some nice uses of that too. The land-owning characters wealth was not just coin, and a bad year could diminish your total wealth.

Dark Albion will have semi-abstract wealth values for Noble houses.

Quote from: RPGPundit;838299Dark Albion will have semi-abstract wealth values for Noble houses.

Can you elaborate?

Also, in Dark Albion, the egg is listed as a form of currency. It's valued at 1/24th of a penny.

In Mutant: Year Zero, bullets are used as currency, which I find pretty cool.