pogre said:
Howdy,
I was wondering if anyone has seen trading rules for merchant guilds or shipping companies. What I would like to do is let players get involved in caravans, shipping, and merchant guilds to further enmesh them in the politics of the region and make some cash. I put some rules together for WFRP a few years back, but with the prolifieration of d20 stuff it seems like someone must have done this.
Thanks in advance!
Here's a quick'n dirty investing system I came up with.
It assumes that land ventures (caravans) are generally less risky than sea ventures (ships), that ships have a higher profit margin because they have rare cargo, and that each venture takes about a year.
I also use the base assumption that most large ventures are run by guilds having multiple investors with very few having a share of more than a few thousand gp. Most investors in that scale will diversify (oooooh, logic!) and put 2-3k in one trip, a 4-5kgp in something reliable, and maybe 2kgp in each of three ships.
The mechanics are butt simple: roll the die and see how much of your investment (i) you get. A result of 0 means the entire thing was a bust. i/2 means you get half your money back, i you get your investment back, 2i double your money, etc.
For slightly more realistic sea ventures, roll a d4-1; that's how many years it is before the ship returns (with the same as 1 year).
It gives something like a 20% profit margin on average for caravans and I think 50% for ships. The flip side to ships are that 20% of the time you lose your shirt, err, ship.
During special situations (martial law/rationing) you may want to reduce all i>1 by 0.5 (2i -> 1.5i) to reflect the price controls. However during famines increase all i>=1 by 0.5 (i/2 -> i/2, i -> 1.5i) to reflect increased demand. You can also apply the increase during rationing to merchants who sell to the black market.
Return on Investment
d20 Land Venture Sea Venture
1 0 0
2 0 0
3 0 0
4 i/2 0
5 i/2 0
6 i/2 i/2
7 i/2 i/2
8 i i/2
9 i i/2
10 i i/2
11 2i i/2
12 2i i
13 2i i
14 2i i
15 2i 2i
16 2i 3i
17 2i 4i
18 2i 4i
19 2i 5i
20 3i 5i
