Editing Money (section)

===Money in Fantasy settings===
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, sometimes with platinum on top of gold (even though it wasn't worth much till more modern times) and electrum between gold and silver (even though the percentage of each metal would be impossible to determine and only hold more value than silver from a state's backing and assurance of a particular degree of purity). 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.  Gold's density is usually left unaddressed; a typical "fantasy coin" (1" diameter, 1/8" thick -- gold is too soft to be made into thin coins) of pure gold would weigh a little over an ounce (31 grams to be precise), so a sack of 100 coins (enough to buy a decent sword or an adventure's worth of supplies) would weigh nearly seven pounds, and never mind lugging around 1000 gold coins (68 pounds) to buy a suit of armor.

Another challenge of gold specifically is that one of the main goals of [[alchemist]]s 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, high end artisans or scribes to deal in gold rather than in silver or copper.

Most common among the more exotic options for currency in fantasy settings is souls. Trading in souls is an extremely popular trait for any evil society with good grasp of magic, especially extraplanar beings. More rarely valuable items, that are for some reason valued the same everywhere, like art or food can be used as a money equivalent. Most adventurers turns this kinda thing into cash the first chance they get. 

For some reason dragons also like to sit in piles of gold and gems, which makes them targets for adventurers trying to seek wealth.

Wouldn't it be great if coins were made of harder, less dense metals so they could be thinner and lighter?  Or heck, we could just dispense with the metal and write down how much we're worth or spending on pieces of something really lightweight, like paper.  Nah, this is crazy talk!
[[File:Discworld Money.jpg|thumb|300px|right|...or is it? (Ankh Morpork Banknotes from Making Money)]]