My strong instinct is that you ought to err on the side of comprehensibility. This may mean "$" but it could mean you just write out "credits" every time.
That said, If it's it just "¤" for money, I can keep track of that, especially if the equipment tables all have a "cost" column and then each entry doesn't just say "50" or "1200" but "50¤" or "1200¤." But if I have to remember that "¤" means money and "bruteborns" means space orcs and "Lixua Engine" means FTL drive and a dozen other bits of reskinned jargon, then that adds a big layer to my comprehension.
You can get away with neologisms if they are self-explanatory. For instance, you could have never read the Stars Without Number and see "vacc suit" in an adventure written for that system and instantly know it's a space suit. "Shear rifle" is slightly less obvious, but I would be surprised if you read that term and thought anything other than "some kind of really gnarly directed energy small arms." But a single character can't be self-explanatory unless it's already in wide use, which means it lacks the unfamiliarity you're trying to convey. Most of us know the symbols for dollars, pounds, euros, pesos, and yen, but not the generic symbol for currency.
Incidentally, one issue with the term "sols" is I would hear that and assume it's a unit of time, not a currency. think it means "a 24 hour unit of time used by people who need to know the time and date on Earth but are either in space or on another planet that has days of a different length." Your meaning as currency would be clear in a context like "the salvage is worth a paltry 300 sols" but it would be ambiguous in a context like "passage on the freighter is 30 sols" as that could refer to the length or the cost of the journey.
I don’t like the “§” symbol for the same reason Wilhelm Fitzpatrick doesn’t much like the $ symbol. The § symbol means “section” in U.S. legal notation when referring to statutes, rules, regulations, and so on. (So, 11 U.S.C. § 101 means “Section 101 of Title 11 of the United States Code”.) For most U.S. lawyers or other people familiar with legal writing, they will see § and probably think that—at least momentarily. You want to immerse them in your setting. You do not want to give them another reason to think about work.
Whatever you choose, it needs to be something the players can rapidly jot down on their character sheet. I think that rules out the double "s".
If you have more than one denomination you could adopt the English system from the first half of the 20th century, and use slashes to represent each. I don't remember it exactly, but in general I think it was pounds / shillings / pennies.
Using gp, sp and cp as an example, five gold, two silver and a copper would be 5/2/1. If you have less than 3 denominations present, you know what it is by positioning. So 5 gp would be 5/. 5 sp would be /5/. 5 cp would be /5. It is simple to write, and would likely be entirely novel to your average North American.
If I recall correctly the "$" symbol was actually representative of the pillars of Hercules on the reverse of the Spanish New World silver dollar. So what symbols are on the currency?
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think that in the Spanish translation they went ahead and used capital S as a symbol after the ammount. E. g. "1000 S". It works well enough, it has a little more flavor than the dollar sign, it’s dead easy to type and hard to confuse with anything else (unlikely to get mixed up with the Siemens symbol in an RPG).
Other than that, of the options presented, I like the double-s section symbol. It even has a circle in the center that looks a bit like a sun.
I've always found the use of the dollar sign for currency in non-modern settings (e.g. TFT) to be slightly disruptive to my ability to imagine myself in another time and place, even if it's being stated to stand for something else. So I'd come down in favor of an alternate symbol.
My strong instinct is that you ought to err on the side of comprehensibility. This may mean "$" but it could mean you just write out "credits" every time.
That said, If it's it just "¤" for money, I can keep track of that, especially if the equipment tables all have a "cost" column and then each entry doesn't just say "50" or "1200" but "50¤" or "1200¤." But if I have to remember that "¤" means money and "bruteborns" means space orcs and "Lixua Engine" means FTL drive and a dozen other bits of reskinned jargon, then that adds a big layer to my comprehension.
You can get away with neologisms if they are self-explanatory. For instance, you could have never read the Stars Without Number and see "vacc suit" in an adventure written for that system and instantly know it's a space suit. "Shear rifle" is slightly less obvious, but I would be surprised if you read that term and thought anything other than "some kind of really gnarly directed energy small arms." But a single character can't be self-explanatory unless it's already in wide use, which means it lacks the unfamiliarity you're trying to convey. Most of us know the symbols for dollars, pounds, euros, pesos, and yen, but not the generic symbol for currency.
Incidentally, one issue with the term "sols" is I would hear that and assume it's a unit of time, not a currency. think it means "a 24 hour unit of time used by people who need to know the time and date on Earth but are either in space or on another planet that has days of a different length." Your meaning as currency would be clear in a context like "the salvage is worth a paltry 300 sols" but it would be ambiguous in a context like "passage on the freighter is 30 sols" as that could refer to the length or the cost of the journey.
I don’t like the “§” symbol for the same reason Wilhelm Fitzpatrick doesn’t much like the $ symbol. The § symbol means “section” in U.S. legal notation when referring to statutes, rules, regulations, and so on. (So, 11 U.S.C. § 101 means “Section 101 of Title 11 of the United States Code”.) For most U.S. lawyers or other people familiar with legal writing, they will see § and probably think that—at least momentarily. You want to immerse them in your setting. You do not want to give them another reason to think about work.
Whatever you choose, it needs to be something the players can rapidly jot down on their character sheet. I think that rules out the double "s".
If you have more than one denomination you could adopt the English system from the first half of the 20th century, and use slashes to represent each. I don't remember it exactly, but in general I think it was pounds / shillings / pennies.
Using gp, sp and cp as an example, five gold, two silver and a copper would be 5/2/1. If you have less than 3 denominations present, you know what it is by positioning. So 5 gp would be 5/. 5 sp would be /5/. 5 cp would be /5. It is simple to write, and would likely be entirely novel to your average North American.
If I recall correctly the "$" symbol was actually representative of the pillars of Hercules on the reverse of the Spanish New World silver dollar. So what symbols are on the currency?
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think that in the Spanish translation they went ahead and used capital S as a symbol after the ammount. E. g. "1000 S". It works well enough, it has a little more flavor than the dollar sign, it’s dead easy to type and hard to confuse with anything else (unlikely to get mixed up with the Siemens symbol in an RPG).
Other than that, of the options presented, I like the double-s section symbol. It even has a circle in the center that looks a bit like a sun.
How about ☉ ? The astrological sun and the alchemical gold 😉 https://codepoints.net/U+2609
I've always found the use of the dollar sign for currency in non-modern settings (e.g. TFT) to be slightly disruptive to my ability to imagine myself in another time and place, even if it's being stated to stand for something else. So I'd come down in favor of an alternate symbol.
It'll be a little annoying for online gaming if you have to remember a special key combination to discuss money.