I am still laboring on my revisions to dungeon encounters and treasure types. One thing I know I want to do (and hope to have ready soon!) is to subdivide treasure types into two categories, which I am currently calling “coins” and “bling”.
Coins is the leftmost rows of the existing treasure tables - copper, silver, gold, and platinum - and also maybe common trade goods and the special items that could be substituted for each 1K of coin. These are bulky items that I imagine only certain monsters would collect and keep organized, although the legacy tables don’t reflect this. (Giant rats being major coin hoarders has interesting setting implications, but I balk at griffons or hell hounds carrying chests of coins in their jaws when they move to a new lair).
Bling is the rightmost rows - gems, jewelry, magic items - and also maybe precious trade goods. These are the kinds of things I imagine might be swallowed when a monster chows down on an adventurer, picked up by critters that like shiny things, worn on the body of a reanimated undead, etc.
Having seen the lexical power of our hive-mind unleashed on alternate terms for sinkhole, I am hoping y’all can help me come up with better terms than “coin” and “bling” for these two categories!
Some words that spring to mind:
Loot and Phat Loot (I’m so street… cof)
Coin and Treasure
Valuables and Plunder
Prizes
Lucre
Wealth and Riches
Opulence (for bling)
Luxuries (for bling)
I’ll second ‘coin and treasure’ and ‘wealth and riches’ as good options, though I’d switch around the second to ‘riches and wealth’. I feel like ‘riches’ sounds more like coins and goods and such. You could also do ‘cash and valuables’. Are there any plans to have art objects available? Probably not every monster would have a portrait of Emperor Thurmond in it’s lair, but some intelligent monster might collect such, and even unintelligent monsters might have some by happenstance. It’s a good way to get some historical/cultural flavor in the game world.
This is a truly entertaining task to turn a historical thesaurus on, because there are always so many words for money and valuables (and the slang is magnificent). This may not be helpful, but I think it will be entertaining…
Treasure: druery (13/14C), warison (figurative, 13/14C), margarite (14C)
Jewellery: bijous, belette, sepulchre (rare, 16C), pierrerie (cf. perry)
Valuable: chateus/chattel, nobleye (14C), pelf (15C), plunder (19C)
Coinage: spetia/specie, emperale (14/15C), ambrosin (18C)
Coin: spense (13C), lour (16C), lucre, “the Spanish” (slang, 18C), spondilucks (19C), dosh
Ready Cash: fob (17C), Darby (17 C)
Two words for the plain disks of metal upon which coins are struck: planchet, flan
Humanoid Terminolgy:
Spendy Stuff & Shiny Stuff
(Coins & Valuables seems logical.)
Coins is the perfect term for category one. Anything else would be too broad and potentially confusing.
The second category… anything that sounds good, since it will be obvious that it’s not Coins. Valuables, Goods, Items, Plunder, Booty… avoid specific synonyms of “coins” and the only word that wouldn’t be good is Treasure (since the whole thing is the Treasure Type).
I think I am going to go with “Coin & Goods” and “Valuables & Magic” - thanks everyone for the suggestions!
Goods meaning textiles and trade items?
Yes, maybe it would make more sense to say “Coin and Merchandise”?
I prefer ‘goods’ to ‘merchandise’, since their context of acquisition isn’t a purchase.
It’s not too late for “Spondulicks and Pelf”!
Yeah I think Goods is better too.
As it happens, “Goods” fits with the FFC terminology (is that where you picked it up Tavis?). There’s a couple different places but the best instance of FFC “Wealth” breakdowns is in the dragons descriptions (1980:61). Wealth is broken down as "gold, silver, jewels, goods, and misc. Miscellaneous is probably the equivalent of the “Maps & Magic” column of the D&D treasure table. 