Anyone know any rpgs with decent rules for trading or for running a trading business?

I know Traveller had lots on this, but my impression was that they were complex and could lead to odd results.  Has anyone done any reasonably straightforward rules for this sort of thing?

Quote from: BalbinusAnyone know any rpgs with decent rules for trading or for running a trading business?

I know Traveller had lots on this, but my impression was that they were complex and could lead to odd results.  Has anyone done any reasonably straightforward rules for this sort of thing?

I don't mean to threadcrap but I have tried to find just such a beast before and decided it is really difficult to do well. I would go as far as to say impossible but someone will come along and prove me wrong. My views on trading rules are that in the confines of a board game they can work but the nature of an RPG is that they either are too simplistic leading to unsatisfying results or so complex that they trip over themselves. As you noted (and my experience with Traveller is dated) Traveller had results that just made no sense. I played in a game of D&D that had similar merchant rules and was similarly illogical results.

I guess, in the end, I think this is one of those "Need to play it out" or make it simple. For Nebuleon I have been working on the tools to do this. For instance, local CPI to adjust costs and products. Nothing overly complex but a wrench might be 3 credits in Tern System and 1.5 times as much in the Balek system. Tools are more important, IMHO, than a "Roll a d6 and that is your success in negotiation".

Now, if you were looking for setting information about costs, shipping routes, trade alliances, tariffs taxes and the lot, ignore the above.

Bill

What genre? YotZ: Traders will have some more detailed stuff about trading and bartering in the post-apocalypse, but it's based on d20 Modern Wealth Levels which I know lots of people hate

Well, i co-wrote a set of trading rules for the WFRP Companion. That said, it is tied to the setting as far as trade routes go and the prices you can expect to get for goods at different markets. You can substitute your own stuff for that.

It covers, supply, demand, Guilds, goods etc (although the goods are non-technological if you're after a Sci-Fi set of goods).

Take a look at Far Trader for GURPS Traveller. It handles all the stuff.

Basically, you´d have to give us what kind of trading you want.

Speculative or Freight hauling?

In speculation, you earn through information advances and through sheer betting on external shocks, or through insider information.

In freight hauling you earn through your services. Competition will lower the price very near to your operation costs + wages. In some RPG environments, that includes combat and security as a service.

So what´s the Adventuring purpose of those trading rules?

Trading rules:

Players may transport goods for the purpose of sale. Upon trying to sell said goods, roll relavent trading skill (depending upon system). On a failure they cannot sell their goods at a profit. On a critical failure they loose everything due to legal/beaurocratic issues or simply bad faith deals. On a success they make a modest profit and a critical success is a wild profit due to unusual circumstances.

Profit margins are measured in percents. For each point/level of success they earn a percent of profit on the base cost of goods. For each point/level of failure they lose a percent. They always have the option not to sell at those prices and move on to a new location to try again...

THe GM is responsible to ensure that they pay for the effort of moving goods and shipments, and presuming a 'trading based RPG', the effort of moving goods IS the adventure, thus problems like sick draft animals, borked FTL drives and mice in the grain are assumed to be the purview of the GM.  In all cases losses of goods should be measured in percentages of goods to ease book keeping.

Bonuses to the trading roll are based on knowledge of the culture being traded too, distance traveled (farther away tends to mean more profits for the sales) and uniqueness of goods.   Special modifiers are based on GM controlled events.  For example, if the players buy bulk grain from Kingdom X and deliberably move it to Kingdom Y, where the GM has reported a famine, then their profit margins should reflect a critical success.

Critical Successes can be rated as 10% profit on the trade per point/level of success. Given that most critical successes are already high level/point Margins of Success, this should result in the traders doubling their profits in most cases.  


Hows that?

S. John wrote some great stuff on trading which I snagged - for GURPS IIRC. I don't have it here, but maybe you can ask him?

-clash

I don't have anything too specific in mind yet, I'm playing with ideas a bit.  The thing is, commerce seems a natural source of adventure, but in practice I've tended to find that it results in the players making out like bandits on one bad GM call or on the players whinging the moment they're asked to pay a road toll.

I tell you, players who in real life were avowed socialists turned into minimal state libertarians the moment an NPC asked for payment to cross a bridge.

A campaign where the party operate a trading vessel or are part of a merchant caravan sounds kind of cool, but having a sensible risk/reward framework is not at all easy.

Quote from: BalbinusI don't have anything too specific in mind yet, I'm playing with ideas a bit.  The thing is, commerce seems a natural source of adventure, but in practice I've tended to find that it results in the players making out like bandits on one bad GM call or on the players whinging the moment they're asked to pay a road toll.

My personal favorite trading rule is the Firefly Rule, which I declared in my Serenity campaign: "Whatever you do will eventually lead to bare subsistence trading. It's what the game is about - it's not about the destination, it's about the road there. All gains will be offset almost immediately by corresponding losses. Do your best to keep your head above water, and you might just eke out a living."

Worked great.

Quote from: BalbinusI tell you, players who in real life were avowed socialists turned into minimal state libertarians the moment an NPC asked for payment to cross a bridge.

That would surely depend on whether the toll was state imposed or private, and further whether it was a user fee or dumped into the general funds.

Quote from: BalbinusA campaign where the party operate a trading vessel or are part of a merchant caravan sounds kind of cool, but having a sensible risk/reward framework is not at all easy.

It is if you declare it up front and everyone buys in.

-clash

Quote from: BalbinusA campaign where the party operate a trading vessel or are part of a merchant caravan sounds kind of cool, but having a sensible risk/reward framework is not at all easy.

I have run many adventures like this to great success. More than the traditional "You are guards of a caravan", my best successes have been to star them small (couriers or take this package to there for a fee) and move it up to hauling freight or getting them in on the prices of oranges in the kingdom to the north.

Another thing to keep in mind is the idea of the merchant-craftsman. I had a very successful two year campaign centered around a dwarven brewer of Kek (dwarvish Ale) and the quest for a formula thought lost (made by Kolba who normally specialize in beer). It had traditional elements but also getting ingredients, finding the formula, and acquiring the proper equipment, to say noting of the capital to start a brewery. I have often thought of writing it up as an adventure for sale.

So, yeah, lots of ideas.

Bill

I tended to use the Traveller trade rules in one form or another.  Some depends on how complex you want it to be.  The very basic from Book 2 Starships or more advanced from Book 7 Merchant Prince for CT.  Then there were even more advanced rules in MT.  I never looked at the rules from TNE, GT, or T4 but heard that the GT rules were pretty good.  Plus there were sereral varients published in JTAS and Challenge articles.

I know that sometimes there were really odd results that didn't make any sense but that is why the GM should reserve the right to throw out those and roll again.

What goes wrong with Traveller?

V.

Quote from: VolkazzWhat goes wrong with Traveller?

V.

Not sure, I've heard a few times you can get wacky results a bit too easily.

Quote from: BalbinusNot sure, I've heard a few times you can get wacky results a bit too easily.

The really odd results do tend to turn up with more regularity than I like, but a good bit of that has to do with some of the early world generation results that the trading rules used for input.  Some of the early world results were a bit strange.  The MT trade rules were less buggy.  I'll try to find some of the varients that were in JTAS and Challenge, as I remember they were not bad.

Two important points - First, if you don't like a result, roll it again (or chose something more appropriate), and Second, it has to be remembered that the people who made Traveller were not Economists.  They were Game Designers.  As a result, it is pretty much acknowledged on the TML (and others) the the economic system given in the Imperium is pretty much broken, especially the starship economics.

Quote from: VolkazzWhat goes wrong with Traveller?

The economic perpetual-motion machines -- find an agricultural world one jump away from an industrial world; make sky-high profits on each and every leg carrying the products of one to the markets of the other; retire a gazillionaire after one or two years.

The GURPS Traveller Far Trader rules explicitly state that basic supply and demand will negate these perpetual-motion machines by attracting so many large corporate carriers that average profits will decline to nearly zero; therefore speculative trade of the free trader type will tend to be at the economic margins.