Currency for my Dark Sun campaign
reddit.com/gallery/sufivf
reddit.comPosted Feb 17, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC
14028
reddit.comEnough to buy a slave right there
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Funnily enough I’ve never actually seen any guidelines on the cost aside from one silver being incredibly cheap.
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First thing my players did was buy a slave. I made them pay 350 cp. Actually they bought two but one of them attempted to kill his purchaser first chance he got. I'm playing the other one as fearful of the defiler/owner. He may get his chance though walking along a winding path or whatever. He's watching everything the defiler does. He's just waiting. Like having a time bomb in the party which I love.
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Edit. A slave caravan with gladiators , a circus and a few wives.
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Looks like it could be counterfeit
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That’s the fun part! Some of the tenbits are counterfeit, having 9 or 11 respectively. And if they spend one with the wrong merchant…. We’ll the Templars will have to be alerted now won’t they.
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so good hahah
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Honestly I cannot wait until one of them hands one to me. We started out doing Freedom sans the novel characters, but the party quickly commandeered a gith sand-skimmer on its way out from the silver spring oasis and decided they wanted to try engaging in some mercantilism, city of Tyr be damned lol. That’s going to come back to bite them later but hey, we’ll have some fun for now.
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Thats awesome.
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Thanks dude. I’m honestly very happy with them and may be changing all my games over to a bit<CP<Silver scale because it’s been so satisfying using them.
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The great thing is that its a fairly easy currency system to expand on.
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Right? The 3.x Athasian emporium brings in lead beads as a type of currency less valuable than a bit, and the base system goes through gold and iron pieces too right? Never had a player get that much money before, not going to lie lol.
Technically treating bits as copper pieces I could just copy the system over whole cloth. And these were relatively cheap to make. Ceramics are all sculpey and super sculpey, roughly two regular packages worth, and the most expensive part of making the silver pieces was the MoldMax60 I used to make the mold for the pewter, and I had that on hand from a previous project. The only issue I see moving forward is getting gold and potentially iron pieces since I’m not aware of any metals that could pass for those that I can melt on my stove top.
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You can always grab a can of gold spray paint! No need to make anything expensive. You could copy that for silver, copper and platinum. Just use the ultra shiny mirror like spray for the platinum. And then if you really want to do something odd, orks in warhammer use teeth as currency. Shape some pointy ork teeth out of sculpey and paint them bone color.
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Real question:
How did you make those or where did you get them from and how cost effective is it for funding a campaign?
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So the ceramics are all sculpey or super sculpey rolled 3/8” thick and cut out with a leftover cup from a bottle of children’s Motrin. I pressed them flat to my desired thiccness, then used a toothpick to press the divisions in. Cut out the center to help hide any imperfections with my accuracy on the division, poked holes in each bit for aesthetic, and baked them at 275 for about 15-20 minutes. I can fit 15 or so on a baking sheet, and 2 packs of sculpey got me all that you see here with about 1/4 a pack of clay left over. Total cost for ceramics was like, 15 bucks. Also be warned. Super sculpey is more firm than regular, and is in this case, much easier to work with. Regular sculpey was my second batch and hoo boy it’s so soft I had to essentially relearn my process, constantly reshaping the coins as every tiny touch deforms them.
Now for the silver, it’s a little more expensive. Bismuth pewter can be melted on a stove top in any cheap stainless steel pan (I recommend keeping it covered and letting it go on medium or maybe one tic up from it) and is fairly affordable. My coins are roughly 90/10 bismuth/tin and goes for $15 a pound. I’ve used about a pound here for the 12 silver I have for example. You’ll need some Smooth-on Mold Max 60 which will run you about $30+shipping too. Then you’ll want to make your coin out of clay and bake it, and then make your mold. Get a tiny box or make one out of cardboard and duct tape and fill it halfway with level super sculpey. Press your coin into it flat-ways until it is half submerged, and then mix and pour your silicone in to create the first half. Wait 24 hours, check to see if you got the detail you want, and then repeat. After they you’ll need something to clamp the two halves together while you pour the pewter in, and then you just need to let it sit for 10-15 minutes to set and cool, and you’ve got a shiny piece of Tyrian Silver.
At the end of the day, for less than $60 I’ve gotten about all the game money I’m going to need for a good long while (hopefully. Trying very hard to keep my players poor. They keep running into Faenaeyon and the Sun Runners lol). And now making more silver is also way more cost effective too.
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Thats kinda cool.
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Gorgeous!
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forbidden athasian cookies
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Lol both my groups assumed that I brought cookies for everyone he first time I brought these out 😂
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Super cool, man.
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Thanks bud! It’s been a blast using them So far lol
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Darksun cookies!
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Really awesome work! Only downside is the box makes me think of lunch and they're just close enough to crackers to trick me.
Lol dude both my Thursday group and my Sunday group were super stoked for cookies the first time I brought these out at the table. Frankly I’m not even mad. It’s hilarious.
Add me to that fooled group.
I definitely thought this was food at first lmao
The forbidden cookies.
Forbidden by the Templars, that is.