Money

In the interim since Ancient Toronto fell and the new world arose, governments began minting coins anew, so that the standard silver, gold, and copper coins of the standard DCC milieu are also found in Toronto Crawl Classics. Platinum and electrum also exist, but these coins are extremely rare.

But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all.

Caches of ancient coinage also exist in Ruined Toronto. Some of these coins are ancient indeed, coming from the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum that was, and others are from foreign exchanges – these are curios, most often, of little practical value. I wanted to give PCs reason to seek out Canadian coins, though – loonies, toonies, and quarters in particular, but right down to the humble maple leaf penny.

(Non-Canadians should be aware that the Canadian dollar coin is called a “loonie” because it has an image of a loon on it, and the two-dollar coin is called a “toonie”.)

Setting a value for these coins had to meet three criteria: (1) that they be valuable enough to search for, (2) that there is a real decision between keeping them or turning them in for the monetary value, and (3) that the value still makes currency conversion relatively simple.

To this end, a Canadian loonie is worth 5 gp, a toonie is worth 10 gp, and a quarter is worth a mere 1 gp. The reasoning is thus: You need Canadian currency to use the vending machines scattered throughout the ruins. These vending machines are generally priced at $2.00 per can of beverage. The vending machines can defend themselves. Moreover, if the ritual of putting the correct change into the machine is not followed, the beverage vended will lose any potential mystical ability it has.

That’s right – pay for it properly, and there is a good chance that your can of Dr. Pepper is also a healing potion. And, as the abilities of any given potion are based on the type of drink, once you learn the ropes, you can almost certainly decide if you really want Coke or Pepsi right now. Don’t pay for it, and you have carbonated sugar water and have to fight the machine even for that. Since the time of the Ancients, the vending machines link directly to another plane of existence, so you can’t even break them open to retrieve your change….

Quarters are only worth 1 gp in this system because fully ¼ of them disappear into the vending machine without being accepted as payment. Nickels and dimes are worth 1 sp and 2 sp respectively; fully 1 in 3 disappear into the void without payment being registered. Finally, pennies are also worth 1 sp…in this case because elves can handle the metal, which can be forged into pennysteel – a metal like steel in all ways, but with no iron content. Every indication shows that pennysteel didn’t exist in Ancient times; it’s very existence is a by-product of the arcane forces set loose in the new world.

For some reason, American coins don’t work in Ruined Toronto’s vending machines, and cannot be forged into pennysteel here. Perhaps if you travel to Buffalo or Windsor, things will be different?