Not really, and that is one of the things that influence does pretty much fix. PCs pick up the occasional item because it is useful in that context or because they want it long term, but there is very little in the way of ransacking, searching dead bodies pockets for loose change, or ignoring an investigation so that they can drag a pile of 13 lasguns, 5 autoguns, 2 stubbers, 16 autopistols, 3 las pistols, 5 stub revolvers, 2 hand cannons, 24 hive leathers, and 16 flak jackets to the nearest shop to sell.

I overstate for effect, but this is not the sort of campaign I want to run in Dark Heresy. Even in the more wealth acquisition focused RT the scale is such that its not about annoying minutiae.

I am not a troll, I have read the thread, and I remain unconvinced by the arguments of those in the Hard Currency camp. The Influence system works fine. None of the scenarios concocted in this thread actually refute the system itself. Adeptus-B's post (#122) points this out, but others have done the same.

It's ultimately a playstyle disagreement, and personally I'm happy FFG has moved away from the beancounting of the days of yore, and I think mixing the two would be a complicated mess.

Not really, and that is one of the things that influence does pretty much fix. PCs pick up the occasional item because it is useful in that context or because they want it long term, but there is very little in the way of ransacking, searching dead bodies pockets for loose change, or ignoring an investigation so that they can drag a pile of 13 lasguns, 5 autoguns, 2 stubbers, 16 autopistols, 3 las pistols, 5 stub revolvers, 2 hand cannons, 24 hive leathers, and 16 flak jackets to the nearest shop to sell.

I overstate for effect, but this is not the sort of campaign I want to run in Dark Heresy. Even in the more wealth acquisition focused RT the scale is such that its not about annoying minutiae.

Listing values as described earlier in the thread wouldn't do anything to alleviate or worsen this.. "issue".

I admit I haven't read every word of every post in this thread- has anyone pushing for hard currency presented a solution to the problem of 'treasure hunting' taking over the game?

Has the Influence system?

Having run a campaign up to rank 7 so far under DH2, and having run campaigns in the other systems previously including, and especially, DH1, yes, it has. At least for my group, the magpie tendency incentivized by a conventional currency system has been mitigated by the institution of an influence based acquisition system.

Many items are not worth carrying for even trade-in value and if one limits the number of acquisition checks made per session to say, Ib attempts, and one also keeps a reasonably close accounting of weight limits the D&D-like loot-whoring pretty much disappears.

Don't forget how hard it is to be subtle when selling all that loot.

On a related note does anyone need slightly used body armor?

Has the Influence system?

Having run a campaign up to rank 7 so far under DH2, and having run campaigns in the other systems previously including, and especially, DH1, yes, it has. At least for my group, the magpie tendency incentivized by a conventional currency system has been mitigated by the institution of an influence based acquisition system.

Many items are not worth carrying for even trade-in value and if one limits the number of acquisition checks made per session to say, Ib attempts, and one also keeps a reasonably close accounting of weight limits the D&D-like loot-whoring pretty much disappears.

Items can still be traded in for other items, bartering, which means that they have intrinsic value. You say that you're limiting the number of Acquisition checks made per session and keep an accounting of weight limits - but these are things you should do anyway, if you want to prevent loot-whoring.

Selling objects takes just as much time as buying objects, which takes just as much time as bartering objects. It's false dichotomy, again . Anyone that wants to game the system is still going to try to game the system now, if only to keep track of whatever they pick up for future reference.

Not to mention that the whole barter-for-bonus-to-Influence thing doesn't make any sense at all, the way it's written in RAW, but that's another point entirely, for another day...

Myself (and others) arguing for a Hard Currency system to be reenstated to DH have at no point asked for Influence to be removed - It very much has its place in an investigative game like DH

I realize I'm an odd duck, but I actually care more about not getting a Hard Currency system 'reinstated', than I care about the fate of the Influence system.

I'm not generally fond of abstract systems, but I can take or leave Influence. I wouldn't like to see a return of "Throne Gelt" though (it didn't help that throne gelt was really an abstract system pretending to be a hard cash system. At least Influence is honest about what it's trying to do.)

I admit I haven't read every word of every post in this thread- has anyone pushing for hard currency presented a solution to the problem of 'treasure hunting' taking over the game?

Any system is open to abuse, and yes, unfortunately the prevalence of d&d (and many computer rpgs) and the like have keyed players into the treasure hunting when there is currency involved. However it isn't a given, and can certainly brought under control (certainly with the harsh carrying capacity caps the new system has).

Influence is just as open to abuse in different ways.

The best way to deal with it in any system is to make sure the players understand the type of game being played, with occasional GM slap downs when needed ("Oh, that stack of autoguns you were collecting? Yes, confiscated by customs.").

The best way to deal with it in any system is to make sure the players understand the type of game being played, with occasional GM slap downs when needed ("Oh, that stack of autoguns you were collecting? Yes, confiscated by customs.").

Agreed. The GM defines the economy. However, the objective is to have fun. Don't let your players get invested in looting only to let them find out the unfun way they've been wasting their time. That kind of GM'ing will ruin the game & likely the group. You'll feel like you're stuck babysitting unruly children, and your players will feel abused.

It's pretty much the first law of gaming: never, ever get adversarial on the meta level. Down that road awaits only suckage & fail.

Try to discuss stuff like this before you start playing, and don't be afraid to compromise.

Both absolute and abstract acquisition mechanics are grounded with item Availability.

I've defined (general) economy by way of imposing cumulative negative modifiers to each subsequent acquisition test: -5, -10, -15, -20, depending upon the availability of PC resources, local economic development and taxation, trade schisms, boycotts and embargoes, and the local technology level.

Myself (and others) arguing for a Hard Currency system to be reenstated to DH have at no point asked for Influence to be removed - It very much has its place in an investigative game like DH

I realize I'm an odd duck, but I actually care more about not getting a Hard Currency system 'reinstated', than I care about the fate of the Influence system.

No, you're not. I'm in the same position. I wouldn't object to side bars on planets giving a short passage on trade on a planet ("all goods assigned according to need by Administratum" or "thriving black market using charged fuel cells for currency" etc.), but adding currency -- including abstract stuff like Throne Gelt from the last edition -- would be a significant negative to me. It doesn't reflect how the Imperium works in the large majority of cases and it just gives players the expectation that they can buy stuff causing conflict with GMs.

Big dislike for the idea, here. It's not a consumer society. I think some people just aren't familiar with how a non- consumer society or scarcity society functions. Money, even when combined with availability, is misleading.

The best way to deal with it in any system is to make sure the players understand the type of game being played, with occasional GM slap downs when needed ("Oh, that stack of autoguns you were collecting? Yes, confiscated by customs.").

Agreed. The GM defines the economy. However, the objective is to have fun. Don't let your players get invested in looting only to let them find out the unfun way they've been wasting their time. That kind of GM'ing will ruin the game & likely the group. You'll feel like you're stuck babysitting unruly children, and your players will feel abused.

It's pretty much the first law of gaming: never, ever get adversarial on the meta level. Down that road awaits only suckage & fail.

Try to discuss stuff like this before you start playing, and don't be afraid to compromise.

That's one of the reasons I actively don't want money in the game. It sets up exactly this conflict. Players are simple and stupid creatures. The only way you get it into their heads that the game isn't about collecting money, is to present them with a system where the default is for money to not exist and in the cases where it does exist, for it to be worthless the moment they are transferred to another planet.

The instant that the book says a bolter is "50 thrones" or whatever and you don't let a player with 50 thrones buy one, they feel that you're altering the way the game is supposed to work to punish them.

A lot of people who have grown up in the modern world, especially in the West, genuinely don't know how a non-Consumer Society functions. They've never been exposed to one and it's a long time since most of our countries have experienced one. The easiest way to get into the mindset, is to imagine that the Army is actually now the organization of the entire world. You don't go and buy lunch, you get rations. There aren't shops selling you clothes, there's a local quartermaster's office where you'll show up with your identity papers and they'll issue you new clothes (and probably make a note of how often you request them). Of course our own armies now exist in the modern world and money creeps into them with shops and so forth, But the basic principle holds.

The Imperium is very large. Many worlds do not conform to this pattern. But it's more often the case than it isn't and when you're transferring between worlds like PCs normally do, it's going to be the case.

I have a hard time with the concept of a money free world working. I know of no example in the fluff or human history that worked and see no reason it should be the norm. If I am wrong please correct me.

Fine, then. Abstract everything. But be certain to demand FFG put a sentence or two in explicitly proclaiming the Imperium does not use a consumer-based economy, and nothing can be "purchased" that doesn't first have its location and acquisition role played. I personally will relish with great delight the burden of boring this will place on the actual story I'm trying to tell.

Imagine...

The Players say "Okay, we have a few hours to kill before meeting with Mister Kundt. Let's grab some recaf."

The GM replies with "Make an Influence roll...Okay, it took you forever to find some habwife willing to trade recaf for sex, but you did find it. Too bad you missed your meeting." Or he says "There's no such thing as coffee shops. Get your lore in order you idiots, geez. This isn't a consumer-based economy, you know..."

Because it's either this, or the GM and Players say nothing. Because it's simply faster to overlook the setting details if they take too long to include. And this is why items received through the use of influence have the appearance of just magically appearing out of nowhere. Like purchasing recaf. Why have a listing for the most mundane of items if you can't just run out an buy it?

Yeah, yeah. Influence. Logically, no one ought need to roll influence for a cup of coffee. Or a pack of lhos. This stuff is everywhere, and everyone should know how to procure some. And beside, there's no point wasting time making an Influence roll to get it if it's just a fluff detail, right?

I have a hard time with the concept of a money free world working. I know of no example in the fluff or human history that worked and see no reason it should be the norm. If I am wrong please correct me.

Humanity has been around somewhere between 100,000-200,000 years. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the earliest example of something you could consider money dates back 4,000-5,000 years. So uhm.. Technically the money-free world has stood the test of time better than the money-using world

There's no reason to get all weird & rigid about things, though. Acquisition DoF's don't have to mean PCs can't afford stuff or lack the clout to have it issued. DoFs could just mean lower quality stuff, longer delivery times, or whatever other complications might be appropriate. It's also not the kind of thing you should test if failure isn't both entertaining and a sensible possibility. You shouldn't test Athletics to avoid falling on your face and drowning in an inch of water, just because there's a tiny puddle on the road either.

Influence is an abstract value representing a lot of things, from authority to the change in your pocket. If you want to use it as a concrete, finite resource like the exact balance on your credit card, simply impose limits on the modifiers that can be applied to the stat and how many times the stat can be used. And then make each use an automatic #DoS. Award additional uses and expand the modifier range instead of handing out sacks of monies.

I have a hard time with the concept of a money free world working. I know of no example in the fluff or human history that worked and see no reason it should be the norm. If I am wrong please correct me.

But that's largely what the Imperium is. It is a bureaucracy in a literal sense, with feudalistic trappings. The reason money is necessary is because there is the concept of universal ownership. I am a farmer, my horse needs a shoe. How do I pay the blacksmith to shoe him? I can barter - here are three sheaves of corn for your work -- which is clumsy and why money is needed, or I can give him coin. That's the basic principle. But commonly on an Imperial planet it works like this: I am a farmer, this horse needs a shoe. I take it to the blacksmith who shoes the horse. Not because I pay him -- it's not my horse. But because he is a blacksmith and this is his role. The Adeptus Administratum runs most Imperial worlds. How does the blacksmith get recompensed for his work? He doesn't. Just like I am a farmer and my task is to work the fields like the last four generations before me, he works the forge like the last four generations before him. He'll have a ration book or whatever equivalent this planet has and gets his portion of food. Maybe he reports the birth of a new daughter and the Administratum updates his record and now he gets additional rations. Maybe he needs more steel for the shoes. He fills out the forms and the machinery of the Administratum sends the ingots his way. (Or loses the form for three months - the Imperium is gloriously inefficient). Why do the farmer and the blacksmith stay doing these roles? Because it's what they've always done. Because there is a galaxy-wide religion that has spent literally thousands of years perfecting the art of telling people it's their duty to serve the Empire. And because the local planetary governor who is their lord and master will have the enforcers beat them for dereliction of duty if they don't. The farmer doesn't own a farm. The blacksmith doesn't own a forge. They don't need money much because they are property themselves - serfs. They no more need it than the farmer's horse needs money to buy its hay. It's owner makes sure it gets enough hay to keep it working productively. A real world soldier doesn't need money to buy bullets from the armoury for his gun. Nor to buy the gun in the first place - the bureaucracy of the military tells him go and collect X bullets and tells the armoury to give them to him.

Now this is one example, but it's a very common example throughout the Imperium. I think it's fair to say it's the archetypal Imperial world. There are factories in the Imperium where whole families exist to operate one small part of the machinery and have passed that duty down through the generations. They have no idea what it does, just that they know it's their Emperor-mandated duty to make sure the little needle never enters the little red section and that the Machine Spirits will be angry if they do. Every season, a ship appears from the sky and brings them food and collects the las-guns that the great factory has belched forth. There's no money involved in the transaction - just simple trade and duty.

Your historical parallel is Feudalism. Now in medieval European feudal society, money did exist. But it wasn't commonly used by the ordinary person. At the lowest levels of Feudalism in Western Europe, you had what was called Manorealism - i.e. a Manor. Each manor had attached peasantry and serfs and they usually operated as I described above in the farmer and blacksmith example. Farmers were forbidden to leave the land they worked. Sons were required to inherit their father's trade. (Women had the ability to move around a bit more but that was mainly for purposes of marriage which most would agree is not a definition of freedom. ). People did not receive money for their labour. They owed the products of it to the lord of the manor.

Manorealism declined as use of money increased, as it happens. Commerce started to build and the system of serfs et. al began to be obsoleted.

Now the Imperium doesn't have the same factors that caused the decline of feudalism as in our own history. Yes, there are rebellions where governors are overthrown. Sometimes even democracy, but then armies arrive from Outer Space and beat the crap out of you until you're back down where you belong and then priests appear who tell you why you getting the crap beaten out of you was your fault for not being holy enough and that in future you must work harder to please the Emperor. And those that don't teach their children this get executed and rooted out by the Inquisition and their children sent to the Scholla Progenum to be properly educated. Pretty soon, you're back where you started.

The other critical factor is that one of the vital advantages of money is that it is efficient! It's very hard to organize a large community without money. But what medieaval Europe didn't have was massed infrastructure of the Adeptus Administratum. Cogitators, banks of clerks, rampant paperwork. It's still horribly inefficient compared to money, but it can manage far more sophisticated communities (towns, cities) than manorealism can where the lord tells the blacksmith to keep working. Now you have a room full of clerks with a ledger of blacksmiths in the area.

So that's a common Imperial world at the lowest levels. But of course there are other worlds and even different levels higher up on the common worlds. Don't they need money? Depends. Let's take the second case first - on our feudal world the serfs are doing what they're told but how are the nobles buying and selling without money? Well sometimes they do have money, but generally they don't have to buy and sell - they own estates which are self-sufficient and they have staff to manage those estates (who are essentially better rewarded and more comfortable versions of our blacksmith and our farmer). If the local baron wants a las-gun can he go out and buy one? Well no, there are no las-gun shops. What he does is he finds someone who has a las-gun in his estate and takes it - because it's his. And a nice lord and master will send you something in exchange for it, rewarding you a little more land or something. And a nasty one will just take it. But they don't buy it. What if there are no las-guns to be had in his estate? Well then he either goes to his lord and master and asks for one (which he may or may not get depending on how in the good graces he is / how much leverage he has) or he goes to one of his peers who has one (or has one in their estate) and trades a favour or some land or a lovely xeno artefact ("don't tell the Inquisition dah-ling, wink wink"). That also is how things worked a lot in medieval Europe. They did have money, but it wasn't central bank money like we have today where value is independent of the coin itself. It was gold coins or silver coins etc. and they were valuable because gold and silver themselves were valuable. The stamp on the coin was merely the promise of the maker that it was the value they claimed it was.

So there may or may not be money floating around, but quite often not and it doesn't fill the same role as it does in our world. And part of the reason for that is because we are a consumer society and the Imperium is not. Which brings us onto our other worlds that are organized differently to what we've talked about so far.

What do I mean by a 'Consumer Society' ? Well suppose Steve Jobs makes a phone and sees it is selling well. He calls up his factory in China and says "install more of those suicide nets outside the window, we want another twenty million by October." This is supply and demand. People want to buy the phones, so someone makes those phones and then sells it to them.

The Imperium however, is a Scarcity Society. This means there is supply cannot rise to meet demand. Suppose a world wants more las-guns? Well to a small extent you might be able to push a few more out by cracking the whip at the las-gun factory on Slaveius VI, but by and large that factory produces a hundred las-guns every week and that's what it's always done and nobody dares tamper with anything in that factory because it's run that way for the last three-hundred years and if you break it, no more las-guns from it. So there's very little capitalism going on - there's never enough of anything and if the Imperium decides that it needs to raise a new IG regiment on such and such a planet, that's where the las-guns will be sent. You can't out-bid that other planet if you want them to come to yours because (a) there's no way to make a currency span multiple planets and have any kind of steady value. (We couldn't even manage a single currency between Germany and Greece without the disparity wreaking havoc) and (b) if you try to bargain with the Imperium saying: "hey, we'll produce some extra grox meat for those las-guns" then all you find is that your tithe has been increased because you obviously have some to spare.

Now obviously there are some things that are commodities - food, minerals, whatever. To some extent supply of these can be increased when demand increases, but in the Imperium it will never, ever be enough. You can't start a factory building phones because (a) half the time no-one knows how to do so and those that do know are to busy doing so for the Imperium and (b) your potential customers are mostly serfs who are owned by their lord and have no means to pay you with anything you'd care about.

I've painted with very broad strokes here. I was trying to answer both how a society can function without money (i.e. badly for the most part) and why this state would persist in the Imperium. You asked for historical precedents of such societies. Feudalism is your closest real antecedent that I can think of which is unsurprising as feudalism is a big influence in creating the setting of the Imperium. But your mistake is to ask for / think in terms of functioning societies. This is probably the critical thing. The Imperium is not a well functioning society . It's closest parallels are not medieval Europe or Byzantinium or the Italy of the Borgias, though there are great comparisons that can be drawn to all of these, but to collapsing societies. Look at Russia in the early days of Communism after the fall of the Tzar when Russia was being attacked by the West to prevent the spread of communism. Money meant little - it had legacy value and you could buy things with it, but only opportunistically when people could afford to gamble on it still be valuable next month. You'd get allocated food, the local committee would assign you a place to live. In the early years of Israel not only food was rationed, but furniture, footwear... These are your parallels for the Imperium - not functioning societies, but desperately struggling ones.

Of course because I've painted with very broad strokes in all of this, I've missed out all those exceptional worlds. And there are a lot of them. There are democracies, there are mercantile societies. The Imperium is filled with variety. But what all these exceptions have in common is that they are isolated from each other. Maybe there are a few multi-system worlds that have common currency between them (though see earlier remark about a common currency not even working between two neighbouring EU countries with different economic needs), but you're not going to be able to take your Royal Scrip from one planet and spend it on the planet of the Grox-dung traders in another system. Just doesn't work.

So sometimes when your Inquisitor sends you to a given world, you might be given a thousand Moosmocks to spend so that you can get around, eat, etc.). Or more likely you'll use your Influence rating at the local Adeptus Administratum office to convince them that they should release some Moosmocks to you to spend. And on these worlds, maybe you can spend those Moosmocks to buy that las-gun you want. But these are all not the general case.

And finally, there are those little sub-systems that fall through the cracks. Criminals running a black market. Naval crew wanting to gamble with each other. Rogue Traders bidding for a ship component. What do they all use? Well generally whatever is locally appropriate. Those naval officers probably gamble with ship credits or shift duties or Lho Sticks. Rogue Traders are bartering artifacts, precious minerals by the tonne, exotic goods. A Rogue Trader knows how to haggle that's for sure. The black market? Very dependent on the local environment they exist in. Your feudal agri-world isn't going to have a black market - just corrupt petty nobles who trade favours for things that their cousin in the navy smuggled in that he shouldn't of, perhaps a vagabond who travels from village to village peddling a few wares for food and shelter or petty things the lesser nobles might value in exchange for a bit of precious metal. A local space port or more sophisticated world will have a local currency probably and they'll use that - but the keyword here is local and it tends to only crop up outside of the normal Imperial World system.

Anyway, that's my take on it. They key points are lack of individual ownership obviating the need for money in large swathes of the Imperium; the absence of common currency between worlds which is practically unavoidable; that the Adeptus Administratum manages the allocation of resources, not self-management of societies through trade; and finally, that this is a Scarcity Society and normal laws of supply and demand cannot exist in the Imperium. Don't compare it 1:1 with any stable historical society. Compare it to collapsing societies or those on a war footing. Because that's what the Imperium is.

EDIT: Great username by the way. Describes my players perfectly.

EDIT EDIT: Wow. I spent about forty minutes writing that post!

Knasserll, you spent 40 minutes writing it but it was a **** good description in my opinion. Well said! Issue this guy an extra desert ration

I'm gonna copy that explanation to use for a reference. Thanks.

Actually the oldest coin currency is probably only about 2700 years old. That said, it is likely that livestock were used as a medium of exchange long before that. They do lack many of the essential elements of currency, specifically:

1. easily standardized

2. widely accepted

3. divisible

4. easy to carry

5. not deteriorate quickly

It is not implausible to interpret the Adeptus Administratum as using a sort of centralized bookkeeping currency that exists only on paper for the purpose of handling different account and the like, but this being 40k it is more plausible that there are a myriad of different ways that value is notated and that the exchange rates between them are needlessly complex.

That said it is not even implausible that many hive worlds or even cities on otherwise feudally run worlds still maintain a local currency. A sector capital may even use its local currency to measure tithes managed by the governor in his effort to meet Adeptus Administratum tithe exactions. Whether you interpret such things as being unusual or more common than a largely currency-less society such as that described above depends on your interpretation of 40k.

As a parallel Soviet Russia is perhaps far closer to what 40k might be imagined as than medieval europe. It is also worth noting that Medieval Europe had a thriving currency exchange in all of its cities and amongst the elite. Currency was very relevant for the small percentage of the population that didn't spend their lives as some variation of serf/freeman.

Cities tend to be ignored in many depictions of feudal societies, but this is largely because they do not fit into the chain of being established at the time as the proper understanding of how society functions and each persons role within it.

Lastly, China, which is a far more bureaucratic society, more centralized, more urban, and longer lasting than most western civilizations maintains currency systems, sometimes even paper currency although often silver based, throughout most of the medieval period.

I myself tend to think of 40k's relationship with currency to be highly fractured but it is important to recall that the PCs are for all intents and purposes elite members of society operating in elite circles. Even if you are wandering through the dregs of an underhive as often as not or are visiting feral worlds every month you are space faring, technology using, widely traveled, educated, initiated into various guild-like societies (the Ad Mech for example) and while you might not be nobility, you are definitely nearer the 1% than the 99% in the same way that Americans and other members of the first world today are immensely privileged and advantaged compared to humans throughout our history.

The PCs might then be well familiar with currencies of various worlds and conscious of the markets, exchanges, and tithe accounts that are largely unknown or deeply mysterious to most citizens of the Imperium. But as the above posts suggest, they will certainly find themselves interacting and attempting to hide within societies that do not have normal currency systems. it is unlikely any city even on a feudal world has no currency system at all. But the medium of exchange may be widely varied, dictated by credit, centrally controlled, unusual, largely just used for paper notation, or mostly limited to black market exchanges. Even in Soviet Russia or in Wartime Nazi Europe ration slips were used as currency, as were cigarettes, luxuries, bullion, coins, ammunition, and a variety of other goods that could roughly meet the above five criteria for a usable currency.

The points about consumerism and a pseudo-capitalist society such as ours not being a pervasive and common feature are well taken and worth keeping in mind though.

All of which is to say that 40k has within the setting plenty of room for interpretation and variety which is really one of its best features.

Ok those were some great posts but their are a few points I want to make. The Adeptus Administratum is noted as running many agri-worlds directly (meaning this is note worthy rather than the norm) and the RT book (I think, I don't have it with me) says the Adeptus Administratum doesn't worry about how an individual world is run. This implies to me that KnasserIIs view is not the standard way of doing things. Secondly as Togath pointed out even at our most feudal we still traded stuff like the excess food from harvest, the romans allowed slaves to own money and buy their freedom and even the feudal world only took 90% of what its serfs mined.
The Imperium may be a stagnating society but it has lasted over 10,000 years and the collapsing societies used as examples didn't last long enough for a sector lord to care unless the planet was of decent tithe grade.
I'm not saying that there needs to be a single currency that works beyond one planet but I still see currency as the norm.

Can we all at least agree that the concept of a universal currency is kind of silly? The Administratum is grossly inefficient as is, maintaining a galaxy spanning currency is a little much.

I think there is a "local currency" on almost every planet - as the imperium itself ussually doesnt mess with such things, as long as the thides are paid.

Societies tend to develop some kind of currency, be it coins, digital money transfers or shells and stones.

So, I strongly believe - most planets will have currencies and some kind of "money" to regulate the trasnfers of goods.

I do not believe though, that this currency is a universal one - it will be local and differing from planet to planet (maybe even between makropols/countries within a planet) - but that is no problem to give "throne" costs as relative costs for an item.

It just means, that the players money from one planet can be reduced by exchange rates from the GM to reduce their looted weatlth *hehe* ;D

Quite a few interesting things to discuss there. I'd like to comment on a few of your points. I'll agree up front that WH40K has a lot of variety in it and also that it isn't always entirely consistent with itself (I think we all know the latter point). The context of my post is a mixture of justifying what I think is the common and current way the setting is usually depicted and answering the question of if this is how it is, then how could it work? And one of the main points that runs through both answers is that it works badly. The Imperium isn't in free fall, but it is in a continuous state of war and teeters permanently on the edge of falling apart. So many times when the point is made: 'this would be massively inefficient / difficult / wasteful / an organizational nightmare / generally bad', then the answer that comes back is actually a simple 'yes, yes it is'. The Imperium is kind of what Feudalism would have been if it had the power to stop itself from being undermined by Commericialism. (Capital 'C' commericialism there, the rise of trade and mercantile classes). You mention the use of money in the Medieval period. I think in my post I did highlight that I was talking about Medieval prior to the rise of Commercialism and increased use of money. The Medieval period is actually a thousand years - from 5th to 15th Century. And what you describe is actually more true of the late Medieval period after around the 10th Century. For our Imperium parallels, we should properly look to the early and middle Medieval periods.

Now the reasons why Commercialism cannot take off and supplant the feudalistic system (or mitigate it at least) in the Imperium, in contrast to what eventually happened in Medieval Europe are the following two facts in conjunction:

• Any disruption of the feudalistic nature of the Imperium must be many systems, even sectors wide. Commercialism -- which went hand in hand with increased use of money -- is the rise of trade. Internal trade within a planet does not affect the nature of the Imperium. It must be trade between worlds (i.e. above the level of Imperial Governor) as that is the level at which Imperial feudalism operates.
• Trade between worlds is not possible for the following reasons:
  • The Imperium takes all excess production and pushes for maximum production already. This is enforced by the Imperial Guard, Assassins and the Ecclesiarchy who have half a galaxy worshipping a dead guy on a throne thousands of millions of miles away.
  • The Imperium controls 99% of transport between worlds. You've got the Imperial Navy as half of it. The other half is chartered ships who are directed by the Adeptus Administratum. And between the two halves you have a small sliver of Rogue Traders (who really ought to be beyond the Imperium proper) and a smattering of pirates and independent traders who have slipped through the cracks.

Put those two things together - trade needing to be above the level of the lowest unit (Imperial Governor) to affect the Imperium - and trade between worlds not really being possible in the general sense, and you've severely curtailed the rise of Commercialism which necessitates the use of money.

One thing you mention a couple of times in your post is that in Medieval Europe, whilst the lower classes didn't use money much the upper classes did have and use money. What they really used, was coin . Today, that is the same as money. Back then, not the case. The promise that a coin would be a representation of value, backed by a government was centuries in the future and the use of money as purely abstract not backed by anything at all, actually didn't come about in widespread use until the 1900's. Up until the First World War, you could actually still exchange your British pounds for gold. Not buy gold, exchange. The abandonment of the Gold Standard is a recent thing in our history. There are still people today who argue that we should return to the Gold Standard (though try that in a room of modern-day economists and you'll be pelted with fruit). Bits of coin, notes of paper, having value just because a government and people say they have value... these are not what Medieval coin was. Go back then and what coin actually is, is precious metals. The stamp of Caesar or whoever, wasn't saying this coin is worth X amount because I say it was, they were saying "this coin was minted under my authority and does indeed weigh X amount and is indeed made of gold, not lead dipped in gold.".

Not that everyone trusted it, mind you. Iirc, one of the skills in the 1st Ed. Warhammer Fantasy Role-play let you cut coins down the middle and then melt the two halves back together again so that you could some of the precious metal without damaging the coins face making a slightly thinner coin. Or if the seal didn't quite reach the edge of the coin, you could shave some of the edge off.

Anyway, the point is that when a baron answers the call for soldiers by sending the king a hundred gold coins in their place , that's not acceptable because its money in the modern sense, but because that is actual gold that the king can use to fund his war effort in place of soldiers.

So what's the difference whether the money used on an Imperial World is money in the modern sense or actual bits of certified gold / silver / pressed grox dung / whatever? Well in one sense, not much - if you can go to a shop and hand over coins for something, that works to an extent. However, as already illustrated the majority of Imperial worlds are unlikely to have private ownership of any significance for the common people (everyone is effectively a feudal subject managed by the Adeptus Administratum) and the nobility would typically have self-sufficient states and trading a hundred coins of gold for some artefact with your peer is no different to haggling over granting them some land or a house or some such. It's unnecessary. If you say I'll give you a kilo of gold or a hundred 100g coins, it's all the same thing (and in fact, freshly cast ingots are probably safer).

You also raise the fact that in Soviet Russia ration slips would be used as currency. Indeed. But that ties into the above - they're not so much money as barter with something that has universal value and is semi-easily divisible. A stand-in for money, essentially. I mentioned in my previous post how enlisted men on a naval vessel might gamble with ship credits or equivalent. Same thing. You're going to get little proxy systems cropping up.

But they are never going to grow beyond their local sub-systems. You cannot manage singe monetary policy across differing worlds. Even across nations presents enormous difficulty. One reason Greece and Spain are in trouble is because they're tied by a single currency to economies like Germany and it's impossible to set interest rates at the best value for both. Fluctuations in value would make use of currency between planets utterly infeasible. You get a hundred Thrones on one planet. You go "yay! I'm rich!" You go to another planet and find a hundred Thrones buys you a small toy Terminator. That utter disparity in value is unavoidable. Definitely. I can expand on this if wanted, but a unified currency even within a single sector is not possible. And I don't just mean problematic. I really do mean it's unworkable.

I'm not saying that there are not worlds where there is money - far from it, the Imperium is vast and varied. But what I guess I'm emphasizing, to bring back to concrete bullet points is the following.

• Moneyless planets actually are feasible within the setting of the Imperium and work largely like I've described.
• Most of the fluff leads me to think this is the general case.
• A currency that spans multiple worlds is not feasible.
• The Imperium is not a consumer society and the entire notion of general trade, retail, etc. doesn't fit. There are no "las-gun shops".
• Putting such a system in Dark Heresy and / or putting prices on items creates a misleading impression and also sets up conflict between players and GM. The moment the players see that a las-gun costs thirty thrones, every single thing a GM does that fits the fluff is going to be seen as punitive and obstructive. "But the book says it costs this much? Why can't I buy one?" "But I have a thousand thrones, why have you made every planet we've visited not use them?"

This last one is one of the chief reasons I don't want to see a money system in the game. I mean look how much explanation and back-story and exposition I've done in these two posts to show parallels to the real world and explore how a Feudal Bureaucracy (which is how I would properly describe the Imperium) actually functions to people who have grown up in a consumer society. The simple notion of a scarcity society where you can't ramp up production of a well-selling product is just not familiar to many people. And without this understanding, all most players will see is the GM saying "no" over and over again. The instant that you put a price on items, you have put people into D&D mode where they are collecting Thrones and expecting to buy shiny equipment.

And that's just not the Imperium to me. It runs counter to the resource management of the Adeptus Administratum and the entire structure of the Imperium, as well as not being reconcilable with many of the realities of the Imperium.

It's a lot more WH40K to me, that on arrival on a planet, you don't go to the shop and buy X or check into a hotel. You go to the Adeptus Administratum office and fill out forms or argue with them for half-an-hour that you need housing allocated and fill out an Offworld Visitor form whilst some snivelling flyweight clerk enjoys giving you the run around. That's when you pull out your Influence score and name drop the local planetary governor or mention that you have a signed seal from his prefectus and the frightened clerk scurries to assign you whatever you've asked for and hurries you past the queues.

Nowhere am I arguing that there is not money on many of the Imperial worlds. But I'm incredibly wary of setting up the wrong expectations and I want it handled on an exceptional basis under a particular world. Nothing really explains and highlights what an Influence score is, than a world that operates via bureaucracy, not money. Some have said that they're happy to have both, but I'm willing to argue that the two approaches are actually in conflict. If you add money, you're undermining the Influence system (a system I really like). But more importantly, you're setting up personal conflicts in every gaming group where the players aren't all economists or historians.

and the RT book (I think, I don't have it with me) says the Adeptus Administratum doesn't worry about how an individual world is run.

WH40K fluff varies over time, but there's a lot of fluff to contradict that going all the way back to 1st ed. WH40K and onwards, where the Adeptus Administratum has levels even below planetary level. But a lot of what I said applies whether it is the Adeptus Administratum directly, or some equivalent under the Planetary Governor. The Imperium is on a war footing. There's no excess production, there's extremely restricted ability to adapt production dynamically to demand (people inherit their jobs and knowledge is handed down, you might be able to move the odd factory worker to toil in the fields if you want to, but generally the reverse is not true. You have families who have spent whole generations living in a factory tending their section of the machines without even knowing why or how it works). And the overwhelming bulk of humanity are effectively serfs who own very little, merely tending the farms, working the forges, with the product of their labour going to their masters.

When you are not rewarded for the product of your labour, there is very little reason to need money. You don't have to pay the blacksmith to shoe your horse. It's not your horse. The lord of the manor tells you to work and the blacksmith to shoe horses that need shoeing.

The same is true of all those drones working in the factories on industrial planets, trudging from their allocated housing to the factory each morning, and then taking their ration books to the store on their way home eighteen hours later.

For parallels to the Imperium it is wrong to look at healthy functioning societies. You need to look at collapsing or struggling ones.

I've nothing of value to add, except "thank you", knasserll. I've been of the opinion that currency doesn't fit into 40k from the get-go, but I have found it hard to GM it. Your posts are giving me some stronger footing and I feel more confident about the impending "shopping session" of my next game.

I've nothing of value to add, except "thank you", knasserll. I've been of the opinion that currency doesn't fit into 40k from the get-go, but I have found it hard to GM it. Your posts are giving me some stronger footing and I feel more confident about the impending "shopping session" of my next game.

I'm glad it's of interest and provides some food for thought. I've a tendency to come across as quite strident online, so I'll consider myself kind of done on this topic and if people want to differ, no problem. The 40K setting is a big one and the cannon is not entirely consistent.

If I haven't been clear on anything though or if people want to debate specifics, I'm happy to expand. The above is my take, but I feel it fits well with the fluff that I'm familiar with and I think it makes clear how such a system can work and the problems with Thrones or equivalent. I totally get that there are plenty of exceptions. I mainly want to avoid encouraging conflict between players and GM. To me, WH40K is a setting where you don't buy a boltgun. You get given one by a grateful noble who inherited it from a great grandfather who fought at the battle of Ordorus VIII and was presented it by the Imperial Governor personally. There are very few actual commodities in the setting to my mind, and if something isn't a commodity, then price is a whole complex area.

(A commodity would be like a bread or electricity in our world. Phones, laptops etc. are now also virtually commodities. A non-commodity is something like a piece of artwork or a custom product. I.e. it's not something "off the shelf").

IIRC, money was often mentioned in the Dan Abnett Novels. Like the Ghosts gambling for money, or, paying pensions for widows to soldiers who died in war.

This states to me, that money does exist, and, that it even has to exist in a centralized shape which can be converted to local needs.

To put it short: those who dont want to see money in 40k, will find ways to ignore it or to find other interpretations.

Those who want to see money, will find some passages where it is mentioned.

It is similar to the question: does the Internet exist in 40k or not ?

Finally, it is a question of: do I want it in the RPG or not - and there, the oppinions are split.

I think it is not possible to find an "objective" solution here.

But: putting prices into the rulebook does not take up much space - and - if someone does not weant to use them and uses influence only, he still can do that.