Buy High, Sell Low is a Dumb Economic Model

[Rune]

And, yet, that's what we get with D&D. It encourages the "pawn shop" economic model, wherein the PCs purchase an item at full price, get the use they want out of it, then get what limited cash they can out of it when they are done, or prospectors acquire items at no cost through various means (tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery, mostly), sell the goods for a minimal gain, only to have the merchant jack up the price and make a good turn-around on the items.

Clearly, the merchants have the "buy low, sell high" practice down, but what if the PCs want to do a little mercantile campaign? What if they want to profit without resorting to tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery? Plenty of adventuring could still be had in such a campaign. What would it take to make such a campaign work?

 

[OnlineDM]

And, yet, that's what we get with D&D. It encourages the "pawn shop" economic model, wherein the PCs purchase an item at full price, get the use they want out of it, then get what limited cash they can out of it when they are done, or prospectors acquire items at no cost through various means (tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery, mostly), sell the goods for a minimal gain, only to have the merchant jack up the price and make a good turn-around on the items.

Clearly, the merchants have the "buy low, sell high" practice down, but what if the PCs want to do a little mercantile campaign? What if they want to profit without resorting to tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery? Plenty of adventuring could still be had in such a campaign. What would it take to make such a campaign work?

It would take players who care more about buying/selling than exploring/slaying. I would guess that a game other than D&D might be better suited to this type of campaign, since so much of D&D is focused on exploring/slaying, but I'm sure a good DM could make it work in D&D too.

Personally, I've never had that sort of player, so I don't have much advice to offer!

 

[jonesy]

A working economic model. We don't have many of those even in the real world.

 

[S'mon]

Clearly, the merchants have the "buy low, sell high" practice down, but what if the PCs want to do a little mercantile campaign? What if they want to profit without resorting to tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery? Plenty of adventuring could still be had in such a campaign. What would it take to make such a campaign work?

Traveller?

I think the main things to deal with are:

1) Goods acquisition - must be free (loot?) or cheap (adventurers looking to offload gear).
2) Demand - will not be infinite. For magic items, if supply is limited then some stuff may be easy to sell - +1 swords, say. +6 vorpal swords may be a little trickier unless you have easy access to the City of Brass.

Magic-Merchant PCs are likely to spend a lot of time sitting around guarding their inventory, looking to offload it while defending against thieves and other threats.

 

[Piratecat]

One of my players recently said "We only sell at 20% of list price? Screw adventuring. I'm going to get rich by selling magic items."

This is, I suppose, what you get when it's a game about beating up monsters and stealing their treasure, not about selling items in mysterious alley stores.

 

[jedavis]

Traveller indeed! Or perhaps Mercator if your tastes run ancient-wise.

My understanding of the D&D magic item economy as it stands is that it is more profitable for PCs to be out killing things and taking their stuff than it is for them to try to craft or sell magic items, so the opportunity cost is high enough that PCs soak the pawn shop economy prices as part of doing business.

One other relevant factor is the level of fun inherent in these things. I know that I went into my current Traveller game with a thief / merchant with the intent of buying and selling many things for a great profit... and while a great profit I did make, it was actually a lot of work, and kind of ceased to be fun (so now I've moved to only dealing in high-value cargoes like radioactives).

 

[Tortoise]

And, yet, that's what we get with D&D. It encourages the "pawn shop" economic model, wherein the PCs purchase an item at full price, get the use they want out of it, then get what limited cash they can out of it when they are done, or prospectors acquire items at no cost through various means (tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery, mostly), sell the goods for a minimal gain, only to have the merchant jack up the price and make a good turn-around on the items.

Clearly, the merchants have the "buy low, sell high" practice down, but what if the PCs want to do a little mercantile campaign? What if they want to profit without resorting to tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery? Plenty of adventuring could still be had in such a campaign. What would it take to make such a campaign work?

In my Ptolus campaign one of the groups of adventurers found a treasure trove of life-sized, hand crafted, very detailed trees made of precious metals. They resealed the dungeon entrance with magic until they could buy a shop in the city. They then carted the trees back to the shop by magically shrinking them. Their target audience of course were the wealthy merchants and nobles. Took them more than a month of in-game time to make it happen, but they got the job done.

 

[Huw]

I've always considered the magic item market to be one of high overheads. You've got to have really secure premises, you've got to have spell casters with identify and remove curse on stand-by, and most of your stock sits idle on the off-chance that one of the few people in the area rich enough to afford it wants any of it.

So that shopkeeper is only offering you 20% because he's got a couple out the back anyway, and it's going to cost him another 20% securing and identifying the thing anyway.

 

[jonesy]

I've always considered the magic item market to be one of high overheads. You've got to have really secure premises, you've got to have spell casters with identify and remove curse on stand-by, and most of your stock sits idle on the off-chance that one of the few people in the area rich enough to afford it wants any of it.

So that shopkeeper is only offering you 20% because he's got a couple out the back anyway, and it's going to cost him another 20% securing and identifying the thing anyway.

That might be a good starting point for a D&D economy. Describe various levels of sellers, like corner store, library side store, magic guild shop, wizard tower, independent wizard, witches coven, backalley shop, and then how much each of them has to spend to be able to do the job. Then what they can each buy and then supply. And then how much that would cost to the customers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And, yet, that's what we get with D&D. It encourages the "pawn shop" economic model, wherein the PCs purchase an item at full price, get the use they want out of it, then get what limited cash they can out of it when they are done, or prospectors acquire items at no cost through various means (tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery, mostly), sell the goods for a minimal gain, only to have the merchant jack up the price and make a good turn-around on the items.

Clearly, the merchants have the "buy low, sell high" practice down, but what if the PCs want to do a little mercantile campaign? What if they want to profit without resorting to tomb-robbing, theft, and robbery? Plenty of adventuring could still be had in such a campaign. What would it take to make such a campaign work?

All that's missing to make the economics work properly is a "used gear" market model. That way, the merchants would not be selling used gear at new prices...and PCs could get used gear for less than full cost.

Of course, as used gear, it shouldn't be in as good condition, so there should be mechanical disadvantages- not as good an AC for armors, breakage rules, something.