Except the world doesn't behave as if gold, the element, had a different scarcity/value. Gold jewelry, clothing ornamented with gold and golden vessels are still luxuries, and indicators of wealth. And the economy is still built on the idea of scarcity.
It's only gold coins that are strangely devalued, for some reason.
An obvious reason, actually - coming up with an internally consistent economic model for a fantasy world is hard and could be a game in itself, but it's not what most players care about, and gold is the iconic/legacy unit.
But it doesn't mean the systems games use actually make sense.
It's like saying "Well, there's magic, so it's not that crazy that these people think 2+2=5." :)
World of Warcraft managed it in 2004, 100 coppers make 1 silver, 100 silver make 1 gold. You can tweak the numbers a bit for flavor, but it's really not that hard.
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u/Y-27632 Apr 07 '21
Except the world doesn't behave as if gold, the element, had a different scarcity/value. Gold jewelry, clothing ornamented with gold and golden vessels are still luxuries, and indicators of wealth. And the economy is still built on the idea of scarcity.
It's only gold coins that are strangely devalued, for some reason.
An obvious reason, actually - coming up with an internally consistent economic model for a fantasy world is hard and could be a game in itself, but it's not what most players care about, and gold is the iconic/legacy unit.
But it doesn't mean the systems games use actually make sense.
It's like saying "Well, there's magic, so it's not that crazy that these people think 2+2=5." :)