Currency

General The World
1

Something that came up when talking currency at King’s Stoke Wassail II.

I’d be interested in seeing a tiny bit of fluff concerning the Imperial Currency - to wit, what actually is the ring? I know it’s a horribly mundane thing, but the coins are known to be intrinsically valueless, which means that what we have is a fiat currency.

Is it backed by reserves of some precious substance (gold?) held somewhere in Tassato?
*In which case, inflation at Anvil is a reflection either of a change in the reserve fraction or a change in the rate of [gold] extraction, and the failure of this monetary easing to trickle down to the Empire’s common people.
*And what are we using instead of gold? Can we trade it to foreigners or Ephisis? Can we loot a ton of it from a barbarian convoy, precipitating an economic crisis similar to that which Spain faced thanks to the conquistadors?
*And who controls the reserve fraction? The Throne? They can nosedive the Imperial economy with a word.

Is it backed, like the US dollar, by the fact that imperial taxes can only be paid in Imperial crowns?
*In which case, inflation at Anvil is a reflection of the divide between the haves and have-nots in Imperial society, as evidenced by a concentration of money among the Anvil delegates: the rich are collecting Imperial tax and spending it primarily on themselves. The plot writes itself.
*And who controls the rate of minting of money? The Master of the Mint? They can nosedive the Imperial economy with a word.

Is it fully backed, like the Edo Japanese koku, by agricultural output? Is there one ring minted per bushel of grain harvested?
*In which case, inflation at Anvil is a reflection of both a divide between the haves and have-nots and a surge in agricultural output - the common people should be rolling in their prosperity from this surge, but instead it’s somehow become concentrated at Anvil. The plot writes itself.
*And who sets the value of the ring in grain? The Civil Service? They can starve the Imperial population with a stroke of the pen.

I know that this is dangerously close to the abstraction layer, but if the Empire is facing an inflationary crisis then these questions will be asked, loudly and often, and it strikes me as something that for example the League’s economists and Urizen’s architects would just be able to quote.

2

I kind of see the rings as ‘hero’s money’ where common village people don’t really make money. Only work for their board.
Heroes and the rich get money and have ownership of things.

That’s how I see it really. Which means that each ring is actually worth a lot!

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3

I’d disagree with that Buckland, I think you’re overestimating it. How do roadside inn’s operate if not with money? Yeah I’d fully expect room and board to be part of a labourers wage and thus they don’t use money on a daily basis (I’m thinking of a Marcher farm labourer), or in the case of more self-sufficient cultures like Winermark, particularly Suaq, or Navarr. However in League cities? Money will be massively important, with everyone having a bit but most of this being spent on daily living. This would also explain why the senate gets different tax amounts for different region, Sarvo is worth more than Sermersuaq because money plays a greater part in the daily lives of the citizens there.

EDIT: of course that’s not the only reason for tax amounts, but monetary wealth of a region basically determines its wealth.

4

Me and Darius have just been discussing this post and thought that as the currency was done when the Empire was more powerful it might have been back by Rings of Ilium, probably one of the most valuable materials we have now. 1 ring’s worth of ilium may have been enough to make a whole ring for your finger, 1 crown’s worth to make a whole crown, 1 throne’s worth to make a throne.

With inflation the price may have sky rocketed to make this no longer viable but the names matching gives it nice symmetry.

5

Iulian: I would incline towards the second possibility, because of the wording of the Constitution:

Bucklund: It seems very unlikely to me that that would be the case. Certainly the great and powerful at Anvil are throwing around a lot more money than most of the citizenry, but I get the impression that at pretty much every level of society there is money in circulation even if not for everyday needs. Michael sums it up very nicely.

6

“Each citizen that owns land or property will tithe annually wealth equal to a single crown” - Imperial Constitution.

As such, the value of the ring is derived from its status as 1/20th of the annual tax revenue. Given the difficulties of changing the constitution, it means that the Senate has to deal with anything that affects the value of the currency.
The Imperial tax base is linked to population… so the primary means of expanding the tax base is expansion of the Empire. The wider we spread and the more people we absorb, the wealthier the Senate becomes.

How that links to the activities of the Mint - the relation between the theoretical currency to the physical coinage - I do not know. Since the powers of the Master of the Mint are described as “Ceremonial”, I would suggest that the Mint is run offscreen by Civil Servants (under the Oath) and the method is used to determine how much physical currency there is around.

While that suggests that economic rituals, etc. act to focus more of the Empire’s wealth in the hands of the players, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the players are the 1%. The implication of the setting and system is that the Empire as a whole is more than prosperous enough to get rich without bothering with Anvil. That while the Senate budget is the largest in the field, it doesn’t really rate that high in terms of the total material wealth of the Empire. As personal freedom and prosperity are guaranteed by the Constitution, the Throne and Senate are kind of toothless in terms of their ability to compel service or condence money into the “Empire” budget - we’re not talking 50% Income tax here. I guess that explains why the Empire was failing for 100 years… not enough civic-minded people coming together to do Imperial business rather than getting on with being prosperous in their own local area.

From an OC perspective, I think that there need to be a few more money-sinks in the system… which the new “labour costs” for Senate actions will hopefully provide. The materials market could also do with a shot in the arm, I think. Buy more magical items!

7

This. Basically speaking the question OOC is what to do about the fact that the Imperial economy is in serious danger of overheating, because Anvil is as currently written a large tank into which money is being poured at an order of magnitude higher rate than it’s being poured out. OK, so the people who turned up at Anvil weren’t oligarchy-rich yet, but the people who now own the Bourse resources basically are, now: the economy now needs to survive without training wheels, or the wheels are going to come off entirely. Or in other words, the payback period for meaningfully upgrading a mana site with mithril is currently somewhere around a decade and climbing, and this is not sustainable.

Assuming an inflationary currency - that is, one where it even makes sense to talk about money supply, such as the dollar-style fiat currency that the ring appears to be - then if money is being supplied at a reasonable rate by NPCs conversant with the state of the NPC economy (and so the base rate of inflation is low: the gearing of the Imperial economy is low and we don’t have foreign loans), and money is accumulating in Anvil, then money must be being siphoned from the rest of the Empire into Anvil, and that reflects an increase in inequality. If there is not an increase in inequality in the Empire, then either money is not accumulating in Anvil or the Civil Service is printing far too much money.

Figleafing it as an economic bubble is fine, but involves discussing the consequences of that to the people who don’t come to Anvil, and that naturally leads to piteous conflict-causing NPCs turning up with wheelbarrows full of useless ring coins to buy their daily loaf of bread (in the one situation) or complaining that a ring’s worth of flour used to do a family for three weeks and since the Emergency Corn Laws it hardly does eighteen days (in the other). Printing money in a mediaeval economy model either plunders peasants or murders merchants: it makes sense with a dollar-like inflationary currency, but without anywhere for capital to fly to then the Empire is going to go the way of the Weimar Republic. Which is fine, provided that it is intended!

As far as I can tell, the materials market is low by comparison because of a combination of people not realising the power of magic items and the fact that it only looks low when you’re looking down on it from the ridiculous height of the Bourse Resource market. Also, of course, there’s an upper limit on how much money you can physically convert into things that a character wants - this is just the natural tendency of the marginal propensity to spend to decrease with increasing income (because seriously, there’s only so much that money can buy).

If it isn’t intended, then there are a number of solutions, mostly involving uses for the Senate pork barrel that don’t require Bourse resources and don’t put those rings into player hands.

If it is intended, it can and will be combated IC! And I don’t propose to discuss my IC solutions here except to say that if you made me Emperor I could enact them :smiley:

And I’d like to know which sorts of hideous economic consequences of a possible crash I can predict, so as to prophesy doom accurately - hence the thread.

But the problem of making a game this large and realistic is that regardless of whether or not you want to believe in economics, economics believes in you.

8

I view the increasing inflation at events as very much a feature not a bug of the game and very much an IC issue (as there are a myriad of things that can be done IC to affect it). Not enough pressure sinks and the like are massive game for elements of the player base. It could turn out to be a disaster or something good in game whatever. I certainly don’t think it’s something that PD need to fix as it’s not broken as a game design. Increasing inflation will greatly benefit some characters and harm new ones, and could create disaster or stability, oligarchy or anarchy. We’re too soon into the game to tell. However the responses to it, the way to change inflation in game is very much IC and doable under the current game rules and Imperial powers available to different titles in game.

I like labour costs being included in senate motions being constructed as it represents the other costs in building something, and that creates more McGuffiins for me to play with in the Senate, I like McGuffins, they are fun.

9

From where I’m observing, it seems to me that the hyperinflation in the Empire is largely restricted to Bourse resources. The last several times I have been paying attention, prices for crafting materials and herbs and the like have been pretty steady. If my perception is not unfounded, the problem sort of only breaks out in the “high level” finances: upgrading armies, building sinecures and such. It has an impact at the lower level, because upgrading the production of personal resources becomes ruinously, impractically (and potentially ethically) expensive. The restrictions on personal items reduces the impact of the ultra-rich on the magic item market, along with the ready availability of no-resource items. It may be that the lack of growth in “personal resources per capita” will lead to inflation of the cost for those personal resources eventually, but it’ll be a more gradual, manageable thing.

10

I haven’t noticed anything in the way of inflation apart from the rare resources.
I’m still liking beer prices. :slight_smile:

But there are some very rich people. Someone even came into a bar and just bought everyone in there a drink! Just to get rid of some money.

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11

Quite. Problem is, in the real world that hyperinflation would be geared - it would mostly be carried out with borrowed money, and the cost of that money is related to the rate of money supply, yada yada economics, quantum finance butterflies et cetera. Here, it’s not, and so it actually becomes an irritatingly relevant question as to how the money is supplied in the setting - as in, what kind of problem is it for the Empire’s economy that there is a large and spiraling circular arsekicking contest between the Senate and the Bourse?

[proper edit] I note in passing that you have to be quite careful solving this problem with OOC actions without crashing the Imperial economy into a tree. There are IC actions that are more than capable of solving this problem in the medium term, if we can get away with them - and IC actions that are more than capable of crashing the Imperial economy into a tree - but if a Bourse auction suddenly makes a loss due to a change in the rules then it might leave people feeling justifiably miffed. I’m fairly sure the fundamental brokenness of the economy under Britta’s rules was intended. But I am still interested in a little more information on the nature of the ring.

12

I will be helping (or at least attempting to divert some currency my way) by selling magical items IC together with unique phys-reps for (hopefully) ridiculous prices.

So an Icon of the Hearth featuring an image of Zemress, hand-painted in oils (acrylics), encased in silver (aluminium) embossed and embellished with carnelian, lapis lazuli, citrine, turquoise and a rock crystal (glass) vessel containing a splinter from the hull of the Kraken’s Bane.

At some point I will figure out how to upload images to the forum. :slight_smile:

13

Iulian,
solely as a counterpoint, and with no aspersion on your interest in the fundamental value of the Ring, the economy etc,
( I for one would be interested to know what the ring is made of, if anything of value in world)

IC money is for me, intrinsically worthless within the game. I’m not a starving student ooc, I don’t need to buy beer with IC monies.
I’m not in a money-matters-Nation. (Marches. Land matters, not money. it’s a fine distinction, but a significant one.)
I don’t have a money related Personal resource. (Military unit)
I don’t really have anything to spend IC money on.
I can’t use IC money to increase the supply of consumable resources within the game. (I dont want to buy resources off of another empire citizen, I want to give money to a foregner and increase the amount of consumable stuff the empire has)

So all in all to me, IC money is a Mare’s Nest. Fantastical, and irrelevant.

Can you tell me why money matters at all?

Cheers
Hob.

14

Iulian’s point seems to be that you will never ever be able to afford to upgrade your military unit.

The extent to which that troubles you may not be very high

EDIT:

You can. You can pay mine workers, and forest workers, extra to make them work harder and extract more materials than they normally would in a three month period (as one example).

profounddecisions.co.uk/empi … me_Options
profounddecisions.co.uk/empi … me_Options

If there is money sloshing around in the economy, then everyone could be wearing high end magical gear… if the plutocrats were so inclined.

15

[quote=“Hob”]Iulian,
solely as a counterpoint, and with no aspersion on your interest in the fundamental value of the Ring, the economy etc,
( I for one would be interested to know what the ring is made of, if anything of value in world)

IC money is for me, intrinsically worthless within the game. I’m not a starving student ooc, I don’t need to buy beer with IC monies.
I’m not in a money-matters-Nation. (Marches. Land matters, not money. it’s a fine distinction, but a significant one.)
I don’t have a money related Personal resource. (Military unit)
I don’t really have anything to spend IC money on.
I can’t use IC money to increase the supply of consumable resources within the game. (I dont want to buy resources off of another empire citizen, I want to give money to a foregner and increase the amount of consumable stuff the empire has)

So all in all to me, IC money is a Mare’s Nest. Fantastical, and irrelevant.

Can you tell me why money matters at all?
[/quote]

There exist channels allowing you to use IC money to increase the supply of consumable resources within the game - the best known of these is the Conclave, but there are others and the number is not fixed. PC action that adds more is probably a good thing if done right, precisely because it makes money stronger (and thus makes the Marches and the League relatively more powerful compared to nations where voting rights are granted by things that give other than money).

NPC action that adds them has to be very careful or the IC economy will crash and burn and it won’t be the fault of players, and it will APPEAR to be the fault of players, and that would suck.

Additionally, NPCs behave as though money matters and we do not wish this fact to change; ideally we would like NPCs to be rational people or at least not constrained to be irrational, so I posit that there should be a chain of sensible reasoning that lets me give IC reasons why money matters.

16

My point is really I suppose that the Bourse resource market is rapidly diverging from the market in anything else: nations with national Bourse resources will be vastly, disproportionately, and increasingly wealthy compared to those without, and it will be impossible to break into the Bourse resource game without being already in the Bourse resource game. Also, it becomes rational to hoard Bourse resources except if one needs money right then, and basically irrational to spend them on anything except for Senate motions (so yes, I (who own mithril!) cannot afford to upgrade my mana site with it).

Which isn’t really a problem OOC, provided it’s deliberate, which of course Plot shouldn’t say ^^ - it’s a problem that’s there for the Throne to solve, a problem with a lot of handles and spikes on it. But in order to correctly rabble-rouse, I want to make sure that I know where all of the money in this circular arsekicking contest is coming from - whether it is genuinely linked to economic activity (and so somebody somewhere is being screwed out of their fair wages) or whether it is just being printed meaninglessly (and so those on fixed incomes are getting ever closer to penury) or whether it is linked to an equivalent of gold mining (and so we have a new kind of McGuffin to chase).

If the plutocrats’ wealth were right now denominated in Thrones rather than mithril and they decided to buy everyone high end gear with too much of their capital, then next season someone else would be plutocrats and those people would have lost their shiny shirts. They themselves and their best mates can probably be bought high end gear with spare change. The real beneficiaries are the national bourse positions. ^^

17

As someone intimately involved with trying to kick the inflation beast to the curb IC, I’d really love to know what the impact of the inflation is on the common people of the Empire. The hyperinflation is currently mostly contained in the bourse resources cycle, but one of the solutions involves pumping money into anvil outside of the bourse cycle, so it would be nice to have a vague idea of the impact that will have.

Actually, what I’d really love is a dirty starving child, who can tell the senate how his family are starving because the price of white granite has destroyed the economy in his town, but I don’t think I’m likely to get that :smiley:

18

From my experience at Maelstrom that doesn’t normally work as people who aren’t on the field aren’t real enough for people to care about. There are exceptions but this kind of thing is overridden by things which directly affect player characters.

19

Hob:
The Ring is made of steel, and I assume copper-plated. From the Imperial History page (It’s also mentioned in the League pages):
“Giovanni also laid the foundations of the Imperial Bourse, and worked with the Senate and Synod to codify the body of Imperial Law. During his reign he establisheed a single currency based on steel coins issued by the Imperial Mint, based in Tassato under the ultimate control of the Civil Service.”
So clipping it and melting it down with your pewtering tools won’t be useful :wink:.

Herb Gardens, Mines and Forests can be “turbo-charged” by paying 1 Throne to make them kick out more stuff. This is inefficient in general, but a potential inflation counter. See DanW’s links.

Ministries like the Marcher “Bailiff of the Grand Market” position let you buy lots of resources at a reasonable price. The Conclave ones let you buy lots at unreasonable prices. You could get them to buy stuff for you.

Money can be used to buy things like rituals, books, event attendance, hiring a fiddler, etc. You can bring your own beer but it’s less easy to bring your own violinist. This is why I love the service economy at Empire. If you can’t think of stuff to buy, I recommend Potions, Magic Items, Combat Rituals, Fun Rituals and Random Tat. There’s even a whole branch of the Way devoted to helping you spend your money. Please, find me in uptime, we can chat about Prosperity RELIGIOUS FANATIC STAAAARE :smiley:. PCs charging for things like ritual performances and crafting items is good is because it keeps money flowing around and makes it have value to other PCs.

Money can be used to purchase goods and services without haggling over the relative price of Ambergelt compared to a Biting Blade or whatever. People joke about the Mana Standard, but you can’t make change for 20% of a mana crystal. Money is the only thing that can deal with small transactions unless you start your own currency of promissory notes.

Ultimately, Imperial money has value to players because there are levers in the game that require money to pull. That means people who want to pull those levers need their PCs to acquire money, rather than Mana or True Vervain or whatever. Which means they have a reason to treat money as a thing that matters. I don’t need to think about this at all on my PC because I can always find more equipment to buy for King’s Stoke, or magic to fund, or beer. Real-life acquisition of beer not being the point. The point to me is the experience. “I am now sitting in an IC pub, roleplaying with people and not taking the piss IC by not buying any stuff. Also, hooray, OC free beer!”.

20

Re: beer.

There are also more kinds of beer available to purchase in the field for IC money than there are kinds of beer available in the field to purchase for OC money :slight_smile: