World-building question:

World-building question:

A reasonable way to portray steel minted as coin.

Fluff:

"Whenever someone wants to be an adventurer, the question is asked, "Do you have the steel for it?" Which is a three-fold question: 'Do you have the guts for it?' 'Do you have the gear for it?' and finally, 'Do you have the money for it?' "

The original idea is to make steel rare. That introduces problems of its own. If it's rare, do I fall back on some magical Unobtanium for common weapons/ utensils/ armor/ construction materials?
If it's not rare, why are we minting it into coin instead of swords, shields, nails, screws, joins, et cetera?
If steel isn't rare but the ability to smelt it is limited, again, why are we making coins? Why aren't we simply making the smelting/ forging method more plentiful?

Anyway, your help would be appreciated in breaking this down.

nigga just use copper/bronze/brass weapons/armor/whatever

it ain't rocket science

but steel is bad for coins, rusts easily.

Well steel is an alloy that is human manufactured so making rare would be logical. Iron on the other hand just exists so iron would be the common metal.

Not unless a good quality stainless steel. granted still not impervious to oxidation but highly resistant

I have a similar idea in mind as far as steel (and metallurgy, forging in general) being rare and expensive. Rather than replace steel with something comparable, the emphasis is more on shittier materials and improvized gear.

You raise a good question I've ran into with "why smelt currency?" For my setting, there's a sharp contrast between richer cities and poor wildlands, with bartering being far more prevalent in the wilds. Making it make 100% sense on other situations, I'm not toally sure.

Steel takes time and effort to make. You're talking about acquiring iron and then the carbon (which can be either coal, or even blood/bone/plant/etc) to mix in to make it into steel. And not all steel is equal. Some steel has a lot of impurities in it, some have hardly no impurities.

You could make it that high quality steel is minted for coins (though it'd probably be a cultural thing) while lower quality steel is relegated to making tools and other equipment.

Why would you want to make steel coins? Well they weather far better than simple iron and they would still be cheaper than many other precious metals for coins (silver, electrum, platinum, etc). It could also be just a local thing. If iron is rarer in the area around you, you might treat steel as a rare commodity, better fit for showing off your status than for tools. An example of similar would be the Silver Pharaoh, a pharaoh whose casket was cast not in gold like pretty much every other pharaoh but in silver. Why? Silver was far rarer in ancient Egypt and was treated as being worth far, far more. So if the dude wanted to show off, why the fuck wouldn't he use silver rather than gold?

Something similar could be done for your setting.

High-quality steel coins could be tested by some sort of acid that makes low-quality copies rust quickly. Maybe the technique is jealously guarded by the mint.

Fuck man, just look at the king's of England and how they react to just the mere threat of someone minting their own fake coins (hint - mass beheading or hangings for not only the culprit but also many people simply associated with said culprit or, in at least one case, almost the entire offing of a community of people just because a few were minting or snipping coins). So yeah, that sounds about right.

Steel doesn't have to mean steel. It can just be slang for money

the biggest impediment to steel coins is that the steel is better used for practical purposes, unlike gold which good only for coinmaking

steel implements might be used as high density trading tokens however

>the biggest impediment to steel coins is that the steel is better used for practical purposes, unlike gold which good only for coinmaking
That was actually the trigger for the idea for using steel. steel has a wide variety of uses. It has value and importance.

the coins could also be a way of storing steel for later use, as large ingots would have sharp corners that could damage a cart

over time, high demand for steel causes steel to be traded for almost every good and service, and eventually the standard measurement for all value

Then you kinda get fucked when someone melts your coins for shit.

We even have a problem IRL with people using paper money for notes and scratch paper.

Dragonlance is shit, deal with it.

Yeah. And that's a minor thing. Now think if you could turn that paper into real, actually worthwhile shit.

Make steel a fiat currency.

Steel remains super fucking common, but the properly minted coins carry tokenistic value. In addition, adventurers in a pinch use the coins for field repairs.

Easy.

How else do you think the exchange rate works? Steel armor and weapons are literally worth their weight in steel.

Maybe blacksmiths are like Masons used to be. A highly secretive order who guard their techniques.

There is a special steel alloy that is more carbon than iron and has a little something extra. The main contributor of the carbon is a well-known national crop unique to the kingdom.

Said alloy is wonderfully rust-resistant, but also terribly brittle. Tools made from them are very effective, but also specialized and requires frequent repair/replacement. As quantity started to prevail over quality, and people invested more in durable goods, the industry that produced this steel was converted to a Mint. The only known steels that can compete in rust resistance are also far more costly to produce, so the kingdom was able to both preserve its historically vital industry and create a reliable currency.

That was a joke. People don't take money out of circulation to print books on it. Why? Because with that scrap of paper you can buy much more paper. A steel coin with the king's face and his guarantee, backed by drawing and quartering forgers, that that steel coin would be much better put to buying a LOT more steel than could be gained by it, would face no danger.

Dragonlance?

There is also the fact that paper money isn't made out of paper, but linen.

>unlike gold which good only for coinmaking
I see you've never heard of conductivity.

Gold is very useful for electrical purposes. But yeah, that may not mean much in a medieval setting.

>but steel is bad for coins, rusts easily.
it needn't in a fantasy world

Let's help you learn some basic metallurgy. Iron doesn't "just exist", iron ore has to be smelted.

All iron used as weapons and tools is human manufactured same as steel.

Iron used as weapons and tools has a higher carbon content than steel so iron is an alloy.

Iron has to be used as an alloy as pure iron is too soft for use as a tool and couldn't be made by smelting anyway so medieval smiths couldn't have obtained pure iron even if they wanted it which they didn't because steel was better.

nigga you never heard of a "promissory note" ?

steel coin got value cause the boss hog of shit mountain (or whatever government your culture has) declared it to be so

they can back it up with whatever so long as they also back it up with force of arms

>A steel coin with the king's face and his guarantee,

This is going to make steel coins really expensive to produce or easy to forge.

Real world coins are struck from soft metals in hard dies. Steel is a hard metal so the dies are going to be hugely difficult to strike. Historically it was men hitting dies with hammers which wasn't an easy job strength wise even with soft metals. Dies striking steel coins are also going to wear out and get blurry really fast compared to gold, silver, copper etc which will make forgery easy or will require constant retooling of dies which is not cheap.

Or, since OP implies existence of magic, dies are constructed by or reinforced by magic, or coins themselves are produced magically. Wizards don't usually come cheap.

"These Magical Dwarven Moulds will last for centuries."

That was hard.

Stop posting on Veeky Forums and write the third Starshield novel already, Weis and Hickman.

Rarely if ever has a coin been worth its weight in material at time of striking. The act of making the coin incurs expenses so making a coin with a face value of one solidus of gold out of one solidus of gold would be losing money for the country. This is why coins were reduced in size and debased with cheaper metals while retaining the same nominal value in the country of origin. Outside the country of origin where different laws applied the face value wa meaningless, only the material content was really important, and the exchange rate dropped markedly as their size and composition changed. Steel coins are becoming increasingly common around the world as copper is becoming expensive and the worth of copper in coins is approaching their face values.

Finally, some sense.

This is the right solution. As is . A steel coin that has value in what it represents rather than the value of the actual steel solves all your problems. If the lowest denomination is greater than the market value of the coin as steel, then people won't smelt it, though they might still debase it in some way if you don't have a way to protect against that e.g. stamped faces and milled edges. If having pure steel makes it difficult to have low-value denominations for small transactions, make it an alloy with cheaper metals. Actually, that also protects against both debasing, smelting, and counterfeiting. Making it an alloy makes it more expensive to separate out the steel from the cheaper metal, while having a unique alloy mix makes it more expensive to replicate and could have done not-easily replicable aesthetic features.

The only problem one runs into is if this campaign goes outside the country in which this coin is minted. If the country is not a big trader, and thus the coin is in circulation outside the country, merchants might refuse to accept the coin

Mate, in D&D gold is literally worth its weight in gold. Whilst all you say may be true, does it really matter to op's setting?

Bureau De Change, shame the assholes have such stingy rates on gems.

And plastic in more modern countries.

or medicine or magic (I'm talking both rpg magic and real world alchemy) or jewellery or decoration or spacesuits

Yeah, dwarves are stupid enough not to charge a premium for something they won't be getting repeat business on.

And the same king always rules for centuries. Not like one dies or gets overthrown or changes the style on a coin to celebrate each of his glorious victories.

You could make it so the only ones who know how to make steel are way in the higher ups and its a very closely guarded secret.

Then you use other materials for weapons.

Gold is used as currency mostly because it's rare, but also because it's a terrible material to make weapons out of. It's soft and it doens't take an edge well. You could also make that a part of misinformation that they use to control the masses in not using steel for weapons or something.

Try asking the OP, to whose original post I was not responding.

They charged the premium centuries ago, during a time when our alliance was still fresh.

The morphic plates that alter to new kings faces were created by Runebeard MacGuffin LaForge himself, they are truly a wonder.

The point is you're putting reality before fantasy. In a thread about fantasy.

It's kinda like saying "magic ain't real" in a thread about wizards. True, but off topic.

>If it's not rare, why are we minting it into coin instead of swords, shields, nails, screws, joins, et cetera?
The main reason is that Steel is much tougher than Gold, Copper and Silver.
Used to be, back when the concept of proper minting didn't exist, and people didn't have coins, they'd have solutions like the Norse Hack-Silver, which was literally them carrying their money in the form of silver bracelets.
If they needed to pay for something, they took of the bracelet, grabbed an axe or something else nearby, and chopped off the necessary amount from the bracelet.

Since back before minting Gold, Silver and Copper became used in such a fashion, and since they are not abundant enough to completely crash the economy every other year from someone finding a new rich deposit, is why Gold, Silver and Copper were used over Steel.

Now in a setting where Gold, Silver and Copper are extremely rare or non-existent, I could see Steel replacing them, but those three are much better in a semi-realistic setting due to their "weakness" and rarity, than something as tough and common as steel.

These.
It'd be nice to see Blacksmith aristocracy for once.

You know you can't just abandon logic in your fantasy world, thats why mages don't exist. This is basic stuff, get your shit together Tim.

Wut?

I feel like Food should be on that chart.

Food and culturally significant dishes are an artefact of culture, not the other way around.
But if you mean like how an island like Japan differs food wise from a land locked nation, see Environment

I mean, this is obviously very setting-dependent, but in one of my games, metal as a whole is very rare. Leather/bamboo/bone/etc. armour is the norm (but setting is tropical and desert world, wearing a lot of armour is impractical for other reasons). Metal weapons are a kind of badge of honour, marking the wielder out as a soldier, recognised adventurer, mercenary or whatever.

Steel is the one generally handed out for this, bronze arms and armour are mass-produced in desperate times but the shittier metals are generally just used as stopgap construction materials, or coins in the case of copper.

Very dangerous world, anyone in the kind of position to be carrying steel arms is probably also in high enough demand to have steel coins on them too.

Full plate is for invincible warlords, kings, and the occasional extremely high-ranking paladin.

If you're going for a medieval-Europe sort of setting, a lot of this isn't going to carry over (not a lot of castles in this game) but using extremely tough organic materials from monsters and so on for common gear is a thing. Adds a bit of status to adventuring, too, and bumps up the payoff for going after certain big nasties.

Why would "steel" be slang for money when it's not used for money?

Why do some brits refer to one pound sterling as a cephalopod?

Make the steel coins be made using some arcane process, requiring sufficiently rare materials.
Elven blood steel?

Oh yeah, this is another feature of this setting. Blacksmiths are fucking loaded, and they hold positions of great influence. Generally work for adventurer's guilds and on the councils that govern groups of nearby towns.

Dragonblood Steel.

...Do they? That's pretty funky.

Well, a "squid" as in "gizza squid", which comes from an earlier version, "give me a quid."

But for the life of me I can't see how One Pound became a "Quid".

wait I'm retarded

From "Quid Pro Quo". Just used as a generic term for money, the Irish use it to mean euros, or dollars, if they're in the US, and so on.

Thank you user.

Easy: make it so in your world's steel making process there is excess metal created that is similar to steel. It doesn't rust and keeps shape well against light wear and tear, but against serious strain (being used in tools/armour) it bends and cracks. A relatively low amount comes from a large amount of tool steel though, so its valuable since it takes a lot of metals and is difficult to counterfeit since you need a whole factory to make it.

Nobody is going to use steel as coins because steel (and iron) rusts, and nobody wants to have money which can literally be destroyed by just leaving it outside.

Also, if you want steel to be rare, you don't need to do anything terribly unusual. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, in specific ratios. Before industrial manufacturing, any steel manufacturing is going to be limited to the few blacksmiths who know the specific way to make it and anyone taught by them. Everyone else is going to be stuck with just common iron crafting.

A chunk of chewing tobacco at one point costed one pound.
Said sized chunk of chewing tobacco was known as a "quid".

>The original idea is to make steel rare.

Quid pro Quo means "small argument." Nothing to do with money, dude.

Who taught you that? "Quid pro quo" literally means "this for that" and is used idiomatically to mean that one gave or received something in exchange for something else. Take the following for example.

>Hey, user, come over to my place for a game and some dinner.
>Aw, thanks mate. Let me bring the drinks, quid pro quo, y'know?

what the hell are you talking about?

>Barbarian education