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EccentricCircle
2016-07-08, 12:43 PM
So, I'm prepping my new campaign, which will be about silk road merchants exploring a vast continent, with lots of opportunity for profit and disaster.
We want to subvert typical D&D economics, so that prices on one part of the continent will be dramatically different to those on another. Thus there will be a point to playing merchants rather than adventurers.

My research so far has involved both RPG and history books, but I've not found many definitive indications of the sorts of scales involved. Just how rich do you get if you successfully bring a lot of silk back from China and sell it in Venice?

History books don't have the information that I need, as clearly economics was as vastly complicated a topic in the 13th century as it is today, so sources that generalize tend to do so in a qualitative manner. RPG books tend to gloss over such things, as they aren't relevant to most campaigns, and are not easily summarised for game purposes.

So does anyone know what kind of differences in price something like silk, spice or luxury goods would have when you travel from one place to another. In general terms, is a merchant going to come back 0.01% richer, 5% richer 100%, 1000% etc?

Has anyone run a campaign of this sort previously and so is aware of potential pitfalls and considerations.

Many thanks.

Shiva asori
2016-07-08, 02:13 PM
try maybe 2-10% richer maybe?
The prices of things are gonna differ quite a bit between places but a large amount of profit is gonna go into stuff like escorts, guides, provisions and re-buying the products to sell for the next trip.

VoxRationis
2016-07-08, 02:41 PM
try maybe 2-10% richer maybe?
The prices of things are gonna differ quite a bit between places but a large amount of profit is gonna go into stuff like escorts, guides, provisions and re-buying the products to sell for the next trip.

Ah, but an adventuring party can (and likely will) skimp on a lot of those costs by doing things themselves. They won't hire guards, they'll probably have at least one member with enough navigational skill that they won't need to hire a navigator, and they won't be re-buying products. They'll be taking on additional risk for additional reward, cutting out a continent's worth of middlemen.

Gallowglass
2016-07-08, 02:54 PM
A lot of this will depend on your system and how robust the mercantile system is. Because you will want a robust system as you are turning the "merchanting" into a minigame inside the game you are running.

You will need costs sheets for the things they need to buy to make and repair their caravan:
dray animals (a variety of beasts with bonuses and negatives. i.e. horses are faster but less durable and take more food and carry less weight than camels)
wagons, carts (again you ideally want a variety of wagons so they can pick what features they want while accepting some offsetting penalties.
feed cost per day per fatigue level. You need more food to go faster.
repair materials (axels, wheels, etc.)

these costs should vary from town to town depending on access so that they work up their own cheat sheet of where its most advantageous to stock up on things.

You will need a variety of goods for them to purchase in one location to move to another. These goods should vary in cost from location to location and have some level of trade off (i.e. heavy objects sell for less profit in most places)

You will need a strong record keeping system, you will need to know weights and measures and carrying capacity back and forth, up and down.

You need to have a system that "leaks" some resource every day (feed, fatigue, wear and tear on animals and wagons, spoilage of goods) to give a sense of danger and possible failure to each transaction above and beyond the generic math problems.

You will need a way for the players to use their skills and abilities to effect the bottom line. Rolls to get betters deals or find alternate buyers. Something to give them a power over the end result.

and then you need to bear in mind that your players are going to be smarter and more clever than the system you built and will find ways to subvert it. You will need to remember that they will find a way to wring profit out of every encounter. They may decide to just start taking over other people's caravans and selling them for example.

Shiva asori
2016-07-08, 03:09 PM
A lot of this will depend on your system and how robust the mercantile system is. Because you will want a robust system as you are turning the "merchanting" into a minigame inside the game you are running.
you need to bear in mind that your players are going to be smarter and more clever than the system you built and will find ways to subvert it. You will need to remember that they will find a way to wring profit out of every encounter. They may decide to just start taking over other people's caravans and selling them for example.

Very true, You also need to expect the players to find ways to make profit just using the PC abilities as plenty of spells and magic items can and will subvert the standard merchant system quite easily and may throw of the wealth expectations you may have.

Tvtyrant
2016-07-08, 03:11 PM
So, I'm prepping my new campaign, which will be about silk road merchants exploring a vast continent, with lots of opportunity for profit and disaster.
We want to subvert typical D&D economics, so that prices on one part of the continent will be dramatically different to those on another. Thus there will be a point to playing merchants rather than adventurers.

My research so far has involved both RPG and history books, but I've not found many definitive indications of the sorts of scales involved. Just how rich do you get if you successfully bring a lot of silk back from China and sell it in Venice?

History books don't have the information that I need, as clearly economics was as vastly complicated a topic in the 13th century as it is today, so sources that generalize tend to do so in a qualitative manner. RPG books tend to gloss over such things, as they aren't relevant to most campaigns, and are not easily summarised for game purposes.

So does anyone know what kind of differences in price something like silk, spice or luxury goods would have when you travel from one place to another. In general terms, is a merchant going to come back 0.01% richer, 5% richer 100%, 1000% etc?

Has anyone run a campaign of this sort previously and so is aware of potential pitfalls and considerations.

Many thanks.

Ferdinand Braudel argued that long distance trade of specialty goods had to make several hundred percent profit on a successful trip to pay for the chances of a trip being unsuccessful. He was specifically discussing the spice trade of Portugal, which added the costs of ships and cannon to the transport costs and a high chance they never came back, but overland trips also needed to make a high profit if they borrowed money (which they did).

I would assume a caravan at least triples its money, and makes as much as ten times its initial cost when the trip is finished. The caravan would probably devote less then half of its storage to the long range trade goods, and would buy and sell short term trade goods as it passed through cities. So a caravan from China to Novgorod might start out with porcelain, silk, and jade. They enter into Mongolia and trade the silk for furs, then they trade jade in Afghanistan to the population for more furs, then get to Samarkand where they dump the furs for Persian wines, which they sell in Kiev, and finally dump the porcelain in Novgorod for 50x its cost in China, take the German silver they were given in exchange back towards China.

Berenger
2016-07-08, 03:17 PM
Disclaimer: This opinion is not based on any historical facts.


I'd say:

1) Take the price the product did cost in China.
2) Divide the total costs of transport by the quantity of transported units. Add this number to the purchase price.
3) Multiply that sum by 1d20+5. This is what you sell it for when you come home.


Things to keep in mind:

- While I do not know how much the "multiplier" (I suspect it varied wildly) was in RL, I'm pretty sure that the success or failure of a single journey could make or break a whole family of merchants.
- The safety of the route will greatly affect the profit margin. Laws of supply and demand apply.
- How much return can a merchant expect when he invests his money in a safe venture? As in, a venture that is not highly likely to take years until you see any returns, that isn't likely to get several members of your family killed, that hasn't a risk of a total loss of all investment akin to that of roulette?
- Is there a upper class with spare money interested in your stuff? For the major italian cities of that era, I'd default to "yes".
- How many other merchants are doing the trip? Are they united in some guild or price cartel or do they compete?
- There will be taxes, bribes, necessary "gifts" and custom duties along the way.

Jelly d6
2016-07-08, 03:35 PM
One of the more plausible modern theories on how Silk Road functioned is that the specific merchants traveled back and forth within only a section of the whole way. That is, the goods coming from the Far East changed the ownership multiple times before arriving to Europe. This had to contribute to the price increase significantly.

Another historical example might be from a certain point closer to your idea. Atlantic Triangular trade. The topic is quite controversial and I'm not sure if it's entirely comfortable with the board rules. So no extra details - luckily the topic is very well documented, try to research it on your own if you are interested. So bare economics: the price differential for the one leg was 2-3 times on average. There were variations though but the differential never exceeded 5 times.

Profits for the whole trip varied even more wildly. 100% on the capital invested for the one trip (which took somewhat short of a year) was considered a good run. Loss was also possible even when the ship returned home safely, not to mention dangers of seafaring. Still the business, as you can guess, was considered quite profitable.

Slipperychicken
2016-07-08, 04:12 PM
One of the more plausible modern theories on how Silk Road functioned is that the specific merchants traveled back and forth within only a section of the whole way. That is, the goods coming from the Far East changed the ownership multiple times before arriving to Europe. This had to contribute to the price increase significantly.

I came here to post this. No one person was actually going from China all the way to Europe to trade. It's one of the big reasons why Europeans and east Asians were so ignorant of each other, despite being parts of the same trade network.

As for the price, each individual merchant on the way had to markup his product so he could make a good return after incurring all the usual costs, such as feed, maintenance on vehicles, and so on. There was also the matter of taxes, which made middle eastern states quite wealthy despite them not having many natural resources of their own. Getting around those costs was a big reason why sea routes to east and southern Asia were such a big deal. The first people who got to India and back by sea (going around Africa to do it) made an enormous profit off the spices and things they picked up, precisely because they didn't incur the huge costs of transporting it by land.

Shiva asori
2016-07-08, 04:20 PM
One thing that could help us is some more information.

How big of a scale do you expect the PCs to sell on?
Are they gonna be running the trip with a big payoff at the end or selling the cargo in bits and pieces?
Are they gonna be participating in a caravan or are they just going on their own?
What level of magic is gonna be in the game?
Is this mercantile trip just gonna be once or are they gonna run it multiple times? ( assuming they survive)
What are you expecting them to transport as cargo?
Are they going to go by land, sea or air?
Expected survival rate of the merchants?
Are they gonna run the entire trade route or just a leg of it?

The closer you are to history, the closer the expectations from historical evidence and records.

Recherché
2016-07-08, 05:10 PM
IIRC no one merchant company ever traversed the full length of the silk road (or at least no one did commercially some people did it as a way to travel). This was for a couple of reasons, first no one person would have all the skills for the entire length. Also because no one knew the entire route with all its geography, languages and customs. Finally because it would take near forever so it was easier to just do one leg repeatedly and be able to come home once every few months.

That being said the profits will vary a lot based on leg. I think I read somewhere that parts of the sea leg made Italian merchants almost 500% profit after they finished paying for the ship themselves. Other parts were less than 10% for more easily traversed areas with less sunken costs. If I had to guess I’d say that the profit margins for the whole thing would be fairly decent but probably not as spectacular as the Italian merchant princes. On one hand you aren’t losing any profit to middlemen, but on the other you’re probably having to buy supplies at inflated prices for foreigners everywhere, you don’t own your own ship for any maritime sections, and you might well need to hire local guides for some sections.

TheYell
2016-07-08, 06:14 PM
I don't think several hundred percent is unheard of. You won't expect to earn every year, though.

The historical record is that banking houses in Italy did earn big money until the Iberians were able to shift the passage of trade around the capes and not use the Mediterranean. Also, if you have that much cash local European kings expected to get loans for war from you. That didn't work out so well for the bankers, but, it worked better than sitting on a pile of gold and telling the king to go pound sand (Templars).

If you come up with a fun and workable medieval trade game, you can sell it for actual dollars. Keep at it.

tomandtish
2016-07-08, 07:53 PM
So, I'm prepping my new campaign, which will be about silk road merchants exploring a vast continent, with lots of opportunity for profit and disaster.
We want to subvert typical D&D economics, so that prices on one part of the continent will be dramatically different to those on another. Thus there will be a point to playing merchants rather than adventurers.

My research so far has involved both RPG and history books, but I've not found many definitive indications of the sorts of scales involved. Just how rich do you get if you successfully bring a lot of silk back from China and sell it in Venice?

History books don't have the information that I need, as clearly economics was as vastly complicated a topic in the 13th century as it is today, so sources that generalize tend to do so in a qualitative manner. RPG books tend to gloss over such things, as they aren't relevant to most campaigns, and are not easily summarised for game purposes.

So does anyone know what kind of differences in price something like silk, spice or luxury goods would have when you travel from one place to another. In general terms, is a merchant going to come back 0.01% richer, 5% richer 100%, 1000% etc?

Has anyone run a campaign of this sort previously and so is aware of potential pitfalls and considerations.

Many thanks.

It is important to understand that you may also have them at cross purposes here. Namely, there's a big difference between being a merchant and being an explorer.

Merchants are looking primarily for established products and cheaper ways to obtain them and get them to market (whatever the final market may be) in order to maximize profit. Explorers are looking for something new.

Now, it is possible that the two may overlap in some form, but not necessarily in all aspect. For example, both Columbus and Hernando de Soto were looking for shorter routes to Asia (exploration) in order to more cheaply reach established markets. They weren't looking for new products or new markets.

Now, an explorer who is exploring new territory in depth might bring a sampling of products back to see what catches on, but realistically they probably aren't going to gamble 100% on anything new. They'll bring back quite a few things, and then go back for full loads of what was popular on subsequent runs.

So make sure you're prepared for the difference when you are running the game.

erikun
2016-07-08, 08:24 PM
First question I'd need to ask: Are you looking at a standard adventure in a Silk Road setting, or an actual merchantile game? Because if it is the first, then you could handwave a lot of the more difficult or technical aspects to background details. The PCs could be hired by a specific merchant, to guard the caravan or to explore a new route or to secure a new contract with some remote location. You don't actually need to involve profit margins or costs or anything else in such a game - just assume that the merchant or NPCs handle such stuff. There would be plenty of reasons for adventures and mercenaries to be used in such a setting.

If you are looking at a merchantile game, though, you're looking at something considerably different from the standard adventuring model. You won't be looking at the same money curve, you won't be looking at the same challenges or difficulties, and you won't be looking at the PCs doing the same things. So be sure that's what you (and your group, if there is already one) wants to do.

-

Now, the first thing that I think would matter is volume. The PCs aren't going to get a large profit margin if they just pocket a ring in one country and bring it to another country. If they could, then there would be NPCs doing the same thing, and then other NPCs doing the same but with a bunch of donkeys, and then other NPCs would be doing the same with cartloads up until it is no longer feasable to continue doing so. This isn't to say that PCs carrying sacks between countries should be unable to survive, just that it wouldn't involve much in the way of profits at all.

Trading in volume would present some interesting challenges. One involves transporting such material. It would require large numbers of carts with large numbers of animals, large numbers of protectors (four people just can't watch 20 carts all the time with much reliability), and large amounts of food for them all - which means more carts and more animals. I suspect the balance point would be somewhere between enough carts to make a profit and so many that they get easily robbed when sleeping at night. It also involves not only locating enough people who create the product and are willing to sell, but also enough people willing to buy at the destination - most local general stores probably have no use for fifty tons of silk, even if it does sell well.

Time is likely a large factor as well. Sure, the PCs could stalk slowly and carefully to their destination with their loaded carts, but they may not make good enough time to get a profit. The reason that the Silk Road was historically so important wasn't because it located some rare or unusual new products - it was because it greatly cut down on the travel time and danger, so that people could get more product faster and get more profit that way. The party would also need to worry about food - not every stop will have enough grain to feed all the animals involved - and with their own lifespans. A journey taking two or five years isn't going to mean much to a PC if that time never adds up to anything.

Add it all together, and the PCs will typically be spending their time gathering carts, animals, hirelings, and feed; they will be talking with NPCs to buy/sell product; they will be watching their product both for changing cost and damage along with protection from sabatoge and theft; they will be scouting out routes to take and stops to make. It will be quite a bit slower travel then you'd probably expect compared to a typical adventure campaign, with travel times measured in months and a good chance of ruin if you fail. You could involve just short journeys like Spice & Wolf where the PCs earn a bit of profit with a single cart of items, or something like running a caravan with large profits but a lot of risk.

-

As for profit margins, it depends on the size and the length involved. A large caravan traveling for months had better be bringing in a large profit, both for the food/repair/payment costs but also the chance of losing everything to thieves or raiders. Several hundred times the initial purchase price would not be unreasonable, especially if you consider that such returns can't factor up very well (there won't suddenly be a large number of new people producing silk when you return to China) and because it can take large amounts of time to just make one journey. As small, single cart moving between towns might see a 10% to 50% profit margin, but would only be traveling for a few days and does run the risk of the destination not having anyone interested in buying, for whatever reason.

And you could combine the two, such as a large caravan making a large journey, but willing to sell some stock at local villages along the way to help cover the costs.

Just tailor it to what your gaming group is doing. That +10,000% profit margin is fine if you know it won't be happening more than a couple of times during the campaign. The more reasonable +20% profit margin is more likely what they would be seeing for some short, one- or two-session trips.

goto124
2016-07-08, 09:14 PM
So, I'm prepping my new campaign, which will be about silk road merchants exploring a vast continent, with lots of opportunity for profit and disaster.
We want to subvert typical D&D economics

... is this game being run with a DnD system? If so, what edition of DnD?

Backing up the question of "Are you looking at a standard DnD adventure in a Silk Road setting, or an actual merchantile game?"

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 09:36 PM
One of the more plausible modern theories on how Silk Road functioned is that the specific merchants traveled back and forth within only a section of the whole way. That is, the goods coming from the Far East changed the ownership multiple times before arriving to Europe. This had to contribute to the price increase significantly.

That makes a great deal of sense. After all, why would you risk your life traveling to a place you'd never been, that you might never be able to return from, needing to speak an arbitrarily high number of languages you've never been exposed to even to get there (alternately hiring a large number of translators), when you could travel a short distance with a high probability of profit multiple times per year? That is, it follows it would be economically efficient for people would specialize in short sections of the route.

EccentricCircle
2016-07-09, 03:41 AM
Thanks for the responses everyone! There have been some very good points raised and some really interesting comments.

I'll reply in broad strokes rather than responding to individual comments if that's OK. If I miss a question you've raised then feel free to poke me.

Some questioned the use of the word "exploration" I meant this is the sense of the PCs going to places which are new to them, rather than "boldly going where no one has gone before" etc.
The game will be used 5e D&D on the lower magic end of what it supports. The PCs won't have much in the way of magic items, although I suspect that things which enhance carrying capacity could be good rewards later in the game. Likewise teleportation won't be readily accessible at the start, but could be a way for them to cut corners once they become more established.

I'll be telling the players that they don't know much about the world besides what their characters have actually seen. They have heard stories of the various things in D&D, but don't know to what extent any of it is actually true. Most of the setting guide and maps I'm writing/preparing will be in an in universe style. So there will be a fair amount of misinformation as the game progresses.

The game won't be a typical adventure, but won't be entirely mercantile either. There will be myths, magic, ancient secrets, lost lore and nefarious cults, but it won't be as sword and sorcery as some D&D games. Major objectives are likely to be temporal rather than cosmic. There will be lots of scheming and intrigue, as tipping the balance of power at one or other imperial court will be more important than saving the world from generic villain #1337's latest plot to take over the world.

To what extent the characters invest in the trade aspects of the campaign will to some extent be up to them. I know at least one player is keen to play a merchant and explore this side of things.

I'm aware that most trade was short range, and this will largely be the case in this game. The players will have the option to travel over longer distances than most people, since two of the characters are going to be envoys from one Emperor, sent into the east on a secret mission which will kickstart the plot.

Basically I'm working on a table of trade goods, with prices in their source regions, and multipliers for how much they are worth in different parts of the world. A bit of research on where different spices and commodities originate in real life has let me construct a map of source regions in my world, so now I just need to set prices.

I've considered the costs of supplies, guards maintenance etc, and am drawing up some guidelines however I don't want this to ever feel like a chore, so if the players move away from this aspect of the campaign it won't be the end of the world. The plan is always that they will ultimately become caught up in greater things, but I'd like them to get in a few successful trades over the course of the campaign, either before the main plot sets in, or alongside it.

I obviously have a few encounters planned that will impede their ability to transport their goods, so am considering how different skills and party roles will interact with the various perils of international travel. Someone mentioned researching the transatlantic slave trade, I suspect that this sort of business is more likely to be a danger for the party to avoid, than a venture for them to participate in.

I expect that finding ways to circumvent some of these perils as the game goes on will be an important part of the plot. So I look forward to seeing how the ingenuity of the players plays out.

They will be starting in the middle of the map, and exactly where they want to go and what they want to do will be up to them to some extent. various clues will point to different regions of the world, and so I expect them to visit around five or six countries by the end of the campaign. Travel times will be measured in months or years, with much of it glossed over using a downtime system.

In terms of scale I'm expecting them to have a few carts and some pack animals. There are going to be around seven players in various roles, one of whom is keen to play the caravan master, so I will likely let them hire a few guards or guides to augment their crew, but don't expect them to have hundreds of wagons and dozens of employees. (Although they may surprise me.)

I'm largely going to let them choose what they buy and where they take it. So I need a robust framework to allow this to work.

In terms of research so far I've just finished reading The Silk Road: a new history of the world, which I thoroughly recommend. I've also been using The History of Cartography and the DK World History Atlas. I'm planning to try to read up on India and Medieval Africa next, as well as taking a crack at Marco Polo. On the D&D front i'll be taking a look at some of the 2nd edition Kara-Tur and al-Qadim material, as that will have more game relevant stuff.

Yora
2016-07-09, 04:34 AM
One of the more plausible modern theories on how Silk Road functioned is that the specific merchants traveled back and forth within only a section of the whole way. That is, the goods coming from the Far East changed the ownership multiple times before arriving to Europe. This had to contribute to the price increase significantly.

I also was under the impression that it was more of a bucket chain. Which might be how the Portuguese got so crazy rich and powerful when they found a way to cut out two thirds of the middlemen by taking ships to India.

For an RPG campaign it would probably be quite plausible to have someone get the crazy idea to take the land route to China and buy directly from the producer in hope for a ludicrously high profit margin. Of course as complete foreigners they will run into all kind of troubles and adventures that the local traders normally know how to avoid.
In the end the detours and losses along the way might leave them with no more money than they started with, but it would still be a big adventure.

Beleriphon
2016-07-09, 01:02 PM
I don't think several hundred percent is unheard of. You won't expect to earn every year, though.

The historical record is that banking houses in Italy did earn big money until the Iberians were able to shift the passage of trade around the capes and not use the Mediterranean. Also, if you have that much cash local European kings expected to get loans for war from you. That didn't work out so well for the bankers, but, it worked better than sitting on a pile of gold and telling the king to go pound sand (Templars).

I thought the Templar's did provide loans, and that's why Phillip II got all uppity with them. Notwithstanding the historical accuracy of Assassin's Creed. :smallamused:

thirdkingdom
2016-07-09, 04:04 PM
You should check out ACKS (Adventurer, Conqueror, King), a B/X retroclone. It has very explicit rules and guidelines for mercantile ventures.

EDIT: In fact, you should probably post this question here, on the ACKS forums: http://autarch.co/forums/ask-autarchs

CharonsHelper
2016-07-09, 10:21 PM
For an RPG campaign it would probably be quite plausible to have someone get the crazy idea to take the land route to China and buy directly from the producer in hope for a ludicrously high profit margin.

Isn't that basically what Marco Polo did?

Also of note - part of the reason that the products in China was so expensive was because of artificial shortages. Plus the Europeans didn't even know what the heck silk was. China was very careful to keep the process a secret, though eventually monks were able to sneak out some silk worms in their bamboo walking sticks.

dps
2016-07-10, 11:42 AM
Realistically, profits for successfully bringing back luxury good to Europe should probably be well-nigh astronomic, but so should the chance of losing everything (including your life). That might not be appropriate for your campaign, though.