CHANGED 2025-02-15: Small grammatical fixes for clarity.
These are some rules I threw together for “realistic” banking in a fantasy world. They’re written primarily for Clash of Steel and the assumption that temples (or temple moneychangers) act as banks, but they should be easy to adapt to any system. Enjoy!
Realistic Banking in a Fantasy World
Quoting Clash of Steel:
Adventurers will amass silver coins and spend them on training and the honing of their skills, as well as weapons and more mundane items. Their savings should be lodged in a temple, with its god passing knowledge of this wealth to its other temples, allowing PCs to withdraw funds from any of that god’s temples.
This is a simple way to manage large amounts of silver coins. However, I’m not fond of gods intervening in mortal economics. Instead I’ll assume temples distribute information and silver the old-fashioned way: wagons, couriers, and messenger birds.
How Do I Deposit Money?
When you deposit your money with temple, they give you a token that attests that you have an account with them. Each has a “credit rating” with a rough indication of how much they’re willing to spot you, based on the Wealth Table on Clash of Steel page 74:
| Balance (sp) | Grade | Credit Limit (sp) |
|---|---|---|
| < 1 000 | 0 | 0 |
| ≥ 1 000 | 1 | 10 |
| ≥ 10 000 | 2 | 100 |
| ≥ 100 000 | 3 | 1 000 |
| ≥ 1 000 000 | 4 | 10 000 |
How Do I Withdraw Money?
When you want your money back, you present your token. Depending on the amount requested and your credit limit, one of the following will happen.
- If the temple has your financial records but you don’t have the funds available (or you’re overdrawn), the temple will not give you money. Any overdraft is considered a loan.
- If the temple has your financial records and has the funds available, it can get you your money immediately.
- If the temple doesn’t have your records but has funds available and your request is at or under your credit limit, you can take out a loan.
- If the temple doesn’t have your records but your request is over your credit limit or the funds available, you will have to wait the waiting period for the type of temple from which you asked.
A loan will be repaid automatically when the lending temple has your records or you make a deposit within three days. Otherwise the temple will send out a Debt Collection Squad and change 1d6 silver per six days for the “service”.
The waiting period reflects the round-trip time to send a courier to the nearest large temple and come back with records and/or funds. It’s random to compensate for travel time, couriers and wagons already en route, trouble on the road, etc.
Types of Temple
| Type of Temple | Immediate Withdrawal | Waiting Period (days) |
|---|---|---|
| Home Temple (City) | automatic | — |
| City Temple | 8+ | 2d6 |
| Town Temple (near City) | 10+ | 2 × 1d6 |
| Town Temple | 10+ | 2 × 2d6 |
| Village Temple | 12+ | 2 × 3d6 |
Immediate Withdrawal reflects the chance that the temple will have both sufficient funds and the customer’s financial records. Roll 2d6 and attempt to score the target number or higher. Add +2 if you informed your home temple or the temple of your last town of your next destination.
Home Temple
Since you deposited the money here, you should have no problem witdrawing as much as you like. However, if the balance dips, your credit rating will be downgraded.
City Temple
Most city temples should have up-to-date records, and enough funds to withdraw just about any amount. They may put a hold on 1000 sp or more.
Town Temples
Town temples may have up-to-date records; if they have the records they may not have the funds. In either case, a town near the city would make a round trip to the city; otherwise, it would have to solicit funds from nearby cities.
Village Temples
Village temples generally have little if any silver. Most villages temples get by with food offerings and “barter”. A village temple would have to send out to the nearest town for any apprediable silver, and it may be faster for the adventurers to travel out and get it themselves.
Shrines
Shrines usually don’t have regular attendants. A priest or worshipper from a nearby settlement travels out every few days to clean the shrine and burn any food offerings. Adventurers should find a Town Temple.
Appendix A: Adapting to Secular Banks
The above assumes that various temples of the same god, or even temples of allied gods, would cooperate easily. If we consider banks run as a business we have to account for a few factors.
-
As I stated previously, most early banks would discount the amount actually withdrawn based on the distance to the PC’s home bank, local taxes, processing fees, and so forth. Thus of 100 silver withdrawn you may only get 46 back.
Since PCs would revolt against such a rule, let’s assume banks twigged onto fractional reserve banking, in which they borrow your money to make investments (and cover for bad investments). So of 100 silver PCs get 100 back … subject to the timing restrictions described above. (We’ll assume the bank won’t pay interest.)
-
If, however, PCs want their whole deposit back, and that deposit is over, say, 10,000 sp, they may require more time to gather that amount … especially if their whole business is banking. (Iron Age Savings and Loan?) Give it an extra 3d6 days …
-
Unless a bank is backed by a kingdom (or a religious order), banks can also go bust. One day the bankers just hang a closed sign on the door and run for the next kingdom. So there’s also that, especially if there’s been a run on the bank.
-
The City/Town/Village breakdown above assumes that temples have a reserve based on the number and wealth of their worshippers. That neat distinction breaks down for secular banks. Before a national banking system existed, it was every bank for itself, and branches of a main bank, even in a city, may have too little business to keep a sufficient reserve for rich customers. Thus the distinction should be Large/Medium/Small, with potentially a Small branch in a large city. (Potentially a small town might have a Large branch if a rich noble or merchant lived nearby.)
-
Finally, the “identity token” I posited above has a number of flaws, starting with verifying the bearer of the token is the actual depositor. (This may be a feature and not a bug in some groups.) I assumed that literacy would not be common, even among adventurers with lots of silver. A fantasy world closer to the early modern era might verify identity with a signature or maybe a personal seal or signet ring.
I also assumed the token would be hard to counterfeit, either through skilled craftsmanship or magic. A low-magic Bronze Age or Iron Age world may not have the magic or even the skill to personalize tokens in the bank that present both an identifying mark and a credit rating. (That may even be hard for a temple.) Perhaps they’re pre-made with random account numbers and credit ratings assigned: this is the poor person’s bin, this is the one-star bin …
Appendix B: Alternate Currency
An exclusively silver-based economy makes sense from a simplicity and historic accuracy perspective.
Historically, however, some kingdoms and empires have minted coins of other metals, so here’s some alternate coinage.
| Coin | Abbrev. | Wt. (s) | Value (s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| pound of gold1 | gL | 50 | 5000.00 |
| gold crown | gc, gp | 1 | 100.00 |
| gold half-crown2 | gh | ½ | 50.00 |
| electrum3 trite | et | ½ | 20.00 |
| silver piece | s, sp | 1 | 1.00 |
| half-silver2 | sh | ½ | 0.50 |
| quarter-silver4 | sq | ¼ | 0.25 |
| copper penny | p, cp | 1 | 0.10 |
| copper half-penny2 | ch | ½ | 0.05 |
- Coin
- the name(s) of the coin.
- Abbrev.
- abbreviation for the coin.
- Wt.
- the weight of the coin as compared to the weight of a silver piece.
- Value
- the value of a coin in silvers.
Gold
(See “The Ecstasy of Gold: Money in RPGs” for more about gold in a silver-based economy.)
Realistically, gold is an absurdly expensive metal to use in common transactions. Nevertheless, players may find gold coins in a hoard or, if they become nobles, start buying fancy carriages and castles.
Consequently, I’ve set the value of gold to be 100 silvers per coin of equal weight to align with modern gold prices, rounded up to a convenient number. Ancient bi-metallic currencies used a different conversion ratio. For example, a gold daric was worth only 20 silver sigloi.
Note that if the king does not set a fixed rate of exchange for bi-metallic currency, moneychangers will sell gold for a few silvers more and buy it for a few silver less in order to make a profit. Call it a service fee.
If the GM / Referee wants to introduce some variation in gold prices relative to silver, they can multiply the amount of silver expected for an amount of gold by (4d6 + 85)% to get the actual silver received, and vice versa.5 This represents increased or reduced demand for gold, questions about its purity, etc. For a more pessimistic range, use (3d6 + 85)%.
Gold is about twice as dense as most other metals, so a “gold crown” will take up only half the volume of a silver piece.
Copper
Most rural districts won’t see coins at all; they will pay their “rent” with the harvest they grow, and trade for small items using items of equivalent value or “credit”. The local lord (or temple?) keeps an account of how much each person owed or was owed, often in fractions of a silver.
Nevertheless, a city might mint copper coins as a way to pay the working poor whose work isn’t worth a full silver. Copper is a common and therefore intrinsically far less valuable metal than silver; it’s used to make pots, or alloyed with other cheap metals to make statues and decorations.6 Thus these coins may only have value in the city they were minted in, or other cities nearby.
Copper has a slightly different density from silver, but I’m going to assume they’re about the same size as a silver piece of comparable weight.
-
Based on the D&D 5e assumption that 50 coins weighs a pound. This works out to each coin weighing a fairly sensible 9.07 grams. Clash of Steel assumes 100 silver coins counts as an “item”, so perhaps I’m not far off. ↩︎
-
Either a coin broken in half or, in more civilized areas, a coin of the same metal only half the mass (4.5 g). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
-
Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. Here I assumed the issuer mixed silver into the electrum so that it’s slightly less than 40% gold. (Because I really wanted a 20 sp coin.) ↩︎
-
Either a coin broken into four pieces or, in more civilized areas, a coin of the same metal only a quarter of the volume (2.25 g). ↩︎
-
For example, say I have 30 gold, and I should get 3000 silver for it. The Referee, however, rolls 11 on 4d6, so I’m only going to get 96% of the official price. That’s 3000 × 96 / 100 or 2880 sp. ↩︎
-
And bronze weapons, but I’m assuming we’re well into the Iron Age. From what I gather, the really expensive metal was tin, which came from only a few mines in the ancient Mediterranean. ↩︎