4 Quick Fixes to Currency & Trade in Your Game - Campaign Creator #26
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Currency and Trade. How much to sell for, and how much to buy for, and all the currency involved. We take a look at if we need to mix our currency, the detail we go into, and our ultimate quick fix that will help facilitate your games.
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A low level cattle herding adventure sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
Sounds perfect for a few level 4ish peeps. I can see it being hilarious if you let the players choose their creature, afterall why use cows when there are dinosaurs in the dmg!
Good way to start an adventure, and make a bit of cash to start.
It would be an excellent idea. For one thing you could run them through all kinds of pre planned adventure types to introduce them to the game.
I've actually done that! On multiple occasions, even! It's great because it adds a real reason that random encounters occur. It doesn't even have to be a bunch of orcs looking to do some cattle rustling. Wolves, lions, even larger monster would be satisfied eating a large number of cows.
You also can challenge the players out of their comfortable niches. They can't stay at every inn the pass. Crossing rivers and mountain passes can become treacherous. And unlike most adventures, you can lure your players in with the sunk cost fallacy.
Unlike most adventures, you get the treasure at the start of the adventure. There, great, you get 50 cows. That's 400 gold worth! Give them more than they'd get, really impress them. Now watch as the players start to chew their teeth and count their losses with every cow they lose from encounters and challenges. They still might end up with the expected gold for an adventure at the end, but they'll be mindful of their cows every encounter!
The television show "Rawhide" got several seasons of classic Weird Western TV out of this very premise - it works out better than one might think at first glance! Consider the possibilities of some of these episode descriptions, in a setting where the characters, driving cattle across the Western wilderness from one remote one-horse watering hole to another, might find themselves caught up in plots involving anything from murder mysteries, to conflicts with cattle rustlers or Indians or confederate soldiers, to ghost stories, lost civilizations built by pre-Columbian Druid wizards, gypsy curses, ghost towns, or Bigfoot:
"Gil takes on two brothers as cowhands - a retired gunfighter and the masked kid brother who is determined to follow in his footsteps, which leads to trouble in a small town..."
"Gil is determined to drive the trail across a wide stretch of dry plains, leading to low morale and heightened tensions between the cowhands."
"A disgruntled old rancher and ex-trail boss refuses to let Gil water his thirsty cattle on his land, knowing they will die of thirst before they reach a suitable source of water to supply the full herd."
"The herd is desperately in need of water. Gil is forced to seek out a lake in the "Haunted Hills" which are known to be the home a group of Indians who despise the white man."
"Men representing President Diaz of Mexico want to take one of Gil's men, the son of their biggest enemy, into custody."
"The drovers meet a father and daughter searching the Texan prairie for signs that a druid civilization once lived there."
"An old acquaintance demands Gil's help to capture a mustang before the herd will be allowed through a pass."
"The drovers experience trouble when gypsies visit their camp."
"Jesus, trail wrangler, goes to visit his mother, only to receive a violent reception and claims that his mother is a witch who has cursed the town."
"A group of Confederate soldiers, unaware that the civil war has ended, prepare to stop the trail herd advancing through territory it was ordered to hold."
"Six days without water, Gil is in desperate need of water for the herd, while a Mexican friend tries to fulfill a prophecy."
Each plot suggests its own NPC interactions and skill rolls, most have some pretty obvious possibilities for fights, and it doesn't take much imagination to convert these ideas into a cattle drive in a fantasy setting full of Orcs, Elves, and such instead of Confederates, Mexicans, Indians, or whatever, and then work in the equivalent of a "dungeon" or monster-of-the-week for the PCs to roll dice at, where appropriate....
One major thing you forgot to mention: danger factor. Danger cuts down on the number of people willing to deliver a good, and the number who survive doing so. Delivering food from a farm to the city along a well-guarded road will have a small profit margin. Delivering it when the only route is through orc-infested woods, that's a higher profit margin. And that's your adventure. There's a high demand for X, and the price is high because no one else is willing to travel the route.
Make them guards instead of orcs, and now you're all smugglers!
Oh, also a pretty important idea I got from putanumonit: "risk in itself doesn’t generate high returns, only risk that someone is willing to pay you for, and someone will only pay you to hold risk that is otherwise unavoidable"
@@pablorepetto2759 Yeah. Risk cuts supply. Risk of thievery. Risks of a volatile market. Risk of government seizure. All of that increases the amount people will have to pay your competition for them to be willing to take on that risk. But it doesn't guarantee the good being transported is in high demand.
@@YourFunkiness And what you say has a Major Flaw. It doesnt count "What you, the one who does the Job" want or thinks... If your Client isnt willingly to Pay Extra for all that Risks, because he simply isnt in Need to do so, you never will get that paid.
@@sensen9900 Is there some part of my last comment that doesn't cover that?
"Rats! Rats are eating the wheat!"
I played a merchant ship captain in a Traveller game. I kept an actual account journal. I enjoyed it as I worried over ship payments, passengers, and cargo costs/profits. I may be nuts.
I'm the same way so I end up turning into the group accountant. Which is fine, because I enjoy it, and my group doesn't care because then they don't have to keep track of a bunch of stuff.
I've played GURPS Traveller games where one of the characters had a merchant ship. But we never worried about the accounting side of things. It was just an adventure hook, where a lucrative opportunity got us into an "interesting" situation.
hahahaha. I'm running a Trav game now we all love these kinds of exchange heavy, negotiations.
Some folks, myself included, just enjoy fictional accounting and resource accounting.
I think better "quick fix" solution would be as follows.
• Divide world into zones. (obvious barriers like mountains and oceans make easy zone borders)
• Everything that has no zone specific modifier just buys and sells for the same PHB amount.
• Individual zones get their "abundant" and "rare" resources. (just quickly think or roll like 3 abundant and 3 rare resources for every zone)
• Any abundant resource is 10% cheaper and any rare resource is 10% more expansive in that zone.
• You can also apply extreme circumstances for extreme cases, that make it swing more widely than 10%. Just reserve that for cases where there would be obvious massive imbalance of supply and demand, like water in the middle of a desert.
• If you like, roll d20 each time and on nat 1 no profit is made regardless of zones and circumstance and on nat 20 it's 10% profit where would be none, or double where there is one to be had in the first place.
• If it becomes stale and your players just go trough the same route for too many times, just proclaim the resource they imported as no longer rare, resource they exported as no longer abundant, or just re-roll the abundant/rare chart entirely.
Just wanted to drop by and say:
I love your world anvil tips!
That's very kind of you, thank you. I won't fan-boy but I love your channel :)
Imagine a collaboration between Zee Bashew and Guy 🤔😄
Khjaiit has wares if you have the coin. Not those filthy imperial crowns, though.
*waves hand* Imperial gold will do fine.
@@MrSteveK1138 No, it won't! What, do you think you're some kind of Breton, waving your hand like that?
XD
I... I think I'm going to go watch Spice and Wolf again.
I thought of that too! Love that anime
Watching that has made me really want to play a merchant
Bird Monster i really need to watch it, I've seen amazing fan art and it may me very curious
Oh my gosh yes that is a great idea
Love the wolf chick, but damn that show was so boring. Like it's okay if you're interested in it, but if you're not it's a terrible slog.
I did a quick fix for non-trade focused campaigns. Because inevitably one player will want to turn a profit on the bag of beets they found. I create a shortage of one category of item in each town, and one surplus. So Town A might have a shortage of quality foods (double price for meals), but a surplus of pelts (thus selling for 1/2 price). Town B might have a shortage of raw metals (Double cost for iron, bronze, etc ingots), but a surplus of textiles (half cost fabrics and clothes cost). Town C might have a slight shortage of construction materials (150% cost lumber, stone, etc), but a slight surplus of alcoholic beverages (75% cost of ale, beer, and mead).
Quick, easy, simple, it affects the sell all and move on mentality in the early game, and if someone wants, it is easy enough to tun good foraging/crafting/looting rolls into a slightly higher reward. If they don't care, then it is a nice subtle money sink and town quirk to help with the uniqueness feel of each region. (Of course the Elven town has expensive meat, no one else eats it so it is very special!)
Plus there can easily be a reason for this the Party can investigate (Why is there a surplus of textiles? Why are there so many missing travellers in the region, and a single armed woodsman selling so many clothes and stained fabric scraps?).
As well, I love having roaming trader groups as random encounters. They have no need for coin, they want goods or services in exchange for their products (or maps, or information, or training, or etc). Example trappers who want steel weapons for aid in tracking quarry.
One word: Genius
Really cool, and not so complicated it stops fitting a roleplaying game!
An idea: places with high demand are easy to sell in, places with low demand are hard to sell in. Places with high supply fetch low prices, places with low supply fetch high prices.
For instance, trying to sell rare magical items in a large city or to a mage association fetches good money and is relatively easy (high demand, but low supply). Trying the same in a small town, or a fighter's guild will still net a tidy sum per unit sold (low supply), but finding buyers will be really tough (low demand)
I think that removing the Electrum Piece because it is a weird currency is a missed opportunity in making a more immersive world. So let's say that copper pieces are for your lower class laborers, silver for your craftsfolk, gold for your upper class (Lords, mayors, large business owners, sellswords, adventurers), and platinum for your super wealthy; what happens when say a middle class that makes more money than the craftsfolk but less than the upper class emerges? Electrum pieces.
Maybe Electrum pieces are a product of counterfeiting gold coins, which by the government's decree are supposed to be 24 karat? The merchants have to bite the coins or use acid to figure out if the coins are pure gold or a counterfeit. Some people still use Electrum as currency because it is still a mixture of silver and gold and thus is a precious metal, while others will report you to the guards because you are using illegal coins. Maybe people who have a knack for seeing through a lie are called "acidic" in the area's slang after the test for the purity of the coins.
Maybe Electrum pieces are used for more shady and dubious activities. Maybe an electrum piece is the opening bid for gambling. Maybe it's the standard price of a prostitute for an hour. For example let's say a prostitute works 8 hours for 8 electrum or 4 gp, a wealthy inn stay per day is 2 gp and wealthy meals per day is 8 sp thus giving them a 1 gp and 2 sp profit. Maybe people pay for assassins in electrum because it can't be traced to any particular country.
Make it mean something to your players.
Thing about electrum pieces is they are worth half a gold piece. If you need a coin worth half a gold piece have your king mint half weight gold pieces. Or just cut gold pieces in half.
The upside is that each one weighs half an electrum piece so you can carry twice as many. 😀
Guy, PLEASE keep all your on-screen text on one side with you on the other. You had a pretty important equation there 90% of which was behind you and unreadable.
If you want an "S" for gold pieces I would recommend either "Sovereign" or "Solidus", both of which were real world gold coins.
In your opening cattle drive skit I was expecting the DM to say the players can sell the cows for 4 gold pieces each, because the NPC's will only pay half the value for something the PC's have.
For some reason the end of this video made me think of a D&D version of "Settlers of Catan"
I've got wood for your sheep!
How'd you know I was working my worlds money this weekend?
Just make up a simple system. Such as the CP SP EP GP PP.. I still feel it to be shameful when people don't use Electrum Pieces... After all, Electrum Coins were used in Greece and Rome. However these things should have their values adjusted, after all Electrum coins on Earth was 50% gold and 50% Silver, meaning that if you had 10 silver to 1 gold, 1 electrum should be 7.5 Silver or 750 copper...
Still coinage is a hard thing to deal with, and the simpler the better, the longer the campaign is the more complex it can be, but still, keeping it simple is good.
As owners of a ship or other transport vehicle PCs don't have to get bogged down in the mundane business of trade themselves they just have to offer their services to transport and guard things for merchants between cities. All kinds of crazy adventures can ensue and you don't have to worry much about profit/loss margins outside taking care of the ship.
Yup. Pirates, medicines, stolen goods, thieves, competition, all can add spice to an mercantile campaign.
@@warrenokuma7264 There is a D&D 5e book that recently came out based on this exact thing. It's pretty cool
currently playing Ruins of Azlanti in Pathfinder and, due to my rogue wanting to not do things to get killed, has extensive trade and peace treaties with the various factions around us.
currently we are something of a world wonder, and the DM is having a field day figuring out how a fairly mundane 'murder hobo' kinda series of books have turned into a (in his words) better Kingmaker, and how these alliances will affect the coming final clash
Oo, you gotta tell us more about this; might get me interested in giving the adventure path a looksee again.
Are you sure? I'm happy to write up a lot of this, but I dont want to spoil the game for you if you think your guys may play it.
@@Tillman581 Don't worry about spoilers; I already read the AP through. Also, I don't have anyone to game with anyway. Thanks for being considerate, though.
@@AlgaeNymph Okay, well to start things out, when making our characters we had to come up with reasons as to why we are on this pseudo-one way trip to the colony, most of us were the 'looking for a fresh start' types, some had the ''Ancient Azlant scholar' bit and were making a bee-line. Still more worked for the Pathfinders (Those funding it all). Further, we had to put at least a few skill points into various crafting/profession skills so that we were of use to the colony, made for a bit less min/maxing and added some fun gags.
In the case of my Half-Orc I had him be an orphan, so he was coming here, not to start a new life, but to make one to start with :P He's a rogue, and I gave him ranks in Professions/Crafting architecture and engineering. Personally I thought it was funny as hell that the rogue was designing and building your homes.
Trust me, its fine, nothing to worry about.
Further, I was wanting to game the system a bit, so I picked Sap Adept and decided that, as part of his background, he made sure not to kill, so he wouldn't get in trouble as a child. One thing to kill and rob, another thing to knock out and rob, you get the idea, this matters a LOT later on.
Fast forward to the first sessions, our party consists of my guy. A Sea-Dwarf Barbarian that is our general store operator (came with his wife and two kids), a gingerbread witch Gnome (Baker, of course), an elf Magus who wanted to be a brewer (honey wine, they had apiarist (sp)), our gunslinger Azlanti scholar elf, lastly a half-elf bard who was going to run the pub (lots of NPCs as well to help with the rest of the colony.
First session, we make landfall, to find the original colony (we were the second wave) was like Roanoke, everyone was gone, everything on the line, food on the table, whole bit. While searching we came upon two monkey goblins from a nearby tribe, before the others could kill them, myself and the Witch knocked them out, and found out that only she and I spoke Goblin, so we starting having some fun there...we tied up the goblins and put them in her cauldron (Because of course, she has one) and were discussing the best way to cook them (in goblin) when they came to, after some questioning, and intimidation checks by the Witch, we learned of the place being abandoned, and convinced the goblins of a live and let live (First steps to peace and trade)
Next session we encountered some aquatic critters (Cant remember the name, this was my first Pathfinder campaign) that were prepping to attack, and again, we managed to capture and question them. They were just hungry, and we managed to work out a trade deal with them for land-foods (they could come on land, but not far), dealt with some other issues in the village (a Haunt, few swarms, ETC) and the ship made landfall.
Fast forward a bit more, dealing with some swamp issues, finding out the dry well in town actually had a Ioun stone mine in it, and looking for the old colonists (according to the fish-men, they literally walked off into the water) Exploring further we found some Azlanti ruins that used, for the lack of a better term, holographic tech, and the Goblins had been using it as a rite of passage (brave the ghost and return kinda thing, it was just a recording, they didnt know though) our Scholar took the thing apart, and by then my character had met with a crafter to get a rather minor item made, Engineering Gloves, and starting making obscene use of that to become a better designer of our structures, and to find the true size of structures/ruins, I say this as it comes up a lot in our game.
At one point we are awoken to a terrible cry in the village, to see our Baker with a baby monkey goblin. Seems that when we 'killed their devil' rite of passage, the goblins named our gnome the new trial due to how terrifying she was, this goblin had red fur, and, seeing as how our gnome was a redhead, they deemed it a cursed birth, and offered the child up to her as a sacrifice. They were g oing to kill it (Gnome was going to eat it...gingerbread witch....) but I adopted it and, not trusting my team or their families, put off more gear for myself to make a studded leather baby carrier and take her with me. Her name is Leo, he thought it was a boy for the longest time, as he didn't know how to sex a monkey goblin.
Later we found a Azlinti ruin, a tower that had a lot of magic stuff hidden away, we cleared it and learned of more sites to start to study, as well as more about the earth-fall, given the rules of the settlement, our Magus claimed it as her home.
We had the aquatic race from before return to us, but under peaceful terms (first result of our unexpected mercy in the game) and ask us for help, seems others were being driven mad and eating eachother, and more and more were falling to this, further, if we killed the leader, this one would take over, and garment peace as well as trade deals for some of the things under the waves (more ruins, scouting, resources, ETC). We agreed, so there was our first treaty and second trade rout (considering the mainland, but that was months there and back)
While heading out to the above mentioned encounter, we met a Naga (lvl 12 caster apparently) and while the rest were bickering about how to attack it, I (player) got bored and waved at it.
It waved back.
Seems it was driven from its home by these baddies, she casts waterbreathing on us all, and I manged to trade a few bits of loot I didnt need to her (got some really nice things back...like the little dolphin statue that summons a real one), and, given how she had been treating us, left my little one with her to babysit while we went and dealt with the baddies.
Shes my official babysitter now, and I gave her rings of landwalk and airbreathing, she visits my house a lot now :3
Fast forward, met with a tribe of winged elves that lived on another island, after some tensions (seeing us trade with two 'hostile' races and the Naga moving on land) we set up more trade, and we offer them some of the water-born goods in exchange for their tree-born ones, as well as detailed underwater maps for their ones of the land masses. Found a second tower that they help fly us to and that's the tower I claim as my home (Much to the Magus' ire, player thought that, as the only real arcane caster, he should have all those sites, I pointed out I hadn't even built a house yet, and this one was mine. It's a bit of a walk, but hey, arcane tower with some really unique things in it, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of a caldera lake) as part of the journey back we met a sea hag that had a blinded cyclops in it. Again, I saved the 'evil' monster from our party (Our Magus again, really wanted to murder everything) and paid for a regeneration spell to restore the eye that the Hag took, he lives with me in the tower now, mostly trying to just be calm and recover from the trauma)
@@AlgaeNymph Part 2, in case it doesn't post right.
Jump again, we have learned of some secrets of the towers, namely mine has the array for an ancient Azlanti superweapon in it, and that there seems to be a VERY strong Aboleth (sp) gunning for it, and it, as it's the thing that brought about the earthfall (The old disaster that ended the world, so dangerous something wanted to stop it) Found out the first tower had an inter-planar prison in the basement, thanks to my glove and some translators we released the 'good' enteties, solars and the like, out, and they helped us deal with the demons. We found out the later when we went into an underwater facility that a lot of old Azlanti golems, turns out it was a full factory, and with the help of the bard we we got one back online, seems they held the memories of some of the Azlanti, so now we have a direct connection to the old empire, and seeing as I was one of the main engineers she and the other golems (gave me the command word to shut down the mindless ones, and she helped the others calm down (Originally this was just a straight up fight, DM had some fun ^_^)) are now in my tower, further, we managed to dismantle the old assembly factory for them, and got those up and running back in the tower. Also found a fully functioning observatory from an uninhabited island, given who her god was she wanted to build one, we did one better and brought the whole thing back with us thanks to the golems (and the witches golems, next bit) Aslo got a new roomate in the form of a table-mimic :3
The Witch has also gone down the path of golem-craft, gingerbread men, so now we have the automata/'living' golems, and the gingerbread ones that are all workers, ruining part of the books that would have brought slavers to the island.
We fight and kill the Aboleth, close fight as it used wall of force to really mess with us, nearly died, but now we have rescued those that were being experimented on, seems it was making a new slave race from the old colonists, saved them and worked on the gas it was using to change people (My Orc was exposed, I got the best result, fast healing 1), the others are now with the gill-man colony until we can cure them.
With the help of the Priestess we now have accurate maps of the old Azlanti empire, and knowledge of those techs that they have, at least conceptually. My Orc now has a mission, he wants to find their communications tech and teleportation gates. This makes us skip a whole book, as now we are bypassing things to get to a merfolk city, we, by accident, find a mermaid in trouble (Naga was taking us on an alternate path, as there were a LOT of sharks on the way) and we get in a fight, letting us learn of some issues with the city with some deep-merfolk, turns out she was the daughter of a high up tradeswoman (Yay me!), and with one of my Orc Talents I get an in with the black market, helping them find the deep-merfolk that were messing with their business, while we helped the more legit guilds deal with an assassination plot.
More trade established, and we get the main crystal we need for the teleportation matrix. While we were out the priestess helped get the blueprints of the comms tower put together, and with the first teleportation we get the materials from the mainland to build the tower.
This is around when we learn that there is a 10,000 year old Lich, left over from the Earthfall, who wants the weapon, but before he can move on us, the super-aboleth makes their move and attacks us with faceless stalkers, almost died again, daughter saved me with a healing pot. Stalkers steal the weapon array from the tower (Though, I found out not mine...seems the Magus decided he’d taken it from my tower a while ago...somehow through all my traps and defenders...good job mate...I’m not bitter >_>)
We are gearing up for more attacks, and all out war with a Lich and the super-aboleth, when the Mordenspire Elves show up to take our colony.
Bit of an error...our crafter had been making Lyres of Building (I think that's the name…) to further supplement our manpower, it’s how we built as much as we did. Full walls, auto-crossbows and Ballistae, allies ready, golems, the cyclops which we have put two of those auto-turrets on and armed/armored.
They opted to parlay, this is also the only time I didn't try to talk it out first, as they showed up in force and were landing troops outside the city. Gunslinger (Now captain of the guard) had them all online and ready to rock.
With their coin, they bought out the colony, now we are under them, but given how well we had been doing, they weren’t going to fully take over. This is where the Gunslinger player switches out his character to a Mordenspire Elf caster, as our Magus had to leave the game (work)
The way he traded out his character put us on the path of the Lich, we found his base and moved in, learning more and getting an ‘meeting’ him via a golem he was controlling.
He wasn’t willing to talk. We chased him down and found him in a pocket plane he made that was letting him scry on us from anywhere, also found special cyclops that he was using to predict things for him (This is all DM made up as far as I know, as we had disrupted so much the initial plans from the book with the lich are long gone), we rescue them, and I have three new roommates, those that can ‘see’ for us if needed.
Lich fight didnt end well...he held my Orc and the Barb and threw me through a portal while he fought the others (Still almost killed him, but he jumped in as well when he was about to die, and popped invisibility), others came through the portal for me, and we found ourselves on another planet, an Azlanti colony.
Despite the risks, we raided everything we could for knowledge, library, museum, main records rooms, factories, their teleportation facility, ETC. We were moving to the last place, a mage tower, when we had to fight a trap that was even stopping the Lich, a mirror system that tapped into alt-planes. We had to fight our evil twins in essense. After defeating them the lich showed up and was about to take the item that was being guarded, but my character managed to snatch it first, and we popped some trinkets we had made (while we were trapped, yay Bard crafter!) that got us home.
Found out the item was the power source for the weapon, not knowing what to do with it, but not wanting to risk it being taken again, we made a lot of summonings to get ahold of those Solar from the prison incident and they took it off our hands (Good luck Lich!)
Time jump, we make more deals, sell and use some of the knowledge from the other planet, refocus on the coming battles, my character is offered some nice boons for some trinkets I set up manufacture for and now my daughter may be going to one of the best academies at the capitol...still deciding, she may learn more homeschooling at this point ;)
And we are up to date. Aboleth fight is on the horizion, Lich is pissed and is coming for me personally (May try and make a call to him and talk things out...he wants the Aboleth dead as well...and we are doing a fine job resurrecting his society...so we will see) and our colony is currently a wonder of the wolrd with instant travel, communications (Think Star Wars holographic comms), very good defenses, allies from all ages and realms.
Currently our plans are to get people moving to this new ancient colony, in case things go wrong, seeing about getting the airships they had been making up and running, getting another teleportation matrix up and running for the merfolk (we use it for trade more than people, but there are people), getting the others cured, and trying to keep our families and homes safe.
It’s been a ride...but we are coming to the end soon, and the DM is trying to figure out how this will all work with all the tech and allies. He’s already making plans that, if we want to, we can play our decedents (My monkey goblin daughter, the Barbarian playing one of his kids, ETC), but we aren’t there yet :D
I think he said of the seven (?) books there were, we skipped two lol
Well I have my next encounter now! Conkey riding Gobolds!
This video's existence is why 6e needs to have more on economics than the "hand waves" we've gotten so far. It doesn't need to be excessive, or complicated, to work and bring depth to a game.
The Unprofessional Lurker I mean it’s not like the handbook can set up the supply and demand pressures for every region in every campaign. It falls to the dm and the dm can totally hand wave it if they don’t want to be bothered.
@@derekeastman7771 True, but a better structure for DM's to use as a tool would be nice. I've met people who want a more robust system, but don't have the knowledge/understanding to develop one from scratch. It is an oversight to leave it out of a game system where trade occurs.
Remember, profitable trading attracts bandits and pirates. Protecting your trade route can be a full adventure by itself
If you need another currency on S, especially for gold, the Sovereign seems the superior specimen. :P
Guy: "plus half a donkey"
Me: "er.."
Guy: "half a donkey and half a cow. A conkey"
Me: "..."
I just decided to go full Economicon and my PCs basically don't really count money after their first dragon load (or whatever other large treasure) so generally by level 5/6 basic money stops being a concern and they start needing favors from powerful people or rare resources that don't have a gold value.
Like "We could hire a mercenary corp to distract the armies of the overlord while we get into his teritory!" - "Sure but you will have to march them trough this nobles lands, it's to fight the overlord so he might not mind but you should ask him to be safe."
I once played in a campaign where we all organized an adventurer's guild so we could switch out characters whenever we felt like it. All members had a mothly fee for 'afterlife insurance' to cover the costs of Revivify or Raise Dead Material components. The guild was also owned an adamantine mine and a shipping vessel. We calculated the profits for all of our ventures and kept track of everyone's insurance payments. It was complicated, but rather rewarding.
Take home point: Piracy Pays!
I love deep dives like this; reminds me of "How to make a Castle taking Magic into account?" My players interact with an NPC based on a Ferengi, a Cleric of Prosperity, follower of the Great River. The players have enjoyed his antics, and financial savvy, which so far has been highly profitable!
Been watching your vids for over a year now and I take notes on these. Along with some of the comments, they have helped shape things in my game for all my players. Thank you, keep up the good work.
I have a feeling you'd relish Celenia's system. It's VERY trading-heavy and there's very little coinage around. It's mostly barter and my players love it. They need to stick around towns to let craftsmen to make their stuff on order and they buy and sell wares to transport them around the world when they travel anyway.
It would be really cool if there was a Randomly Generated Economy tool where you can generate a table of Plentiful, Scarce, and similar values where say you get a list of objects that are plentiful meaning you can buy them at reduced cost in a region, vs objects that are scarce meaning you can sell them for higher there, and other relevant information.
Completely random wouldn't work well so it could be algorithmically tied to researched trends with things like climate data and population for the area you want to generate.
I can see it being very feasible to make if someone had the gumption, well, and experience in making generators + wherewithal to effectively research or contact people who'd know the subject well.
I was just starting to think about this for my campaign, great timing with this TH-cam recommendation!
I'm always impressed by the creativity on display in the endcard
Immediately remembered this video once my players asked how much a fishing boat costs (330g) and how much a fish is worth (7s) and how many fish they can carry in the boat (120).
The first, and last, minute of this video, is basically me, whenever a fellow player brings up the subject of economics/trade. I just want to go on adventures, thank you.
I used miniature clay tablets as currency in one location. It frustrated the players at first, but the natives basically threw away gold and silver or used it for decoration. When they discovered this they worked for a small amount of clay tablets and some art/decorations. Most places traded in gold, silver and copper, sometimes prices went up and sometimes they went down, depending on the economy and supply and demand. Trade sometimes happened, too, but not often. Roles determined how well the trade was negotiated. Sometimes the PCs took a bad deal because of how desperate they were for whatever it was they were after. No major time was spent on these things, unless a player took a deeper interest, but that was usually cut short by a need to press forward (I used a time sensitive prophecy to drive the players, which I used to fulfill the prophecy, thanks to their eagerness to prevent it, lol). These things should be for flavor and not the focus on any campaign.
I have a suggested quick fix. It requires a maximum of about 30 minutes of set-up, but that doesn't need to happen with the players present. During play it'll be single digits of SECONDS.
This works for the largest centres of commerce (CoC) for a given setting. Say your want to keep to a scale of trading between cities within one particular nation. You (as the GM) decide upon a manageable number of large cities, and a particular set of trade-able goods (TGs). i would recommend a number less than 10 for each of these. Each CoC is represented behind the GM screen by a small container. Each TG is represented by a particular colour of bead. these beads could represent broad categories (like Weapons, Armour, Food, Magic, Building material, Clothing, etc) , or much narrower (like Broad swords, Bastard swords, Arrows, Cinnamon, Diamond Dust, Saline, Wood, Wool, Silk, etc)
To start with each of the CoC's will have broadly similar economic make-up, but you can shuffle the beads around between them extremely easily. As the players find TGs in the wild, the GM keeps a small set of beads to represent these aside in a player box. If the player buys TGs from a CoC then these are moved from the CoC box to the Player box.
Whenever the Player wishes to sell a given TG to a particular CoC, the GM simply visually compares the colours of the beads in that box to the same colour in the other boxes, and offers a price with a reduction based on this ratio. (the more of a TG that CoC has, the less "in demand" that resource is in that location).
I came up with a very simple solution: Most, if not all places simply take a certain measurement of Silver. Certain places will only accept local coins, but you can melt down your silver at the local Silversmith (Small scale Mint) to the local coinage whenever it’s needed. The cut up bits of old Siver is called Hacksilver.
The only major exceptions to this are in very isolated or poor areas, where lengths of wool are used as currency. And in the most isolated and distant of places, shells, beads, or iron ingots are used instead. A fun test to see how intelligent your players are is to introduce them to a Village which only accepts payments in and only rewards deeds with lengths of wool. The people who argue with you (Not the characters, *you*) about it are the people who’ll cause trouble.
So once upon a time I broke wealth per level so hard my partner who was DMing for me just sat there and sighed... My level six suddenly had a level sixteen's gold...
I had him calculate how much my shop had made while I was away for a month on my alchemist who had dedicated over half her starting money to setting up this tiny hole in the wall shop with goods, a hireling, and guard dog before leaving for the adventure...
This was the incident that made me rethink the RAW for finances in my setting.
Heh, and your enemies did not burn it down? Odd.
@@warrenokuma7264 Most of the cost was the location inside the biggest trade city in the setting, hench why it was so small. Best organized 'police' in the setting are in said city and my shop was too small to be worth risk of robbery, so yeah it'd survived. Admittedly probably because the GM didn't give it a second thought when allowing it.
@@ebonyblack4563 odd, that a business that successful has no competition or your character made no enemies.
@@warrenokuma7264 part GM inexperience and part the RAW numbers being super wonky. This was that character's first adventure and he'd actually low balled me on selling at only like a half dozen items selling per day. Just the numbers verses return on alchemy products is ridicules.
Think how much low level players pour into stuff to make up for lack of spell access and a few what ifs. Hell the cost for creation to profit on sell by RAW is silly for anything. Six~ items in a day is pretty much one maybe two people making a purchase in an alchemy shop, but practically any single item selling paid per day overhead after I'd dropped so much on the shop location and stock.
I was also min maxed for skills with synergy that had been allowed that was individually ruled on in my favor. So again, GM not seeing the potential in what was allowed to pass.
This was fair pay back for when my partner had gotten me to allow a demon on his summoning list that resulted in an atrople being brought into a city by a level eight character, my 'broken' wasn't nearly as destructive as his... And I was making a point that merchant style characters could be viable, but he hadn't believed me. Later we co-oped to adjust some numbers and make a table for crafters and vendors, those numbers turned out much more reasonable over time.
Food for thought. Thank you.
To add, there are some real world market facts that may make international trading easier and realistic.
That is the superpower and default currency.
Today, IRL, the dollar is the default currency of the world. Which is to say that if you want to do business in one country but they don't want your currency, you can exchange for dollars; and then buy what you need from them.
This was done on purpose after WW2, and it was the idea of European nations. Circumstance made the US the best choice.
This was not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Typically it was a nation with economic and/or military influence on an international level. Spanish doubloons and floreines from Florence were gold. While before them was the silver drachmae from Rome.
In the lore you make, it could be a city state on a major trade route, a country with a gold mine, or an empire. Also, IRL, these coins remained the staple default of the international economy even after they fell.
In my fantasy world, I made a ton of lore around the development of money; and most of it is irrelevant for this. 3 metals, copper, silver, and gold were established by a now long since fallen empire. Then I added brass and bronze. The lore goes into local lords debasing the copper currency and more; but what I want to point out is that I have a base value applied to all coins. In world it's called "pents."
The difference between this and everything being GP is that Pents are based on the smallest valued coin.
1brass=1pent; 1bronze=4pents; 1copper=8pents; 1silver=40pents; 1gold=3200pents Why?
It's easy to keep track of the total fortune, and you can have gold be worth a lot. So your PCs can carry their fortunes easily in gold.
Shadiversity did a video on carrying coins. An average pouch can easily hold 200coins and weigh 8 lbs.
So, have three money bags.
Copper for cheap stuff like tankards of ale for the party. In my world a full pouch would hold 1600pents worth of copper.
Silver for larger purchases like horses. A full pouch of silver=8000pents
Lastly, gold is your greater treasure horde and rare find, like platinum in DnD. Pouch=640,000pents condensed to 8 lbs
You can make your 4th "S" be stamps, a cross between mint press coins and fiat stamps for sending letters.
Late to comments section. But I'll throw my hat in.
The trade vs. Adventure dynamic can be solved, I think in a really simple and creative way.
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You don't just go to the wheat dealer and make your trade. Offloading/onloading 100 tons of wheat would take literal DAYS. That'd be a sufficient amount of time for the party to go clear out a goblin horde or rescue the blacksmiths daughter.
I'd argue that a merchant game would make your campaign world wide. Making that sweet GP, chasing down the BBEG, and dodging pirates sounds like a blast.
This "Quick-Fix-Calculation" is just great! I'll use it also for the haggling all the other stuff!
Huzzah for long form videos! Hip hip! Huzzah!
My group(s) use Rolemaster. That game system has a lot of resources to provide price lists, and how to vary prices based on need or oversupply, and how the price can change with haggling skill and knowledge of the various markets and so on... I read them intensely, did some example rolls for myself, and then use that experiment to come up with a fluid and variable economy based on supply, demand, how the buyer or seller views the race and reputation of the adventurer. - - - There are various kingdoms with their own coin weights, but the weights are known and foreign coins are just weighed against local coins and math is done, favoring the locals at all times. - I have not had to bring out my planned trade systems for underwater and underground races, but I have it ready. - - To me, it's about the DM doing the prep to make the transactions sensible for the players, at the detail they wish to be involved in, and keep the rest in your pocket for campaign flavor.
This came at just the right time. Our player wants to play a greedy merchant.
Souls? "Come closer! See what Vulgrim has to offer!"
Souls? That's what evil gods use, we use the scroll economy.
I had a character who by nature wanted to make money buying and selling. The character fit the game, but none of the other players really wanted to get into buying and selling, they all wanted to make money by adventuring. Rather than take time for my character to work the market of every town we hit what we did was designate three hundred pounds of weight in the wagon to inventory. My inventory had a tracked financial value. Each time my character went to work the market the GM would make some rolls and I would have the chance to buy or sell (randomly) a certain value of inventory for a certain price. So for example I could buy 25 gp of inventory for 24 gp, one day and sell 11 for 11.5 the next. As a result the character got to do his thing without stopping the game for everyone else. The GM could curtail the money by simply never letting me sell, and he could always engage my character. And if the party ever needed money I had a big wad of inventory ready to go.
A keeper of the purse, as judas. Wargamers have a baggage train, wagon. If wagon not captured worth more points. With uniforms equipment and booty on wagon as bonus
This video came at the best time! I really needed this! Love your work, thanks so much!
"Do we really need to have an in-depth economy?"
*looks at my villain campaign where my players have their own nation, kick-started the industrial revolution, and are currently fighting a 2-front war*
"Yes, yes we need it."
Fun Fact: My players spent 2 days arguing over who had the patent for a steam engine they had built, and even made a contract.
This would be a fun campaign to listen to. Though I suspect some arguing will have to be edited down.
One way of diversifying the costs of things would be to pick say 2 resources that are high in demand and add 50% to the price for a certain region, pick 2 that are low in demand and make them worth 50% of their original value in that region.
Make those different resources for different regions, and everything else is standard, seems easy enough to me.
If you want to go into more detail you can add more resources to each city or change the percentages.
Like for example, the nation is at war so grain and iron are in high demand and they will pay 200% for it. However, spices, and gems are luxury items that aren't needed so no one will even buy them.
Just an interesting suggestion.
I personally ALWAYS try to trade goods if the option is available. It's super hard to get money otherwise. Especially with a super plot oriented and stingy DM. Even more so if we have access to any type of ship.
You could use inteligence checks for macro level trading routes, too, I guess
This looks like a _very_ good quick fix...
I never did like how much gold currency is floating around in D&D. Silver & copper coins, not gold coins, were the common currency used in ancient & medieval times. Gold was rare and valuable. Finding a treasure chest containing 50 gp should be a really big deal!
Pick one of three
1. Gold coins are tiny
2. Gold coins are just gold plated
3. Gold is more common because of ancient deposits from the Elemental Plane of Earth
@@affsteak3530 Those are all options. But if you prefer changing to a silver standard for a more "medieval" feel to your campaigns, there are quick fixes. You can do simple price conversions in the equipment lists, like multiply all listed prices by 10%. This is equivalent to changing listed prices so 1 gp = 1 sp, 1 sp = 1 cp, and 1 cp = 1/10 cp denomination.
It is true that buying and reselling trade goods will rarely come up. But I imagine something else will come up more often: the selling of monster _byproducts._
Skins/pelts, bones, organs, venom sacs, blood, teeth/claws, spines, scales, etc. If you throw monsters at your party, chances are at least one of them will take the time to start harvesting the remains. Which raises the question of what players can do with them.
Now, for me, I'd like to make use of those fancy Tool Proficiencies, and start making stuff out of said remains. Leatherworker's Tools can be employed to turn all manner of skins into objects, like bags or belts or boots (although that might require Cobbler's Tools instead) or book-bindings. I'm now imagining a wizard PC who struts around in an orc leather jacket, goblin leather pants, Yuan-ti scale boots, and carrying an Illithid leather bound spellbook inside his beholder leather bag of holding.
Regardless of whether the PCs sell the remains raw or craft them into trade goods, though, it leaves us with the same problem: how do you determine what monster byproducts sell for? What is the going rate for raw goblin leather? Is it even legal to sell, if goblinoids are otherwise protected under the law? Who would want to buy the skin of an intelligent (if belligerent) being? Does goblin skin even make for passable leather, compared to that of farm animals? To what degree does damage to the skin itself (almost certain to have been made, in the act of acquiring) affect the sale price?
I worked on salaries. If you took cows 180 miles at 12 miles a day, you want 15 days' pay for it. Non local produce at one step for wholesale would be 25% profit. So you if you know what 15 days pay is, you can work out that the cows have to cost X for it to be worthwhile. That gives you whether you can buy beef or leather somewhere or if it is a luxury good, therefore you transport alternatives. If each step gets a 25% price hike to pay for the middleman you can work out how many middlemen you can support per cow, given the number of cows that would be used up by the population and that the difference between the farm that sells cows and the price in the PHB (ostensibly the peak price, since it would be everywhere the same and though shops would not accept a loss, they'll happily make more profit) is half the price of the PHB, you have four steps: farm->local store->transport hire->distant warehouse->high street retailer. Where there aren't enough people you either had the local farm or you bought on-spec as the transport passed by. Or you did without.
So you got the wages for workers and then players would get that, plus whatever bonus the DM role played into place, either by adventures (divesting robbers of their goods) or by making this a requested urgent delivery with a bonus.
You've inspired me... to add Konkeys and Gobolds to my campaign.
A bit late on the comments. But I love this kind of RP in Elder Scrolls, and is working with likeminded folks to convert good rules like these into our roleplay. Thank you!
As for prices, I take the middle three if 5d6 to roll the price of a good at a location, then the merchant and player roll haggle and the winner gets one point from that 5d6 drop 2 roll in their favor plus another point for every five by which they win the haggle. That final point value divide by 10 is the price percentage of the rulebook listed price.
Recently I played as a wandering merchant and faced with a similar problem: if trading is simply to good, than I have no reason to adventure, if trading is unrpoffitable, than my character doesn't have a reason to be a wandering merchant anymore. Another problem is - you trade goods are dead weight to you until you spend really long time to sell them. While others spend their money to adventure gear, magic potions and another cool stuff, you using you old equipment while trying to move 1000 pants to another part of the world to earn 20 more gold.
I've found one simple solution for those players who just want to play as a merchant but don't want to spend their time on economic minigame. The rule consist of three parts:
1. As long as your transport has a reasonable amount of trade goods, you don't need to pay for your travel: for your food, your animal food, pay traveling fines, pay salaries for workers on this transport and so on. You'll have to spend at least one hour on every trading stop to do your merchant deals (you don't need to roll anything, it's just simulation of your working time). Every time you spend on a trading stop, your DM will ask you, would you like to sell some of your goods hear in exchange for other goods of this place? Mark what amount you have on your sheet.
If your cargo is empty, or if you don't spend any time in trading posts, you'll have to pay for evey travel expenses as usual.
This rule applies to every trading transport: your donkey, your caravan, ship or even a spaceship. What is reasonable amount of goods to have this benefit? I don't know, consult with your DM. My take is 10 gp for a donkey, 50 for a cart, 100 gp for a small vessel and so on.
2. You trading goods are just another way to keep your gold. You can exchange it for real gold in almost any trading post, town or city, or you can just use it instead of a gold, when dealing with merchants and other rich people. You just need to spend a bit of your character time on trading (no rolls required). Don't waste your time trying to calculate exact number of pounds of flower, you just have 20 gp of flower and thats all you need to know. Or 20 gp of salt, cloaks or other stuff. The only two times you need to know exact numbers will be when your first time trying to understand, how much of this stuff your transport can carry. The other time is for story reasons, when you have unusual idea for using your trading goods.
3. Your DM doesn't bother you and you don't bother him with economics stuff, until you have story or roleplay reasons to do that. Use it rarely. For example: you have your salt shipment, but your group has found a rare mine during long days of travel - DM says that if you decide to replace cargo, you will fail your contractor and your relationship with her will suffer, but you'll get more money for the ore. Or you can forget about the ore until another chance to return here, but then you are risking to lose it to another founder. Your DM can reward you with a good deal after adventure (extra money for selling stuff or extra trading goods), hook you on a new adventure with economic difficulties and opportunities. He can just replace some if your standard reward for adventure with a merchant themed reward and thats it.
As you can see, this stuff doesn't take huge time in your game and provides some opportunities for roleplay. It doesn't provide any extra sources of revenue to break the balance, but also doesn't punish you for roleplay and allows some ribbon mechanical benefits.
I began to give players items instead of money in dungeons. Yes some monsters would have some coins. But a lot of the stuff that was there would be items left behind by the original occupants and various items brought by others. Living quarters would have among the "treasure" a silver comb or mirror. An armory would have an ornate set of armor worn by an officer or an ornate weapon used by an officer. Various different other rooms might have a rare plant in an herbalist's room, a rare book in a library, kitchen might have a set of silver ware or porcelain dishes. The point is a lot of the treasure would be items that some PC's would overlook. Or that they would need to transport to a town to find a buyer. I would have the local outfitters merchant fit this role, but only towns were big enough to have one, cities would have many.
And just to spice things up, some outfitters would have deals with the monsters of local dungeons to buy used items from adventurers these monsters killed in exchange for goods, money, and information on adventurers that these monsters could not normally get. Sometimes the adventurers would figure it out, sometimes not.
I actually came up with a more adventure based trade system.
A description of it is that the players are not trading in bulk goods. They are trading in exotics and magic items (a chest of +1 weapons, live wyvern, one of a kind painting from famous artist, etc.). These items are relatively small and VERY valuable. Now the PCs get these "treasures" from NPC contacts that they earned in game. Help a wizard, he can provide a chest of magic items. Meet a king, find he buys wyverns. Etc. Basically these "trading contacts" will sell the PCs a "treasure", and every time you sell them a treasure they can provide their treasure again. Basically trade is not about haggling with no name NPCs, but instead about interacting with important named NPCs.
Now for this to work in game you have to explain to players why they should stick to this system instead of going for builk goods. Basically that it is easier to create level appropriate adventures for this kind of trading and it makes sense that high level adventurers would take on this kind of high risk, high reward trading.
What if, instead of buying, and re-selling the wheat, if they were instead contracted to ship the wheet for a commision?
Nah ignore wheat, go for the high ticket items, and find out what is in demand.
The best way for a DM to encourage trade is to let the players discover arbitrage opportunities themselves. Like in a sandbox campaign, for every town the PCs visit give them a list of local market prices for equipment, food, raw materials, etc. Secretly create wide price differences for one or two items in two towns, & see if the players pick up on it.
Coinage as a concept is all to serve as flavour to characterise a society better.
For 'human' society I tend to just use Copper/Silver for commoners and tradesfolk, silver and gold for nobles, gold and platinum for crown banks. Electrum, the forgotten middle child, is a coin that only Dwarves mint, so that flavours that in a fun way without it being just another currency thats out of place.
As for your quick fix rule, I feel like it streamlines it well. A post-roll justification of "Yes they really want that because its not often it gets shipped over" or "This city will buy it but it actually had something like it already" is INFINITELY simpler than predetermining all of the supply route and their current desires to fit a realistic economic model.
Damn, the depth of economic simulation here means I cannot help but subscribe.
This is the time in the game to introduce one of the original Magic Items: Quick Growing Beans
I wanted to chime in and say howuch I liked Dragon Age: Origins and the economy in that game.
Copper mattered. It was not treated like pennies. By the end game, I only had about 114 gold or something like that and each gold had value.
In D&D, copper is lile a penny, a silver is a dime and a gold is a dollar. In Dragon Age, a copper felt like $10 and a silver like $100+ and a gold like a grand or so.
I recently started to do something similar for a trade module (want really simple and it's for flavour not the aim), really like your ideas and logic.
Money I didn't think about. But the other 'currency' you could have (19 mins in not mentioned really) are jewels, they are a lot more portable and not area specific.
You could also introduce banking. Magic for sending message for account info and deposits or a token or something else. Could make zero cost to remove any annoyance, saying bank get interest from loans of deposits.
one thing of note is gold/silver smiths, historically you could take gold and silver, in either whole form or coin form, and get it melted down into the coinage of the local economy. Ontop of this, certain coins were more valuable, or rather held a value closer to the true value of the metal, due to the coins being viewed as more reliable. Spanish silver was well known for being very reliable in terms of purity and weight, so you knew an authentic spanish silver coin was worth an exact amount, and the same as every other spanish silver coin, and would thus be worth more than a similarly weighted unmarked coin. Furthermore some coins just were worthless in some regions due to politics, so you needed to get the metal reminted to use there, an example of this is how the french, for a time, would deface french coinage due to it being minted with royal figures, and likely many french merchants just wouldnt accept coins with french royals on themif they felt strongly enough about it.
I made a magic item Coin Changer that switches money e.g. 10 cp to 1sp etc and back again, can also change currency types on DM discretion to the equivalent e.g. 10 cp to a bronze bit. Found it was a nice way to get around most things.
I am subscribed! Where are my Goblins??
they were all lost at sea due to pirates.
It's important if it is going to be a crux of the adventure. Having a major merchant or even country only deal in silver is going to make silver potentially more valuable than gold if there is now a shortage of silver available, or perhaps a magician is hoarding a lot of a specific common resource making typical purchases too expensive, or maybe you have cartels dealing underground in illicitly received items and/or certain currencies being forbidden by a new ruler and now it ties into crime and punishment. Otherwise keep it simple. what I tend to do is describe coins for flavor, but just tally them up to GP for ease. Same with items, "you find a finely crafted jade statuette of a pixie worth 25GP" it's up to the player to simply convert into coins right away or maybe use the info to try to haggle better prices to an art dealer perhaps. I think I'd like to play a bit more crunchy where loot, and even how to transport it, are more detailed, but most players don't want anything to do with it... As for the argument that sailing is more profitable than adventuring, well yeah, that's where fleets of pirates, swarms of mermaids, and the occasional kraken come in :) It's up to you as the GM to raise the stakes, most players just want to get rich and powerful
I've found that some players want to know everything about your world, which is ok but they can be extremely frustrating when they keep asking for obscure detail that you never expected anyone to care about (such as where a currency comes from, what your nobles ranks are and what there relations would be called or why aquatic elves are proficient with rapiers when they cannot really produce metals or how they are surviving Sahuagon attacks when they have the same level of technology, lower birth rates and seem to be under the impression that the elves have a constant war with the creatures (last one is very specific as i spent hours trying to explain it to a player once).
For my game, is the specific region, theres 5 major currencies. One of each of the two kingdoms (takes place on an ocean trade route), The sea regions currency (aquatic races and some of the island people), A "universal" currency to make it easier to trade between nations & Orcish currency as there kind there own group. For the most part however do to the relative ease of carry and the fact that they are based on purity and quality the players and others generally just convert there money to gem stones as those have the same general value everywhere (save on the ocean but they generally just trade goods)
TLDR currancy is confusing and sometimes painful, unless thats what the game is based around don't complicate it to much
I made a point of making _Electrum_ my base standard currency, when I began my campaign.
I did homebrew the monetary system a bit, granted.
I wanted GOLD to be viewed by my players as actually VALUABLE, and it made no sense to me to give them 200gp a few sessions in. Plus, for worldbuilding purposes, gold is incredibly rare, whereas electrum was far more obtainable.
Rolling dice for "social combat" is a way to avoid roleplaying. I have replicated talking to one another by _talking to one another_ for over thirty years and it is lots more fun. Take the dice out of that equation and just listen to what arguments the characters make.
Regarding finding a fourth S for your currency set of Shards, Shells, Souls, and gold, if you wanted to go with something historical, you could go with Sous or Sols, which were the French derivation of the Roman Solidus after the collapse of the western empire.
Ah wheat transports.... I remember well when my party decided to take on a wheat shipment across the The Maw (giant hugely deep section of ocean with no islands or safe harbour;just uncertain weather and strange sea beasts). With no foreknowledge of what the kingdom we were going too was currently like;we arrived in the middle of a famine and were hailed as heroes!
Which unfortunately took a turn when the revolting peasant army stormed the docks. That was.... Quite the negotiation.
It ended pretty well all things considered. Me and one other player had evil characters so while we DID hike the price on the wheat (as well as the monstrous "whale meat" we had) we didn't push things so far as to risk over a thousand very angry armed people trying to board us. Good times though,things like that always make trade interesting.
My group sometimes uses characters' jobs/businesses as adventure hooks. But since these things are just adventure hooks and not the focus of the game, and since we use GURPS, we just abstract the job/business side based on the characters' levels of the Wealth advantage. If you spend more points on Wealth, then your character will have more money/toys during the adventure. If you spend fewer points on wealth, or if you take the Poverty disadvantage, then you'll have less money/toys during the adventure. As a GM and as a player, I prefer this level of detail for something that isn't the focus of the game.
I like to give currency of each race a different name, however, it all spends the same. Reason, it allows for plot hooks and mysteries. When the king is killed by a killer who was paid in Elven Gold Ducats, that brings up conclusions which may be true or false. Maybe the Elves did it, or perhaps they are being set up. The only time I use different values are with ancient coins, which may or may not be worth more than the standard currency. This provides another reason to adventure, as well as including some history into the game.
Electrum fell out of use somewhere around 350 BCE, being replaced by silver and to a lesser extent gold. Could be an interesting flavor item for lower tech games.
I think in D&D setting there would be no point in transporting costly goods via boat/airship, since non-dumb wizards guilds/associations/individuals can instantly transport things via TP circles with a little bit of preparation. and it becomes free when upkeep have been done for 1 year.
In the campaign I'm planning I'm using electrum, gold and platinum, one country uses electrum and one uses platinum, but you can still exchange gold for both and use gold for shopping (in most instances). I'm mostly using it as a Tool to emphasize the economic disparity between the two nations. 1g = 5e, 1p = 5g, 1p = 10e
Great video, but the post vid credits clip made me laugh so hard that you earned your sub my friend! Happy trading!
I have Wulframs that can be 100-1000 GP and Tivers (purple cloth notes) that can be worth 1000-10,000 and enchanted metalic tablets that can be worth 30k+ just to keep weight down.
GP across nations is still interchangeable due to its weight. So the value of treasure is "you find 100 GP worth of gold coins" there may 50 large coins or 150 small ones. Most towns will exchange the gold without issue. A small fee may be deductable if yoy want to work that in i guess
I was under the impression that you don't need to convert to different currencies if its commodity money with intrinsic value.
A seller typically isn't going to turn down a pile of gold and silver because it's got the wrong face printed on it unless there is a specific reason to.
I think that if there's a war going on in your game it should be MANDATORY that different factions use different currencies and that one side's currency should be worthless on the other side's territory (except for the frontieer and maybe illycit business). Also a great DM could use the strenght of those currencies to imply it's side strenght on the conflict
Your little equasion during the last part seems really neat.
Although most Paizo/WotC Adventures are pretty narrow in their world scope (worldendingwoes excluded), you could easily adjust the distance in miles to, say, distance in major settlements over etc.
2 halfpennies=1 penc 12 penc=1 shilling 7 shilling =1 pound 13 ponds=1 florins tallysticks= to be determined by the king
1, You haggle the first seller down.
2, Go to a area where cows are in need.
3, Come up with a figure for travel expenses, security, and maintaining cows health.
2B, By feed for the cows.
4, Mark up cows by double (Keystone) which also gives you a bit of haggle room if folks think that is much.
5, Get the bard to do it so they seem pleased with the hustle. (Plus it also keeps them out of trouble, fucking bards)
6, Repeat...
Okay now to go back and see if I did this right.
To consider about exchange rates: a 'hard' currency, or a currency that is held onto a gold standard, or a silver standard, or what have you, can be strongly simplified for exchange. Especially if it is actually *made* of that material. It's value is *precisely* the value of . . . how ever much that amount of that material is worth in that area.
So, you get 5 gold pieces from the Dwarven Kingdom? Great. Those gold pieces will still be worth their amount of gold in that area. Might not buy you as much armor or weapons, but maybe it'll buy you some more wood-works or wines. Take those same gold pieces to the halfling farming village a few more days down the road, and you could buy some grain or beer at a bargain, but be charged quite a premium for books or scrolls and the like.
I love that you did this video ❤
It’s an interesting question; I’ve scratched the gold piece stuff entirely and replaced it with national currencies - with only a single minor currency each.
As for logistics, I work in shipping at a company with one of the largest RoRo fleets in the world, where anything under 30 metric tonnes is seen as “oh, that’s small, we’ll find space for it”. If I need details on shipping values, I just lean over the cubicle divider and ask the pricing department. :-D
Read somewhere the idea where XP from monsters/mission would be converted to gold, and with that you could buy XP, or better items etc. Paladin: "How did you level up so fast?" Cunning Rogue " Well i found this trade route, care for some tithe?"
Great video! It would be really useful if you could upload that document somewhere for reference.
Have you checked out Stars Without Numbers' Suns of Gold supplement? It's a whole book just focusing on mercantilism that could probably be easily ported to a fantasy setting. It deals with prices of commodities, market volatility, and even random happenstance that can mess with PC's perfect plans...
I solely use Gold Pieces. I may give them different names, 'crowns' , 'florins' whatever you want to call them. Makes things so much easier, and my players have never once asked me to use different currencies.
one problem I have with many rpg-econ systems is that they are half-arsed. You either need a complex, realistic thought through system to simulate your players being merchants ... or just a simple indicator of your players buying power, maybe region locked(as you mentioned). One player of mine always complains when I ask for copper, because he "only has Gold", to which I respond, that I do not care, just jott off 0.01 gold. You never need/want the inbetween, either your players get excited over eco-sims, or they just need a metric on how rich they are. middle of the road systems will only invoke the ire of both groups, nobody enjoys the hassle of currency conversion without the prospect of brain earned profits and/or realistic eco-sim.
Is it possible to get that word doc with all the values you've worked out?
I like your conclusions, just abstract it. That was my conclusion too. The players should hire a beauromancer to run this stuff for them. If everyone really wants to do this, then run it.
Side note, look up hyperinflation in Spain in the 1500's, I think. Spain brought in so much gold it became virtually valueless, and silver was worth more.
When metal coins were the common monetary unit people spending more than a few copper or silver just weighed gold coins. No one needed to convert coins because they weren't counting them. It's what made coin clipping a big problem, people would accept one or two coins at a time for a payment then when they wanted to make a large purchase discover they didn't have as much money as they thought and no way to be sure who was robbing them (and legally speaking, the government)
Why could you not have a Trademaster as part of the crew of the ship or caravan. Then that NPC determines what cargo is hauled letting the Party of Adventures, focus on the adventure. Then you roll against a DC 10. Give the Trademaster a +1 to the roll. Add bonuses for distance traveled, pirate attacks survived, etc. Then subtract the net result from the DC 10, and then divide by 2. Example the trademaster rolls a 12, which becomes a 13. The Gm adds a +2 to the result for the distance (there was a pirate attack) so the total result is 14. (15-10)/2=2 (rounded up). The ship sees a 20% profit.
Thank you for the video. From now on electrum will be in every single one of my sessions.
The Elves, the Dwarves, that Bunyip named Tom, all have their own currency. Tom only trades in sandal thongs. Tom is weird.
My group , after very low levels, gave copper and silver to various pilgrim groups or temples