Nerd Bounty

No new hobby news, the muse is still on vacation. :(

But, today the postman was kind to me...
Last year I had participated in a Kickstarter for gaming coins, these coins were large, sounded well and were generally wonderfull, their self-claimed "legendary" status was deserved. Their only flaw was that their size and small number made them not entirely practical for actual RPG use, as they couldn't cover small day-to-day transactions.
So I turned to kickstarter once more for a batch of smaller coins to supplement them. These arrived today:

(More pics and loot after the break:)


Which means I now have a full, functional set of medieval/fantasy denominations:

Pretty snazzy, eh?
What I'm thinking now is use the smallest, rightmost coins as the equivalent of the DnD copper coins, and stepping up value a factor 10 with each next coin. (As much as I would love to use a non-linear system, like for example the old British coinage, I don't want to needlessly torture my players...)
As you can see, there are three different coinages there, allowing me to differentiate even further:
-The centre row is the basic currency, one of these represents the basic value of that coin type.
-Top row is the coinage from an affluent kingdom, the metal of whose coins are exeptionally pure, each of these coins represents double the value of the basic coin.
-The bottom row are rare ancient coins from an empire long gone. Due to their rarity and historical significance, each coin represents five times the value of the basic coin.

(Looking at them again, I'm tempted to switch the last two coins in value, the greyish one becoming the basic "tin bit" for basic consumables, and the smaller one becoming a bronze coin, then pure copper/large bronze, followed by silver and gold as the most valuable. Means you can't sort value by size exactly, but it does seem more realistic/immersive.)

Here is how they look in great big piles:

As you can see, the mix of sizes and colours just looks to much better than piles of uniform coinage. It just looks so much more convincing and lived-in. I love it!

But that's not all the postie had more for me:

Yeah, I'm a huge Witcher fan...
It started with the original Witcher game, I quite liked the setting and story, but I got stuck somewhere in the game (Mostly due to poor savegame-management on my part. I only used the quicksave and my last save was just past the point of inescapable death.) and the nascent love sort of stayed dormant.
I skipped Witcher 2, due to getting stuck in Witcher one and not allowing myself to play it without finishing the original game (spoilers and such...). I did find out the games were based on books, but they lingered on the to-read list. Then first news of Witcher three dropped, I started looking into it again, finally started reading the books and was totally and utterly hooked. I re-played Witcher one and Witcher two back to back before diving headlong into the Witcher three. It was glorious. And despite clocking nearly 200 hours in the Witcher 3 it ended all too soon. Luckily now the new DLC is about to arrive, and I can add another few days to this game time, and then there is still New Game+. I'd been holding off on that until I had played all DLCs.
I couldn't help picking up a little memento of all the fun I had, and will still have, with this franchise.
Best of all, the Witcher series provides plenty of inspiration and ideas to feed back into my wargaming and RPG hobbies as well...

And just for fun, as I had all of it within reach anyway; A high-stakes Gwent game:

Let's just hope the Witcher gets to keep his medallion... ;)
(Yeah, I'm waiting for the other two decks to be shipped as well... Couldn't help myself.)

See you next time!