Or, “what happens if we take the phrase ‘murderhobo’ seriously?” In his most recent (as of this writing) [piece](https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-tyranny-of-fantasy-gold/), Bret Devereaux talks about the weird reliance on “gold” as a concept of money and coinage in fantasy media. It’s a good piece, but it has a few things that disconnect from my experience of fantasy RPGs (*D&D* specifically) and that sparked me to want to explore some “well, if this is the case, how do we make it make sense?” style questions. So I talked this through with some of the good folks at the [IGRC](https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/), and here’s where my thoughts lie. First, this is applicable to some kinds of “D&D-like games”, games where you play wandering adventurers in a quasi-medieval land, who expose themselves to danger, often do violence (oftener to “monsters”, however that’s defined), and gain treasures as a result.[^1] Yes, this setup is familiar from the American Western,[^2] and of course *D&D* is more about Westerns than anything else—it is very much an American game, with American ideas. [^1]: Devereaux’s piece assumes that the material rewards are mostly in the form of payment, but in my experience, even if the town offers a reward for fixing their owlbear problem, usually it pales in comparison to the pile of treasure the owlbear was using for a nest. [^2]: Devereaux’s mention of *Seven Samurai* nods towards this, without his piece being able to fully explore it while staying on its topic. So, Devereaux talks about how local medieval economies tended to operate not on coinage, but on account (often denominated in terms of some precious metal) and also via a parallel system of horizontal and vertical gift-giving. *D&D*-style adventurers often want to avoid getting tied down (it makes it hard to seek out the next adventure) and want to operate with coinage. The question then is this: in a world where coins are used in the metropolis and by merchants, but not by normal folks, and where normal folks tend to be deeply enmeshed in local systems of account and gift-giving, how can we still have *D&D*-style adventurers? And, how can we realize this in a game in way that is fun, and that we remember to apply? I think it’s easy to see how adventurers might end up with coinage: the monsters have coinage among the treasures they have gathered, so when you kill the monster, you get their coin. This is clearest with dragons, but it’s a trope of all kinds of D&D monsters, too. That coinage needn’t be gold (though it is *iconic* for dragons!) but whatever it is, it’s worth asking both where, in-world it comes from, and where in *our* world the idea of “piles of coins” as treasure comes from. Taking the latter first, historical people would often bury coins and other valuables either with the dead, to honour them, or in remote places, to hide them from raiders and reavers of all sorts. This gives us a strong starting point for monsters having piles of treasures—the undead have their very own grave goods, and others are things monsters collect *as the very raiders and reavers* themselves, perhaps. So now adventurers go into danger, fight monsters, and come back with coins. But why are they not just retainers of the local Big Man, doing his legitimacy-building work of keeping his tenants safe by hunting monsters? (And: as they are not retainers, they are therefore not enmeshed in the web of relationships of the area. How do they *remain* un-enmeshed?) An idea that arose from the IGRC conversation is that this is a matter of caste and ritual purity. Adventurers are a useful and necessary caste, but an untouchable caste. Like those who deal with the bodies of the dead, dealing with monsters renders you ritually impure, and those who are habitually ritually impure cannot become retainers, cannot stay in a community, a kind of *homo sacer*, in a way. ETA: [Thomas Manuel](https://ttrpg.substack.com/) pointed out, very correctly, that this is a misuse of “caste” and a misunderstanding of what untouchability means. I think that a closer parallel in my mind is Ashkenazim in the Pale of Settlement: money lending is a socially-required activity, but a socially-unacceptable activity, and so Jews are allowed to do it, and make money, but are completely excluded from social networks of power and, you know, at risk of the sudden violence of pogroms. Brand, meanwhile, felt that his clearest inspiration was the *fianna*. And so your characters come into an area, are welcomed and feasted in the hopes that they will perform their social role: kill local monsters, make things safe, *and then leave*, taking some portable treasure with them as something they find more valuable than the locals do. Here, another idea was presented: make a countdown clock[^3] that tracks how warm the welcome the characters have. It starts off okay—probably better if they have some good face characters among them, a bard or whoever to talk them up—and degrades with time, with bad outcomes, and with bad interactions, and can be forestalled with good omens, good outcomes, and adventurers helping the community with their special skills. Towards the bottom of the clock are events like bad rumours and eventually outright hostility to their continued presence. [^3]: À la those in *Apocalypse World*, rather than those in *Blades in the Dark*. Someday, I’ll write an article on the important differences I see between those two. Another idea that came up was that the presence of adventurers is a sort of *carnival* event: larger-than-life, well-traveled, almost alien people show up in your town, solve a deadly problem (or promise to), and are an occasion for feasting, and sharing wealth both from them to you, and vice versa. Rules are bent, social norms can be transcended, and perhaps new adventurers, or apprentice-adventurers, or would-be adventurers, are formed.