Most RP that I've seen on my short time on the server revolving money has left me dis-immersed in the world, though not completely obliterating my verisimilitude. The reason being that most transactions are occurring strictly with wolf fangs (gold pieces), not taking into account all the other coins we have at our disposal!
When characters make transactions of 1-5 thousand gold coins, I imagine they're handing them something like this-
Full of gold coins, either that or a coffer. When I feel like the reality could be something much less extravagant and more meager, thus adding to our grim setting.
Now I'd like to inform the readers that this is more of a personal suggestion to the player-base, an alternative to the currently dominating system of "counts out some gold coins" to add that extra dimension to value.
However, it could also be a suggestion to the developers to simply change the name of most of our currency, just as a way to remind our players of what they're really spending.
Currently, it's not that hard to have 1-2k gold in your bag at any time, however that's not really the case since 50 coins weigh one pound. 5000 coins weigh about 100. So it's much more likely that our coins are split up, it's also unlikely that all of these coins are
GOLD especially since gold is fairly valuable in our DnD world.
I believe a good generalization for the value of gold, though not entirely accurate, is that 1 gold peice is similar to a $100 dollar bill in buying power. It works well with our core book statistics. As a result, our other coins gain relative values of:
1cp=$1 dollar
1sp=$10 dollars
1gp=$100 dollars
1pp=$1000 dollars
Here are some examples of how these value associations are useful.
According to 3.5, a full mug of ale can cost you about 4cp (or 4 bucks)
Bread costs 2cp (2 bucks)
Meals (per day)
Good 5 sp (50 bucks) - A really nice restaurant
Common 3 sp (30 bucks) - A restaurant you like
Poor 1 sp (10 bucks) - Carls Jr.
Inn stay (per day)
Good 2 gp (200 bucks) - A nice hotel
Common 5 sp (50 bucks) - Low end Hotel
Poor 2 sp (20 bucks) - Motel
A heavy horse costs 200gp or $20,000. About the cost of a new Honda Civic.
However, my new Rogue of only a week has about 2000gp, or the PHB equivalent of 200,000 copper pieces. He could live in a common inn for 10 years as per the book.
My suggestion is to alter the perception of "Gold Pieces" and instead just assume they're copper pieces, or Rat-Teeth, it's an easy fix that makes more thematic sense.
It's also super easy to figure how much you're giving someone. Let's say you're buying herbs for 2,184gp. You hand them 2 platinum, 1
gold, 8
silver and 4
copper. That's a total of 15 coins, much more feasible than 2,184 gold pieces.
This adds value to our grim-dark gothic setting, instead of handing over chests and bags of gold, you're counting out coins of different colors, with their value determined by the counts themselves.
And for value purposes, my character now has 2,000 "dollars" or 2,000 Copper, or just 20 Gold Pieces. Which now means he can now only stay in that same Inn for about 4 ten-days (a month and ten days) before he's gotta figure out another way to make some money again.
Thanks for reading my suggestion and please feel free to share any and all thoughts associated with this idea. I'll be happy to respond to any questions or inquiries based around this superior system for economical immersion.