Money

Your purse is held by the game in your era's own coins: what you have, you keep, and you can't spend what you don't have.

In the historical eras your money is a number the game keeps, in your era's own coins. It isn't a line of text the narrator rewrites each turn.

How it works

• What you have, you keep. A sum you earned on turn 5 is still there, to the penny, on turn 50.
• You can't spend what you don't have. Offer more than is in your purse and you come up short, and the story has to deal with that.
• The game does the sums. When coins change hands, the narrator only reports what moved (three pence for a pint, a shilling for a day's work, a purse lost to a pickpocket) and the game updates your purse.
• It checks the narrator's work. If the story says you paid but the narrator forgot to report it, the game takes the money anyway.
• A failed attempt earns nothing. Fumble the pickpocketing and you don't walk away with the purse.

The coins of each era

Each era has its own money, with real prices of the time to guide the narrator: pounds, shillings and pence in Dickens's London, denarii and sestertii in Rome, ryō and copper mon in Edo, pieces of eight in Nassau, livres and sous in Paris, dollars in Tombstone and Chicago, and East or West Marks in Berlin. In 1917 it depends on your side.

The game understands the way people talk about money, too: a quid, a bob, a tanner, a sou, a bit.

Elsewhere

The myths and most player-made worlds have no coinage of their own, so the Ledger describes your wealth in words instead.

The small adverts in the newspaper are priced in the same coins, and placing one of your own costs the paper's fee.

See also

• The Ledger: Your Condition
• Risk & Difficulty
• The Newspaper

Last updated 2026-10-29