So what’s the deal. How much is considered a lot of money in IC terms? Some people say 50 gold is a fortune that you can buy an estate with, others say 120k gold is more likely.
If I have ten silver in my pocket, does that make me a rich man or a poor man?
I’m sorry if this thread/question has been made before, I just can’t remember what the general consensus was.
Not sure what is considered a lot, depends on the player, seller, buyer or who the two parties work things with with IC money.
My character currently hold 1 Gold 58 Silver 5 Copper. Which I want to try keep a reasonable amount rather than say I have 154 Gold.
I believe we can only estimate from what is shown in game, IIRC a guard in Redridge claims he earns a few silver a week? I think there are other examples but I’d reckon 50 gold is alot IC.
That’s a topic mentioned quite a few times by now, and one which you won’t find definite answer for anywhere. In one place you see something like few silvers being a weekly wage, in other places you see gold thrown left and right. The shipping contract between Ashvane and Sweete’s pirates had a payment of 12,000 gold, for example.
I’ve heard someone use the first mounts as a good measure for wealth.
10 gold is something that would buy you a horse/wolf, and a very well groomed at that it would seem. So around 10 gold can be a lot. An average Stormwind citizen would probably be saving up for it for a long time.
a few copper? - A pint of ale or beer and a good meal.
A few silver? - your house/hutt rent for the month.
fifty silver? - A reward for a criminal.
A gold coin? - A full suit of plated armor and a weapon, fit for a standard soldier.
A few gold coins? - A mount worthy of a warrior or a knight.
A hundred gold coins? - Enough to gear an adventurer in magical, rare, fancy equipment from head to toe.
five hundred gold coins? - a fortune.
Five to ten thousand gold coins? - A kings ransom.
And that, if you use the examples above, about covers it. Though that’s just what I follow, it varies wildly from RP’er to RP’er.
… gave a fortune to someone for harassing that person with apples…
Fifty gold sounds like rent.
There just isn’t one. I try to avoid being specific with coins, because the same foodstuff can cost 1,000 times its price in Cataclysm as it did in Vanilla. WoW doesn’t have a working economy, which is fine, it only makes sense things become more expensive as your character levels, but yes, you won’t find a consensus. I find it best to keep things vague, for example upon recruiting a new Sun Hawk Brigante will point to the section of their contract about monthly wages and go “As you can see, the wage is very generous” And let people take it from there. They know they’re a bit flush with cash for doing a dangerous job, whether that is 90 silver or 9 gold is up to them. I just leave it at “You’re well paid”. Sometimes we do specify things to a degree. “You want to buy your Dragonhawk? From the State? You know I had to remortgage my house and rent for three years just to put up the deposit so they would consider the idea!”
Basically not ascribing a figure, but getting across the idea that it would be a ridiculously large amount of money to buy a military pedigree Dragonhawk from the state.
You just can’t ascribe a figure, basically, it just doesn’t work, because there is, unlike our world, no consistency of values, and no shared economical market. My advice? Keep it vague, or if you want to assign prices for things, be aware others may not assign the same prices, so avoid making it a stumbling block for RP.
I agree with Brigante. It’s quite difficult to set a monetary value to things, which is why I personally prefer to set pricing as a general value than a monetary one. Phrases like ‘a small fortune,’ ‘dirt cheap’ or ‘an arm and a leg’ come to mind. ![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Contrary to what is generally thrown around in RP there is a sense of what the value of money is on Azeroth (with healthy room for interpretation of course).
1 copper can be used to buy a few vegetables, so it can be extrapolated a handful of coppers will feed someone for at least a few days. (Source is the Warcraft: Traveller novel, so pretty recent)
30 silver is enough to hire an Ogre mercenary (again from Traveller, and to note this Ogre isn’t considered quite smart, but is loyal)
50 gold for training a miner, 200 gold for an engineer and 300 for a foreman (from a Cataclysm quest in Blasted Lands) 300 gold can also buy a very fast speedboat (Also from Traveller.)
On the upper end of the scale Saurfang was offering 500 gold for a live Alliance spy and 1000 gold for a dead one (to note he was making a bluff but it is reason to believe the bluff was meant to be realistic.) (Source is from A Good War.)
So essentially we can make a loose pattern of what types of money are being thrown about. The average jack? Based on coppers for basic food, 30 silver for the hire of a mercenary and 50 gold for the training of a manual, working class job we can probably suspect a normal person may have anything from a few gold to maybe a few hundred if they’re good at saving.
The more wealthy sorts? Saurfang is a racial leader, throwing money around so it can be assumed this is money coming from national coffers. Exceptional figures like Gazlowe routinely handle multiple thousands of Gold on betting and salvage.
So figures like 50k gold? Fanciful if not probably the reserves of money entire businesses and cities might carry. Any more is likely farcical. Could a well off adventurer have a lot? I’d say anything between a few thousand gold upwards towards 10k-20k for the wealthy, well to do and savvy businessmen seems reasonable.
But for day to day living I suspect most would be trading in copper and silver, and only the more wealthier sorts in society would be trading handfuls of gold at most (unless they are exceptional individuals)
The Traveller books are incredibly good for small tidbits of lore we never see on a macroscopic level, like money and the average person. It’s nice to have a general framework to keep yourself right.
I don’t know the “lore” behind coins and how much they are worth but I tend to follow D&D 5th Editions values-ish.
1 gold is equal to 10 silver, 1 silver equal to 10 copper.
This however doesn’t translate well with WoW as 1 gold = 100 silver etc.
But the D&D values make more sense for roleplay as you’d probably not walk around with 100 silver or copper coins in a pouch. Also as Kaibyrne stated earlier about the quest where a guard earns a few silver a week, it makes sense that it would follow the “D&D”-system.
Isn’t there a quest that gives some value to certain Alliance troops in the Blasted Lands, with cost of education and equipment? Like it costs 50 silver to train and equip a foreman or something like that.
The quest is ”Pick Your Fate” and it costs 50 gold to train a miner, 200 gold for an engineer and 300 gold for a foreman. Call me suspicious but I bet the Stormwind Workers’ Union takes a hefty cut of that money.
That sounds about right really. Training a recruit from scratch, feeding, housing, gearing and paying them a wage throughout is an expensive business. Then there’s promotions and the stuff that comes later. Heck, pensions!
I personally shuddered when I found out how much it cost to train me in the real armed forces. It isn’t cheap, oh no, nope.
Interesting responses! I’ve gotta admit I was a little skeptical on how this’d pan out but so far everyone seems to be on the same wavelength with this.
I think for the sake of arguments, I’ll personally go with the generalisation method. As a poster pointed out, saying things like “small fortune”, “cost an arm and a leg” and so on.
The Sixty Thieves and my old guild, Shamsana Pet Services, both used the same monetary system: One gold is the same as one hundred euros. It’s personal choice, some go higher, some go lower, some don’t specify at all so the other player has the option themselves. It’s difficult when you’re not given lore, but there’s a large post where a player calculated through in game items how much things should cost:
wow/topic/8324932462
It’s old, mind you. Our system is very similar to those calculations. On the old forums, and the link just keeps breaking on me.
This. It’s inconsistent both in official content and in RP, so I generally avoid mentioning specific numbers.
It very much varys from rper to rper, I can remember doing a small little scenario in the city of fundraising, to which I went around and sought donations in character, it was interesting to see how very similar characters viewed their purse with donations ranging from 20 gold to 1 silver. But yeh it entirely varys,
Traveler 2 goes into detail on the value of gold in this setting.
Most notable checkpoints of wealth mentioned in the novel are:
A thing to note that Gazlowe is also a very rich goblin and him wagering 2,000 gold on a boat race is the kind of past time that filthy rich people get up to. 2,000 gold is not something an average person wagers.
/e passes a few coins over the counter, paying for the drink.
If forced, I go by the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system. In that, it describes currency in terms of who worries about what.
Copper coins are for peasants to worry about.
Silver coins are for merchants and wealthy peasants to worry about.
Gold is for nobles and wealthy merchants to worry about.
Not every character falls into those categories, but you can normally associate yourself with one of them. Obviously your peasant might end up with a gold windfall, but generally speaking, that guide should tell you what can be considered a lot of money to your character and what items shouldn’t be within their reach.
Is it something peasants wouldn’t have much of? It probably costs silver, rather than copper. Is it something peasants wouldn’t dream of owning? Gold.