Trading commodities in D&D

[haakon1]

Naics

If you want a free list of businesses or things to trade, search for the NAICS online.

NAICS is a list of every type of business, creating for government and statistical classification, as updated for NAFTA. A lot of the industries are modern, but you can ignore those and stick with the berry farmers, diamond miners, and bail bondsmen, etc.

The one thing to keep in mind about medieval trade is that weight and bulk matter a lot. Stuff like iron ore and wheat is a pain to move around with modern bulk transport ships and railroads. In a medieval world, that stuff shouldn't move more than 40 miles or so.

Long-distance trade should be high-value add products: spider silk, spices, alcoholic beverages, perhaps preserved foods, arms and armor, art, that sort of thing.

Of course, fabulously rich dwarf farmers do need to import their food . . .

 

[frankthedm]

And here i was going to say; "They make enough money to make them want to keep adventuring."

 

[Ry]

There's a Savage Worlds setting that has a great system for this (by actual play reports, not my own experience) and a lot of really cool plot ideas.

 

[mmadsen]

I am thinking of basic goods like iron, wood, foodstuffs, medical supplies etc. Prices? Expected profits? Costs to run the ship?

If the route is not particularly risky, then the expected profits should just barely justify the expense -- including the expense of buying the ship in the first place. Selling the ship for 10,000 gp should be roughly equally appealing, from an economic standpoint, to holding onto it.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

A previous poster pointed out the fact that merchants might not like competition, so perhaps your players might like to make themselves associate members of an actual trading house, which could conceivably be used to generate some new adventures. If they are skilled fighters with good reputations, merchants might like to have them along to send a message to pirates, and also save on the cost of hiring low-level grunts as guards for the cargo.

By being actual members of the trading house, the PCs can get connections and contacts that they might not otherwise have, and can use the trading house's resources to supplement their own. They can also have latitude to do their own trading as associate members, paying a percentage of their profits to the merchant house, instead of just being employees for some other trader.

If the players insist on staying independent, perhaps they might like to specialize in niche goods, trading with non-humans, or with humans not associated with the normal trading works of the region your players work in. French and British fur traders from the 16th to the 19th centuries made huge profits trading with the First Nations of North America, giving metal trade goods (guns, cooking pots, etc.), and selling the furs at a huge price in Europe.

This might be a way to introduce new cultures or races into your campaign, or get the players mixed up in the goings-on of another part of the world; the French fur trader Samuel de Champlain, for instance, ended up joining his Huron trading partners in their conflict with the Iroquois.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I have GURPS Free Trader for Traveler, which has pretty good rules for this type of thing.

My other suggestion would be to search these boards for an economics systems posted by Old One. I copied it out for my own use, and it seems like it would fit what you want to do.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

If the route is not particularly risky, then the expected profits should just barely justify the expense -- including the expense of buying the ship in the first place. Selling the ship for 10,000 gp should be roughly equally appealing, from an economic standpoint, to holding onto it.

That's solid basic economics, but it assumes perfect competition - anyone can get in who wants to. Given other circumstances - danger (as you mentioned), a limited number of ships, a limited number of people who know the routes, a limited number of people who can sell cross-culture, etc, it doesn't necessarily hold. Given any of these you would be able to turn a good profit by trading.

 

[Slife]

To be really simple, have a profession check modified by +5/ton of goods (and some amount for distance traveled. +2/week?). This is your profit.

 

[mmadsen]

That's solid basic economics, but it assumes perfect competition - anyone can get in who wants to. Given other circumstances - danger (as you mentioned), a limited number of ships, a limited number of people who know the routes, a limited number of people who can sell cross-culture, etc, it doesn't necessarily hold. Given any of these you would be able to turn a good profit by trading.

Excellent point, but if the player characters just stumbled across a ship, and they're trading, I would assume there are few barriers to entry. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be the ones wielding any monopoly power -- although that might make for a great adventure reward, in place of physical treasure.