I feel this way too. Gold just loses some of it's mystique when it just turns into D&D dollars or credits or whatever. It also had powerful funerary associations, because it doesn't corrode like other metals - it doesn't rust or change with the passing of time in that way, which is why the ancients buried their dead with it. Even if they probably could never have guessed that Gold is actually produced in the hearts of dying stars, they still understood it as a chthonic element with Plutonic underworld associations. Also the idea of it's malleability as a wrought metal that changes shape and can be worked into many forms. Or even down to the soft sheen that characterizes it (the other part of the 'All that glitters is not gold...' aphorism hehe). Gold throws off light in a way that made it seem magical in an era before electric lamps and overhead fluorescence and whatnot. That's why it was used to adorn temples and churches and priest's vestments. Gold looks very different by candle or torchlight in the dark than it does under harsh modern light, less gaudy and more powerful in the illumination in that way. All that, and then there's the weight, as just the heaviest of heavies. All this is pretty cool lore material that could be mined from the depths and collected down by the river. I think they should use silver as the main stricken coin, and somehow preserve gold as a bit more rare and more special than these games usually do.
