Greentext

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.

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.

One bread costs 5 whole gold coins. Because obviously.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

No spacebucks?