[Glorantha] Re: use of coin in Sartar

[Nic Hughes]

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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)
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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 at grove.demon.co.uk>
>
> In message <33d89280606172111m5da21342l860ba9b29e5f6bd1 at 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