Hussar said:
Then I can only be thankful my group pays attention to the world and setting and strongly appreciates and world building that myself or any other DM does.
How do wandering merchants survive?
- Thread starter fuindordm
- Start date
Then I can only be thankful my group pays attention to the world and setting and strongly appreciates and world building that myself or any other DM does.
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
Real Life PoL Merchant Models for the Non-Human Races
The simple principle is caste not class.
I'd say the wealth of kings is particularly vulnerable. Taxation is a miserable institution (A) and (B) kingship is a military and legal institution not financial. Which means kingdoms are small like Kent or ridiculously complicated like the Merovingians. During the Dark Ages the institutions of finance and nationality are in no way synonomous which means...
Yes, it's realistic to find merchants carrying high quality goods, just not to expect that such merchants will be either a.) interested in accruing capital in our modern sense and b.) that they will inevitably help the overall PoL situation.
But also during the Dark Ages trade flourished. There are 4.5 primary models and three alternates, just remember there is no merchant class, just merchant lifestyles -
1.) Imperial Market and Trade Network - From an extremely unstable and weird empire that was itself a PoL setting the Byzantines ran a trans European and Medditerranean trade network. They ran regular markets and traded huge amounts of everything from slaves to corn to technology and art. This activity did nothing to help the overall PoL situation. They did through prestige, education, cunning use of alliances, and merchants who were skilled at security. We'll call this the Eladrin model. They loose wars all the time and their cities are in another dimension. But they can project enough power that they can guarantee the market twice a year, and their coinage is the only institution worthy of the name.
2.) Yankee Traders - Vikings were most famous for it but Sicilians had a similar game. Most warrior classes work as a subset of farming community. Your crew works as a superset. Sure there's a community you base yourself off of, but mostly you roam around and trade or raid as you see fit in order to get the prestige, food, and material to maintain a company. Like Alcohol you're both the cause of and solution to the PoL problem. Let's call this the Dragonborn model. Sure their companies of mercenaries are noble and help keep the roads open, but they also get a cut from the caravans they escort and will happilly take trade from adventuring bands. Plus, does it really help the overall situation that they go through and raid the hobgoblins and orcs on a regular basis? May keep them from organizing into a kingdom, but it also keeps them angry.
2.5) The Walking Drum - You get enough merchants, entertainers, and guides together and you can start acting like a military company security wise. You no less secure than a village because you are a village, but since you rely on trade you also aren't necessarilly helping the PoL since you don't put down roots or cultivate. You're just a point that walks. Call this the Half-Elf model.
3.) Syrian Enclaves - These were networks of extreme minorities who were good at education in order to preserve their identity and good at travelling and negotiation in order to preserve the network. Trade piggybacked on this. The fact that they were insular and thus vulnerable to persecution/unwilling to expand their franchise generally meant that they also ensured trade and the PoL situation. Let's call this the Halfling model. They can trade because they know they have relatively safe havens with all sorts of people and really good internal contacts/information. You can trade because everyone knows you are there to trade. You survive the frequent robbings and set backs because you have a diffuse network of risk. Halfling barges get robbed all the time, but the flotilla survives.
4.) Charcoal Burners - Very small communities of skilled workers or gatherers living in isolation and protection. They can walk out to farming communities and peddle and walk back and be safe. When they get raided they just melt away, wealth isn't their motivation so much as living an alternate lifestyle. Monks follow this model, too. Unlike charcoal burners they do get wealthy, but they also leverage alliances and are comfortable with the fact that they are going to die with some frequency. Let's call this the Dwarf model. Somewhere in the mountains they have a stronghold with a forge. Dwarves wander down in small parties with real regularity, trade for food, and depart. Sometimes you'll see smoke in the hills and Dwarven refugees will show up, leave in town for a while, build up strength, and then go back out to the hills to destroy something.
Alternates:
1.) Commancheros - You're mobile, sort of armed, and in a weird legal situation anyway. Stay off the main road and sell to everyone. Let's call this the monster gnome situation.
2.) Kung Fu Caravans - This is what happens when you get functional nation states without functional internal security or trade. Early Spain or Imperial China. The government operates off of financial institutions that are divorced from trade and can't really be threatened by internal unrest. The cities and cultivated areas are extremely productive, but the hinterland is a horror and corruption is very high. So you develop a non-military warrior caste that can protect merchant interests. Let's call this the Tiefling model. The demon tainted live in their clan schools and have nothing to do with human society or concerns, but when a merchant needs security they are the first to be contacted. Again trade is enabled, but since they are not part of the legal system they don't function to dispel the darkness.
3.) Beaver Trails - In North America there were lots of peddlers and extensive trade networks but actual cultivated areas were few and far between. Even the Iroquois confederacy consisted of one heartland and then a huge area over which they had influence but did not live. There was no real trader class, but a hunter or two would decide to travel, pick up some valuable goods and head down the path. Sure loads of them were killed or went missing, and no one made a lot of money, but there were enough of them every year and they were competent and self-sufficient enough that trade was pretty developed. Let's call this the Elven economy. You've got your unnecessary magic item on you and you run into an Elven woodsmen. You give him the sword and he gives you the elemental rubies he got for trading wyvern scales to the Dwarven outpost. They're money to you, but the magic item is a tool for him. It's an economy of value rather than capital.
The simple principle is caste not class.
I'd say the wealth of kings is particularly vulnerable. Taxation is a miserable institution (A) and (B) kingship is a military and legal institution not financial. Which means kingdoms are small like Kent or ridiculously complicated like the Merovingians. During the Dark Ages the institutions of finance and nationality are in no way synonomous which means...
Yes, it's realistic to find merchants carrying high quality goods, just not to expect that such merchants will be either a.) interested in accruing capital in our modern sense and b.) that they will inevitably help the overall PoL situation.
But also during the Dark Ages trade flourished. There are 4.5 primary models and three alternates, just remember there is no merchant class, just merchant lifestyles -
1.) Imperial Market and Trade Network - From an extremely unstable and weird empire that was itself a PoL setting the Byzantines ran a trans European and Medditerranean trade network. They ran regular markets and traded huge amounts of everything from slaves to corn to technology and art. This activity did nothing to help the overall PoL situation. They did through prestige, education, cunning use of alliances, and merchants who were skilled at security. We'll call this the Eladrin model. They loose wars all the time and their cities are in another dimension. But they can project enough power that they can guarantee the market twice a year, and their coinage is the only institution worthy of the name.
2.) Yankee Traders - Vikings were most famous for it but Sicilians had a similar game. Most warrior classes work as a subset of farming community. Your crew works as a superset. Sure there's a community you base yourself off of, but mostly you roam around and trade or raid as you see fit in order to get the prestige, food, and material to maintain a company. Like Alcohol you're both the cause of and solution to the PoL problem. Let's call this the Dragonborn model. Sure their companies of mercenaries are noble and help keep the roads open, but they also get a cut from the caravans they escort and will happilly take trade from adventuring bands. Plus, does it really help the overall situation that they go through and raid the hobgoblins and orcs on a regular basis? May keep them from organizing into a kingdom, but it also keeps them angry.
2.5) The Walking Drum - You get enough merchants, entertainers, and guides together and you can start acting like a military company security wise. You no less secure than a village because you are a village, but since you rely on trade you also aren't necessarilly helping the PoL since you don't put down roots or cultivate. You're just a point that walks. Call this the Half-Elf model.
3.) Syrian Enclaves - These were networks of extreme minorities who were good at education in order to preserve their identity and good at travelling and negotiation in order to preserve the network. Trade piggybacked on this. The fact that they were insular and thus vulnerable to persecution/unwilling to expand their franchise generally meant that they also ensured trade and the PoL situation. Let's call this the Halfling model. They can trade because they know they have relatively safe havens with all sorts of people and really good internal contacts/information. You can trade because everyone knows you are there to trade. You survive the frequent robbings and set backs because you have a diffuse network of risk. Halfling barges get robbed all the time, but the flotilla survives.
4.) Charcoal Burners - Very small communities of skilled workers or gatherers living in isolation and protection. They can walk out to farming communities and peddle and walk back and be safe. When they get raided they just melt away, wealth isn't their motivation so much as living an alternate lifestyle. Monks follow this model, too. Unlike charcoal burners they do get wealthy, but they also leverage alliances and are comfortable with the fact that they are going to die with some frequency. Let's call this the Dwarf model. Somewhere in the mountains they have a stronghold with a forge. Dwarves wander down in small parties with real regularity, trade for food, and depart. Sometimes you'll see smoke in the hills and Dwarven refugees will show up, leave in town for a while, build up strength, and then go back out to the hills to destroy something.
Alternates:
1.) Commancheros - You're mobile, sort of armed, and in a weird legal situation anyway. Stay off the main road and sell to everyone. Let's call this the monster gnome situation.
2.) Kung Fu Caravans - This is what happens when you get functional nation states without functional internal security or trade. Early Spain or Imperial China. The government operates off of financial institutions that are divorced from trade and can't really be threatened by internal unrest. The cities and cultivated areas are extremely productive, but the hinterland is a horror and corruption is very high. So you develop a non-military warrior caste that can protect merchant interests. Let's call this the Tiefling model. The demon tainted live in their clan schools and have nothing to do with human society or concerns, but when a merchant needs security they are the first to be contacted. Again trade is enabled, but since they are not part of the legal system they don't function to dispel the darkness.
3.) Beaver Trails - In North America there were lots of peddlers and extensive trade networks but actual cultivated areas were few and far between. Even the Iroquois confederacy consisted of one heartland and then a huge area over which they had influence but did not live. There was no real trader class, but a hunter or two would decide to travel, pick up some valuable goods and head down the path. Sure loads of them were killed or went missing, and no one made a lot of money, but there were enough of them every year and they were competent and self-sufficient enough that trade was pretty developed. Let's call this the Elven economy. You've got your unnecessary magic item on you and you run into an Elven woodsmen. You give him the sword and he gives you the elemental rubies he got for trading wyvern scales to the Dwarven outpost. They're money to you, but the magic item is a tool for him. It's an economy of value rather than capital.
It was mentioned elsewhere that in some historical periods, far less dangerous than any D&D setting, it was not unheard of for merchant expeditions to have 2/3rds casualties, and 2/3rds of goods being lost en route. Ppl are spoiled by next-day delivery of Amazon orders, and instantaneous bidding on eBay items from the other side of the world.
Rykion
Explorer
The ultimate answer seems to be merchants survive because the DM says so, but there are plenty of good ideas in this thread. I think I'm going to add a merchant cartel that uses airships to my campaign.
There are still PoL in the real world. There are plenty of places ruled by warlords or corrupt militaries/police forces. Villages are raided and travellers killed or forced into becoming part of the warlord's army.
Are these places as dangerous as the D&D PoL? It's hard to say because that is up to individual DMs.
This is definitely the case when talking about the entire world, but certain places during certain times have been PoL. Hostile people are what makes a real world PoL rather than predators and environment. The Romans didn't fear the German forests just because of the animals and the threat of losing their way. They feared the people they perceived to be warlike barbarians. Northern France during the Hundred Years War was definitely a PoL setting. It was dangerous for people to travel, even when the war itself wasn't active. There were still plenty of bandits on the road and even regular people killing to survive. The borders between hostile nations were commonly dangerous places for travel. The land route of the Silk Road was incredibly dangerous. These are just a few historical PoL.Mirtek said:
There are still PoL in the real world. There are plenty of places ruled by warlords or corrupt militaries/police forces. Villages are raided and travellers killed or forced into becoming part of the warlord's army.
Are these places as dangerous as the D&D PoL? It's hard to say because that is up to individual DMs.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
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