By Casey Smith, Staff Reviewer

Available at the ENWorld Download Store

Initiative Round

Fantasy Money is an interesting pdf product released in October of last year. While most e-books offer new content like prestige classes, monsters, or whatnot, Fantasy Money is instead a pure visual aid. The product aims to simplify the game by offering a variety of printable cards that represent your character’s hard-earned coinage. Fantasy Money is produced by Juan Navarro (illustratons), Stefan Pietraszak (layout) and ENWorld-proprietor Russell Morrissey (editing). The product retails for $6.95 . . . though I was lucky enough to pick it up during ENWorld’s $1 pdf sale.

The currency cards in Fantasy Money come in a variety of denominations for copper, silver, gold, and platinum, ranging from 1 coin to 10,000. Each type of card has a unique illustration, such as an adventurer, a magic item, or in the case of the 100’s, a dragon. Some are pretty funny, too, such as the mace-wielding gnome standing on the shoulders of an angry ettin. The cards can also be printed with backs, which have the name and weight of the currency (fun fact: 10,000 platinum pieces weigh 200 pounds!). They’re in color, but look sharp printed in black-and-white, too--I printed some in black-and-white on thick colored paper, and they look great. The designers included both small and large sizes of the cards, though I found the smalls to be a little too much so.

Critical Hit

While Fantasy Money is a simple product, it gives a very thorough treatment of its subject matter. The pdf bundle also includes do-it-yourself card trays to hold both sizes of the fantasy dinero. And in case your campaign world features its own strange currency, or you need some one million gp cards for epic-level characters, there’s a blank template so you can make your own.

Critical Fumble

The only real problem with Fantasy Money is the ringer it’ll put your printer cartridge through. While the cards look nice, they’ll also use up a ton of ink, especially if you want to use the large cards.

Coup de Grace

Fantasy Money adds a nice, tactile, boardgame-ish element to your D&D game. You could just use Monopoly money, but that’s not as cool. If you’re tired of erasing a hole in your character sheet, or having your players get extra gp through Enron-style booking, then Fantasy Money is worth checking out.

Final Grade: B