Re: Value of fictional currency

Jamie Hart <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina Hall wrote:

No technology more sophisticated than a wheel and axle, or a
winch for a well. Some aspects are modern, however. Housing for
example.

Built by magic?

Yes.

Who can work magic in your world?

Everyone in that city (theoretically everyone in the world, but not
everyone everywhere can get at it). That's the reason for the unusual
currency in the first place; enough people can just shape one object
into another, at least dead materials like metals, thus gold and silver
have no special value in this city.

Doesn't matter though, unless we want to digress badly. :)

I just needed something I can map onto the currency according to the
relative value of the object or service. That was nicely answered by the
link David Friedman posted. (It gave me a start which I can work with.)

They've got the cloth currency I mentioned before. From my
backround notes:
<snip list>

These are banknotes printed on the various materials, yes?

Something along that line, yes. (Not printed, woven with magic in a
special way.)

They don't have paper, use cloth to write on, too.

The differing materials would just be a way to tell notes of
different denominations apart.

More or less, yes. The higher value ones are more sturdy, and the fancy
ones fall apart more easily. (They're made that way.) And of course
quality enters into it, but that just confuses the issue here. You got
the average value.

flats *40 = Cotton *20 = Linen *10 = Leather
Silk *20 = Velvet *10 = Brocade

Most of those things are unfortunately shamelessly neglected in
the story. The evil overlord pays with Velvets, everyone else
uses Cotton and the Flats.

(I've adjusted that now that I've got some idea on what some foods would
cost, to 'Shan pays with Brocades'.)

I see a problem here. If the overlord pays in Velvets, then
anyone he pays must pay with velvets and get cottons or silks in
change (plus flats of course). This means that unless people
paid by the overlord earn substantially more than everyone else,
then there must be a lot of linens in use as well.

They earn substantially more than everyone else, and most of those don't
know what to do with it.

Even among the rich folks who deal in the larger sums (more expensive
shops, better paid healers and all that), there's only so much you can
do with money if you can't buy a monopoly or other kind of power.

Or you need to explain why everyone else gets paid in buckets full of
cottons.

:) Nice image.

But the actual thing that bugs me is; I keep wondering how much
a bread would cost, how much a labourer's wage is, how much a
posh house would cost, what a whore would ask for a night.

Here's where you run into the real problem, you've ducked the
question of how the economy really works by saying the overlord
wants it that way. Unfortunately that doesn't leave you a
platform to build a working economy on.

I've got the economy (how it works), I just lacked any kind of
inspiration at all of what price labels to put on things. Money isn't
mentioned often. If one of my characters had bought a bread early on, I
would have had the price[*]. Unfortunately, all that's mentioned is
monthly (well moon-ly) wages. To have that make sense, I need the price
of a bread.

For the question here, suggestions what something would cost in a
society that, for descriptive purposes, is somewhere between medieval
and our world, no more was needed.

(In the story, the individual bits range anywhere from several thousand
years ago to now, including ancient Rome for example, with the Shan's
own take on that plus his own ideas. But that takes a story to tell in
detail. :) Let's just say that he has had opportunity, and used it, to
observe our real world all that time. He knows how humans work.)

Your best bet is to invent a wage (bread and an hours labour are
commonly used. i.e. how long does it take the lowest paid person
to earn enough to buy a loaf of bread).

Yes. The problem was that I had no idea where/how to attach the prices.
I didn't know whether a bread would be one Flat or ten.

The question here was for some corner stones to extrapolate from.

[...]

Bear in mind that other readers if you ever have them, or you now
I've put the idea into your head, might wonder what stops the
overlord from interfering in the economy.

He's the one that steers it, makes it work the way he wants. Mainly not
by enforcing laws, but by having his fingers (or literally controlled
fingers of other people) everywhere they need to be. (Little parts of
that are occasionally strewn into the story, where appropriate, though
the story itself concentrates on those he messes with more directly.)

And there are some things a citizen can't do without his permission,
like buying all the farms. He also regulates the weather.

I keep wondering whether short quotes would explain it better. Let the
characters explain rather than having me fumbling around to describe the
picture.

That's a few random bits to get some idea about the prices in a
society that's not quite what I live in, and not quite medieval
(where I have no idea what a horse, a house, or a bread would
cost, either).

Surely the economics in your setting have little to do with where
you live or with medieval prices. you need prices that either fit your
economy (not easy in your case) or just sound right for your world.

Considering that the evil overlord can look at our world and pick out
what he likes... It has as much to do with it as he sees fit.

On the other hand, if medieval prices sound good to you, go with
them, it'll make little difference in the long run.

It's the kind of prices the evil overlord would want in his city.

[...]

(Tax, if it matters for this, doesn't exist.)

Where does the overlord get his money from?

Moneyweavers in his employ. They're actually creating most of the
currency and he spreads it with his outrageous wages. (One of the
characters asks him at one point how they're paid. He gives a
satisfactory answer, though that character later finds out enough to
give another option; they have no choice.)

Of course, with his magic, he could just make piles and piles of it
himself.

[*] That's how my worldbuilding functions; I can't sit down and make big
plans on the details in advance, I have to 'be' there and see it. Which
leads to problems like this... Hard things like prices, and the magic
growth, sooner or later are no longer enough as foggy awareness from a
character's viewpoint, concepts they don't need to have explained to
them and have no reason to think much about.

--
Tina
WIR: Magic Earth series.
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy.
Posted to Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition.

.

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