The FAO (food & agriculture) statistics have been broken into two tables:
The ICYB (industrial) statistics have also been broken into two tables:
Showing posts with label Trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trade. Show all posts
Monday, April 23, 2018
Original United Nations Statistics (trade)
The following are production figures from the United Nations, 1988, gathered from the Industrial Commodities Year Book and the Food and Agriculture Organization. I originally used these numbers to build the amount of production of various products in my world, filling in details for products not included in these volumes by painstakingly hunting them down one by one. This, however, gives a good idea of how much raw product the reader may want to include in the trade system they are building.
The FAO (food & agriculture) statistics have been broken into two tables:
The FAO (food & agriculture) statistics have been broken into two tables:
Pricing Equipment (trade)
Once we have obtained prices for undeveloped and manufactured goods, we are ready to use weight and workmanship to create individual prices for goods that would appear on an ordinary equipment list.
This is a very easy process. For example, we have already determined that the cost for a pound of manufactured pottery is 18.685 copper pieces, or approximately 19 c.p. per lb. We need only determine how heavy a given object made of pottery weighs, multiply that against our ratio and then judge for ourselves how carefully worked the object is.
Let's take something very simple: an earthenware pot, the sort of object that might be used every day and be churned out in large numbers, for ordinary use around the house - such as would be used for flour, cookies, buttons and so on. We already know that the pot is fired, as this was part of the process that increased the cost from mere clay to being pottery. We can add that the capacity of this pot is about a pint.
Let's establish the weight of the pot at ½ a pound. Let's also establish that because the pot is very ordinary, the workmanship is 1.0. This makes the cost of our pot equal to 18.685/2*1 (in excel calculation), or 9.343 copper pieces. For the players, we will round that out to 9 c.p. That's a reasonable price; an ordinary household may have half a dozen of such pots. An orc lair might have a hundred or more.
By why limit ourselves to ordinary workmanship? There is such a thing as 'art pottery,' some of which is spectacular in design and color. We can well imagine establishing a set of perameters for pottery of greater workmanship, based on quality of clay (the best material is reserved for the best pots), additions such as handles and lids, color, sculpting, quality of sculpting and so on, so that workmanship for a given piece can be rated as x 2 (fair), x 4 (ornamental), x 8 (fancy), x 16 (artistic), x 32 (quality), x 64 (excellent) and x 128 (exquisite). Thus, a truly exquisite pot (still the same weight) can now be rated at 1,152 c.p. (or about 6 g.p.).
That's nice - but the party isn't likely to get excited about 6 g.p. (though a household of such objects might make someone take notice). Still, we can always enlarge the pot. Our one-pint pot is about 7 inches tall (23 cm); how much would it be worth if it were, say, 14 inches tall?
In such a case, we need to multiply all the dimensions by 2: height, width and thickness of the material (though the latter may not be necessarily true - it is up to us). This would mean our 14-inch tall pottery vessel would be multiplied by 8 times and be worth 48 g.p.
Now, that's something. But let's not stop there. Let's suppose the party stumbles into a big lair and finds that the chieftain sits between two massive pottery urns, each 49 inches tall (about a meter and a half, for all us moderns who aren't familiar with imperial measurements). And let's say that the workmanship is magnificent (x 256). How much would they be worth? From a usual game standard, we're just guessing - but now we don't have to guess. 49 inches in height is 7 times our original pot's size; we're increasing the size in 3 dimensions, so the urns are 343 times as large, or about 172 lbs. each in weight. The base cost, size multiplied by the value of ordinary pottery, is 3,204 c.p. The workmanship, however, increases that value to 820,346 c.p. In my game, that's 4,273 g.p. Those are pots that are very definitely treasure!
By this method, we can logically determine the precise value of any pottery object in a way that is consistent with all other pottery objects. We can do the same with metal goods, horses, leather work, ale or anything we like. We need only establish the difference in "workmanship" between an ordinary ploughhorse and a heavy warhorse to give us a range of possible prices all based on the same original price we generated for horses.
If this isn't precise enough, we only need to create another set of references for a particular kind of metal, horse, leather or beverage, running through the same system we've already built, to produce another set of numbers we can use to price things.
And always remember, the price for one market in our world always has the potential for different prices, both higher and lower. Where is the best place to sell those big pottery urns?
How heavy is something? We have the whole internet to use as a judge. In fact, we can find specific objects on the internet and say, "such and such a pottery jug, in this picture here, weighs this amount and I'm calling the workmanship this." In reverse, the player can present an object, describe its dimension and ask what the price would be and we can work it out in a few seconds, without worrying about whether or not it would 'break the system.'
For those who would be interested in going on the 'net to find the weights for objects, I have a hint: search for 'shipping weight.' Most sites will be very unclear about how much a depicted object weighs, even on sites that are selling things - but those that ship objects are always interested in specifying weight; often distinguishing the difference between shipping weight and 'actual weight.' This can save a lot of hours wandering about trying to determine how much a telescope, a ship anchor or a pair of boots weighs. For historical objects, such as swords, museum sites are often very helpful.
I have priced more than 1,300 objects in this manner; my blog has many examples of equipment tables, some of which do give the exact weights of objects. As I write this, I am upgrading my prices table, reorganizing it to make it easier to expand and to more deeply adjust for the price of an object. I do plan to make this table - in excel - available for users, but only those prepared to invest $10 per month in my patreon account.
We're not done, however. This more or less describes the skeleton of the whole system. Having described it thus far, I can now begin detailing specific elements of the system, such as how to build structures that will calculate trade distances between multiple cities, organize hundreds of different references at the same time, splitting and handling more specific references, calculating out things like different products, adding wages and performed services (from getting a shave to hiring a berth aboard a ship) and so on.
We have a lot of things yet to expand. [placeholder]
See Trade System
This is a very easy process. For example, we have already determined that the cost for a pound of manufactured pottery is 18.685 copper pieces, or approximately 19 c.p. per lb. We need only determine how heavy a given object made of pottery weighs, multiply that against our ratio and then judge for ourselves how carefully worked the object is.
Let's take something very simple: an earthenware pot, the sort of object that might be used every day and be churned out in large numbers, for ordinary use around the house - such as would be used for flour, cookies, buttons and so on. We already know that the pot is fired, as this was part of the process that increased the cost from mere clay to being pottery. We can add that the capacity of this pot is about a pint.
Let's establish the weight of the pot at ½ a pound. Let's also establish that because the pot is very ordinary, the workmanship is 1.0. This makes the cost of our pot equal to 18.685/2*1 (in excel calculation), or 9.343 copper pieces. For the players, we will round that out to 9 c.p. That's a reasonable price; an ordinary household may have half a dozen of such pots. An orc lair might have a hundred or more.
By why limit ourselves to ordinary workmanship? There is such a thing as 'art pottery,' some of which is spectacular in design and color. We can well imagine establishing a set of perameters for pottery of greater workmanship, based on quality of clay (the best material is reserved for the best pots), additions such as handles and lids, color, sculpting, quality of sculpting and so on, so that workmanship for a given piece can be rated as x 2 (fair), x 4 (ornamental), x 8 (fancy), x 16 (artistic), x 32 (quality), x 64 (excellent) and x 128 (exquisite). Thus, a truly exquisite pot (still the same weight) can now be rated at 1,152 c.p. (or about 6 g.p.).
That's nice - but the party isn't likely to get excited about 6 g.p. (though a household of such objects might make someone take notice). Still, we can always enlarge the pot. Our one-pint pot is about 7 inches tall (23 cm); how much would it be worth if it were, say, 14 inches tall?
In such a case, we need to multiply all the dimensions by 2: height, width and thickness of the material (though the latter may not be necessarily true - it is up to us). This would mean our 14-inch tall pottery vessel would be multiplied by 8 times and be worth 48 g.p.
Now, that's something. But let's not stop there. Let's suppose the party stumbles into a big lair and finds that the chieftain sits between two massive pottery urns, each 49 inches tall (about a meter and a half, for all us moderns who aren't familiar with imperial measurements). And let's say that the workmanship is magnificent (x 256). How much would they be worth? From a usual game standard, we're just guessing - but now we don't have to guess. 49 inches in height is 7 times our original pot's size; we're increasing the size in 3 dimensions, so the urns are 343 times as large, or about 172 lbs. each in weight. The base cost, size multiplied by the value of ordinary pottery, is 3,204 c.p. The workmanship, however, increases that value to 820,346 c.p. In my game, that's 4,273 g.p. Those are pots that are very definitely treasure!
By this method, we can logically determine the precise value of any pottery object in a way that is consistent with all other pottery objects. We can do the same with metal goods, horses, leather work, ale or anything we like. We need only establish the difference in "workmanship" between an ordinary ploughhorse and a heavy warhorse to give us a range of possible prices all based on the same original price we generated for horses.
If this isn't precise enough, we only need to create another set of references for a particular kind of metal, horse, leather or beverage, running through the same system we've already built, to produce another set of numbers we can use to price things.
And always remember, the price for one market in our world always has the potential for different prices, both higher and lower. Where is the best place to sell those big pottery urns?
How heavy is something? We have the whole internet to use as a judge. In fact, we can find specific objects on the internet and say, "such and such a pottery jug, in this picture here, weighs this amount and I'm calling the workmanship this." In reverse, the player can present an object, describe its dimension and ask what the price would be and we can work it out in a few seconds, without worrying about whether or not it would 'break the system.'
For those who would be interested in going on the 'net to find the weights for objects, I have a hint: search for 'shipping weight.' Most sites will be very unclear about how much a depicted object weighs, even on sites that are selling things - but those that ship objects are always interested in specifying weight; often distinguishing the difference between shipping weight and 'actual weight.' This can save a lot of hours wandering about trying to determine how much a telescope, a ship anchor or a pair of boots weighs. For historical objects, such as swords, museum sites are often very helpful.
I have priced more than 1,300 objects in this manner; my blog has many examples of equipment tables, some of which do give the exact weights of objects. As I write this, I am upgrading my prices table, reorganizing it to make it easier to expand and to more deeply adjust for the price of an object. I do plan to make this table - in excel - available for users, but only those prepared to invest $10 per month in my patreon account.
We're not done, however. This more or less describes the skeleton of the whole system. Having described it thus far, I can now begin detailing specific elements of the system, such as how to build structures that will calculate trade distances between multiple cities, organize hundreds of different references at the same time, splitting and handling more specific references, calculating out things like different products, adding wages and performed services (from getting a shave to hiring a berth aboard a ship) and so on.
We have a lot of things yet to expand. [placeholder]
See Trade System
Manufactured Goods (trade)
Goods that are manufactured have their prices based upon the value of the original raw material plus labour. It is less important how much of a particular product exists (chasing the supply and demand model) that it is to ascertain how much more valuable the product is to the worker after labour has been added.
The synthesis of labour and raw material cost is achieved through a formula - which we will, as with undeveloped goods, use excel to calculate. There are two processes in which this formula applies, which I shall call one-for-one and extraction. In all cases, I will continue to use Marzabol numbers, though of course the same process applies for whatever market we're calculating for.
This means that we can say, approximately, that one pound of unprocessed ore will, once labour is added, produce one pound of processed ore. Similarly, since the amount of clay that is made into pottery isn't lost in the process, we can say one pound of pottery equals one pound of clay plus labour. This isn't strictly true, of course - there is always waste. It isn't worth our accounting for it, however, so we can discount the waste as not being counted either before or after processing.
In each case, we need to determine the total cost of all unprocessed material necessary before we can determine its final price. For example, it takes 2.6 oz. of grapes (+.47 oz. of sugar) to make 1 fluid ounce of wine (the internet can provide all sorts of detail on this, with varying amounts for different wines). We don't have sugar in our system, so we're not going to overlook it for now, but if we did add sugar we would want to account for all materials.
For Marzarbol, we determined that grapes were 42.16 c.p. per lb, or 2.635 c.p. per ounce. This means to make a fluid ounce of wine our starting raw materials will cost 6.943 c.p.
Conversely, let's consider sheep. Using research from medieval times (sorry, I did not bother to save the source - I did not need to, I'm not writing a university thesis), an average sheep produced about 26.45 oz. of 'greasy' wool per year. A modern sheep produces much more, but it has the benefit of understanding genetics and careful breeding. Such things did not exist 400 years ago.
We can therefore set the initial value of wool as 1/26.45th of a sheep. After all, the sheep isn't doing anything else but producing wool so this is a fair equivalent. When we slaughter the sheep, we can use the same calculation to determine the price of its meat. Our price for a sheep in Marzarbol was 54.36 c.p., so our base price for greasy wool is 2.055 c.p. per ounce.
Let's use this last to get a price for refining wool.
Note that I have created this new table right underneath the old one. This way, I can have cell C23 = cell L16 - so that if I change the number of references for sheep it automatically recalculates the cost for clean wool, as shown. In time we will create a table that keeps track of all our references - but as ever, we leave that for another day.
The fewer the number of references for wool, the more expensive the labour will be. If we consider Crow's Nest, where the number of references for wool is only 0.2, the increase in the cost of labour would make the final price six times the original - and this would be the selling price in Crow's Nest, regardless of whether the cloth is produced there or brought from Marzarbol. Always assume that the price in a given market already accounts for things like demands, competition and so on! Trying to adjust further for these things will only spoil the elegance of the system.
Very well. We can now determine the cost for cloth in precisely the same way. Cloth is based on wool just as wool is based on sheep - except that we use cloth references instead of wool references. Once again, cloth has 1 reference, so the result is the same: the price of cloth is double that of clean wool:
Like the wool from sheep or the fluid ounces from the grapes above, there are various distillations that have to be tracked down one by one (if earth-like accuracy is sought for; otherwise, an individual user can make up numbers as necessary). Below is a list of prices calculated for Marzarbol based on the information accumulated thus far in the tutorial. As before, I'm including an excel table that can be downloaded so that the various calculations can be examined.
In time I will be addressing the problem of adding new data to the above table (since at the moment it would be painstaking to add new references individually), but before we get there, we want to move on to the pricing table: how to determine the price of individual items on our equipment table.
See Trade System
The synthesis of labour and raw material cost is achieved through a formula - which we will, as with undeveloped goods, use excel to calculate. There are two processes in which this formula applies, which I shall call one-for-one and extraction. In all cases, I will continue to use Marzabol numbers, though of course the same process applies for whatever market we're calculating for.
One-for-One Process
This describes a situation where end result from processing equals the amount of goods produced. For example, it may be remembered from describing the quantity of goods that I wrote that the weight of 'ore' described the metal content only - waste rock is not counted (there are ways of calculating how much of this there would be, for mining purposes, but that is not important to our purposes right now; I will address this later).This means that we can say, approximately, that one pound of unprocessed ore will, once labour is added, produce one pound of processed ore. Similarly, since the amount of clay that is made into pottery isn't lost in the process, we can say one pound of pottery equals one pound of clay plus labour. This isn't strictly true, of course - there is always waste. It isn't worth our accounting for it, however, so we can discount the waste as not being counted either before or after processing.
Extraction Process
This describes a situation where the amount of material manufactured differs from the original source. There is a great variance to how this can manifest. For example, how many sheep does it take to produce a ton of wool? How much meat exists in a cow or a sheep? How much grain does it take to produce a gallon of beer? How many grapes does it take to make a bottle of wine?In each case, we need to determine the total cost of all unprocessed material necessary before we can determine its final price. For example, it takes 2.6 oz. of grapes (+.47 oz. of sugar) to make 1 fluid ounce of wine (the internet can provide all sorts of detail on this, with varying amounts for different wines). We don't have sugar in our system, so we're not going to overlook it for now, but if we did add sugar we would want to account for all materials.
For Marzarbol, we determined that grapes were 42.16 c.p. per lb, or 2.635 c.p. per ounce. This means to make a fluid ounce of wine our starting raw materials will cost 6.943 c.p.
Conversely, let's consider sheep. Using research from medieval times (sorry, I did not bother to save the source - I did not need to, I'm not writing a university thesis), an average sheep produced about 26.45 oz. of 'greasy' wool per year. A modern sheep produces much more, but it has the benefit of understanding genetics and careful breeding. Such things did not exist 400 years ago.
We can therefore set the initial value of wool as 1/26.45th of a sheep. After all, the sheep isn't doing anything else but producing wool so this is a fair equivalent. When we slaughter the sheep, we can use the same calculation to determine the price of its meat. Our price for a sheep in Marzarbol was 54.36 c.p., so our base price for greasy wool is 2.055 c.p. per ounce.
Let's use this last to get a price for refining wool.
Making Wool Cloth
There are two steps towards making cloth, which we will later use to make garments for the players. The first is the process greasy wool cut from the sheep into clean, carded wool that is ready for the spinning wheel. The calculation for doing this is to take our cost for greasy wool obtained from sheep (2.055 c.p./oz.) and divide it by the total references in Marzarbol (1 reference). The product of this calculation is the labour cost. This cost is thus added back to the original cost for greasy wool, making clean wool worth 4.11 c.p./oz. In excel I make a small table that looks like this:
Note that I have created this new table right underneath the old one. This way, I can have cell C23 = cell L16 - so that if I change the number of references for sheep it automatically recalculates the cost for clean wool, as shown. In time we will create a table that keeps track of all our references - but as ever, we leave that for another day.
The fewer the number of references for wool, the more expensive the labour will be. If we consider Crow's Nest, where the number of references for wool is only 0.2, the increase in the cost of labour would make the final price six times the original - and this would be the selling price in Crow's Nest, regardless of whether the cloth is produced there or brought from Marzarbol. Always assume that the price in a given market already accounts for things like demands, competition and so on! Trying to adjust further for these things will only spoil the elegance of the system.
Very well. We can now determine the cost for cloth in precisely the same way. Cloth is based on wool just as wool is based on sheep - except that we use cloth references instead of wool references. Once again, cloth has 1 reference, so the result is the same: the price of cloth is double that of clean wool:
Like the wool from sheep or the fluid ounces from the grapes above, there are various distillations that have to be tracked down one by one (if earth-like accuracy is sought for; otherwise, an individual user can make up numbers as necessary). Below is a list of prices calculated for Marzarbol based on the information accumulated thus far in the tutorial. As before, I'm including an excel table that can be downloaded so that the various calculations can be examined.
In time I will be addressing the problem of adding new data to the above table (since at the moment it would be painstaking to add new references individually), but before we get there, we want to move on to the pricing table: how to determine the price of individual items on our equipment table.
See Trade System
Transport (trade)
Includes instructions for creating roads, determining shipping distances and making adjustments to references according to those distances.
As before, we begin with a map of Pon, adjusted by adding a road from the Heap in the Hills to Crow's Nest. When making up our mind where a road goes, we want to be sure and choose hexes that fit with how people would travel the distance if no road existed. In historical times, the path beaten by feet and cart tracks would always predate the eventual construction of the road; thus "the shortest distance" is always what is most convenient for travel, never the shortest distance between two places.
The road from Heap to Marzarbol swings around the edge of Pon's southern mountains, so that the distance is four hexes, not three. The terrain between Crow's Nest and Marzarbol is forest and plain, so it is easy enough to carve a road that follows more or less a straight line.
Eventually, we can create roads that will take us to other markets - Adeese, Groat, Basimar and so on - but for now we will only want to create roads that we know will be used in the trade sphere we have developed thus far. Trying to build a single system for the whole world will be impractical and will take more time than most people have - our primary goal is to get prices on the board as soon as possible. When other markets (and references) are added, it may adjust the first prices we create, but as this will be done automatically (as we shall see in good time), we needn't concern ourselves with this right now.
Consider the 2 references of cattle that we have assigned to the Heap in the Hills. We know that this represents 12,800 cattle. For the sake of the system, we can imagine that these are the cattle that exist around the Heap that are available for sale. Of course, some of these cattle can be sold more than once; so that in our system we can imagine that these cattle can represent many more cattle in terms of sales - and that the sales (and resales) in markets other than Heap are fractions of the local availability adjusted by distance.
The distance between Heap and Marzarbol is, as we've said, 4 hexes. We want to think of this in terms of 4 days travel - and to this 4 days we want to add 1 day for the actual organization of the good (in this case, cattle) in Heap. Thus, when considering the availability of cattle in Heap as compared to Marzarbol, we would divide the number of references and the number of cattle by 1 in heap and by 5 in Marzarbol.
For simplicity sake, we'll just compare references. There are thus 2 references for cattle in Heap and 0.4 references for cattle in Marzarbol.
Now we want to know how much cattle is available in Crow's Nest. Once again, 4 hexes separate Marzarbol from Crow's Nest - however, the traders in Marzarbol will want to take their cut; and there will be road costs and various other fees that will be incorporated from taking our goods through Marzarbol. Therefore, we will want to add 1 more day in adjustment for travel. This means that while it is only 8 days travel from Heap to Marzarbol, in terms of trade it counts as 10 days. This will give us 0.2 total references for cattle in Crow's Nest. The total references for all three markets is 2.6, more than what we started with (but remember, resales happen).
Now let's look at something that comes from two different places: fish. We have 1 reference for fish coming from Crow's Nest and 1 reference coming from Marzarbol. In addition to that reference, both markets import fish from the other market (the fish may be different species in each town, encouraging an exchange, or it may simply be both markets encouraging supply). We know that the distance between these two markets is 5 hexes (including the organizing day), so each exports 0.2 fish back and forth between them. That makes the total references for both Marzarbol and Crow's Nest to be 1.2.
Both, in turn, ship fish to Heap (we can presume whatever arrives in Heap has been dried just long enough to survive the length of journey or that it represents an amount of fresh fish that is caught in local ponds around Heap - either can be seen as a way of accounting for Heap's access to fish). Marzarbol ships the same amount of fish to Heap as it does to Crow's Nest, as it still counts as 5 hexes; Crow's Nest counts as 10 hexes, with the Marzarbol pause. Thus the total amount of fish references in Heap, together, is 0.3.
Using this system, we can make a new table that shows the references for each market adjusted for distance (both raw and manufactured goods), as shown on the right.
We can also compare the amount of references originating in a market and compare it to imports. Crow's Nest (as seen here) produced 8 references but it imports 4 more. Marzarbol produces 15 and imports 3.6. The Heap in the Hills produces 10 and imports 3.8. These slight differences pile up as more and more markets are added to the system.
Our next two steps will be to translate these numbers into actual general prices that can be paid by the players. First, by calculating raw material prices, thereafter by calculating manufactured prices - the steps are different, as the reader will see.
See Trade System
Creating Roads
The road from Heap to Marzarbol swings around the edge of Pon's southern mountains, so that the distance is four hexes, not three. The terrain between Crow's Nest and Marzarbol is forest and plain, so it is easy enough to carve a road that follows more or less a straight line.
Eventually, we can create roads that will take us to other markets - Adeese, Groat, Basimar and so on - but for now we will only want to create roads that we know will be used in the trade sphere we have developed thus far. Trying to build a single system for the whole world will be impractical and will take more time than most people have - our primary goal is to get prices on the board as soon as possible. When other markets (and references) are added, it may adjust the first prices we create, but as this will be done automatically (as we shall see in good time), we needn't concern ourselves with this right now.
Shipping Distances
While it may seem that the best method for determining the difference in prices from place to place would be to calculate the cost of using a wagon to transport a set weight of goods, plus time, plus cost for labor and so on, this would be needlessly fiddling in designing what can be a straightforward methodology.Consider the 2 references of cattle that we have assigned to the Heap in the Hills. We know that this represents 12,800 cattle. For the sake of the system, we can imagine that these are the cattle that exist around the Heap that are available for sale. Of course, some of these cattle can be sold more than once; so that in our system we can imagine that these cattle can represent many more cattle in terms of sales - and that the sales (and resales) in markets other than Heap are fractions of the local availability adjusted by distance.
The distance between Heap and Marzarbol is, as we've said, 4 hexes. We want to think of this in terms of 4 days travel - and to this 4 days we want to add 1 day for the actual organization of the good (in this case, cattle) in Heap. Thus, when considering the availability of cattle in Heap as compared to Marzarbol, we would divide the number of references and the number of cattle by 1 in heap and by 5 in Marzarbol.
For simplicity sake, we'll just compare references. There are thus 2 references for cattle in Heap and 0.4 references for cattle in Marzarbol.
Now we want to know how much cattle is available in Crow's Nest. Once again, 4 hexes separate Marzarbol from Crow's Nest - however, the traders in Marzarbol will want to take their cut; and there will be road costs and various other fees that will be incorporated from taking our goods through Marzarbol. Therefore, we will want to add 1 more day in adjustment for travel. This means that while it is only 8 days travel from Heap to Marzarbol, in terms of trade it counts as 10 days. This will give us 0.2 total references for cattle in Crow's Nest. The total references for all three markets is 2.6, more than what we started with (but remember, resales happen).
Now let's look at something that comes from two different places: fish. We have 1 reference for fish coming from Crow's Nest and 1 reference coming from Marzarbol. In addition to that reference, both markets import fish from the other market (the fish may be different species in each town, encouraging an exchange, or it may simply be both markets encouraging supply). We know that the distance between these two markets is 5 hexes (including the organizing day), so each exports 0.2 fish back and forth between them. That makes the total references for both Marzarbol and Crow's Nest to be 1.2.
Using this system, we can make a new table that shows the references for each market adjusted for distance (both raw and manufactured goods), as shown on the right.
We can also compare the amount of references originating in a market and compare it to imports. Crow's Nest (as seen here) produced 8 references but it imports 4 more. Marzarbol produces 15 and imports 3.6. The Heap in the Hills produces 10 and imports 3.8. These slight differences pile up as more and more markets are added to the system.
Our next two steps will be to translate these numbers into actual general prices that can be paid by the players. First, by calculating raw material prices, thereafter by calculating manufactured prices - the steps are different, as the reader will see.
See Trade System
Locating References (trade)
Goods that are traded must originate somewhere in the world. This requires that we make choices as to which goods will exist in given locations, and how important those goods are. We increase the importance of goods by increasing the number of references for that good; this in turn increases the quantity of goods produced, which will cause the price of that good to decrease.
To demonstrate where to place goods, we will need a map, such as the one on the right. This page will be dealing only with the region of Pon, including three centers: Crow's Nest, Marzarbol and Heap in the Hills ("the Heap" for short).
We want to use the map's details: there are five principle environments in Pon: forest (dark green), hills (dull yellow), mountains (brown), plains (dull green, featureless) and scrub (grey). Each should offer clues for where we would want to place the various goods on our list. We want to give this a much thought, as placement will do more than simply designate the origin of the good itself - it will also flesh out the culture and practices of the people living in that area.
We shouldn't assume placement is always obvious. Starting with the raw goods in our list (bricks, cattle, clay, fish, gold, grain, grapes, horses, ores, sheep, spices and timber), we can easily suppose that if there is any fish in Pon, it must be found in the big river, the Wanderer. But do we want there to be anyfish at all? At some future point we are going to certainly place fish in the Sea of Zeti, on the south edge of the map - will we want there to be local fish that conflicts with that trade? Perhaps yes - and at a certain point we may wish to make a distinction between freshwater fish (which would be caught in the river) and saltwater fish (caught in the sea).
Similarly, grapes might be grown on the plain between Marzarbol and Crow's Nest or it may be grown on the south slope of the mountains above the Heap. Wine probably wouldn't be grown on a range known as the 'Mountains of Ice' but the name might be ironic (after all, wine is grown in Swiss valleys between high, icy mountains). Where we place the grapes will make a difference as to what sort of wine is produced. Similarly, beef cattle would be raised on the hills or in the scrub, but dairy cattle would be raised in the forest or on the plain.
We're making an effort to keep this system simple as possible, so let's impose an experimental guideline (one that can be adjusted later, as we wish): let's agree to list 2 references for each raw good: sometimes placing both in one area and sometimes splitting the references up. Furthermore, I'll try to designate the most obvious placements, recognizing that later on we may want to impose changes there, too. Here's a breakdown of the five environments and their probable references:
I've listed the number of references for each good in brackets. This brings us to the next consideration.
However, some places along the Wanderer river are closer to Marzarbol than to Crow's Nest - so it makes sense that the fish caught in the forest and mountain country of the river will make its way to Crow's Nest, while the fish caught down on the plains will be collected at Marzarbol. Similarly, though we've placed all the horses in the hills, there are hills east of Marzarbol, on the edge of the kingdom, and directly south of Crow's Nest, along with the larger region of hills around the Heap.
One way to solve the problem would be to give one reference per hex where there are hills - but while this is easy for placement purposes, it tends to create sameness with regards to the cultures we're creating and unless we cut down the amount of quantity per reference, we'll produce so much product that the players won't much notice a change in price from place to place. Remember: in scarcity there is conflict. Too much of anything and players grow too content to feel any drama.
If we choose to make that small patch of hills east of Marzarbol so special that both horse references originate there, we make it a very critical hex for the Pon's military concerns, we create a patch of localized tremendous wealth and we denude the rest of the kingdom of horses. On the other hand, if we put all the horses around the Heap's hills, we spread the horse culture out somewhat and create drama in the possibility of horse raiding from The Gathering (which is a troll village in the original game this map comes from).
Similar questions arise with clay that comes from the scrubland - does it come from The Scab or from that little patch of scrub northeast of Marzarbol? Does Marzarbol control all the goods of the plains or does the Crow's nest control some of it? And what about the mountains? All three markets have access to those.
So that we can move onto the next step, I'm going to sort the references out and list them in the table below. I'm going to split both the hills and the scrub between Marzarbol and the Heap, give all the plain to Marzarbol, all the forest to Crow's Nest and split the mountains between all three - simply because this seems most obvious. Marzarbol is the capital, so it gets the lion's share. Trade shouldn't expect to balance evenly between the markets - uneven, again, creates tension.
The key first is to reason through how each of these things comes into being. Brewing is made from grains, so it would most likely be made in Marzarbol - but of course grain is shipped into both Crow's Nest and the Heap, so either of them could have developed a brewing culture. Cloth is made from wool, which is in turn made from sheep - which we know are found in both Marzarbol and the Heap. It could be that both markets make wool and that one ships wool to the other to make all the cloth in the kingdom - but we have stipulated only one reference for both. Making 'wool' is much more complicated than merely shearing it; it must be cleaned and pounded and carded - so the raw wool could be collected in Marzarbol to be shipped to the Heap, where it is made into usable wool that is then made into cloth. Or vice versa. It is up to us.
Remember that unlike our culture there was a strong tradition of destroying competition - meaning that not everywhere made the same products like we do in our present day. It takes training to make cloth - and if all the people who can do that training are stolen away and brought under the control of a guild in the Heap in the Hills, it doesn't matter if people in Marzarbol have sheep - they don't know how to properly clean wool and make cloth, and in any case the King wants the guild in the Heap to be happy, so there are actually laws againstcleaning wool in Marzarbol. However little sense that makes to our free enterprise sensibilities, this is how the world once worked - and it is favorable to us as game players - because scarcity builds conflict. So make scarcity, not sameness!
Leather goods, meat and skins come from animals. Metal goods is made from ores, pottery is made from clay and wine is made from grapes. We can make a lot of other products, too, but we're going to restrict ourselves to these, because we only need enough to explain the system.
Below is a breakdown for manufactured references. We don't need to note number of references (it is always 1 for now), so I'll just give a list:
I've put brewing and metal goods into the forest because the fuel from the trees makes the best opportunity for heating the grains and the forges that are necessary. These details matter. It means that although the Crow's Nest mountains produce no meaningful ore, the ore from those mountains that do (around Marzarbol and the Heap) must be hauled to the furnaces and waterwheels of the Border Forest to be processed. So what will the party find on the roads? Wagons full of stone making their way steadily north to dump their valuable loads.
This concludes the placement stage. Our next step will be making roads, determining distances and transport.
See Trade System
We want to use the map's details: there are five principle environments in Pon: forest (dark green), hills (dull yellow), mountains (brown), plains (dull green, featureless) and scrub (grey). Each should offer clues for where we would want to place the various goods on our list. We want to give this a much thought, as placement will do more than simply designate the origin of the good itself - it will also flesh out the culture and practices of the people living in that area.
We shouldn't assume placement is always obvious. Starting with the raw goods in our list (bricks, cattle, clay, fish, gold, grain, grapes, horses, ores, sheep, spices and timber), we can easily suppose that if there is any fish in Pon, it must be found in the big river, the Wanderer. But do we want there to be anyfish at all? At some future point we are going to certainly place fish in the Sea of Zeti, on the south edge of the map - will we want there to be local fish that conflicts with that trade? Perhaps yes - and at a certain point we may wish to make a distinction between freshwater fish (which would be caught in the river) and saltwater fish (caught in the sea).
Similarly, grapes might be grown on the plain between Marzarbol and Crow's Nest or it may be grown on the south slope of the mountains above the Heap. Wine probably wouldn't be grown on a range known as the 'Mountains of Ice' but the name might be ironic (after all, wine is grown in Swiss valleys between high, icy mountains). Where we place the grapes will make a difference as to what sort of wine is produced. Similarly, beef cattle would be raised on the hills or in the scrub, but dairy cattle would be raised in the forest or on the plain.
We're making an effort to keep this system simple as possible, so let's impose an experimental guideline (one that can be adjusted later, as we wish): let's agree to list 2 references for each raw good: sometimes placing both in one area and sometimes splitting the references up. Furthermore, I'll try to designate the most obvious placements, recognizing that later on we may want to impose changes there, too. Here's a breakdown of the five environments and their probable references:
- forest: fish (1), spices (2), timber (2)
- hills: cattle (1), grapes (1), horses (2), sheep (2)
- mountains: bricks (1), gold (2), ores (2)
- plain: bricks (1), fish (1), grain (2), grapes (1)
- scrub: cattle (1), clay (2)
I've listed the number of references for each good in brackets. This brings us to the next consideration.
Who Controls What?
Our next action is to decide which city controls which resource. We must assume that the herders, woodcutters, farmers and so on will have a tendency to bring their goods to specific markets - and that those markets will adapt to service particular industries. For example, since Crow's Nest is in the middle of the Border Forest, we can feel assured that Crow's Nest's market will gather together the timber and spices in Pon.However, some places along the Wanderer river are closer to Marzarbol than to Crow's Nest - so it makes sense that the fish caught in the forest and mountain country of the river will make its way to Crow's Nest, while the fish caught down on the plains will be collected at Marzarbol. Similarly, though we've placed all the horses in the hills, there are hills east of Marzarbol, on the edge of the kingdom, and directly south of Crow's Nest, along with the larger region of hills around the Heap.
One way to solve the problem would be to give one reference per hex where there are hills - but while this is easy for placement purposes, it tends to create sameness with regards to the cultures we're creating and unless we cut down the amount of quantity per reference, we'll produce so much product that the players won't much notice a change in price from place to place. Remember: in scarcity there is conflict. Too much of anything and players grow too content to feel any drama.
Similar questions arise with clay that comes from the scrubland - does it come from The Scab or from that little patch of scrub northeast of Marzarbol? Does Marzarbol control all the goods of the plains or does the Crow's nest control some of it? And what about the mountains? All three markets have access to those.
So that we can move onto the next step, I'm going to sort the references out and list them in the table below. I'm going to split both the hills and the scrub between Marzarbol and the Heap, give all the plain to Marzarbol, all the forest to Crow's Nest and split the mountains between all three - simply because this seems most obvious. Marzarbol is the capital, so it gets the lion's share. Trade shouldn't expect to balance evenly between the markets - uneven, again, creates tension.
Placing Manufactured Goods
This leaves a second group of goods: brewing, cloth, leather goods, meat, metal goods, pottery, skins, wine and wool. While some of these things could be processed in virtually any part of the kingdom, since we're talking a low technology, for simplicity's sake let's simply put each in one of the three markets. For the same reason, let's give each just one reference - again, this can, and will, be adjusted later.The key first is to reason through how each of these things comes into being. Brewing is made from grains, so it would most likely be made in Marzarbol - but of course grain is shipped into both Crow's Nest and the Heap, so either of them could have developed a brewing culture. Cloth is made from wool, which is in turn made from sheep - which we know are found in both Marzarbol and the Heap. It could be that both markets make wool and that one ships wool to the other to make all the cloth in the kingdom - but we have stipulated only one reference for both. Making 'wool' is much more complicated than merely shearing it; it must be cleaned and pounded and carded - so the raw wool could be collected in Marzarbol to be shipped to the Heap, where it is made into usable wool that is then made into cloth. Or vice versa. It is up to us.
Remember that unlike our culture there was a strong tradition of destroying competition - meaning that not everywhere made the same products like we do in our present day. It takes training to make cloth - and if all the people who can do that training are stolen away and brought under the control of a guild in the Heap in the Hills, it doesn't matter if people in Marzarbol have sheep - they don't know how to properly clean wool and make cloth, and in any case the King wants the guild in the Heap to be happy, so there are actually laws againstcleaning wool in Marzarbol. However little sense that makes to our free enterprise sensibilities, this is how the world once worked - and it is favorable to us as game players - because scarcity builds conflict. So make scarcity, not sameness!
Leather goods, meat and skins come from animals. Metal goods is made from ores, pottery is made from clay and wine is made from grapes. We can make a lot of other products, too, but we're going to restrict ourselves to these, because we only need enough to explain the system.
Below is a breakdown for manufactured references. We don't need to note number of references (it is always 1 for now), so I'll just give a list:
- Crow's Nest: brewing, metal goods
- Marzarbol: cloth, pottery, wine, wool
- Heap in the Hills: leather goods, meat, skins
I've put brewing and metal goods into the forest because the fuel from the trees makes the best opportunity for heating the grains and the forges that are necessary. These details matter. It means that although the Crow's Nest mountains produce no meaningful ore, the ore from those mountains that do (around Marzarbol and the Heap) must be hauled to the furnaces and waterwheels of the Border Forest to be processed. So what will the party find on the roads? Wagons full of stone making their way steadily north to dump their valuable loads.
This concludes the placement stage. Our next step will be making roads, determining distances and transport.
See Trade System
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Trade System
In 1986 I began a system that was intended to assign a price to goods and services that would depend on both the origin and the place of purchase to every part of my world. Throughout the years since the methodology for this has been adjusted and altered many times - but since 2002 I have more or less settled on an established scheme intended to produce my original desired results.
However, my system as it stands is designed for use in my game. It is extraordinarily complex and often overwhelms me. To explain this system to others would be difficult, as it consists of hundreds of thousands of pieces of calculation and data amassed over an 18 year period. There is therefore no practicality in trying to walk a person through my system over the internet or even through the means of video. I've tried; I am not a clever enough filmmaker to enable a useful tutorial through these means.
I have therefore decided to attempt to explain my system through a series of articles that would progress outward from this page, to provide a careful, detailed approach to my trade system that other DMs could employ for their worlds.
This content, therefore, only applies to my world in terms of its method. It is not a detailed accounting of my personalized trade framework. Instead, it is much simplified, with an eye to walking the reader through the process of first understanding, then increasing the complexity of the system as far as the user desires.
I expect that it will take time to fully explain all the elements to be incorporated into the whole system. Please be patient and check this page for updates.
This describes the beginner process for creating a trade system. Below, I will begin to describe more advanced features to the system that can be implemented. Be warned: a practical understanding of excel will probably be required for most of what's below. I will add them in no particular order, for as long as I can think of features worth noting.
Resources
However, my system as it stands is designed for use in my game. It is extraordinarily complex and often overwhelms me. To explain this system to others would be difficult, as it consists of hundreds of thousands of pieces of calculation and data amassed over an 18 year period. There is therefore no practicality in trying to walk a person through my system over the internet or even through the means of video. I've tried; I am not a clever enough filmmaker to enable a useful tutorial through these means.
I have therefore decided to attempt to explain my system through a series of articles that would progress outward from this page, to provide a careful, detailed approach to my trade system that other DMs could employ for their worlds.
This content, therefore, only applies to my world in terms of its method. It is not a detailed accounting of my personalized trade framework. Instead, it is much simplified, with an eye to walking the reader through the process of first understanding, then increasing the complexity of the system as far as the user desires.
I expect that it will take time to fully explain all the elements to be incorporated into the whole system. Please be patient and check this page for updates.
Step 1
Creating References: these describe the relation between the good or service produced as a value of quantity and worth. The more often a particular good is described (referred to), the greater the worth of that goods is in relation to all other goods.Step 2
Designating Quantity of Goods: before a price can be determined, it is necessary to determine how much of anything is actually being produced, in weight or in number.Step 3
The process of Locating References: each raw good that we have chosen to include in the trade system must be given a place of origin on the world map; as well, the number of references we wish to add must be determined.Step 4
Details under Transport includes creating roads, shipping distances and effects on adjustments to references in each market.Step 5
Creating Undeveloped Goods Prices: there are two methods for creating prices in the system; the first is to generate the price of materials that are found and as yet unprocessed.Step 6
Adding Manufactured Goods: details the manner in which goods are priced according to both their rarity and the comparative rarity of undeveloped goods being processed. (content pending)Step 7
Pricing Equipment: incorporates weight and workmanship in order to produce individual prices for goods that would appear on any equipment table.This describes the beginner process for creating a trade system. Below, I will begin to describe more advanced features to the system that can be implemented. Be warned: a practical understanding of excel will probably be required for most of what's below. I will add them in no particular order, for as long as I can think of features worth noting.
Advanced Trade Features
Original United Nations StatisticsResources
Sources (trade)
A 'source' indicates the geographical origin of a reference. Sources may be towns and cities, regions, river basins, lakes, seas, plateaus, mountain ranges and so forth. A reference that sources from a wide area is presumed to originate from scattered mines, shops or fields, rather than from a tightly organized guild.
Sources are organized by markets into zones - preferably, there should be one market per zone. As an example, look at the small region of Sanseverino, in Italy, below:
The source table above shows the number of references originating within the Principality of Sanseverino in Southern Italy, a region of about 500 sq.miles located upon the Gulf of Salerno. There are two population centers, the largest by far being Salerno, a large city of 32,815 people. Eboli, in comparison, has only 906 - and notably does not appear in the above table.
This does not mean that Eboli produces nothing. Note that the table includes a line for 'Sanseverino' - this refers to the whole region. We may assume from the table that both Eboli and Sanseverino, as well as tiny rural communities surrounding them, produce cheese, olive oil, wine, paper and so on. Salerno itself also produces foodstuffs (that is, it processes the maize, oats, wheat, fruits and so on of the region), cloth, smelting (making metal from ore), olives and grapes. It also - within the city and the immediately surrounding fields - as many vegetables as the whole rest of the region, shown by the additional 1 reference.
The 'Sele Basin' refers to a river bottom in the region, where additional livestock are raised. And one additional center - not a town or city, San Valentino - makes pitch. Because it has no significant population, San Valentino would be a monastery, tar pit or similar concern.
For convenience, the source table has been color-coded for different kinds of product: green for made foods, blue for textiles, orange for timber and wood products, purple for chemicals, red for metals, yellow for staple products, teal for fruits & vegetables, brown for livestock and blue for fish. As Sanseverino is on sea, the fish would be salt-water fish; were the fish to originate in the Sele Basin, we could presume freshwater.
Sources are organized by markets into zones - preferably, there should be one market per zone. As an example, look at the small region of Sanseverino, in Italy, below:
The source table above shows the number of references originating within the Principality of Sanseverino in Southern Italy, a region of about 500 sq.miles located upon the Gulf of Salerno. There are two population centers, the largest by far being Salerno, a large city of 32,815 people. Eboli, in comparison, has only 906 - and notably does not appear in the above table.
This does not mean that Eboli produces nothing. Note that the table includes a line for 'Sanseverino' - this refers to the whole region. We may assume from the table that both Eboli and Sanseverino, as well as tiny rural communities surrounding them, produce cheese, olive oil, wine, paper and so on. Salerno itself also produces foodstuffs (that is, it processes the maize, oats, wheat, fruits and so on of the region), cloth, smelting (making metal from ore), olives and grapes. It also - within the city and the immediately surrounding fields - as many vegetables as the whole rest of the region, shown by the additional 1 reference.
The 'Sele Basin' refers to a river bottom in the region, where additional livestock are raised. And one additional center - not a town or city, San Valentino - makes pitch. Because it has no significant population, San Valentino would be a monastery, tar pit or similar concern.
For convenience, the source table has been color-coded for different kinds of product: green for made foods, blue for textiles, orange for timber and wood products, purple for chemicals, red for metals, yellow for staple products, teal for fruits & vegetables, brown for livestock and blue for fish. As Sanseverino is on sea, the fish would be salt-water fish; were the fish to originate in the Sele Basin, we could presume freshwater.
Freight (transport)
At present, the cost to ship freight is tagged at 5 times the cost for a night's stay in an inn's private room within the city of embarkation, per ton of goods.
RULES NOT IN EFFECT
This is subject until such time as a notation is added to the trade tables specifying this cost.
See Trade & Equipment
RULES NOT IN EFFECT
This is subject until such time as a notation is added to the trade tables specifying this cost.
See Trade & Equipment
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Traders (social group)
Describes those who act as merchandisers for objects and services that are made by others, as a conduit between artisans and the buying public. Traders do not make things, they buy and sell them. The vocation of a trader is to make profit - to ensure that they make more money from what they sell than the expenditure they are forced to make when they buy. Traders only appear in towns or cities, except under some circumstances: see below.
The status of traders varies from region to region; in middle to low development areas, between 7 and 11, traders tend to be seen as pariahs or parasites of of the social system - there is a distaste among some for those who do not create, but merely sell. In higher tech regions, where investment becomes more common and the raising of capital in order to create infrastructure becomes more important and respected, traders form an integral part of the region's power structure.
There are two common forms of trader: wholesalers, who deal mostly in raw materials, forming the chain between producers and storefronts; and retailers, who sell from a storefront directly to regular customers. A third type, the peddler, acts as a travelling vendor, occasionally dealing in wholesale goods while hawking goods along roads or in small towns and villages. In all three cases, the balance of goods that are bought and sold will not be manufactured items, but raw and natural goods: produce, staple crops, ores, fish, livestock, animal products and such. These are things that are not 'made' and therefore offer the highest rate of return between the producer and the market where they are sold.
During the days, peddlers will be encountered on open roads, and near the village greens of small settlements; they will be very hard to find at night, as they will usually have some safe house along their routes where they can lock up their wares at night. In the open, peddlers will be very distrustful of strangers, especially those who express a willingness to look over their wares, as this is a common ploy to expose what valuables the peddler has. In a public space, the peddler is likely to be more forthcoming.
Peddlers will speak easily of the places where they frequent and will be a font of knowledge about the region, for those who are wise enough to recognize peddlers for this quality. Look for the following motivations in their behavior:
Many peddlers are one-time thieves or assassins who have withdrawn from their old ways or have been cast out. Appearances are deceiving. It is unlikely that a peddler would be above 3rd level, however.
On the whole, traders are less friendly and more profit-driven than artisans, as they exist in a highly competitive business (there are no guilds for traders and no commercial protection generally). They are prepared to abandon their residences if it proves profitable, as they regard money as more valuable than community. They are ready to 'buy' another community if need be. On the whole, then, encounters with traders will be founded on money. Traders will resent player characters who insist upon par when trying to selling items; player characters willing to take a few coins less than par will make a friend of a trader (who will then give them preference in future exchanges, particularly if what the party brought in earlier proved a good sales item).
At best, a retailer is likely to be no higher in level than 4th. Most will be thieves or fighters, though very few may be members of a subversive clergy. A very rare number of store fronts (about 4%) will be fronts for some illegal operation.
Wholesalers act locally, often transferring goods a distance of no more than a few miles from farms or crews working in the hinterland onto the nearest trade routes, where the product is then picked up by other wholesalers who specialize in long distance travel. Some wholesalers exist continuously on the move, moving caravans across the desert, ships across the water, barges up and down rivers or merely along roads from market to market. Other wholesalers never move, setting themselves up in large markets and paying for goods as they arrive, only to then warehouse the goods until they are sold - incrementally, to keep market prices high - to retailers in store fronts. Some wholesalers retain a troop of retailers who sell products at the local bazaar (town market) or stockyards.
Local traders deal in products that have short lives: dairy products, fresh meat, fruits and vegetables. Distance traders tend to deal in hard products that can last weeks in a ship's hold or upon a mule train.
It is probable that any wholesaler encountered will be moving raw materials that, as a body, are worth considerable coin but which are impractical for thieves to steal: ores, cereals grains, hulls full of fresh fish, bricks, barrels of oil or wine, cut timber or some other similar cargo. Even if an individual barrel of ale is worth more than 100 g.p., there would be no practical means of moving it due to its weight and no market to sell it to, since barrels are carefully branded and marked and traders keep careful records for who is entitled to sell wholesale from one place to another (not to mention keeping records for who is on what road in what week). Therefore, most wholesale traders don't keep large retinues of guards to protect their wares - they would be sad for the loss, but it is already understood by all that a group of bandits that attempted to rob a caravan would find themselves in possession of too much of something that carried no value for them. In fact, the less guards a caravan has to protect it, the less likely it will draw attention to itself - and thus a ton of expensive fabric, pottery or dried meat can be moved from city to city safely under hundreds of grain sacks.
When meeting a wholesaler, there will be some mistrust; but if a party is prepared to move along slowly, they will likely be welcome as companions to the caravan or as paying passengers aboard ship or barge.
Wholesalers know a great deal about the trade routes they travel; they know little else about the regions they've been. They are reserved about giving trade information to strangers, as it is a competitive business; however, if the party were to do something of value to a wholesaler, such information may be available.
Because wholesalers aren't interested in selling to customers, they have traders waiting at the end of their journeys for prearranged loads that they are bringing. As such, wholesalers won't sell to just anyone, as this would threaten their trade agreements that will keep them in successful business for years. Players have to arrange with wholesalers in market cities to have goods brought specifically for them (which can be done, saving a lot of money, if the players are prepared to wait). Once a wholesaler feels safe around the players' party and that the party is generous with their own sincerely told story, arrangements can be made if the party wants to do business or even buy into the wholesaler's business.
Depending on the size of a moving caravan or train, travelling wholesalers may be anywhere from 5th to 15th level (as some are monarchs of a sort, leading hundreds of animals and humanoids), as it requires great skill to survive along roads that often pass through wild parts of the world. A local wholesaler, dealing around a town or city, may only be 2nd to 6th level. The master of a wholesaling business permanently at residence in a market will control a thriving business and will have had extensive experience fighting off enemies upon the road in his or her younger days - count these as 8th to 12th level (as they settled for a more comfortable life before becoming the sort of masters who have controlled a caravan all their existence).
See Encounters
The status of traders varies from region to region; in middle to low development areas, between 7 and 11, traders tend to be seen as pariahs or parasites of of the social system - there is a distaste among some for those who do not create, but merely sell. In higher tech regions, where investment becomes more common and the raising of capital in order to create infrastructure becomes more important and respected, traders form an integral part of the region's power structure.
There are two common forms of trader: wholesalers, who deal mostly in raw materials, forming the chain between producers and storefronts; and retailers, who sell from a storefront directly to regular customers. A third type, the peddler, acts as a travelling vendor, occasionally dealing in wholesale goods while hawking goods along roads or in small towns and villages. In all three cases, the balance of goods that are bought and sold will not be manufactured items, but raw and natural goods: produce, staple crops, ores, fish, livestock, animal products and such. These are things that are not 'made' and therefore offer the highest rate of return between the producer and the market where they are sold.
Peddler Encounters
The role of a peddler is a solitary one, a dangerous one also, as to remain commercially viable a peddler must cover a wide territory in order to sell comparatively few wares. The wares themselves cannot be of much value, nor can the cart that peddler uses cannot tempt thieves. A too successful peddler is bound to attract too much of the wrong attention, only to thereafter begin again from scratch or fail to have the wherewithal to continue at all.During the days, peddlers will be encountered on open roads, and near the village greens of small settlements; they will be very hard to find at night, as they will usually have some safe house along their routes where they can lock up their wares at night. In the open, peddlers will be very distrustful of strangers, especially those who express a willingness to look over their wares, as this is a common ploy to expose what valuables the peddler has. In a public space, the peddler is likely to be more forthcoming.
Peddlers will speak easily of the places where they frequent and will be a font of knowledge about the region, for those who are wise enough to recognize peddlers for this quality. Look for the following motivations in their behavior:
- Pressure to make at least some token purchase, preferably something of absolutely no use to anyone, that the peddler acquired while making a barter with a starving someone who possessed nothing else (most manufactured knick knacks a peddler has will be acquired this way).
- A strong resistance to letting a sale get away - food peddlers were often known as 'badgers.'
- Wares of lower quality than would be found in a town or city; armor that will work at one armor class lower than normally associated with a type; weapons that will break easily; all at the same prices one would find in a proper market.
- An acute willingness to participate in petty crime, so long as the peddler's association with the area isn't threatened; this would include things like a potential for fencing small goods, hiding goods or making introductions to less savory individuals the peddler is bound to know.
- A moderate taste or tolerance for gambling, vices and a willingness to dispense "street justice," meaning that a peddler might prove to be more vicious in defense than expected (use of poison, for example).
Retailer Encounters
On the surface, these can resemble artisan encounters - however, a trader is likely to have a much wider view of the world, meaning that they are bound to recognize members of the player party for who and what they are. As such, while selling out of a storefront, a retailer will be more focused towards matching their wares to the particular needs of the customer. If a conversation does arise between the trader and a party member (see artisan for rules regarding this), expect the dialogue to differ. Expect the trader to:- downplay any aspects of creativity or ingenuity that the players have adopted, stressing that a particular item or object for sale would serve the purpose much better (for a reasonable price).
- promote any stereotypes about race, region of orientation, religious orientation and so on when defining the character's intentions to buy anything, showing great surprise if the player does not conform to the convention.
- sell the idea that there is a simpler solution than taking the time to know or understand anything. For example, a trader will argue that a music box is the equivalent of any musical instrument, because it takes less effort to play.
- take a stance that anything that happens in the region fails entirely to take into account the special needs of the buying and selling community.
- treat any large purchase as a virtual bribe regarding any information about the community where the trader dwells (including the potential for giving away state secrets). Make the chance for a given trader to reveal such information a 1% chance per 10 g.p. spent; however, the money spent must be on wares - a trader will straight up refuse an obvious bribe. DM's prerogative what information is revealed, but it must be of substantial interest to the party!
On the whole, traders are less friendly and more profit-driven than artisans, as they exist in a highly competitive business (there are no guilds for traders and no commercial protection generally). They are prepared to abandon their residences if it proves profitable, as they regard money as more valuable than community. They are ready to 'buy' another community if need be. On the whole, then, encounters with traders will be founded on money. Traders will resent player characters who insist upon par when trying to selling items; player characters willing to take a few coins less than par will make a friend of a trader (who will then give them preference in future exchanges, particularly if what the party brought in earlier proved a good sales item).
At best, a retailer is likely to be no higher in level than 4th. Most will be thieves or fighters, though very few may be members of a subversive clergy. A very rare number of store fronts (about 4%) will be fronts for some illegal operation.
Wholesaler Encounters
These are traders who act as enablers to trade. They buy from independent growers, herders, miners and other concerns, then sell to storefront traders - or directly to authorities to support the needs of the military and the building of infrastructure. The most important wholesaler in many parts of the world is the religious monastical system, which pays for items such as wool, salt, grain, produce, hemp or stone, then gets rich transferring this product from rural parts of the world to city and town markets.Wholesalers act locally, often transferring goods a distance of no more than a few miles from farms or crews working in the hinterland onto the nearest trade routes, where the product is then picked up by other wholesalers who specialize in long distance travel. Some wholesalers exist continuously on the move, moving caravans across the desert, ships across the water, barges up and down rivers or merely along roads from market to market. Other wholesalers never move, setting themselves up in large markets and paying for goods as they arrive, only to then warehouse the goods until they are sold - incrementally, to keep market prices high - to retailers in store fronts. Some wholesalers retain a troop of retailers who sell products at the local bazaar (town market) or stockyards.
Local traders deal in products that have short lives: dairy products, fresh meat, fruits and vegetables. Distance traders tend to deal in hard products that can last weeks in a ship's hold or upon a mule train.
It is probable that any wholesaler encountered will be moving raw materials that, as a body, are worth considerable coin but which are impractical for thieves to steal: ores, cereals grains, hulls full of fresh fish, bricks, barrels of oil or wine, cut timber or some other similar cargo. Even if an individual barrel of ale is worth more than 100 g.p., there would be no practical means of moving it due to its weight and no market to sell it to, since barrels are carefully branded and marked and traders keep careful records for who is entitled to sell wholesale from one place to another (not to mention keeping records for who is on what road in what week). Therefore, most wholesale traders don't keep large retinues of guards to protect their wares - they would be sad for the loss, but it is already understood by all that a group of bandits that attempted to rob a caravan would find themselves in possession of too much of something that carried no value for them. In fact, the less guards a caravan has to protect it, the less likely it will draw attention to itself - and thus a ton of expensive fabric, pottery or dried meat can be moved from city to city safely under hundreds of grain sacks.
When meeting a wholesaler, there will be some mistrust; but if a party is prepared to move along slowly, they will likely be welcome as companions to the caravan or as paying passengers aboard ship or barge.
Wholesalers know a great deal about the trade routes they travel; they know little else about the regions they've been. They are reserved about giving trade information to strangers, as it is a competitive business; however, if the party were to do something of value to a wholesaler, such information may be available.
Because wholesalers aren't interested in selling to customers, they have traders waiting at the end of their journeys for prearranged loads that they are bringing. As such, wholesalers won't sell to just anyone, as this would threaten their trade agreements that will keep them in successful business for years. Players have to arrange with wholesalers in market cities to have goods brought specifically for them (which can be done, saving a lot of money, if the players are prepared to wait). Once a wholesaler feels safe around the players' party and that the party is generous with their own sincerely told story, arrangements can be made if the party wants to do business or even buy into the wholesaler's business.
Depending on the size of a moving caravan or train, travelling wholesalers may be anywhere from 5th to 15th level (as some are monarchs of a sort, leading hundreds of animals and humanoids), as it requires great skill to survive along roads that often pass through wild parts of the world. A local wholesaler, dealing around a town or city, may only be 2nd to 6th level. The master of a wholesaling business permanently at residence in a market will control a thriving business and will have had extensive experience fighting off enemies upon the road in his or her younger days - count these as 8th to 12th level (as they settled for a more comfortable life before becoming the sort of masters who have controlled a caravan all their existence).
See Encounters
Friday, March 23, 2018
Trade & Equipment
The following pages are related to trade, distribution of resources and equipment for purchase.
Armor List
Coins
Equipment Notes
Freight
References
Sources
Trade System
Weapons List
See General Index
Armor List
Coins
Equipment Notes
Freight
References
Sources
Trade System
Weapons List
See General Index
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