Is there a way to make currency in modern tabletop games feel better or more worthwhile?
In old versions of Dungeons and Dragons, cash was king. You needed Gold to earn XP, so without treasure, you wouldn't level up.
As editions wore on, and that mechanic was removed, the usefulness of gold and treasure seemed to fall by the wayside. The cool weapons you find aren't the result of a shopping trip, but more likely the result of finding it in a cave, or undertaking a quest to get something for a smith or tailor. You dug around for artifacts, and cash was resigned to buying minor magic items, some scrolls, potions, and mundane items. A mule and cart would cover you for a long time, in terms of carrying capacity, and that was a whopping 23 GP investment.
Spellcasting reagents and ammo used to be a sink, but so many tables consider them a pain to track. Hell, there's a feat in 5e that lets you just Have Your Reagents below a certain price point. Expensive reagents for stuff like Resurrection becomes a quest, since you can't really just go "Hey can I buy a 500gp diamond??"
Shadowrun does an ok job with their taxes, like ammo, lifestyle, and hospital costs, but a mage with the Heal spell can offset the hospital cost, and potential downtime spent healing, so you could do multiple jobs in a month before rent came due.
Coin in Blades in the Dark is used to buy extra success and downtime actions so I guess it's important there, but doesn't feel the same working in those smaller increments. 40 coin to the peak retirement... Ok Blades night do it alright. Good job Blades.
Shins in Numenera dont seem particularly useful unless you want to make Artifacts and Cyphers regularly available for sale. The list of stuff you can buy is pretty short. I allowed a player to use Shins as part of an artifact building process. Maybe that's the issue.
Maybe the issue is that currency often relies so much on a GM making work. "What's a bribe amount that works for this that also isn't just negligible", is just one difficulty. How do you make money a pain point for the players where having money is actually important? But maybe the only way to do that is to make it more integral the way Blades does. Make it for more than just Buying Stuff.
I wish getting treasure felt better. I wish getting a cool ruby was fun, instead of going "does this have magic? No? Whatever."
Edit: This also makes the Treasure Hunter archetype less valuable or even viable as a player motivation.
