kitsune9
Adventurer
Who has the money to buy all of it?
Here's some questions to ask yourself regarding selling all that iron:
1. Who in the town of Diamond Lake has the money to buy all that iron?
2. Who is Free City (only 3 days away) has the money to buy all that iron?
Also, you should play out more realism into effect of hauling that iron and selling it. The more the players dump onto the market, the more worthless the commodity becomes. Say your players haul that iron to the Free City. First hand, they have to find some way to get all that iron to the Free City--they have to hire drivers, teamsters, laborers, wagons, horses, food, guards (equipped them as well). To haul that iron on wagon that bear that weight is going to be a lot of wagons and a lot of guards. If the PC's want to piecemeal it themselves, then they need to realize what kind of daunting challenge it is. Also, any iron the PC's don't manage to sell, they have to store it, which means putting it in a warehouse that they have to rent out, hire guards for that, and of course the local thieves guild will want protection money or else that iron might disappear (within reason though--if it took the PC's a massive logistic effort to get it all to the Free City, it's going to require the same effort of any theives to haul it somewhere and not get noticed, unless the thieves guild has access to some powerful magic).
Also follow the gp limit of the city. Selling any particular item or commodity in this case is going to hit the gp limit, so for example if the gp limit of Free City is 25,000 gp (I don't know what it really is so I'm just making up a number for example), then the characters can only sell 25k, and then must wait until a reasonable period of time to sell more of their commodity to buyers (and I should stress buyers, because hitting the gp limit should be them spending the entire day or more selling their ore to every merchant interested in iron).
Then there is the tax collector at the markets who want to assess the taxes. And there is the guilds who don't want so much iron dumped into the market and causing prices to plummet unless the PC's are willing to sell to the guilds at much much lower discounts (1-2% of value).
Like in real-life, the more desperate a seller is, the lower the price of the item will be.
So, if your players are willing to devote a lot of time, energy and effort to selling this, then it should be exactly that--a lot of time, energy and effort. Of course, you can preoccupy their time by making the events of the Age of Worms unfold around them while they are concerned with hauling their iron around.
Here's some questions to ask yourself regarding selling all that iron:
1. Who in the town of Diamond Lake has the money to buy all that iron?
2. Who is Free City (only 3 days away) has the money to buy all that iron?
Also, you should play out more realism into effect of hauling that iron and selling it. The more the players dump onto the market, the more worthless the commodity becomes. Say your players haul that iron to the Free City. First hand, they have to find some way to get all that iron to the Free City--they have to hire drivers, teamsters, laborers, wagons, horses, food, guards (equipped them as well). To haul that iron on wagon that bear that weight is going to be a lot of wagons and a lot of guards. If the PC's want to piecemeal it themselves, then they need to realize what kind of daunting challenge it is. Also, any iron the PC's don't manage to sell, they have to store it, which means putting it in a warehouse that they have to rent out, hire guards for that, and of course the local thieves guild will want protection money or else that iron might disappear (within reason though--if it took the PC's a massive logistic effort to get it all to the Free City, it's going to require the same effort of any theives to haul it somewhere and not get noticed, unless the thieves guild has access to some powerful magic).
Also follow the gp limit of the city. Selling any particular item or commodity in this case is going to hit the gp limit, so for example if the gp limit of Free City is 25,000 gp (I don't know what it really is so I'm just making up a number for example), then the characters can only sell 25k, and then must wait until a reasonable period of time to sell more of their commodity to buyers (and I should stress buyers, because hitting the gp limit should be them spending the entire day or more selling their ore to every merchant interested in iron).
Then there is the tax collector at the markets who want to assess the taxes. And there is the guilds who don't want so much iron dumped into the market and causing prices to plummet unless the PC's are willing to sell to the guilds at much much lower discounts (1-2% of value).
Like in real-life, the more desperate a seller is, the lower the price of the item will be.
So, if your players are willing to devote a lot of time, energy and effort to selling this, then it should be exactly that--a lot of time, energy and effort. Of course, you can preoccupy their time by making the events of the Age of Worms unfold around them while they are concerned with hauling their iron around.
