The Consequences of Gold

This is another blog about how quasi-medieval tropes sometimes don’t make sense in D&D. 

On the entirety of planet earth, scientists believe there is about 171 tons of gold. You could fit in this in a cube 60ft in each dimension. This is a staggeringly small quantity of gold. It's about half a swimming pool worth of gold.

There are dragon hordes in published D&D modules with nearly as much gold as this. 

If you run gold for exp with just coins, getting to level 10 requires somewhere in the region of 30,000 gold coin. Basic D&D details that 10 gold coins weight a pound. By my calculations, this is 13 tonnes of gold. In 2nd addition AD&D, gold coins weight a third of a standard ounce or 9 grammes. This is about 2.8 tonnes. This is a significant 1.5 percent of the total quantity of extracted gold on the planet. This would be a decent stockpile for a sizeable central bank.

In short, gold is way more common in D&D than we give it credit for. 

How would this interact with our D&D economy?

For lots of reasons, like hyper inflation, monetary police and monetary base, most countries in medieval times printed their own coins. The only type of coin you could use in a country was coins made by the royal mint and stamped with the head of its monarch. 

Using gold coins you found in the dank crypt of an ancient king would not be acceptable at the local town’s smithy. They would look at you like you were trying to pay them in sexual favours or scottish banknotes. It probably wouldn’t be accepted anywhere. It is green, full of holes, smells and it certainly doesn’t bear the stamp of King Robert.

The equivalent here isn’t turning up in modern London and trying to buy a bacon sandwich with a 5 euro note. It’s trying to buy it with a pile of French Livre from 1800. Or, even more parallel, trying to buy it with a roman denarii you dug up from an old fort ruin in your back yard. 

This would play absolute havoc with pricing and exchange rates. How do we know that a Naga gold coin is worth as much as one of Roberts gold coins? What is the metal quantity like? What is the exchange rate between a Duergar electrum coin or pile of Elven silver? 

What I know for sure is that it is in King Robert’s interest for only his own money to be in use. ‘Illegal’ tender now has to be reported to the mint, where it can be scrapped and melted down in replace for a lesser quantity of the king’s minted gold.  

I imagine an NPC who melts antique coins down to mineral worth and the sells the gold back to the mint. She has one eye. The locals probably call her The Clipper. She would be an interesting place to marker weird treasure and monster valuables.

Whatever it does, it’ll change how your adventurers think and challenge them to get rich in different ways.