Coins and Currency: Adding Flavor to Your Coins

The past two weeks on the blog have been my three-part series on Currency and Coinage. This week is the last part! So far, I've talked about the existing currency system of Dungeons & Dragons, and what the principles and math that underpinned a lot of medieval and Renaissance European currencies were. Subscribers to the blog also got to see me put those designs to practical use as I built two different "standards" for the currency systems of my world.

This week, we're going to be looking at the fun part: actually designing some coins. We'll talk about how to make your specific coinage reflect elements of your worldbuilding, tying together the larger themes of the world with the currency your players use.

Subscribers to the blog will once again get to see me put all this into practice in my own world, as I create a number of specific currencies and coins present in my world. You can sign up at any point to gain access to this! The subscriber exclusive content is at the end of this post. Subscribing is free!

Thriving and Failing

A friend of mine collects old coins. I'm going to share a picture of two Spanish coins from that collection, and I want you to think about which one looks older.

You thought the coin on the left was older, correct? I did. It is in worse condition, the edges are worse, the image is less crisp. Surely, it is the older one. But it is not!

The left coin was made by hammer with a low quality metal during the reign of Charles II of Spain. He ruled from 1665-1700, so the coin dates from somewhere in that time. The coin on the right was made by machine during the reign of King Phillip II of Spain, who ruled 1556-1598! The coin on the right is older by probably 100 years. It is not a "different" coin; they'd have been worth the same value. So why is it in such a better condition?

But Spain in 1570 was strong, threatening to conquer the entire world thanks to the wealth of their colonial empire. They could invest in technology that had such a mundane use as to make their currency better. By 1660, the Spanish Empire was in decline, as Britain and more especially France were on the rise. Silver from the colonies had flooded the market, causing inflation at a level that had never really been seen before, in an era of metal money.

The cracks on the left coin have probably been enlarged through use, so some of the condition is wear-and-tear and preservation difficulties. But they would have been there from creation due to how the coin was made.

Ancient Rome faced the same issue. As the realm was threatened during the Crisis of the Third Century, emperor after emperor needed some way to pay their army. They resorted to debasing the currency--keeping the weight and official value, but reducing the amount of precious metal in it. This made merchants not affiliated with the government less likely to accept the coin at face value, effectively cutting the wages of the army, but enabling the emperor to keep up their official pay rate. Their currency literally became less good as they suffered through decades of crisis, with the debased coins also less likely to hold up as well as a more pure coin.

Worldbuilding

This is a great worldbuilding exercise. Which governments are minting the coins that your players have? When were they minted? Was the government strong at the time, investing in good metals and excellent smiths or machines to make their coins last and clearly pressed? Or was the government dealing with a crisis, shoveling out lesser coins--debased or simply more poorly made--to buy their way out of the issue?

A well-made coin holds its shape! When you uncover a dragon's hoard, for example, don't describe all the coins as necessarily beat up and looking old. Some coins from an ancient empire might still be pristine, preserved in the hoard. Describe the coins as varied, with some in exceptional condition and others cracked and their designs faded.

The coins of your world can be a quiet reference to the political situation. Most currency in active use--not harvested from a dungeon--would be fairly current. It might have the current king or the past king, but likely not beyond that, as the monarch would often try to gather in old currency and replace it to show their authority; you don't want someone else's face on your coinage. Coins in good condition show a strong country, while coins that quickly deteriorate show a country that is on the decline and does not have the resources to devote to currency manufacture.

The Face of the Coin

What does the imagery on the coin tell us? Who gets to be on the money? What does how they are presented tell us?

Andrew Jackson, a former president of the US, is on the $20 bill. He was also an incredibly racist man, even for his time, and a noted opponent of central banking. Campaigns to replace him with someone else have been ongoing, with a redesign featuring Harriet Tubman planned since 2015--though the release date of those bills has been steadily pushed back. Who is on the face of money matters symbolically--it represents who and what you idolize as a country. Replacing Jackson, a racist, with Tubman, a black woman, abolitionist, and leader of the Underground Railroad, is not solving racism in America, but it is certainly at least a gesture in the right direction.

Dead Presidents

Most people on U.S. money are dead former presidents.

The Penny shows Abe Lincoln, the Nickel shows Thomas Jefferson, the Dime shows FDR, and the Quarter shows George Washington. Why these presidents? Why in this order?

A big part of which president is on which bill is driven by popularity. Washington, as the first president, is on the quarter and on the $1 bill. Why? He's arguably the most famous president, and so he is on the money that you'd use most frequently (or did, before most of the world moved to card-based transactions).

Why only dead people though? It is a gesture at being anti-monarchy. For most of history, kings have made sure that they are on their money as a sign of their authority, and it is depicting kings that we're going to talk most about in this section. But in a democracy, you don't want the current leader to be depicted as a monarch. There's separation of powers, so the president does not rule absolutely, and there's also an acknowledgement that the president will be gone in 4 or 8 years. Changing money that frequently would be tremendously costly.

The earliest U.S. coins would not have had real people on them at all. Many looked like this:

This depicted "Lady Liberty" – one of the national personifications of the United States, like Uncle Sam.

Keep this in mind for the coins of any democratic governments in your world: they probably don't want to have a living, real person on them. Instead, opt for dead heroes of the country or coins of national mythical figures.

Thrones or Mounted?

If you're going to have a full body picture on your coin, instead of just the face, there's an important decision to make.

Take a look at this coin, issued by Charlemagne, called the livre. What do you notice about the King there? Specifically, what is he holding? It can be a little hard to see due to the quality of the engraving having worn away.

But he's holding a sword in one hand and a staff in the other. The staff was a symbol of civilian authority. The sword is, well, a weapon. He wears a crown, another symbol of authority and royalty.

This is the image of a King at peace. Coinage is propaganda, and so this coin is designed to show that Charlemagne is in charge; he rules through laws (the staff) and by right of conquest (sword).

Contrast that with this coin, from Utrecht in 1681, only about 20 years after the Dutch won their independence from the Hapsburgs of Austria.

Here, the ruler is mounted on horseback and wielding a sword. There's no story of the "rule of law" here; this is a country that was forged in a bloody war for independence and which followed up that war with the Anglo-Dutch War. The rulers of the independent Netherlands were warriors, and we see the same thing in a lot of Spanish coins during the Reconquista. They earned their throne through military victory, and so they are depicted as warriors on their coinage.

Left, Right, or Head On?

What about if all we're getting is the head. Most coins that just have a person's face on them are pictures in profile (facing left or right). This is mostly an aesthetic choice rather than a particularly symbolic one – it is a lot easier to see features in profile than head on, and in order to actually capture a nose on a coin above the face in a head on view, it would be so elevated that it would wear off over time.

Why right or left? That's also mostly just aesthetics. In England, it is traditional to alternate left or right, monarch to monarch. This is a way so that people notice that there's a new king on the coin, rather than just assuming this man was the same as that man.

Icons

What other options are there if we don't want any people on there. Maybe you have a democracy but we don't want to go with a national personification. Or you have a monarch who claims to get their power not from right of conquest nor from good governance, so neither seated on a throne with staff and crown nor mounted makes sense.

Coats of arms are a great option for monarchs, particularly if you're claiming your authority due to ancestry and your link to a popular ruling family rather than a personal attribute. A family crest like this also has the advantage of being recognizable over multiple generations.

Religious symbols are also exceptionally common. People want to claim that they've been named King--or Emperor, in this case, as this was a Byzantine imperial coin--by the divine right.

The Face of the Coin, Conclusion

Basically, ask yourself: "where does the person who made this coin get their claim to rule" and then have the art of the coin reflect that idea.

Religion? Use a symbol. Good governance? Go with the monarch seated on a throne, holding symbols of secular authority (often a scepter and crown, maybe an orb). Right of conquest? Mounted with sword in hand. Long dynastic claim? Some sort of dynastic crest.

As a republic, you generally want to avoid coinage that idolizes any one, currently living leader. That means either dead leaders, national symbols, or religious iconography. And if you're going the dead leader route, generally you'll avoid the "right of conquest" thing, and emphasize the "good governance" thing.

The same thing holds true for any text on your coin. Most medieval coins just say the person's title, which is why I'm not focusing too much on them--they all say the same thing, in Latin: "Name, Rex (King) of their title, by the grace of God". But you can be more creative here too if you want to put a particularly fine point on it. The U.S. started putting "in God We Trust" on all their coins only during the Cold War, to try and draw a distinction with the 'godless' communists of the Soviet Union, so you can pick what you want to try and emphasize with any text on your coinage.

Naming Coins

Ok, last point before I move on to the subscriber only section. How do you name your coins?

The etymology of these names is really interesting, and I'll mostly be drawing from an article in the Independent for this. Basically, there's three main categories that the name for currencies fall into.

Location Words

A lot of money is named for the place that the metal for the coin was originally mined, when that coin was first minted. For example, the now ubiquitous term "dollar" comes from the Flemish "Joachimsthal," or Joachim's Valley. Coins minted from this mine became "joachimsthaler," as we might call someone in New York a "New Yorker". Joachimsthaler would be shortened to "thaler", and eventually "dollar".

The historical French "franc" has a similar origin. The Franks were the people who became the French, and so a Franc is just basically a word for "Frankish Coin." The same holds true for the Euro--a "European" currency.

Other historical currencies following this trend include the Florin, minted in Florence.

Weights and Roman Words

A large number come from weights. The British pound is an obvious example, representing a pound of silver. The same is true of the Latin librum, from where we get the old French livre and the Turkish lira. The ruble of Russia was a unit of weight for silver. The mark, a common Germanic word for currency, was a German word for a particular weight.

Other words are a little more generic when referencing weights. The peso is just a word meaning "weight".

Royalty

Lastly, we have things that reference royalty. The monarch would be the primary person minting coins. Calling a monarchy the "crown" was a common and even official shorthand, and so you get terms like the Danish krone, for crown. We also get the Spanish real or Saudi Arabian riyal, both deriving from the word "royal".

Lesser Coins

We talked last week about lesser coins, as well. Pounds, like dollars, were only the highest part of the unit of measurement for money. But what about words like penny, shilling, groat, or sovereign? In the U.S., what about nickel, quarter, or dime? These also have a few options for names.

Option 1 is to go by portions. The dime is the di-mus, meaning tenth portion (1/10) of a dollar. A cent comes from the Latin for 100, because it is 1/100th of a dollar. The quarter is a quarter (1/4th) of a dollar.

Option 2 is to go by material, if the material is innovative in some way. Most coins were copper, silver, or gold. So when the U.S. introduced a coin that was 75% copper and 25% nickel, the different metal was what got emphasized: the nickel.

Option 3 is to go by size, in comparison to other coins. The English groat comes from the Dutch groot or French gros tournais, because they were "great"--big--in comparison to previous coins. In an era where increasing the value of the coin meant packing more metal into it, bigger coins of the same metal type were inherently worth more. So if you have a one-copper piece and a two-copper piece, the two-copper piece might be called a "Big Copper" or "Grand Copper". And then mush those sounds together until you get a word you like--that's literally how we got groats.

Option 4 is to reference something that is on the art of the coin. The Canadian one-dollar coin is often nicknamed the "Loony" because it has a loon on it. The English Angel of 1465 had, as you might expect, an angel on it. This is pretty simple, but it is what someone dealing with those coins might refer to it as.

Option 5 is to go with any of the "major coin" rules. There's a bunch of coins called the Noble, the Sovereign, or the Crown, all of which come from royalty or who is minting the coin. In a big empire where different mines might produce different grades of coins, you could give them location-based names.

Conclusion

That's it! Thank you for reading! This marks the end of the series and the 10,000 or so words I've written in total on the issue of coins. I hope it was informative and inspiring for you to give some flavor to the currencies of your world.

Describe the coins that your players are using: are they made well? Is there an insecure emperor trying to use a grand military campaign as a way to shore up his failing rule? Maybe it features him on horseback, but the material of the coin is poor, and so within a year of their production, the coins are starting to crack and the design to fade. This sort of thing is a small touch that can reflect back campaign themes and subtly reinforce the vibes you're going for in a campaign's setting. Please share your own creations in the comments!

Or, just stick to generic D&D/fantasy "gold pieces." There's nothing wrong with keeping it simple, but I think it is a missed opportunity.

Subscribers can read on to see me put this into play in my own world as I design a couple of coins that exist in my world, though I'm certainly not going to be comprehensive here! It is completely free to subscribe!