[Glorantha] Re: use of coin in Sartar

In message <44968D8E.7060607@virgin.net> Nic Hughes writes:

>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.

I deliberately tried to keep it general rather than specific to any one culture because none of the Gloranthan ones are an exact match to any RW ones. Certainly the Sartarites don't have laws on how people of different social classes dress and I don't think they'd get away with regularly reminting coinage. Indeed I seem to remember that the coins minted in Sartar's reign are still in circulation.

>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.

Sartarite carls aren't even typical Sartarite peasants. They are the richest ones and their equivelent in Anglo-Saxon society would also be a minority. Unless someone has some authoritive figures I would suggest that the population splits into 10% nobility (thanes, priests etc), 25% carls, 50% cottars and 15% stickpickers and thralls. In a feudal society like Western Glorantha that changes to around 10% nobility, 10% freemen, 65% serfs and 15% beggers and slaves. While carls and freemen are likely to have some coins, cottars and serfs won't.

>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.

Certainly they are an easy in game shorthand although like others I'd use Briton or Irish culture rather than Anglo-Saxon as the Sartarite analogue. Anglo-Saxon has too many feudal elements to fit particularly well.

>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.

I'm not sure why a typical Sartarite should keep wealth in coins rather than jewelry or livestock. Those seem more in keeping with the society that's described. As far as the clans go most people have little or no use for coins - the clan reeve does the trading so it's likely he'll be in charge of the clan store of coins. Internal clan transactions seem to be based on gifting and barter.

I'd agree that the cities will have more use for coins but that's a reflection of the higher proportion of merchants and craftspeople as well as the lower level of trust between unrelated people. The gifting economy will have at least started to break down in the cities where there are any more transient people.

> 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.

Now this is what I'm arguing against - the post-medieval cash economy where coinage is the almost exclusive way of conducting transactions. Maybe the heartlands of the Lunar Empire have reached this point but if the whole world has it's just boring. There's far more fun to be had from taking some pots of your mother's preserved fruit to market and trying to get a present for your sweetheart as well the herbs she's told you to get. In RQ we had to bother with the mechanics of transactions so cash is a simple and well understood option but in HQ we can concentrate on locating the right sellers/buyers and the relationships. Depending on how much we want to make of it that could be an extended contest, a series of simple contests or just a single simple contest. The method of trading becomes descriptive rather than a game mechanic.

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

Except that there are a lot more coins in circulation. All those soldiers are paid in silver and most will get spent. I suspect some clans are doing very nicely out of the occupation. Certainly the cities are doing well.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/