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Gold has no value

If you give me 1000 gold pieces, I don’t know what it’s worth. Is that a lot? What can I buy with it? I’d have to ask the Game Master, and they probably don’t know; they’re probably picking numbers on the fly. If I don’t know what gold is worth, then when we find treasure, why should I care as a player?

We need a real-world reference

Here’s a way to immediately make money matter in your game: one copper piece is equal to one unit of whatever your local currency is. So one silver piece is ten, and one gold piece is one hundred.

Now your players intuitively know what the buying power of their loot is, and they can make financial decisions without GM involvement. In an Australian game, we would all implicitly agree:

• A beer is 8 copper
• A night at a ratty inn is 7 silver
• A night at a good inn is 2 gold
• A day’s labor is at least 3 gold
• A day’s specialist labor is up to 15 gold
• A year’s living expenses is 300 gold
• A brand new cart and horse is 400 gold
• An urban house could be up to 10000 gold

It works in reverse, too!

For the first mission in the Lost Mine of Phandelver, Gundren Rockseeker offers the players 10 gold pieces to escort a wagon of supplies. “Is that a lot?” the players might ask. If one copper is one dollar, that’s $1000 for few days of unskilled work — makes sense! And then when we buy a healing potion for 50 gold pieces (or $5000), the players might ask, “Is that a good price?” Well, a healing potion feels equivalent to a major medical procedure, so $5000 seems in the ballpark, right?

Gold should be player-agency points

When the Game Master gives you gold, they’re giving you the means to change this world and story, and having a consistent, transparent economy holds the Game Master accountable to that promise. How can the Game Master say no to the players buying a house when everyone knows they’re offering above market value?

The OSR people might be right

Although milestone leveling is the modern flavour, meaning the Game Master grants levels at important story beats, regular XP leveling might fix some issues with gold. Lots of old-school games let players trade their loot for XP, and I can’t think of a better vessel for my goal of, “Gold should be used as player-agency points.” But I suppose different game systems may deal with the gold-for-XP idea differently. Can the party trade gold from private enterprise for XP, or only treasure looted from a level-appropriate dungeon? Can the party pool their gold to power-level their Wizard into a walking, talking, magical liability? I don’t know what’s fair or fun in this space, but my next campaign will experiment with gold-for-XP