09 May 2025 5 min read Apocryphal Frontier

Specie vs Currency

Money in the Apocryphal Frontier

So for the Apocryphal Frontier—a setting taking place in a faux American Wild West inspired by the tall tales of the time—the question of how to handle money is fairly important. Anyone who has seen any kind of western is likely familiar with the classic gold and silver coins that populated the silver screen. These coins—specie—are also known as commodity money. Depending on the specific time period emulated, this may be the only practical form of money used. This is because prior to the American Civil War, the lack of national banks led to a period referred to as wildcat banking.

Wildcat Banking

This tumultuous time is also known as the Free Banking Era, a period when loose or no banking regulations allowed any Dick or Jane to open a "bank". Someone might roll into town with a suitcase full of fancy looking paper currency, woo the frontier folk with the ease of transportation and handling of bills, the "secure" backing of the "bank", and take your hard earned specie in trade. Leaving town quickly the following day you would be left with worthless paper for a bank that never really existed, or operates so far away and remote from where you're at that your currency is practically worthless in trade.

The slightly more reliable banks were state chartered and did serve their purposes for the local community. As long as you lived, worked, and traded within the same town, the local bank's currency might retain its full value. The big issue came with how the banks backed their currency. Most of the times the banks overprinted their currency and would not be able to redeem it all in specie, resulting in a run on the bank during times of hardship. These risks led to most people having a massive mistrust of both banks and currency, keeping specie in large supply.

National Banking

After the Civil War, the National Bank Act of 1865 established national banks with a unified currency and redemption across all other national banks, with a 10% tax on state backed bank notes. This resulted in the eventual removal of risky state bank currency and the proliferation of national bank notes. While specie was still extremely common, the national currency meant that the bills traveled better and held their value compared to local bank currency.

Game Mechanics

My goal is to emulate some of the genre imagery of having both specie and currency in common usage, while making sure there's both pros and cons to each.

Specie

Specie are the gold and silver coins in common usage across the frontier. Silver coins consist of: 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent, 50 cent, and 1 dollar. Gold coins are: 1 dollar, 2.5 dollars, 5 dollars, 10 dollars, and 20 dollars.

Specie can be carried in a coin purse, occupying 1 inventory slot and holding a max of $50. The exact denominations of specie are irrelevant, and the PC is assumed to have a variety of coins for various spending purposes, getting change as needed in trade.

Specie—being intrinsically valuable—retains its full and proper value wherever you are. Merchants in town and frontiersmen days or weeks away from civilization will happily treat specie as the worthwhile money it is.

Currency

Paper currency is issued by the Federal Government via its nationally chartered banks, in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000 dollars. These are large bills commonly carried flat and unfolded in a large wallet. These wallets are carried tucked away in a vest, wedged in your belt, or attached to a chain on your belt and displayed prominently. While this means you won't need to juggle different bank's individual bills, the wildcat era has had its toll on the populace of the frontier. The further away from a bank you are, the less value your currency will hold.

Currency is carried in a wallet, occupying 1 inventory slot and carrying an unlimited amount of currency. Currency loses 10% of its value per day of travel beyond the first day from the nearest bank. Within a days ride of a bank everyone will happily accept your currency at face value, but 2 days ride means your $100 spends like $90, and 5 days ride means it spends like $60.

The Tradeoff

With the differences between specie and currency, your planned location for spending will determine whether you want to deal with the bulky yet always valuable specie, or the infinitely carry-able—yet potentially worthless—currency.

Players planning to travel to remote locations will likely want to keep specie and deal with the logistics and risks of transporting it, while a group always close to a town or city with a bank is more than happy to use currency.

The final destination for large sums of money will determine the balance of specie to currency.

Up Next

This article is the first in a series about the development of my new western TTRPG titled Apocryphal Frontier. As I work through both the mechanics and setting, I will be posting my thought processes and reasoning for certain game mechanics and setting pieces. Feel free to comment here or in my discord https://discord.gg/PpbczBdjc6.