"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.
Kayden Walker
nigga just use copper/bronze/brass weapons/armor/whatever
it ain't rocket science
but steel is bad for coins, rusts easily.
Owen Perry
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
Ian Morales
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.
Isaiah Bennett
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.
Gabriel Cox
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.
Nicholas Reyes
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.
Bentley Parker
Steel doesn't have to mean steel. It can just be slang for money
Ryder Jackson
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
Ayden Murphy
>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.
