One bread costs 5 whole gold coins. Because obviously.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Well, it's one bread Michael! How much could it cost? Ten gold coins?
What if money was just called hours?
Difficult jobs are worth more hours than easy jobs and require more specialized skills. If the specific skill is not part of the repertoire then the job will be exceptionally difficult and/or impossible.
There were some experiments where currency was actually denominated in hours, usually as part of a co-op system where you were literally trading for hours of labour.
I think the most famous one was in Ithaca, NY.
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In the not-too-distant future
You can't start a sentence with that and not expect me to get distracted thinking of a certain theme song.
All Star by Smash Mouth?
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Honestly a face of mine. Acting is solid and storyline is like a dystopian Robin Hood almost.
This is a good one to show people to get them thinking about class consciousness.
Can't do that because hours are gods.
I'm making a mars-themed luanti modpack (it's FOSS and available here btw), and i intend to use water as the currency, if i ever get to trading.
Water is a scarce and useful resource on Mars. That's all it takes to make a meaningful currency out of it.
The problem with using water as currency is that it is heavy. It is not reasonable to carry around large amounts. You'll need some kind of representational currency.
You’ll need some kind of representational currency
yep that's exactly what i think would make sense in the real world. basically a paper currency backed by real water. one dollar represents 1 kg of water.
it's like the gold standard, just not backed by gold but by water.
in the game that doesn't matter though since you can just carry around a lot of water bottles before your inventory space runs out.
Kinda fucked up that when coming up with a SciFi dystopia the worst we can think of is the Nestlé-buck.
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Caves of Qud uses water as currency. I think it explains this by making all of its characters weirdo radiation freakazoids that can teleport and fly around and stuff.
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Whilst an average film overall, the movie 'In Time' has an interesting concept for currency set in a near future sci fi dystopia.
Humanity has cured aging, and everyone stops aging at 25. Then their clock starts; indicated by a tattoo like digital clock on their forearm. Everything is paid for with time taken off their clock, once it reaches 0, they immediately die. Jobs pay employees a time salary etc, and the rich horde and manipulate the time markets to concentrate their wealth, and keep the poor from achieving the immortality they horde.
I enjoyed it, and I'm sure plenty others did, but there's no denying that a rather large suspension of belief is required.
I think it's a clever metaphor for the disparity in living standards and the real value of human life in a corrupt marketplace.
But the actual implementation of the story was a bit clumsy and heavy handed.
I remember after I left the movie as a teenager with my parents two older dudes were bickering about whether poor people in our actual world are able to escape poverty or not if they work hard.
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In Time is definitely one of my favorite movies. It has some great world building around this concept.
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Mfw the currency is money
If I made a sci-fi game I would just make the currency MWh. They handwave away so much science, why not have a watch sized device that can store insane amounts of power?
Which makes me wonder, is there a physics limit to the density of energy? There has to be, anyone know what it's called?
is there a physics limit to the density of energy
the physics limit to the density of energy is literally a black hole. it compresses the maximum amount of mass (energy) into a space. but that's technologically useless since you can't extract the energy out of it on-demand.
The densest ways of storing energy that are technologically useful are:
- batteries (Na-Ion batteries: 0.2 kWh/kg)
- oil/carbon-based fuels (bread: 5 kWh/kg)
- uranium (pure uranium: 24 * 10^6 kWh/kg)
There's also speculative technologies like antimatter (24 * 10^9 kWh/kg) which aren't available today.
The beauty of using uranium as currency is that if anyone hoards too much of it, the problem takes care of itself.
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Stellaris is a space 4x game that uses energy as a universal currency. The Endless Space games are also 4x games that use ancient nanomachines called Dust as currency.
And yes, concentrating energy increases mass. E=MC^2, which means more Energy must necessarily mean more Mass. So basically gravity will be your hard limit, theoretically stuffing enough energy into small enough a place will create a black hole, though I assume if you're talking electricity then there's probably some physical limit you would hit first.
[...] why not have a watch sized device that can store insane amounts of power?
Because Hiroshima was leveled by "only" 20 MWh (cost ranges from 120€ in northern Scandinavia to 1010€ in Greece) so having people carry energy wallets with enough to make more around day to day is like paying your groceries bill with C4 (which is perfectly save as long as there is no primary explosive).
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We have technological limits to the storage efficiencies of different types of batteries. Batteries defined as something that can store useable energy. If we are talking just energy, matter "stores" lots of energy, and you can look at the famous Einstein equation to play with numbers. I do know we have something like a matter density limit in black holes.
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This is one of those things where it's basically impossible to make a game with more accurate economics that is actually fun. The fact of the matter is that medieval wealth inequality was just too big for most people to wrap their heads around and would make gameplay really weird. Adventurers would in fact need to be buying equipment with the equivalent value of gold coins, but such wealth would dwarf the costs of pretty much any "normal" stuff you could buy and would cause weird balance issue. For example, a pound of cheese in medieval England cost half a penny, but a good sword could cost 480 pennies. Think about how many swords you encounter in a video game. Even if you sold them for a 100th of the high end price, you could still buy 9 lbs of cheese for a single sword and if cheese is meant to be a healing item then it probably has to be total trash to balance how cheap it is compared to adventuring gear. Or you could say a low quality sword can be sold for 5 gold and a cheese is 1 gold and make it a normal healing item. It's just hard to balance if the economy is realistic. As for credits, it's just hard to imagine what the hell trade will look like in the future and everyone kind of understands credits as a concept.
Or just don't give common items like cheese healing properties. Healing potions are perfectly normal features of fantasy games, and even in a more realistic setting you can use herbs, bandages and disinfectant to heal instead of standard food items. I don't think many players are going to complain that common things like food or staying at an inn are practically free if you're strong enough to kill one well-equipped bandit.
Also, depending on where and when in the middle ages, currency would vary hugely and work with several dozens of different coins. Travel to another region would involve money changers, scales, entirely different systems of coinage with (by modern standards) absurd breakdowns of coins and wholly new names and words.
And having pure coins would be easy, so obviously you'd have fun stuff like "new dollars" being worth 7/16th of an "old dollar" because they have less silver in them.
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You gained Brouzouf.
But are your legs OK?
Be a medieval peasant.
Harvest comes in
Load 1,000 pounds of produce onto a mule
Mule dies
Throw mule and produce on shoulders
Walk to market
Set up stall
Sign: "Apples - 1 gold piece"
Sell a single apple
Am now the wealthiest man in town
Go across the street to buy a wool tunic
Attempt to make change
Merchant cannot make change for a single gold piece
So he kills me and becomes wealthiest man in town
Repeat this for every shop in town
Literally one guy left in village
Mongols show up
Take gold piece
Return to China
China countries to be the wealthiest country on Earth for another century
the why did the wealthiest man in town give all his fortune for a single apple?
He was hungry
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No spacebucks?
Spacebukz
Spacebux
This is what I love about the Legend of Zelda games, it's "rupee", which comes from "ruby":
Rupee is likely derived from or a corruption of ruby, a valuable gemstone. As a result, Rupees were frequently misnamed early in the series, such as the name "Rupy" in the original The Legend of Zelda. In the German versions of The Legend of Zelda games, a Rupee is called a Rubin, which is German for ruby. Ironically, Red Rupees resemble rubies.
They're valuable gems of indeterminate size, not necessarily related to rubies or actual gems (could be glass or something), and have no direct comparison to any actual currency (unlike gold) but we can understand some amount of inherent value (better than credits). It's unique to the game, and denominated as a single number.
Some other ideas for units:
- sovereigns - as long as the person in charge is a king
- in-game term related to the region (like Euro is to Europe)
- chips - could be metal, glass, gemstones, etc
Keep it vague so people don't lose immersion by comparing to realm world units, or not have any inherent wealth. That said, "credits" is better than "gold," just a bit cliché.
Could swear I've seen a setting where the currency was sovereigns, but there was no king. Literally "cash is king".
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Metro series games use bullets as a currency. Theyre small, not easily produceable in the setting, and have inherent value (you can shoot your money at enemies). Great design.
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