How to justify salt as currency?

Salt is valuable because it allows one to preserve food.

Setting has various hostile slug-like lifeforms. Salt is a weapon.

>>50936613
This. >>50936624
Best in a setting where Purify Food and Drink is an actually useful spell outside of intrigue, or better, with no easy magic at all.

>currency consisting of tiny grains that can easily get lost in cracks and whatnot

This seems like a bad idea.

>>50936613
The setting is hot as fuck.

When you sweat a lot, you don't just lose water, you lose sodium. If you don't happen to live in a place where meat is easy to come by, replenishing your sodium is hard - and without enough sodium you'll eventually get sick and die.

IRL, Salt was frequently worth is weight (or more) in gold to peoples who lived in desert regions. In fact, that was largely what you'd trade to them.

If you don't want the setting to be mostly desert (or just hot but not a lot of non-toxic animals) you could also do something vague to do with demonology idk.

>>50936613
>How to justify salt as currency?

It's difficult to get and has a number of practical uses: seasoning food, preserving food, and it's vital for proper health.

Salt as a currency is self-justifying given it's intrinsic value. They used to pay people in salt if I'm not mistaken.

>>50936613
Roman soldiers were sometimes literally paid partly with slabs of salt, hence the saying "worth their salt."

>>50936689
And the word 'Salary'.

>>50936667
nigga not table salt. salt is a rock, you dont have to grind it into grains

>>50936613
>>50936624
I can't dig out a source on it right now, but my prof once told me that salt was literally issued as part of a soldier's pay in the field in the eighteenth century (and possibly before or after, will check) specifically for this reason -- because it was more valuable to be able to make your food last longer than it is to have money where you don't really have anywhere to spend it.

If your setting has a food shortage for whatever reason this would only make salt even more valuable, but if your characters are working within a specific framework, like that of a campaigning army, then the value of salt is obvious.

>>50936624
That and it's an important nutrient (easy to forget in our modern society where too much salt in the diet is more the concern), and it's just generally tasty. Plus it's only obtainable in large quantities in certain areas; if you're not by the sea and don't have rock salt deposits available to mine, you'll need to import it.

TL;DR -- steady, high demand, and limited supply. The perfect recipe for a valuable commodity that will serve well as a form of currency.

>>50936713
Yeah I got beaten by guys bringing up the Roman example, but GG.

>>50936721
Does drying sea water work or is there some catch?

>>50936689
no they werent, thats a myth

>>50936613
Your characters are Legionaires.

early bronze age society where the very idea of currency is a new one and the area they're in is poor in metals but wealthy in salt

its not real currency per se, more pseudo-bartering but salt is common, has a relatively stable "value" and doesn't spoil so people have taken to measuring the worth of an object in salt.

>>50936748
it works, but if you are a thousand miles from the ocean, you can't really do that now can you?

>>50936748
>Does drying sea water work or is there some catch?

Short answer: Yes.

You let sea water evaporate and it'll leave behind a dust coating of sea salt that can be collected and used; Gandhi let a protest walk to the ocean to get sea salt when the English began taxing salt in colonial India.

>>50936748
People have been getting salt from seawater since ancient times, right up until the present day. Have you never heard of sea salt used in cooking?

>>50936713
Ye, where do you think the phrase "worth his salt" comes from OP?

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>>50936748
>is there some catch?
I mean, no, not really. Sea water is roughly 5% salt, so you would need to boil a shit load of water to get a large amount of salt out of it. this of course would require you to spend a lot of energy collecting, heating, and filtering said water.

There is no catch, but it is time consuming, inefficient work. Even in a setting where salt is used as currency, i would think that most civilizations would rather mine for halite than boil seawater. Unless you had a "free" way of generating the heat required or collecting the water, I doubt it would be worthwhile overall.

>>50936748
there's no "catch" so salt
its a very simple molecule, its not like its something organic that can spoil, have a poisonous variant or something like that

its also why all the so called "healthy salts" are complete and utter bullshit

>>50936853
sea water generally isn't boiled to extract salt, its allowed to flow into large shallow pools which are blocked off and allowed to evaporate as the tides recede, then the salt is gathered and they're reopened as the tides rise

sure you need a shitload of water, but its doable

>>50936853
...So you just get a trough of seawater and let it sit in the sun. Repeat.

>>50936853
Sea salt is typically collected by sun drying. You collect brine in shallow pools and just let them evaporate off. Using fuel to boil the water off is generally only done in areas with less sunny climate but a plentiful supply of cheap fuel, such as around the peat bogs in England.

Currencies should be durable, divisible, convenient to handle, and have consistent quality. So as long as the containers are air tight or there's low humidity, there's no reason to switch to other currencies.
Of course it is needed to live, and cheep lab produced salt is modern, so it is a valuable trade good.
A state may start to issue standard salt because it controls the coasts. It may also want to encourage salt production beyond the need of the upper classes, so it orders that all salaries be payed in salt.

>>50936882
and even then it would in most cases be preferable to just use the extensive salt trading networks to get it

>>50936870
>>50936882
that makes sense, sun drying definitely solves the heat problem. I would think that if salt really were currency though you would want to find a method faster than relying on the sun to collect as much salt as possible. after all, if every other kingdom is doing it, how would you gain an economic advantage on them?

I am really starting to like the implications of a salt based currency.

>>50936955
>after all, if every other kingdom is doing it, how would you gain an economic advantage on them?
By producing shit other than salt and trading, duh.

What, you think every country that didn't have plentiful gold and/or silver deposits was shit out of luck economically in the days of precious metal coinage? Being able to make plenty of the base material for the predominant currency is nice, but hardly necessary if you can produce other stuff of value.

>>50936942
For sake of argument, if we assumed that in OP's setting the rock salts deposits are uncommon or inaccessible and weather is not tropical-level of sunny, it starts coming together nicely.

>>50936955
>I would think that if salt really were currency though you would want to find a method faster than relying on the sun to collect as much salt as possible. after all, if every other kingdom is doing it, how would you gain an economic advantage on them?
Think of it like natural bitcoins.

>>50936955
>how would you gain an economic advantage on them?

By either having other resources that are worth salt: livestock, crops, metals, monsters, skilled labor, etc.. Or you could CAPTURE their salt beaches or otherwise blockade/make it more difficult for them to move the salt around without your "expensive cooperation".

>>50937022
You don't even need that, salt was a valuable trade commodity IRL for much of history.

The main issue to address is not "why is salt valuable", but rather "why salt rather than precious metals". This could be simply a cultural thing (eg, a world where people place more value on commodities like salt with practical uses rather than precious metals which are mainly of ornamental value), or perhaps precious metals are too rare for widespread use in coinage.

>>50937093
The disuse of coinage could even be a more localized factor, like how several cultures were known to use rare shells as currency rather than virtually inaccessible metals.

Say salt currency cities are on one end of a massive trading network where large amounts of salt are produced and metals are poorer, but the further downstream you go the more traditional metal coins are used.
And heck if you go down a branch of the trade route you may end up in an area that uses something else entirely like volcanic glass, or like I said shells or even massive round stones the size of a man (not fantasy btw).

The entire world using a semi-compatible system of currency is an incredibly recent development as far as human culture is concerned and even then we have the bitcoin which uses computing power as currency (essentially)

If you're making a fantasy world it could even add some spice to think of what a certain culture would use as currency.

>>50936613
How to justify? Very, very easily.

-In local economics, you can have slips of paper to represent salt deposits, or salt held in a central salt storage. I think there were ancient kingdoms that did something similar for grain, paper currency is actually really, really old.

-The use of salt as a trade item is pretty old, way back in the day Ghana used to trade salt for its weight in gold if I recall right.

-There's nothing magical about precious metals that make them ideal for currency, people mostly used whatever was around. The Ancient Greeks' domestically-made coinage was silver, because silver was what they could mine there. The Romans used bronze for a really long time and only really introduced other metals into their coinage during the Punic Wars.

>>50937217
>If you're making a fantasy world it could even add some spice to think of what a certain culture would use as currency.
Such as, for instance, spice.


...I'll just show myself out.

>>50936613
Salt literally was currency for a while.
It's very valuable for it's weight. Preserving food is very, very useful.

>>50937236
IIRC the earliest known cities on the european continent/peninsula were situated around salt deposits

>>50937093
>You don't even need that, salt was a valuable trade commodity IRL for much of history.

This. There were powerful cities whose wealth came from having a salt mine. Stuff was super valuable for a long time in human history.

>>50937022
Just like real life, before the advent of machines the salt mines were quite dangerous, most deposits were inaccessible and weren't economically advantageous, and we are talking about slaves or slave-like workers, compared to salt works.

>>50937255
no need, given how dried spices tend to have high value for their weight, don't spoil easily and are common trade goods, having them act as either full on currency or else a bartering standard would be 100% valid

heck it could be interesting if spices were used by say a dwarven society as currency because everyone learns how to work a forge, precious metals are plentiful and as a direct result its relatively easy to mint your own coins

but spices can only be grown outside the dwarven mountainhomes or in very rare patches on the sides of mountains all directly controlled by the local kings. They're perfect

>>50937348
I was making a pun, dammit!

>>50937374
And I'm forcefully making it a part of the discussion instead

>>50936613
In my setting magic cannot successfully replicate crystalline structures, so the currency are chits of various gemstones.
Salt serves as the lowest form of currency and granulated salt is effectively the "change"

>>50937236

A central salt store note would essentially be a receipt; this currency bears a copy of a record in the salt storage, and is redeemable for an amount up to the amount it's written for. Literally a commodity-based economy with a salt-standard.

Now, here's the real kicker; how do you figure out what a standard "unit" of salt is? Without a set standard for size, what's to stop merchants from fudging the quantity just a little bit lower in times of scarcity? In this case, you need a universal standard, a physical metric by which defines weight, which can be used as a primary source for balancing all the kingdom's scales, thereby ensuring that the kingdom's trade standards are standardized.

France did this in real life, and became a trade center because of it. Length was standardized, weight was standardized, the definition of bolts of cloth and gallons of liquid was standardized so that merchants trading with France would know they were getting exactly what they were paying for in amount.

>>50937432
and what you mention wouldn't be limited just to salt
shaving coins had severe punishments in most societies because of just how often it happened

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>>50937374
Don't make a comment that makes sense then.

>>50936613
What do you mean how? It was IRL.

>>50936613
Salt is used for preserving food (as mentioned several times already), is a necessary nutrient for the body, has low-end medicinal properties (apply salt to shallow cuts, stings but works), and is used in religious, ritual, and magical ceremonies. However, since it's useful in so many ways, it's more "practical" than a real currency would be so any trade involving it would be closer to a barter system. The people trading for it are doing so in order to use it, and they are not likely to trade it away unless they're scalping it or something. For that reason, it's better suited as the currency of a small kingdom that doesn't have natural sources. Either the ruler or a powerful merchant could keep control of imported salt to control the population.

>>50937472

That's a commodity-based crime when the commodity itself is part of the currency. If the coinage is just a placeholder for the commodity, then shaving wouldn't occur because the money itself is worthless. Of course, people would probably just forge coins in that case.

Economy is hard. You've got to work it out just right for it to work.

I do like how Destiny does it with Glimmer.

>ITT Kids who should have stayed in school and the kids who did tell them what's what.
I mean you could have just googled it OP, you fucking retard.

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>>50936613
Read some history, you dumb, lazy sack of crap.

Salt is subject to massive inflation due to oversupply by /v/irgins.

>>50936713
>I can't dig out a source on it right now,
One of the Pliny's said that during the first century, but he had no evidence and neither does anyone else.

You know I'm in the stages of preparing a campaign that'll have a good amount of economics to it and I'd already played with the idea of at least offering the option to move the setting to something Arabia-esque away from Fantasy Europe once I've assembled the group. I think I'm gonna steal this whole salt economy thing for that aswell if they express interest in the desert setting thing.

What would be good ways to portion salt into conveniently countable and potentially portable currency units/amounts?

>>50937802
I mean you could just google "salt as currency" so you don't look retarded.

>>50937982
You want them to be easily stackable, small enough to carry around, but still worth carrying around for their trade value. Being a mineral, you could have it cut like gems for high-grade stuff and compress the leftover shavings into disks to serve as cheaper coinage.

>>50936613
>how to justify something that happened in ancient societies

Gee I wonder how indeed op.

>>50938077
Is that technologically feasible in your standard medieval fantasy (or oriental fantasy I guess) setting though? Also that's still just kind of 2 denominations, though I guess you could do stuff like press discs, bars, strips and torus or something.

>>50937982
I'm sure you could think of any number of fine, white, valuable powders and see how they're packaged, shipped, carried, or even smuggled. Now imagine if they weren't illegal, and people could carry some on themselves without needing to hide it. Pouches, tiny sealed glass tubes or jars, bricks, etc.

>>50938235
Since it'd be a currency with inherent value instead of representational value, there isn't as much need to indicate its worth on the currency itself. Disc value, being compressed powder, is simply weight. Gem value could be graded by size, purity, and the quality of the cut, much like actual gemstones. If necessary, discs could have their weight value etched onto them and gems could have some other means that wouldn't deface the gem itself, such as number of sides on the flat end (triangular face is 3, square face is 4, etc). Or, just reserve the flat side for value markings and the local seal.

Counterfeiting the discs could be an issue, such as people cutting heavier materials into the mix, so there'd have to be a way to determine purity. Counterfeiting salt gems would be harder, since salt has a very distinct taste and properties.

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>>50938317
Actually, disregard literally all of that. Apparently, salt naturally forms into cube-shaped crystals, which is super convenient.

>>50937982

Most informal exchanges probably eyeball it. I mean, who's going to carry around a scale? If you've got what he needs and he has what you need, might as well just trade even if the particulars are a little fuzzy.

More formal trades and dedicated bazaars will probably ot bother counting grains because they can probably make more sales in the time it takes to count it out correctly, so prefer to deal in minted currency or standardized amounts to avoid getting scammed.

>>50938317
>>50938353
Considering how we talked about the value of salt here I imagine that even the smallest disc you could press that isn't so small that it would be constantly lost and thus impractical would have considerable value though, like several gp at least. So what about incredibly small transactions? How does a peasent conduct the miniscule transactions of fractions of gp that make up their life? Surely they won't just pour loose grains from one hand into the other.

>>50938391
Tiny glass phials to hold the salt dust, sealed with wax and stamped with the king's mark?

>>50938445
Seems a bit too advanced for your average bumpkin in his average bumpkin community.

>>50938466
Well, I'd certainly hope the local currency is handled, processed, and controlled by the state. The capital of which is probably in the only oasis for miles, if this is supposed to be a desert setting. Any loose salt would go through the capital to be packaged as currencyr, with the government taking a percentage as tax, of course.

>>50938511
So every random peasant that somehow acquires an amount of salt that isn't packaged, by finding it, boiling it out of water, condensing it out of air or whatever, mining it or through a transaction of any kind would have to send it to the capital to be processed, somehow organizing not only the transport there and back but also payment for that, and the administrative necessities of weighing and tagging it, for even miniscule amounts?

>>50938391

Back during the Gold Rush, people did use gold dust as currency. They'd either sell it to minters at a reduced rate and the minters melted them into bars to sell at full price, or they just traded it amongst themselves before it found its way back to the people who melt it down.

They'd just keep it in bags and sacks and trade amounts of the stuff around, sometimes employing a scale to determine exact or rough quantities, but otherwise just sort of traded the dust around between bags. Salt can do much the same, since as long as both parties have some bags fine enough to hold it, they can trade amounts between them.

>>50938561
I'll admit I'm not a very smart man, but I don't really see another solution.

So, what does a random peasant do when they somehow acquire a chunk of gold, or sift some gold flecks out of a riverbank?

>>50938607
Keep it or resell it, with salt they would just use it.

>>50938607
Upgrade to something better than peasant, because that amount of gold is more than they might make in their entire lifetime.

That's why I'm asking about incredibly miniscule amounts of salt such as they would actually be likely to get their hands on. I don't think it's probably literally the same value as gold gram for gram (at least I probably would make it worth slightly less in the setting) but there isn't a thing going on where you can make 2 coins the same size with one being gold and the other being silver. Two coins made of salt of the same size are going to be worth the same cause its the same amount of salt.

Plus there's the actual usage factor for salt that would make it more likely they wouldn't have completely unscathed minted bits of currency, but actual useable units of ground salt.

>>50938607

You have a setup for a John Steinbeck book. Look up his book, "The Pearl," where some random kid finds a huge pearl and things go south in Steinbeckian fashion. It's one of his shorter novellas.

More realistically: >>50938631

>>50937694
Forgery is still a crime, even though our paper monies are, by all reasonable standards, worthless.

All this talk of a salt-based economy and no one's posted Tale of an Industrious Rogue yet?

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I

>>50938705
I think we all know it mate.

>>50937802
Maybe read the post before replying?
They're talking about the 18th century, not BC Rome.

>>50936853
>honey in brood comb

always triggers my autism

>>50936721
Unfortunately, salt disintegrates in the rain so it's not very durable.

That being said, you can certainly use salt to back your currency. Just store the actual salt in a safe place and issue vouchers for the salt. Since you can turn the vouchers in for actual salt at any time you can trade them as currency. We basically did the same for gold for a couple centuries before the unbacked currency we use today.

>>50939003
>unbacked
It's backed by plenty of rich fuckers and banks that will readily fight tooth and claw for it to retain its value so they can remain in charge of the world more or less.

>>50936748
The catch is that drying sea water take a long time. I'm talking leaving the sea water out for months to let the water evaporate out. Even if you boil it the process is time consuming.

>>50938965
Care to explain?

>>50939052
I think that's where the babbies go, not the food.

>>50936713
Can confirm from half remembered history class

>>50939027
Technically speaking, having unbacked currency is actually better for an economy since we don't have to worry about somebody finding a new gold vein and suddenly dealing with hyperinflation. Or not having enough gold to pay for everything we're trying to do. Did you know that England nearly ran out of silver before they started selling it to China? They were having trouble with basic economic functions because there wasn't any silver to back their currency. You couldn't take out a loan because nobody had money to lend. You couldn't print more money because there was no silver to back it up.

Really, we don't want to go back to those bad old days. If people are willing to fight to keep our money unbacked then more power to them. Silver and gold weren't even that valuable to begin with.

>>50938391

General small transactions were handled informally. This is true up until the early modern era, actually. Most folks in the middle ages never saw a coin, they paid their taxes in tangible goods, and paid for other things by verbal arrangements, tit-for-tat, and so forth.

>>50939208
If we're talking about a desert setting its likely that there's a good amount of caravaneering going on that supplies more remote settlements with . well, supplies. I guess those communities would just have to get together as a whole more or less to do their trading with the outside suppliers?

Man, with a couple of the players I play with salt is the last thing you can use as a valuable commodity.

>>50939225

If we're talking Babylon, taxes were collected in goods because they were stored in storage structures, and in times of famine would be redistributed back so their people wouldn't starve.

>>50939182
Instead we get to worry about the wonderful ramifications of unregulated capital flows (capital that is available due to negotiable infinitely-government-issued instruments like treasury bonds) causing local hyperinflation.

>>50936613
All biology requires sodium to function. However, the compound is broken down during eukaryotic metabolism.

This means that eating food of any type won't serve as a source of sodium at all.

All organisms need to intake sodium in order to survive, meaning that salt mines are not only profitable to the point of establishing those that control them as merchant kings, but that processed salt is often used in trade and is often a target of theft.

>>50936613
YOU. SEARCH FOR 'THE TALE OF AN INDUSTRIOUS ROGUE.' DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL YOU HAVE READ IT. THANK YOU, HAVE A GODDAMNED NICE DAY.

>>50939182
Fortunately, salt would have a built-in way to fix inflation. Just eat it.

It's as much a product as it is a currency, as its value comes from its necessity.

>>50939315
If we're assuming a desert setting here, what about water in regards ro currency or value?

>>50939326
You don't have to import water in a desert setting, since you don't establish settlements in deserts without ready access to water.
Salt would have to be imported or mined though, which requires either exchanging material wealth for or organized labor.

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>>50936693

And 'soldier', and about 20 other words related to military and commerce.

Pic related

>>50937785

>>50939326

Harder to transport, easier to consume. You'd need an aqueduct from a larger source or be stuck to building around springs and rivers.

A thimble of salt is enough seasoning for a day and then some. A thimble of water is death of thirst.

>>50938466
It has historical precedent. Back when shaving the sides of coins made of precious metal big problem there were people(bankers I think, but it's been a while so I can't remember for sure) whose job included weighing out coins and putting them into bags sealed with their mark and the value contained within. Purchases were made without even opening the bags to confirm the coins inside, the seal of a trusted man whose reputation would be on the line if its contents weren't what he said was enough assurance.

>>50937291
And, coincidentally, fresh water rivers.

>>50939383
So basically every community needs access to a notary and smaller ones that might have to share one with others just have the problem of having to wait or having to travel to him I guess? I guess that works.

I'm kinda thinking of maybe taking the idea of >>50938445
about
>Tiny glass phials to hold the salt dust, sealed with wax and stamped with the king's mark?
but making them like a special issue/edict kind of thing, like a special item.

You could call them a "King's Ransom" or something. They're special tokens of which very few exist and circulate around the realm because they are only issued when the ruler at the time is in need of what essentially amounts to a service or favor that is either unrealistic (or impossible) to fully compensate or he wants to leverage his position for. Basically they would act as a sort of piece of super currency in that the bearer could trade them for almost anything they ask in value, from goods to services, and most would gladly take them because they could then do the same in return with someone else, and that's how they circulate around the kingdom, only ever a few having been issued by rulers across the years, passing from powerful people close to the crown into circulation within mercantile circles. They'd still contain salt in the glass vial and everything, though far less in value than anything they're likely used to attain, merely there as a token of (orginally the issuing rulers) acknowledgement and esteem for the service, and of course to give them practical usefulness by having actual salt. (also offers some nice hooks there, either of forcing the choice between destroying the value of one such thing by using the salt in a life/death sorta situation, or coming across one with the seal broken and the salt missing in some sort of transaction or discovery and going from there)

>>50939276
That's far easier to deal with than simply not having any bullion to run the economy. We also don't have to worry about currency loosing all value as the government turns out to have not been backing their money with gold all along. That kind of panic happened to the Swedes once. Crashed their entire economy.

When everybody knows the money is unbacked nobody cares if the government prints more of it. Oh sure, the currency is going to drop in value but it's not the kind of catastrophic collapse we've seen to gold backed currency.

>>50939315
True, in fact you could also dump it in the woods and wait for it to wash await. Granted this does lead to health problems. The term Salt the Earth comes to mind.

Salt has a different set of problems. First, as a fairly common commodity it doesn't have a lot of value per pound. This becomes a problem when you're buying fairly expensive stuff. I mean, imagine what a million dollars in salt looks like.

You also have to worry about loosing your salt to water damage. Travel for three days to buy some land only to loose all your money to a flash flood is just too much to deal with.

Now, salt backed currencies help a lot with these problems. Instead of hauling forty tons of salt you can pocket a piece of paper that says it's worth forty tons of salt and pay for a new home with that instead of actual salt. The seller can later trade that voucher for actual salt, trade it for smaller denomination vouchers, or trade it for something else entirely.

The salt it'self would sit in waterproof vaults most of the time so you wouldn't need to worry about loosing it to water damage. Usually. The only time you'd need to deal with actual salt is when you're about to eat it.

Now, keep in mind that this saddles you with brand new problems like salt voucher forgery but that's a problem for another day.

>>50939661
>as a fairly common commodity

It is now thanks to modern production techniques. It wasn't, historically. Cities with sizable salt mines were incredibly wealthy in the past.

>>50939783

There's place in the third world where salt still holds value enough to merit smaller scale collecting, lacking access to industry-scale production and distribution.

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>>50939471

>be stable owner
>you get traded a kings ransom for two horses and a night and three meals under your roof by some hand of the king
>can't refuse, law says kings ransom can buy whatever the holder wants

Now what? This glass vial better be worth it. Can I make back what I just lost with this? Who do I trade it to then?

>>50936613
>How to justify salt as currency?
It's a West African campaign. Look up the Salt-Gold trade

Be warned though, while there were kingdoms and civilization in West Africa, playing in such a game may invoke Kangz n Sheet

>>50939898

I would think a token like that is more a currency of desperation. Get paid in this, and you can redeem it from the man later for the cost and then some.

Some hand of the king is on the run, and needs some supplies quick. This is your receipt for it because he couldn't grab enough gold to pay his way, and when things cool down you can call in the repayment.

I'd assume a vial of salt would be kind of crap for that, it'd have to be something impossible to copy, or at least has authentication indicating who it was issued to. I imagine something like that might only crop up where things got bad like that for nobles frequently.

>>50936753
No it isn't.

>>50936613
>How to justify salt as currency?
Well, where do you think the word "salary" comes from? In a world without refrigeration, salt is incredibly fucking useful. It's also where the expression "being worth your salt" comes from.

>>50939910
>The richest man in history controlled 50% of salt and 50% of gold in the old world
>His pilgrimage to Mecca caused fucking hyperinflation wherever he passed
>Rumor has it there's still loadsa cash burried in the desert

>>50936613
salt is really useful, but also not that hard to come by. Inflation would be crazy as everyone with land near the coast starts would have salt flats.

Aside from food preservation and dietary needs, salt is also useful for a lot of industrial processes.

Despite all this, salt was never that valuable. Valuable enough to trade? Yes. More valuable than gold? Never.

>>50940359
>Inflation would be crazy as everyone with land near the coast starts would have salt flats.
I think inflation is the wrong word, as I doubt it would be a continuous trend. You'd just need a lot more salt to buy commodities than gold, but there'd also be a lot more salt to go around from the start. This point becomes even more moot if the salt can somehow be marked as a legal tender so not all salt is automatically currency (just like how not all gold was automatically a currency).

An entire brick of salt would probably be equal in value to a gold coin, making groceries inconvenient to say the least.

>>50940359

Compared to today, it was valuable as hell. I read somewhere that a pound of salt around the first century would cost about $150 in modern currency. Not as much as gold, yeah, but nothing to sneeze at. (That'd be pepper, which was also very pricey)

>>50936713
Hence the word "SAL"ary. It was used a substitute for brass coins and a sack of salt can be traded for quite a lot of things though it was something you'd use for barter rather that it being actual currency. The practice became less common as Rome rose in wealth and power.

>>50937091
American pls.

>>50936613
Salt is pretty valuable as it is.
For example, Russia had some pretty major revolts over government deciding to raise prices on salt. Somewhere around seventeen century, I believe.
It is also the reason why Russian cuisine does some pretty weird things with salted fish, as it was not taxed as heavily as a regular salt trade. Fishermen on sea costs used shitload of salt to preserve fish, merchants bought it and delivered to Central Russia, then poor peasants who can't afford clear salt due to taxes bought it and used as a replacement, adding it to soups, bread, porridge and everything else that needs to be salted.

>>50939071
>Implying babies aren't food

>>50939052
By removing the combs you hurt the hive more then by taking honey

>>50936689
They got salt rations and if it couldn't be supplied due to logistics they got a little extra pay to buy some from the locals.

>>50936613
anything that's regularly used in trade can be a currency. if you're thinking global currency then fuck you there's no such thing.

you could make its value vary a lot less by restricting its acquisition though.

>>50936613
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire
>The main reason for the Moroccan invasion of Songhai was to seize control of and revive the trans-Saharan trade in salt and gold.

>>50939315
>Fortunately, salt would have a built-in way to fix inflation. Just eat it.
>just eat it

We Orks now.

>>50936613
Research the word "salary", anon

>>50936613
Nigga, salt was actually a currency sometime in our history.

>>50936613
The same way you set up just about any barter good as "currency" - it's in high demand, low supply, impossible to falsify and everyone needs it.

>>50939326
[obligatory Dune reference]

>>50936613
We play a League of Legends game

>>50936613
I'll compile some reasons and add some:

More likely in an area where gold and other metals that were used here are either very adundant or very rare.

Easier to do in an area with less moisture, though using hard and other waterproof containers would work too (less so for peasants and travelers).

Better in an area with multiple issued currencies, especially if the countries overlap/are constantly in some sort of struggle.

So basically what we have is ideally it is used by the Middle East style area. It's destabilized because of some various factors, dry enough in certain areas (or the whole thing if you don't know geography) to use leather pouches for normal amounts of salt, and metals are rarer sorta (just change it to make it so).

Also realistically salt is necessary as a nutrient so you would need quite a bit to buy a single goat. Adventurers in particular would need to carry a fuckton to buy a single set of plate mail, since there's always a limit to how much salt can be worth. If it's too expensive, people will probably start dying.

On the other hand imagine stumbling into a salt plain, or smashing open one of a hundred vases in an ancient tomb and salt pours out. Rich people having chinchilla-like dry salt baths. Fuck it go crazy.

>>50939783
It's far more common than gold and silver combined and even gold had issues because transporting tons of gold became impractical.

>>50940089
>>50939898
You're thinking too small.

It's official because of the whole seal and stamped wax and everything thing, would probably be a little more ornately presented and all.

Think of it more like a Rogue Trader's Warrant of Trade, though.

These kinds of things are only minted in big-deal situations. Like, the reigning ruler needs to ask the greatest of the merchant houses to supply him with a substantial part of their fleet for a major undertaking of his, likely expansionistic rather than defensive, and there is no reasonable way he could pay for such a favor. So instead they mint one of those things, which DOES contain a token (and not technically a small amount from the average persons perspective), but obviously nowhere near the actual value of the favor in salt, aswell as all the official markings and seals and whatever.

Essentially, the are a token of the rulers or elites favor aswell as prestige and IOU all rolled into one. Now the other merchant houses obviously would like to be shown such a favor aswell, so when the house in possession of one is in need of a favor themselves, they offer that thing in return, and the others gladly make the deal. And so throughout the realms history these specially marked little bundles evolved to be a little piece of essentially blank check-esque currency honored by the most powerful and elite of the mercantile and political circles, which is PRIMARILY where they would likely circulate, perhaps having come back to be used as currency in a transaction with one or more previous rulers BY the houses aswell, with the rulers honoring them because it meant honoring the word of their royal lines earlier members/ancestors.

So that's what they are, these fabled tokens of basically unmeasured wealth, kind of similar to a Warrant in that way, but one use because they're actually traded in the transaction, and usually only commonly known to, and possessed by, the elite. And then the party interacts with them.

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Dear Elfchan, why don't we just hire humans to do the fighting for us?

>>50943732
>human slave, wat do

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>>50936854
I'm pretty sure some chemicals classified as a type of "salt" are poisonous. That said I don't see how you would get such a product when trying to produce regular salt by drying up sea water.

But with a nat 1, I guess anything could happen.

This is a thread about salt
There is another thread on /tg/ all about slimes.

I feel like something should happen, but I don't know what.

>>50940260
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/worth-ones-salt.html

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>>50939898
>Now what? This glass vial better be worth it. Can I make back what I just lost with this? Who do I trade it to then?


>Handed an item that can literally buy anything.
>"But it has no practical use! WHAT DO I DO?!"

Go out and buy something with it, you pillock. You can legally trade it for whatever the fuck you want. Go buy an infinite amount of gold and fucking retire.

>>50936689
I've heard the phrase's origins attributed to purchasing slaves with salt.

>>50943781
Not an infinite amount of gold, but if a random stableboy did end up with it the nearest merchant baron would probably be willing to make it so the guy can just live out the rest of his life without having to worry about where to live, get food, clothes or anything for the rest of his life in exchange for having a token he can hold over even the nobility and everything.

>>50936613
>How to justify copper as currency?
>How to justify paper as currency?
>How to justify silver as currency?

How the fuck do you justify ANYTHING as currency? It just sorta happens at some point, historically. There is no real "Well silver is valuable, duh", because that makes no logical sense.

>>50943815
I wish we backed our currency with platinum so all the corporate greedlords would suddenly be massively interested in space exploration and mining our solar system.

>>50939357
Seconding this book, it's a fun and informative read. The various means of acquiring and controlling salt offer an insight into how different cultures worked over ages.

>>50936613
>How to justify salt as currency?

You can't.


>>50943815

A good currency is useless, reacts poorly with the environment, and is rare. Its useless so people don't use it up, its rare so people don't suddenly find more of it, and the poor reaction with the environment is so that it doesn't deteriorate quickly.

This way its socially stable, and the people don't have to worry about inflation.

>>50943977
You don't have to worry about inflation if the currency is consumed at a steady pace by the society, either.

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>>50936613

>How to justify salt as currency?

Run a game based on the 2016 election cycle?

>>50943762
I know what happens when a terrestrial snail is exposed to salt. I don't know how slimes interact with salt though.

>>50943899

I just wish we backed our currency...

>>50944105
I didn't ask for these feels from a picture in a salt thread.

>>50943977
>, its rare so people don't suddenly find more of it
How the fuck is paper "rare"? And most of our currency is digital.

>>50944230
>digital
You mean virtual.

>>50943756

A "salt" in chemistry used to be any solid that is precipitated out of a liquid, in modern chemistry it's more specifically a compound you get when you neutralize an acid with a base.
It's not like you'll cyanide get by accident from making sea salt though.

t. C+ in science

Saltpunk: a setting where the world economy revolves around salt, and where sorcerors use salt in all their magic rituals.

Salt mine slavelords sit at the top of society and raiders and barbarians constantly war for new supplies of slaves for mining.

The setting is primitive enough for a commodity currency such as salt to be common.

Done.

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>>50944180

>>50946745
Doesn't do anything for me.

>>50937486
It did make sense, you sperg

>>50949012

That's what he said. "Don't make a comment that makes sense, then."

>>50949012
>>50949138
What a burn.

>>50944230
I don't know about other modern currencies, but at least for the US dollar the vast majority (something like 99.5%) in circulation is in fact physically extant somewhere. You might do pretty much all of your transactions without ever touching a dollar bill, but those numbers in your bank account really do correspond to actual physical bills in a vault somewhere.

>>50936613
Salt is harder to counterfeit in a setting with magic. Anyone can handle, taste dry, watch dissolve and taste dissolved salt.

>>50949955
M0 (Federal Reserve Notes + US Notes + Coins) is 3,572 billion.
M2 (cash/coins outside of the banking system, demand deposits, travelers checks and other checkable deposits + most savings accounts, money market accounts, retail money market mutual funds, and small denomination time deposits) is 13,137 billion.

>>50936613
There is a game called "salt and sanctuary" that uses salt as a currency.
Look it up mange.

>>50950155
It uses Salt as souls from Dark Souls you mean :^)

>>50950137
That's not even remotely close to the Federal Reserve's statistics.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm
>There was approximately $1.48 trillion in circulation as of October 20, 2016, of which $1.43 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes.

The food tastes like shit. Salt is white gold.

>>50950198
Yes.
Still currency.
It's used for crafting, transmuting and leveling.
>Also, It's literally salt.

>>50950293
You're right, my source included other assets in M0 for some reason.

I enjoyed this thread.

I'll maybe look into shifting a soon-ish campaign to sub-saharan climates to integrate this.

I'll let you guys know in Gamefinder if I do. I'll have to look into rewriting some stuff that relied on your average "there's forests and they're full of stuff" setting first.

>>50936667
>>50936696
Could be salt coins.

So just to kickstart the thread and get some more interesting discussion, what other commodities could be used to create a currency other than salt or metals/gems? Someone else mentioned spices earlier, that'd be an interesting idea for certain settings.

>>50954459
Well, we could talk about this guys claim
>>50954103

>>50954459
dyes and colored fabrics
teeth, claws and other non-perishable body parts of various bests

>>50952098
Salty coins?

>>50937745
>STOP TALKING ABOUT THINGS, REEEEEEE

>>50944134
I just wish more people realised that fiat currencies are better than gold-backed.
But, alas, America is destined never to learn. Especially from the great depression.

>>50943687
>old king gives out too many IOUs
>makes fake coup happen
>new king deems old IOUs valueless
What now?

>>50936613
Follow GW's business model, and you've got everything you need.

>>50936682
This nigger right here got it right. Salt was enormously important in sub-Saharan Africa for exactly this reason. Literally worth its weight in gold.

>>50937348
>everyone learns how to work a forge, precious metals are plentiful and as a direct result its relatively easy to mint your own coins

So? Coin or not, the metal still has value. They'd just trade it by weight, like DnD coins.

>>50954459
A currency needs to be made of something that's relatively rare, but still common enough to be used for smaller purchases.
It has to be inert; it can't decay if saved.
And it has to be fungible. It's got to have every unit identical.

Potatoes would make a bad choice. Not all potatoes are created equal, and they rot.
Gold works fine, but you're looking for an alternative.
Tokens of treated wood, perhaps?

>>50955913
Unlikely given that the new king needs the merchant's backing/fears the merchants taking a contract on him.

>>50939253
Coinage was actually introduced to "asia" by Seleucus. People were trading with wares and he needed coinage to pay his soldiers so he built mints that spread silver coin to cities and villages.

>>50945302

What does "t." mean? "that?"

>>50957848
It's something like "signed" and then whatever fake name/title people are using to enhance their shitpost.

Iunno if there's a better explanation for why it's "t." that comes from traditional letter signing standards or something, but my best guess is that instead of "signed" it's actually "typed" and thus the T.

>>50936613
No justification needed. It has literally been used as currency in the past, traded in equal measure with gold.

The word "Salary" comes from the Latin for salt.