Why is it always Gold Pieces?

[tenngu]

Hi all. Sort of new here.

Recently I've been setting up to create a nautical/piratey themed campaign, taking place in an archipelago. I've been trying to turn some general fantasy cliches on its head, and I kinda figured having a gold piece as a unit of currency doesn't make the most amount of sense when there isn't a whole lot of gold to go around. I know its kind of a sin for pirates to not gold after gold, but treasure doesn't always mean gold.

The idea I'm going with so far is Grams of Pearls. Yes, this would be shortened to GP, I thought it would be funny. I figured pearls would sort of be more abundant given the amount of sea there is, create a sort of reason for people to get out into the world, and pearls seem valuable enough.

The thing I'm kinda stumped on, is how one would measure a gram? I was thinking that merchants would generally carry around scales, and before a transaction, whichever scale is used, is first tested with a predetermined weighted token on each side. Both merchants would carry around a token, which they know is good, to test the other merchants token. The transaction would proceed after that where the pearls are weighed and the valuables are exchanged. I assume that even if you aren't a merchant, you'd have one of these standardized weighted tokens, and just use the merchant's scale. Merchants would have a series of different weights to determine the weight of pearls.


Anyway, with that out of the weigh, does this sound logical? I have a feeling I'm missing something obviously abusive with this. Also, and maybe more importantly, is this interesting enough to get rid of gold pieces with?

[DM-Delfon]

Gold pieces don't have to be the currency at all, but it is standard, so people expect it and know what to do with it. I ran a monstrous campaign where the currency was Teeth. Orcs beat the teeth out of their enemies, the more teeth you have the better you are at combat, and thus the more powerful. I had Lizard men paying for goods with beads and feathers. A death cult traded undead servants for goods and services. I have also had powerful merchants use letters of credit.

Your pearl idea is a good one, and I really like that it shortens to GP. My question is how do you make change? Will you still have copper and silver pieces for smaller transactions?

[tenngu]

Hmm. Well, I'm glad I'm not the first one that's tried a different standard currency. The teeth thing seems cool. I hope they didn't run into a hydra or something with regeneration.

I figured since pearls come in all sorts of sizes they'd just get "change" back in pearls. buying something worth 4 grams of pearl with a 20 gram pearl means you'd just get like, a 9 gram pearl, a 5, and a 2. Or whatever the merchant has that's equivalent.

[DM-Delfon]

Cool beans. In that case I would like to make a Druid clam farmer. Animal growth!

[tenngu]

Mother f-.......Okay, that was kind of the abuse-able thing I was hoping to stumble upon before my players do.


....Okay I just looked up animal growth and that's a 5th level spell. I'm actually fine with players having stupid amounts of money around then. It'd still take time to farm these pearls, they'd just get more with animal growth.

EDIT: Also, apparently, pearls take like years to form. 

[DM-Delfon]

They take ages to form. Larger clams do make larger pearls, but only because they had that thing brewing for ages. Your safe, no stupid amounts of money from animal growth, as animal growth wouldn't make instant larger pearls.