Money & World Building
There’s a great little piece of world building any Dungeon Master can do to breath life into their world, in a way that the players might actually pay attention to: currency.
Player character's want money. It doesn't matter how exquisitely you've baited a hook you've made, someone at some point is going to ask your NPC quest-giver “so what's in it for us?” and then try to negotiate for more. And money is a tremendously significant cultural artifact that can convey a ton of information about a society's beliefs and values.
Look at all the information encoded on a US 100 dollar bill. An important historical figure, current important people's names and signatures, a very significant location, symbols from our mythology and religion, not to mention all the security features like watermarks and the hologram strip that may as well be magic.
Now I'm not saying you need to go to this degree for your home game. Look at a quarter instead for instance: the founder on one side, an important symbol on the other, a few significant words about the government and religion and, take note, in two different languages. Even that is more than you need for your home game, but consider how much you can learn from the front and the back a single coin. There's a reason people collect these things.
As a starting point, without going too crazy you can take the five standard denominations that are on the Dungeons and Dragons character sheet and assign unique identities to each. Even just making up words or slang for them is enough to add some flavor.
On page 20 of the Dungeon Masters Guide we get a sampling of different coins in the Forgotten Realms, and even in the PHB on page 143 we get the nice little detail that: “The electrum piece (ep) and the platinum piece (pp) originate from fallen empires and lost kingdoms, and they sometimes arouse suspicion and skepticism when used in transactions.” I think that's cool, electrum starts popping up in circulation around town and now there's an implication: someone must have recently unearthed a ruin of that fallen civilization.
Think about what you can say with the money in your world. Even just the materials it is made from. Maybe the dwarves in this valley use pig iron for copper pieces, wrought iron for silver, and Damascus steel for gold. That communicates something of their culture and values right there, before we even talk about is there a king, or a god, or a dragon emblazoned on the coins. It can also be an important things that sets them apart from the elves in the forest who used polished rings of different species of wood, weaving them into intricately knotted cords that they wear as jewelry. Maybe the elves won't accept the dwarven currency, they're a druidic culture and won't even touch metal. Now the players need to find some sort of intermediary or provide something else of value here. Or maybe they're just encouraged to stay in the dwarf valley for another adventure or two before they can convert their coins to gems. Go easy giving the PCs money that won't spend because it can get frustrating, but once in a while it can really make an impact.
What would it say about a people if they were using money made out of pottery? Or glass? Mother of pearl? Or dragon scales? What does it say to have two kingdoms minting identical gold coins, the same size and weight, but one has the sword and scales of the god of justice emblazoned on them, while the other has the eye and hand of Vecna?
Matt Colville talks about how he has Kaleral the Vile handing out this awesome blood red gold for corpses in his game. The gold is cursed and let's the big bad spy on, and teleport near to, those anyone who holds these coins. I'll track down the video and share it, I believe he took the idea from a book. Steal from those who have stolen before you, this is the way.
In the unlikely event that you don't know who Matt Colville is: he's a huge force in D&D and on YouTube who fairly recently launched his own company and is making some great products like Strongholds & Followers. He's certainly been a huge inspiration to me in my game and in this channel, and his Running the Game Series is one of the best resources for new or experienced Dungeon Masters. Here’s the video where he talks about the blood money.
And here’s me saying the words you just read:
