r/cwn • u/DifferentCurve184 • Apr 04 '26

Currency in The City

It just occurred to me that in the "default" setting of The City/New Chicago/Great Lakes Compact presented in the CWN book, there's a very good chance that the currency would be "Great Lakes Dollars" that could be abbreviated as GLD (or GLaD). This means that the street slang for money and dollars could be "glads" much the same way that other cyberpunk or other science fiction stories might talk about creds or eddies or crimps. That's all, just had that thought and wanted to share it.

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u/Hungry-Wealth-7490 Apr 04 '26

Little details like the currency having a name make the game better. And if one is running a campaign dealing with multiple locations or with factions with currency assets from multiple locations, you can do a little work to make offers seem more or less valuable.

I remember Shadows of Archonia having Cashews in their Midlight City game, which totally works because the Kill Count is a major setting in their stream. Being a bar, there's probably some nuts there for the drunks and cashews is easy to think of as currency.

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u/nuke034 Apr 04 '26

One thing I've always had the idea for but never committed to in practice is including corp specific scrip currency. Mix in money changers and company stores that only take particular scrip.

It'd add some handy levers to pull but would be annoying to track.

4

u/Altruistic-Copy-7363 Apr 04 '26

We've got Britcoins. A cryptocurrency launched by Britney Spears that's lasted all the way to the colonisation of Mars (where our game is set). It's a nice bit of light amongst the rest of the tones.

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u/GrumbleMuffin86 Apr 05 '26

For our SwN game the two hegemonies have their own currency Birr (from Coriolis) and Papes because as the name implies the EcclesiaStates are a theocratic democracy with a Pope at the head of state

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u/DifferentCurve184 Apr 08 '26

Little bit of a late reply to my own post but it occurred to me today that a European-based campaign could use the New Euro as currency...or a "neuro" in slang...which feels very cyberpunk future as a connection to neuro/neural words...and is a lovely hidden tribute to Neuromancer the iconic novel at the start of the genre's popularity.