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.

A Roman Aureus: Roman Emperors had their faces put on their money so that people all around the Empire could know the mug of their leader

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

Song Dynasty Paper Money

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 Aztecs also used cocoa beans for small transactions.

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.

For some reason dragons also like to sit in piles of gold and gems.

Money in Sci-fi

In futuristic settings, money is usually just a single unit (typically called "credits".) and largely operate on a digital level instead of people having to give a form of bank note or coin.

In WH40K; currency is not completely detailed upon. The Imperium officially runs on a feudal system with no unified currency system, where each world must pay tithes with various resources such as food, minerals, hardware, manpower.....etc, instead of paying in coin. Although several publications say that each Imperial world has their own local currency system, not to mention that guardsmen also get paid with actual money (although unspecified). Most people typically just accept that Imperial currency is either called "credits" or "thrones"(throne gelt, specifically, and yes that does indeed mean they are Golden), since they're the most prevalent.

Additionally, every human of the Imperium is indebted to the Emperor at birth, as the only reason they're alive is because of the Emperor's continued sacrifice upon the Golden Throne. Thus, every citizen of the Imperium is considered a currency of the Emperor, and can be spent by the billions to preserve it. That said, wasting something that belongs to the Emperor himself is heresy, so while a commander or an Inquisitor may have the authority to spend that much if needed, they better have a good reason for it (after all, those people could have been used for something else more productive.).

For Orks, they use teef, which can be obtained by krumping a git and yanking his chompers out. To orks; bigga teef means bigga value, so Orks who wants the killiest gubbins from the meks typically has to pick on someone his own size, or someone larger. Orks also run on a bartering system, where one can trade something of value; like salvage or resources to get what they want. Because teeth rots overtime, it cannot be hoarded for long, and has to be spent constantly to get the most out of it. And because no Ork can get rich by just sitting on his ass, this helps keep an Ork band eternally thriving as the constant fighting helps stimulate the Orks' growth.

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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