6. BANKING AND SECURE TRADING
Banks:
Banks would be built and run by PC's. If you don't trust them, lock your stuff into your house.
The banking system will also make people more 'town-centric'. Medieval life was all about the town. MMOLG life isn't when you have instant communication, the ability to craft anywhere (not that it is needed since much better stuff comes from sticking a sword into a monster) and the banks are all hooked together. In this game, changing a town or even traveling very far from it would be a big deal.
Will societies have their own bank accounts within the world?
If you put money into the bank at JasonTown and then go to CoreyTown, you will note (unless the game is present day or futuristic) that your money is not there. You must go back to JasonTown to withdraw those funds.
You also would get to have a lot of storage area in your home. When the home was being built, the builder (assuming they were competent) would have three choices for doors - ones that are either 'locked' or 'unlocked' (this must be changed using a key, just as in real life), doors that are always locked (a key must be used to get into the door) and ones that may not be entered by anyone except the building owner. If the owner of the house gives his key out to someone who decides to steal all of their stuff, tough. They should complain to the village/town/city ruler, not to Customer Support.
If the game is published as a 'futuristic' one, will they have stock markets? Yes - again they would be player built and run.
Is there secure trade?
I am all about secure trade. If someone hits the 'accept' button on trade and then later discovers that (in their opinion) they were scammed, tough cookies for them. I don't regulate trade between the characters. I would also want to have secure repair trade. How I would do this - the person with say armor that needs repairing (customer) and the armorer (merchant) both click on the repair work table (different worktable than the crafting work table). The customer puts his armor in the 'to be repaired' slot. The armorer then clicks on the 'repair cost?' button and it comes up with a number, lets say 50gp. The 50gp is how much it will cost the merchant to make the repairs. The merchant then says "It will cost 100gp to repair the armor." The customer decides this is a good deal (Crazy Wallace down the street wanted 200gp) and puts 100gp in the window and hits accept. The merchant then hits the 'repair item' button. Boom, the item gets repaired and goes back into the customers inventory and the 135gp (the 50gp spent actually making the repairs go away as does the automatic 10% tax - 15gp in this case - that the Evil Overlord of the city has on all merchant transactions) goes into the merchants pocket. If the customer and merchant wish to get around the 10% tax (being that they are naughty) the customer can merely hand the merchant the armor and hope that the merchant repairs it and gives it back. The merchant will still have to spend the 50gp in repair costs but be saved the 15gp of tax. With high tax rates and large items this could be a substantial amount. The only problem with this approach is that it puts the customer totally at risk. If the merchant then announces that it will cost 500gp to get the armor back or says 'what armor' the customer is totally out of luck. I want to make this part perfectly clear - if anyone is dumb enough to give their stuff to someone else in hopes of getting it back or for money off of some other character, or if they drop something on the ground for whatever reason then TOUGH COOKIES FOR THEM.
For a medieval (or PA) game, I'd also have the coins weigh very little. In real life, most coins were the size of the American dime. Not a lot of weight.