Kobolds Don't Carry Cash

When was the last time a troll gave you change? Probably never. There are a lot of reasons for this: their inner child leans ungenerous, and they have a propensity for eating the flesh of their trading partners. But the main one is that trolls do not actually have any money. They do not roll off Benjamins or dispense euros from little purses. They do not have any use for the gold, silver, or copper coinage that are the backbone of human and human-like governments of fantasy worlds.

Coins are imprinted with a recognized insignia of a government or a merchant coalition or a guild. People use them not because they are inherently useful (they aren't) but because they represent fixed amounts concentrated in small, mobile, durable items. A big improvement over bartering, but to trade with coins, you must have trust in the group who issued them. This is very important.

(As an aside, we are talking coins here: gold and silver pieces are not tiny ingots of pure gold or silver, though even if they were, they would still be worthless to primitive humanoids as precious metals are mere adornments to swords, spears, shield and armor.)

The tribes of primitives roaming lands of fantasy share a bunch of traits: they are decentralized; they do not trade peacefully with the civilized folk (an orc will not show up in a city to buy produce with human money largely because she would be attacked or at least denied entry); they are cunning but not smart or organized in major, found-a-civilization ways. They are rather like homicidal cavemen.

And they do not recognize human-like governments’ worthless little scraps of metal coinage.

So when your party stumbles on a hobgoblin slave caravan or is ambushed by a clutch of ravening bugbears and you slay these bad boys, why are they invariably carrying human-issued government coinage? Do they have passports too? How about lines of credit?

Kobolds, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, demons, lizardmen, dogmen, catmen, birdmen, boogeymen and all the other primitives DO NOT CARRY CASH. Maybe a gem or two because they are sparkly or bring “good luck” or whatever, but that's all, because they are already carrying food, weapons, tools, bits of metals that could be smelted into weapon-grade hard metals, talismans for luck, insignias for clan or deity loyalty, protective clothing and armor, and of course skulls and other trophies from successes. Don't make these poor creatures ferry around human money, too.

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom.

Cranky Druid, a.k.a.

Verdre Aspianne, CEO

Dead Stay Dead, Inc.

Stamp out mediocrity: DM intelligently.