Money
Thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia, India and China people set up farming villages, which over time grew into towns and then in into small cities. As they did so, the way people lived changed in many ways. Among them was the fact that people got more and more specialized in the tasks they did, getting their daily bread by honing their abilities at weaving, making pottery, brewing beer or working copper and exchanging those goods for things they needed or wanted. At first they would be paid in food, which everyone had a need for but it was unwieldy (how many bags of barley is a fishing boat worth). As such government clerks and merchants gradually worked out systems in which tokens were used as means of exchange. Thus was born Currency also known as Money, which would over the years become more and more critical to the functioning.
Money allowed for the rise of prominant merchant classes and lead to a whole bunch of ideas such as lending out money on the condition they pay it back along with a bit more at a future date, investing money to make more money and a whole bunch of other complex concepts.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, money allows YOU to buy your sorry of an excuse cool toys so that you can become part of /tg/ while keeping another sorry of an excuse company alive.
Some historic currencies
Here is a brief list of a pre-modern currencies.
Ancient Middle East
Worked out by the Babylonians, the Shekel was the the first proper currency that we know of. Small silver coins each worth a bushel of barley. They were widely traded for the day and come up in the Old Testament.
Ancient Greece
Obels and Drachmas, one obel was worth six drachmas. In addition there was a bunch of coins representing a bunch of denominations of Drachmas and obels, most of them fiddly little bastards made of silver. The Spartans apparently used iron coins to get around a prohibition on Spartiates dealing in gold and silver and letting money corrupt them.
The greeks believed that you should be burried/cremated with a pair of coins on your eyes to pay the ferryman to take you across the river Stix in the afterlife.
Ancient Rome
Several systems were put into use for inflation. One of these was the Augustan system: One gold Aureus is worth twenty five silver Dinarii (singular Dinarius, from which we get the middle eastern Dinar, the Spanish Dinero and in the English speaking world Dollar), each of which is worth sixteen bronze Asses, as well as a few sub units.
The Middle Ages
A crapload of them used by a crap load of countries at different times. Many of them had high denominations called 'pounds' in the local langauge, which were made of gold and were worth a local pound of silver. Many of them also had low value bronze or coppery coins called some variation of 'Penny'. The English System was that you had a pound sterling, which divided into twenty shillings which in turn were each worth twelve pennies, each penny being worth two haypennies and each haypenny worth two farthings. Other coins include guildr and florin.
China
Again various systems used over the centuries, first using funky axeheads as money and latter settling in cast bronze coins usually with a hole through the middle so you could thread them on a bit of string. In the Song Dynasty the chinese invented the first paper banknotes in the world, though this system fell apart after the mongols decided to print the stuff like crazy to cover their expenses. Afterwards they tried a silver based currency getting silver from Japan and Europe, a fact that when combined with isolationism and cultural arrogance lead to several brutal wars. Among the units were maces, wen and tael.
Japan
When Japan was united under the Tokugawa Shogunate, one of the things that it did was institute a new standardized money system which was pegged to the value of Rice. Among it's units were oblong Kobans, square Ichibubans, Ichibubans and Isshubans and round Mon.
Other places
Bolts of cloth were often used as a crude form of money among many Native American civilizations and tribes.
The people of the island of Yap made large stone wheels as a sort of ceremonial money.
In western Africa horseshoe shaped bronze tokens were used as a local currency by slave traders.
In the 19th century many companies paid their employees in scrip, coupons which could be redeemed for goods at company stores.
Money in Fantasy
The default type of money in you usual fantasy world are coins following a simplified version of the Roman System with (in descending order of value) Gold, Silver and Copper pieces. Such systems are usually made by people who are either lazy or don't hold the nature of local currency to be of much concern of the worlds of the story that they're writing. Those that go more in depth or want to differentiate different cultures and civilizations will add different types of money. Those who want to simplify things even further simply stick with gold.
One of the main goals of alchemists was working out a way to transmute common metals into gold. In a few fantasy worlds there are various types of magic that can do this. Such magics would inevitably lead to inflation. This might explain why gold coins are used as a day to day currency in many fantasy worlds when in real life it was unusual for people who were not merchants, nobles or scribes to deal in gold rather than in silver or copper.
One idea that /tg/ had was the use of solidified magic as a form of currency.
Warhammer orc/ks use their teef as money.
In warhammer 40k, the lives of a human is the lowest of the currency due to grimdark and overpopulation. These citizens of Imperium would join imperial guard to make their worthless life useful by dying in the name of the emperor, which is why there are quotes like "Even a man who has nothing can still offer his life." and "Life is the Emperor's currency, spend it well." exist. General Castor from dawn of war 2 retribution mentioned that "a guardsman's life is to die" strongly contribute to this.
As for the psykers, they valued a bit more than human lives because:
1.They are fucking dangerous. If one of them misused their power, they would summon fucking daemons and drag their planet to hell. 2.They are the Emperor's yum yum that's keeping him alive so the imperial cruisers won't lost direction.
And that's why everyone hates psykers and that's why there is an order of inquisitors call "ordo hereticus" dedicate to this.
Money in Traditional Games
Money is a common feature in many games. It's an idea you would naturally be familiar with, is a natural part of any agricultural society not designed by the dirtiest of hippies and is for providing incentive to players in story creation. On top of that is easy to express with a pen and paper. Your Paladin has acquired 50 Golden-Wombats so add fifty Golden-Wombats to their inventory, you subtract 30 Golden-Wombats from your inventory when you buy a new shield from a blacksmith and so forth.
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