| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gelcur |
Posted - 17 Apr 2008 : 02:58:43
So I was flipping through the latest City of Splendor resource and found the Goods and Services table. It had listed adjustment prices for both buying and selling of goods at various shops.
Then I got to thinking there is a Trade Routes and Resources map in the FRCS. If something is a resource in an area then it might sell for 90% of the price. If an area is importing an item maybe it goes for 110%. I think I would want to apply similar adjustments to selling items, adjust by 10%.
Obviously in game plot related items would alter these as would the character of the store. I'm hoping players will begin thinking along the lines of, "We're in Vaasa or Damara, gems are cheap maybe we should stock pile a few diamonds."
Has anyone else done something similar to this? If so how did it work out for them? |
| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Jamallo Kreen |
Posted - 18 Apr 2008 : 00:18:58
Have a look at chapter six, "Equipment" in AEG's Mercenaries and the "Cargo" charts and rules in The Free Companies and Pirate Isles for Mongoose's Conan RPG.
Mercenaries gives specific examples of how to carry on such a trade in order to maximize a merc's income.
The Conan RPG "Cargo" system is based upon a chart giving the geographic regions of the Hyborian Age, and the assumption that what is "common" in one area is "uncommon" in another area which doesn't produce it, and transporting the item from the first place to the second yields a ten-fold price increase (from which expenses must be deducted, of course). Items from very far away or a few particularly rare items are "exotic" and if you can buy them in an area where they're "common" or at least "uncommon," and take them almost anyplace else, the price is (if I recall correctly) one hundred-fold. Elephant ivory might be "common" in Zembabwei, but it would be "exotic" in the far north.
One amusing -- and terribly informative and very realistic -- section of "Equipment" in Mercenaries describes the sale of offices and titles, a historically common practice which is today called "corruption." As an example, the "Master of the King's Heneries" might be entitled to claim every brown egg laid by a hen in the king's henhouses, but might have to pay 500 gold pieces for the title and its questionably valuable prerogative. If the "Master of the King's Heneries," however, is entitled to eat at the king's dinner table, too, then the 500 gold might be well spent.
Power of Faerun devotes a great deal of detail to titles, less to their sale, but the recent death of Paul Scofield reminds me of an extremely powerful and moving moment in A Man for All Seasons in which the condemned Thomas More notes that his son-in-law (?), who has just testified against him, is wearing a gold chain of office around his neck. More asks permission to examine it, and when he does, he sees the Red Dragon on the seal and recognizes it as that of the Attorney General for Wales. He then says, softly, but scornfully, "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales?" Clearly, titles may be given for services as well as cash. In European history the value of a title was permanently demonstrated when the one and only English Pope gave the King of England the title of King of Ireland (which the first had no power to bestow and the second had no right to claim) beginning seven hundred years of trouble, which have, nevertheless, been profitable on the whole for the English monarch. I would not put it beyond the Zhentarim to sell titles such as, "Supreme Lord of Waterdeep," and "Greater Overmaster of Sembia" to wealthy and powerful adventurers in order to accomplish a similar destabilization of their rivals and enemies (and, incidentally, keep the rich adventurer occupied well away from Zhentil Keep!).
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