Guide on Novels and Games - FANTASY - S&R - COUNTRY'S POWER AND MONEY

In this section I'll talk about the elements that make a country strong, the reason is in the "Society & religion" part of this guide is because the strenght of a country can influence the society of the other places.

For determine the strenght of a country we need to keep into consideration various factors:

* *Size*, how big or small a country is.
* *Resources*, the natural and mineral resources that the country have and this imply too the ability of produce food.
* *Army*, in the past the size of the army showed how strong a country can be but since we talk about fantasy we have to take under consideration too things like magic units (magicians and warriors that use magic too aside weapons) and rider units (mount units that ride monsters or special animals), the latter
* *Magic*, since fantasy provide us with magic we need to take into consideration how advanced a country is in the magic field.
* *Technology*, how a country is technologically advanced determine how strong it is.
* *Economy*, the power of a country can prove how strong a country is.

Now, I listed all the traits that can make a country strong but this don't mean that a country need to max all this points since is possible obtain one or more points using a single one:

* If a country have large quantity of resources, the main strenght is that that then is followed by economical strenght that make possible train soldiers and make a large army.
* Magical country make their magic related researches as their main point, this attract merchant (economy points) and the strenght of their magician compensate the army.
* A small conomy-centric country can make the surrounding one depend on them, this way if something happen all the connected country will suffer conseguence so the connected protect the commerical country how better they can.

As you see from my examples there is no need for a country to be strong in all points.

**MONEY**

This is quite an interesting topic... first of all, fantasy stories don't show paper money, if they don't take place in a time period similar to our, and mainly show coins.

Normally the coins take their value from size and material but eventually there is their shape too... if we want to complicate our life...

If we talk about size we have small, normal and big coins, now I'll give you some measurement but they are approximate, based on the ancient roman coins and suppose that all the coins are only circular so don't take them too much seriously if you want to make them of different shapes:

* Small coin, large around 18~20 mm
* Normal coin, large around 23~25 mm
* Large coin, large around 30~33 mm

For what concern the weight can vary based on the material so I'll not listen it here.

If we talk about material we usually have:

* Copper.
* Silver.
* Gold.
* White gold (platinum).

In some cases I saw that other material are used so I limited myself into listing the common ones.

For differentiate the various coins I suppose that each country print a different image on its own coins so that they are different and they become difficult to fake... this is a joke that I saw in various police series where counterfeites discolour paper money of a value and reprint the paper with another value, this way the paper is real and is more difficult know how they fake them.

And now a money topic that is never say in novels... how money is make.

My theory is that is made in the capital and then released from there but in all of this I questioned some things... since I'm not normal I started to give answer to that questions too...

**Q**: A private can make money on its own?

**A**: The process is never explained so if the private have all its need than is possible.

**Q**: Is possible recognize money made by the country and money from a private?

**A**: Again, since the process is never explained and so is unknow if their money have some kind of protection, if they are made good I don't think that someone can see any differences

**Q**: They have some way for see the difference between real and fake?

**A**: Since magic is involved is possible that a spell for identify fake by real may exist but don't really know about it.

**Q**: We really need to know this thing on how money are made in fantasy?

**A**: Not really but since I personally don't like halfbaked things I though to give you this type of infos... ignore them or use them is all your choice... in all of this, I only saw a single novel where the protagonist make money using his power (I say "he" because the story have a male as protagonist)... seriously, of the hundreds of works I saw only a single case.

With this I think I said all about money in novels so now I'll talk about money in games.

In games, "money", is a value that is used for buy various things and the way for obtain it are:

* *Defeat monsters*, if the game is programmed like this, most of the time it is, every monster release a certain quantity of money once destroyed.
* *Found around*, designer leave some money inside containers on the map, an example of this are the money found inside chests.
* *Selling items*.
* *Quest completation*, the player do a job or quest and recive a payment.
* *Story progression*, is possible that money can be obtained with the progression of the story.