[Glorantha] Re: use of coin in Sartar

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> 1. Re: Re: Rune Magic (Donald R. Oddy)
> 2. Re: Re: Rune Magic (Fred)
> 3. Esrolian (male) initiation questions (Mikko Rintasaari)
> 4. Demigod magic (Mikko Rintasaari)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:47:34 GMT
> From: donald_at_grove.demon.co.uk (Donald R. Oddy)
> Subject: Re: [Glorantha] Re: Rune Magic
> To: glorantha_at_rpglist.org
> Message-ID: <25301@grove.demon.co.uk>
>
> In message <33d89280606172111m5da21342l860ba9b29e5f6bd1@mail.gmail.com> Fred writes:
>
>
>> You get my point, though... if you have a windfall, and you have some
>> cash left over after the annual harvest festival, there isn't much you
>> can do to keep it against the re-minting.
>>
>
> True, but that isn't a reality for a medieval peasant. They're more
> likely to end up owing rent. It's like someone today earning the
> minimum wage getting most of their year's income in a single week.
> So you pay your debts and taxes, buy essential tools for the next
> year and maybe the odd minor luxury. There just isn't going to
> be hundreds of pounds (in modern equivelent) left over.
>
>

I've been sitting on the sidelines here not because its not interesting but because I think the discussion has been drifting away from Glorantha a bit.

IIRC the discussion started with Anglo-Saxon currency so its worth noting that this is probably a lot closer to some visions of Gloranthan Orlanthi than the archetypal medieval peasant. Unless there is a good MGF reason to make Sartarite Carls very different to their 10th century English equivalents we can probably look at known habits and practices to inspire details of how to play in an otherwise alien and fictional world. Personally I think this is why games with real world analogues work well, you can avoid having to invent every possible detail by saying "its like such and such except for these differences" as a sort of shorthand for describing a culture.

Sartar in particular looks like a place where currency would have percolated down far enough that most households would have some reserve of coin and most people would at least have seen money, although I would think that outside the towns only thanes, travellers and the heads of households would deal with money with any regularity at all. I cannot recall any mention of mints in Sartar but I personally think there would be a mint in each of the cities Sartar founded, probably managed by the trade ring and closely watched by the associated tribes. Interestingly the Colymar would have less access to coin and be more "traditional" than most of the other Sartarite tribes. In any case I just think this is a slight rebalancing of emphasis, the clan based nature of Sartarite society has been emphasised in the materials but we should not forget that this is a culture that has developed towns and cities which implies sufficient commerce that coins would be useful. During a market quite a lot of coin probably changes hands even if at the end of the day most of the ordinary farmers have turned most of their coin back into something of more practical use to take back to the stead. There isn't usually much left over but plenty of coin will have changed hands.

Of course any stockpiles from the good years got depleted to pay the extortionate taxes once the Lunars took over.

-- 

Nic