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Dr.Epic
2010-09-14, 11:14 PM
Not for the whole world, but just some small, rural parts of the world that are mostly independent from the rest of society. Just thought it would be interesting to have some places like this in a game. You know, for some diversity and creativity.

The Mentalist
2010-09-14, 11:22 PM
This is mostly going to be roleplay. I'd also recommend basically giving gold no value but items that the other party would find useful are full price instead of half price sale but only in goods.

Dr.Epic
2010-09-16, 01:55 PM
Just bumping.

WarKitty
2010-09-16, 01:58 PM
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm for common trade goods.

I'd recommend using a man-hour system to start out, with ratings for different man-hours depending on the skill of the laborer.

Ravens_cry
2010-09-16, 02:00 PM
I am interested in this, because this is a major stumbling block for me when I was thinking up a Stone Age campaign,as exchanging gold pieces made no sense in such a world. Will be keenly watching this thread.

Dr.Epic
2010-09-16, 02:32 PM
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm for common trade goods.

I'd recommend using a man-hour system to start out, with ratings for different man-hours depending on the skill of the laborer.

Cool. That helps.

Thinker
2010-09-16, 02:48 PM
Who run Bartertown?

kyoryu
2010-09-16, 06:04 PM
Instead of worrying about the "system," try to imagine what actions and decisions you want to result from it.

Do you want the players to have to go on a mad dash for the hot barter items? Do you want to have them have to decide between bartering for inferior goods now, or hold onto them (including transportation difficulties) for hopefully better goods later?

If you've got an idea of what the intended actions and decisions are, figuring out how, roughly, the system should work will be a lot easier.

Draz74
2010-09-16, 06:25 PM
I am interested in this, because this is a major stumbling block for me when I was thinking up a Stone Age campaign,as exchanging gold pieces made no sense in such a world. Will be keenly watching this thread.

Frankly, short of a world like Eberron where monolithic gnomish banks are regulating everything, a uniform and regulated currency like "gp" doesn't really fit in most D&D worlds.

That, along with reducing bookkeeping, is why I keep meaning to modify the d20 Modern Wealth System (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/modern/smack/wealth.html) so it can represent a barter market (instead of a credit system). But I keep not getting around to working on it. Anyone want to help?

Fax Celestis
2010-09-16, 06:44 PM
Frankly, short of a world like Eberron where monolithic gnomish banks are regulating everything, a uniform and regulated currency like "gp" doesn't really fit in most D&D worlds.

That, along with reducing bookkeeping, is why I keep meaning to modify the d20 Modern Wealth System (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/modern/smack/wealth.html) so it can represent a barter market (instead of a credit system). But I keep not getting around to working on it. Anyone want to help?

There was this system I posted a while back but I can't seem to find it, based around shells that stored spells or spell like abilities. Since it was a pixie economy, their natural SLAs were cheap, while other spells were worth more. You could trigger a shell to cast its spell immediately, as if it were a wand with no check needed, but it would be a dent in your pocketbook to do so.

imp_fireball
2010-09-16, 06:49 PM
This is mostly going to be roleplay. I'd also recommend basically giving gold no value but items that the other party would find useful are full price instead of half price sale but only in goods.

But if the buyer has say X ranks in appraisal, it becomes half price again - or possibly even quarter price.

Also note that most buyers will be highly aggressive and uptake the players in social combat.

A character with any ranks in appraissal and experienced in bartering has an idea of what people want and don't want and may even have a smidgling of economic theory rooted in common sense.

Again, I should re-iterate that art can't appraised. Most art that is crafted can have varying value (the price of art in races of stone is creation cost, not actual value, isn't it?).

Also, profession: (some artist) is probably better than crafter of specific art since it can allow you to produce many different kinds of art as a freelancer who could become wealthy depending on the opinion of the populace on what is or isn't good art.

Judging most art requires wisdom (no real skill check; maybe an ability check if you want to use it later on for business or whatever) and at least some experience in doing so, but the gnomish ability to use appraissal to judge a performance is different, since that's a product of life experience (and gnomes live so darn long).

Dr.Epic
2010-09-16, 06:53 PM
Instead of worrying about the "system," try to imagine what actions and decisions you want to result from it.

Do you want the players to have to go on a mad dash for the hot barter items? Do you want to have them have to decide between bartering for inferior goods now, or hold onto them (including transportation difficulties) for hopefully better goods later?

If you've got an idea of what the intended actions and decisions are, figuring out how, roughly, the system should work will be a lot easier.

This would only really be for small towns located in the middle of nowhere that don't even show up on maps, and my main reason for doing this is to add some spice and diversity to the game. I also got the idea after reading Bone.

Thinker
2010-09-16, 07:52 PM
Who run Bartertown?

I suppose I'll have to answer my own question.


http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0908/master-blaster-mad-max-road-warrior-beyond-thunderdome-maste-demotivational-poster-1249557911.jpg

onthetown
2010-09-16, 08:13 PM
Why do you need a system for bartering? Just... you know... actually barter with the player.

Shopkeeper- "That item is 10 gp."
PC- "I'll give you 7."
Shopkeeper- "No less than 9."

Works better with a wider gp margin.

Thinker
2010-09-16, 08:20 PM
Why do you need a system for bartering? Just... you know... actually barter with the player.

Shopkeeper- "That item is 10 gp."
PC- "I'll give you 7."
Shopkeeper- "No less than 9."

Works better with a wider gp margin.

That's haggling. Bartering is swapping goods.

WarKitty
2010-09-16, 08:22 PM
Why do you need a system for bartering? Just... you know... actually barter with the player.

Shopkeeper- "That item is 10 gp."
PC- "I'll give you 7."
Shopkeeper- "No less than 9."

Works better with a wider gp margin.

That's bargaining. Bartering is when you don't use coin at all.

Edit: ninja'd

imp_fireball
2010-09-16, 08:27 PM
Do you want the players to have to go on a mad dash for the hot barter items? Do you want to have them have to decide between bartering for inferior goods now, or hold onto them (including transportation difficulties) for hopefully better goods later?

This is all rooted in economic factors, of which are their should be two paradigms in regards to D&D.

1. Business - A player wants to run a business (with all the nitty gritty details, like growing it and using it to monopolize and conquer the world, or whatever). Doing so requires them to tally costs - or have npcs do it for them; an NPC doing might be some kind of percentage of failure offset by modifier in the appropriate profession or another skill modifier like appraissal.

Tallying costs by themselves requires nothing from the PC except literacy. Most of it depends on the player themselves and not checks from the PC. So the player has to write out an inventory and tally costs - the GM could rule that it takes an hour out of the PCs day each day that they choose to even look at their business inventory (separate from actual character sheet inventory which involves encumbrance, etc.) and know it. If the player wants an NPC to do it for their PC, then the GM can either do all the sloggish work themselves or simply roll on a table to determine profits in accordance to how successful the NPC was and the general/administrative business decisions the player made.

So like (on d100 roll; circumstance modifier)

Ingenious/Redefining Decisions - +20

Excellent/Amazingly Creative and Malleable Decisions - +15

Very Good/Highly Cunning Decisions - +10

Good/Keen Decisions - +5

Competent/Logical Decisions - +0

Absent Minded/Mildly Mistaken Decisions - -5

Incompetent/Poor Decisions - -10

Foolish/Illogical Decisions - -15

Full Blown Inane/Retarded Decisions - -20
----

Total NPC Skill Modifier is the average of all total appropriate skills - Hence, appraissal and knowledge (local) could be appropraite skills, ie. One involves ascertaining value while the other withholds knowledge of the sale region, which includes financial facts of that region. Both are dependent on one another and are thus equally valuable. Hence the TNSM (total npc skill modifier) would be the average of those two.

If multiple npcs have the same skill, one must select to aid another - the player would organize who aids who and uses the main check with their management and the GM determines how much can be accomplished in a certain profession region in proportion to everything else in accordance to their own descretion - knowing how it all goes down requires some business sense from the GM themselves... so say the player had 90 accountants, 5 managers and only 30 unskilled laborers, nearly every accountant would be useless - realistically, they only need 1 to 3 accountants and at most, two managers.

If there's no messengers and the player is far away, the NPCs (being the commoners that they are) probably won't have enough GP to pay for sending spells, etc. So the player will be cut off from communication with his business and be told that he must manage accordingly.

In-game, it may take 1 hour sorting out the papers and much longer traveling to talk with each npc - however they can of course hire more npcs to communicate their messages to other npcs or to simply be instructed to manage them; a manager requires profession(manager), that's it; note that npcs that simply clean or otherwise generally help out around a sale region for the sake of your business are performing unskilled labor, so no profession skill is associated and no ranks are required.

Salaries:

- A GM (provided they really want to) can list how much GP each profession user has in accordance to the profession skill, however they wouldn't always charge this amount when using their profession for the sake of the player. Granted, such NPCs could be working for multiple people and only hold one minor contract for the player and their business (profession stresses freelance after all; which largely exists in most middle age era non-incorporated D&D settings).

There's also the matter that even if they had the GP to pay for magic or technology that could assist the business (or the hiring of additional employees), they probably wouldn't do it unless payed even more for their additional contributions (and sometimes even then; money offered can assist negotiation however in accordance to the Giant's diplomacy rules).

Also the money they are assumed to earn from actual profession checks would probably go towards things unrelated to the player's business and thus undetailed (unless they were a PC too, of course). There is, of course, nothing preventing them from offering free business advise to the player. As detailed in social rules and transmitted via general roleplaying, a player could weed out advise with the use of diplomacy on their employees or even negotiate a lower salary - this can't be conducted on the use of multiple employees all at once, however, except through a complex diplomacy/intimidate check.

- Unskilled labor already has a price in the SRD. It may vary in accordance to region however - which relies on the second economic paradigm detailed later (e-entropy).

- The same applies to skilled labor, however. But there is no real static price for skilled labor. The price can be a measure of demand, and actual skill monopolization - that is, those with the highest skill modifier in the appropriate skill in proportion to everyone underneath them. Price also factors into how much time an NPC is willing to devote and how many skills they can put to use (or that the player wants them to put to use; in which case, merely add the sum of those two prices and then multiply by the devoted time factor).

- Salary is on a per week basis but a player can choose to pay it at any time. Usually, paying means paying the week salary, but a two-week pay basis means paying two salaries (of course, the actual term 'salary' doesn't change and will be refered to more flexibly in-character), and a monthly pay basis means paying at least four salaries, etc.

NPCs that haven't been employed for long usually leave a job within a week that they are not payed since other work often proves to be more attractive to them. As always, you can counteract a specific NPC's willingness to leave with a social skill check (bluff/intimidate or diplomacy) counteracted by their save.

Or you can make a complex social skill check and combine multiple social skills (the GM always designs the actual DCs and chooses what skills are used for whichever checks; as detailed in the SRD) to convince an entire group of employees or all employees - ie. "salaries won't arrive for a month, but if you stay loyal you will get them immediately following" - with the added convincer of "you'll all become founding shareholders" or "you'll get big complementary late payment reception boosts!".
----

The below table (but the one following after it) is the proportionate skill modifier relative every other character in the region's demographic that usually has a similar skill modifier ('similar' can range from as little as just +1 to as much as +20 at GM discretion). Note that it is still up to the GM to account for a region's demographic and now include appropriately allocated skill modifier totals and ranges allocated to skilled groups.

{table]Time Devotion| Skill Monopolization| Base Salary Alteration
1 hour/week| Best in the Region| At Least 400% of what's listed (x5)
20 hours/week| Best in the Region| At Least 900% of what's listed (x10)
40 hours/week| Best in the Region| At least 1400% of what's listed (x15)
84 hours/week| Best in the Region| At least 1900% of what's listed (x20)
112 hours/week| Best in the Region| At least 2900% of what's listed (x30)
1 hour/week| Top Skilled| At least 300% of what's listed (x4)
20 hours/week| Top Skilled| At least 200% of what's listed (x3)
40 hours/week| Top Skilled| At least 100% of what's listed (x2)
84 hours/week| Top Skilled| At least 200% of what's listed (x3)
112 hours/week| Top Skilled| At least 300% of what's listed (x4)
1 hour/week| Highly Skilled| At least 100% of what's listed (x2)
20 hours/week| Highly Skilled| At least 100% of what's listed (x2)
40 hours/week| Highly Skilled| At least 100% of what's listed (x2)
84 hours/week| Highly Skilled| At least 100% of what's listed (x2)
112 hours/week| Highly Skilled| At least 150% of what's listed (x2 and 1/2)
X hours/week| Reasonably Skilled| No adjustment
1 hour/week| Low End Skilled| At least 10% of what's listed (x1/10)
X hours/week +1 hour| Low End Skilled| Usually always at least 50% of what's listed (x1/2)
X hours/week| Lowest Skilled/Apprenticed| Usually always at least 1% of what's listed (x1/100)
[/table]

{table]Circumstance| Base Salary Alteration
Trade is Essential/Important or Difficult/In High Demand| At least 1d4(50%) of what's listed (x1/2 - x3)
Region is Difficult to Work in (for whatever reason)| At least 1d20(20%) of what's listed (x1/10 - x5)
[/table]

NOTE: Alterations depending on circumstances such as 'region is difficult to work in' usually affect all employees if, ie., they are all working in the same region.

Also, general non-dynamic circumstances can be modified - Ie. If orcs are conducting raids upon a region in a way that makes it difficult to work in for those working for your business (depending on what your business involves, at GM discretion) or if your business is in enemy territory, then the PC could work to drive out those orcs or forge fresh relations with the owners of said territory. Thus, the circumstance would be modified and the adjustment no longer applies - or is merely reduced at GM discretion, if the modifying simply makes it easier but not perfect; it could also be made worse if, ie., more orcs invade the region or the enemy nation decides to specifically label the player's employees as public enemies.

Note that any salary can also depend on the individual NPC. If they are the best in the region, ie., they may not value money as much as they value magical items or scrolls, ie.

Finally (as detailed in the below table), there's base static price, unaffected by market entropy.

{table]Time Devotion| Skill Monopolization| Base Salary
1 hour| Best in Region| At least

onthetown
2010-09-16, 08:28 PM
That's bargaining. Bartering is when you don't use coin at all.

Edit: ninja'd

My bad. Stupid words are too close to each other.