TheRPGSite

I'm still trying to ramp up on the generic setting contained in the Traveller universe.  My problem starts with these two elements:

QuoteLimited communication
A central theme to Traveller is that there is no form of faster-than-light information transfer – meaning no ansible, subspace radio or hyper-wave communication technology is available, thereby recreating an "age of sail" feel to the game. Most interplanetary communication is handled by courier ships, most commonly "X-boats", which are small Imperial vessels with long-distance jump drives that travel between systems transmitting and receiving vital data. Systems not on an X-boat route must rely on mail runs brought in by visiting ships.

Feudalism
The limits on the speed of information means huge empires cannot directly command all member worlds. Since local rulers cannot be directly controlled by central authority, affairs are managed by independent nobility, who make use of classic titles such as Baron, Duke and Archduke.

In this setting, I can't picture how a central bank would work.  And if there's no central bank, and therefore no reserve currency, then we're not looking at something where a 'credit' (or dollar or anything else) is going to have a universal value.  And history tells us that currencies that can't maintain a constant value lose out to those that can.  Especially in a 'feudalistic' society, because there's no central authority to make it illegal to use competing currencies.

So how does this work, exactly?  What is a 'credit'?  Who issues them, who/what controls interest rates, etc?

I thought about this question a lot myself when I was putting together the Suns of Gold trade supplement for SWN. My eventual conclusion was that there was no clean way of explaining a universal currency in a politically fractured ship-speed universe.

The consequences of this are rather drastic, however. Minor peddlers might be able to change a few tens of thousands of foreign credits on a world's exchanges, but major players don't have a single credit balance- they have separate credit balances on different worlds. What's valuable to these merchants aren't the credit totals they have, but the tangible wealth they have- the goods, the real estate, the minions, all the stuff that's either portable or valuable in of itself. Big traders keep their money in stuff as opposed to credit accounts, because if a world gets mad enough at you or feels like striking a blow against the foreign colonialist oppressors they're just going to zero out your local bank account.

This doesn't work so well for the conventional "space trucker" style of small merchanting that Traveller encourages, however, so I'd suggest two possible rationalizations:

1) The amounts of credits the PCs throw around are small enough that they can find counterparties to exchange them on any given world.

2) A "credit" is just a convenient abstraction of a large amount of negotiation, currency market trading, bearer bonds, letters-of-credit and other footwork that is boring and irrelevant to play, and so is shuffled offscreen. Yes, each world has its own local credit but tracking them is more work than it's worth so it's just handwaved, sort of like the causality issues of FTL flight.

QuoteThe Imperial credit itself is backed by the Imperial and Subsidiary Fleet, or (to be precise) its transport capacity. One credit is equal to the cost of transporting one metric gram through one jump. This has made the Imperial credit safe from the economic effects of inflation and deflation for over a thousand years.

Here's one explanation of what a credit is.

Hopefully this article will answer your questions. (http://www.ayahuasca.net/pub/rpg/traveller/money.html)

Also, I have to say, you are the first I have encountered who thinks that the Official Traveller Universe is flawed because the Third Imperium does not have a central banking system.

Quote from: mcbobbo;695291So how does this work, exactly?  What is a 'credit'?  Who issues them, who/what controls interest rates, etc?

IMO, like the US has, there would be regional reserve banks, that would set the various currency policies for their regions. Money creation is done by individual banks by loaning money, same as now. Similar to the way every currency in the world is valued against the dollar, any local planetary currency would be pegged to the credit.

See, I don't see this as any different than Earth's history before the telegraph was invented.  The United States managed to have a functional, non-feudal government (and, as to that, a central bank) a long time before instantaneous communications.

In like fashion, international finance existed millennia before instantaneous communications.

One factor was that there were always some currencies that, because of the stability of the issuing nation and/or the acknowledged purity of the coinage, were widely acknowledged as having superior trading value.  Since the Traveller universe already has the Imperial government, it's not a stretch to assume that its purchasing power is mandated by the finance ministry.  As far as fringe planets go, I expect there'd be the official currency peg and the black market peg.

Quote from: jeff37923;695304Hopefully this article will answer your questions. (http://www.ayahuasca.net/pub/rpg/traveller/money.html)

Also, I have to say, you are the first I have encountered who thinks that the Official Traveller Universe is flawed because the Third Imperium does not have a central banking system.

Thanks everybody, and Jeff that link is exactly what I needed.

So there is a 'central bank' in concept, but the Empire is somewhat hands-off about it.  Underwriting closes most of the gaps.

Sweet!

Quote from: mcbobbo;695291In this setting, I can't picture how a central bank would work.  And if there's no central bank, and therefore no reserve currency, then we're not looking at something where a 'credit' (or dollar or anything else) is going to have a universal value.  And history tells us that currencies that can't maintain a constant value lose out to those that can.  Especially in a 'feudalistic' society, because there's no central authority to make it illegal to use competing currencies.

This is addressed in detail in GURPS Traveller Far Trader. The credit works because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the Third Imperium. The Third Imperium has this prestige because of the near universal presence of Imperial starports on nearly all member worlds. (All those with E or higher).

Basically Cleon, first emperor, main goal for the the Third Imperium is to foster interstellar trade. To this end the early Imperium built out a network of starports to facilitate trade. These starport do business in Imperial Credits. This was the main engine behind the acceptance of credits as a universal currency.

I forget exactly which ministry handled this but basically the Third Imperium collects economic data and determines the amount of credit needed to expand the economy. It very low, way less than a 1% growth rate. The extra credits are distributed to the sector nobility to spend as they see fit.  Abuse is checked by same mechanism used to keep the nobles in line. Peer pressure on steroids.

Now with all this being said, Traveller does have rules for credits of varying values if you want that complexity. I believe one place they can be found is in Trillion Credit Squadron. It is a chart cross-indexed by Starport and Tech Level. Basically a planet with a A class Starport and Tech level 5 has a Credit rating of 1.0.  Every other combination is lower.

Jeff's source appears to have a wealth of other info on it as well, and I finally found the root page...

http://www.ayahuasca.net/pub/rpg/traveller/links.html

Quote from: estar;695333Now with all this being said, Traveller does have rules for credits of varying values if you want that complexity. I believe one place they can be found is in Trillion Credit Squadron. It is a chart cross-indexed by Starport and Tech Level. Basically a planet with a A class Starport and Tech level 5 has a Credit rating of 1.0.  Every other combination is lower.

The T20 book I picked up has charts for this. They're handling it through price fluctuation.  I can roll with it.

I suppose the biggest reason I wanted to know was more along the lines of what might be possible in the setting.  Earth's age of sail was very much driven by precious metals. An Italian coin could be restruck, for example, so always carried some value.  The wife is confident they used letters of credit then as well, but I am less convinced.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to think those pages need "history" sections, and I don't personally know any experts on it.  I know individual establishments certainly ran tabs, accounts, etc, but at what point were those assets transferable?

Case in point - do I do a lost temple of gold site-based adventure?  Or what about Cassie Chadwick? (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Chadwick)

Trying to grok it...

Quote from: mcbobbo;695349Or what about Cassie Chadwick? (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Chadwick)

Tech level and remoteness are the keys here. The lower the TL, the more difficult it will be to get positive IDs on known criminals/frauds. The more remote the world is, the longer it will take for communications to bring in that vital piece of information law enforcement may need.

Quote from: mcbobbo;695349Case in point - do I do a lost temple of gold site-based adventure?  Or what about Cassie Chadwick? (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Chadwick)

Trying to grok it...

Nice merc/bounty hunter mission with that link.

Money is weird, sometimes it was cowrie shells - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money
I think, same as today, reputation plus a certain amount down would have acted as good faith for a purchase or loan. However, iirc, in one of my economics classes, I heard the Chinese issued the first checks over a thousand years ago.

Quote from: mcbobbo;695349The T20 book I picked up has charts for this. They're handling it through price fluctuation.  I can roll with it.

I suppose the biggest reason I wanted to know was more along the lines of what might be possible in the setting.  Earth's age of sail was very much driven by precious metals. An Italian coin could be restruck, for example, so always carried some value.  The wife is confident they used letters of credit then as well, but I am less convinced.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to think those pages need "history" sections, and I don't personally know any experts on it.  I know individual establishments certainly ran tabs, accounts, etc, but at what point were those assets transferable?

Promissory Notes and basic banking instruments existed back in the Middle Ages.

Quote from: mcbobbo;695349I know individual establishments certainly ran tabs, accounts, etc, but at what point were those assets transferable?

The most simple and gamable way of thinking about it is that the system is based on who you know. If the House of Medicis in Florence knows and trust the House of Pizarro in Seville (and vice versa) then assets are transferrable as both know the other is good for it. But if you go to some grain merchant in Bremen likely they are going to tell you to pound salt. However if you can find a factor of the Medici in Bremen then probably you can get something done although it will probably cost you.

If you want this aspect in your game then make up a small social network of Banking Factors up to whatever number you can handle.

I don't get it, why would a setting with FTL travel have difficulties with information communication? At a minimum surely capable systems would have mailboats, I mean information is a lot more valuable per gram than almost anything else, especially financial information. The Gap series setting by Donaldson had a similar premise and regular drones were dispatched to maintain the flow of data.

Quote from: The Traveller;695407I don't get it, why would a setting with FTL travel have difficulties with information communication? At a minimum surely capable systems would have mailboats, I mean information is a lot more valuable per gram than almost anything else, especially financial information. The Gap series setting by Donaldson had a similar premise and regular drones were dispatched to maintain the flow of data.

It takes a minimum of a week to travel between systems and there is a minimum size on Jump capable ships. so no Jump Torpedoes to automate the process.

The big problems doesn't show up until you get beyond your subsector 8 parsec by 10 parsecs. It take over a year to cross the Imperium from one side to the other.

And (I just learned that) the reason the FTL tech doesn't apply to communication is because it actually shortens distances rather than increases speed. It (if I understand correctly) scrunches spacetime ahead of the craft.

I think the CrImp is backed by the power of the fleet, to say that if one world started counterfeiting them, a squadron of Imperial Dreadnaughts appearing in system will convince them of the error of their ways. The "feudalism", which is actually derived from H. Beam Piper's 'Space Viking', is imo, over-played in the imperium; with the actual size of the imperium of 11,000 worlds or so, can encompass just about any economic scheme. While business thrives on timely information, I still think that most transactions will be in-system, rather than interstellar, and if they are interstellar, it will be rather one sided such as a mercantilist homeworld/colony paradigm.

Adventures being who they are, I would expect them to get that "your credits are no good here" result pretty often. They're going to buy/sell and leave, leaving you holding the bag.

Now if the currency were, say, gold-pressed latinum, well who cares where you got it, and no I don't want you to sign anything...

Up until the rebellion, the credit probably remains a pretty solid currency, then after, it is a free for all as the credit collapses. The game never delves into this, afaik, but it also is low on playability as well.

In the Core the vast population worlds work just fine, they have such vast critical mass. But the fragmented nature of the OTU means that there are many local currencies, and most people don't use Imperial credits, 'cos most people don't ever leave home.

Quote from: mcbobbo;695349I suppose the biggest reason I wanted to know was more along the lines of what might be possible in the setting.  Earth's age of sail was very much driven by precious metals. An Italian coin could be restruck, for example, so always carried some value.  The wife is confident they used letters of credit then as well, but I am less convinced.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to think those pages need "history" sections, and I don't personally know any experts on it.  I know individual establishments certainly ran tabs, accounts, etc, but at what point were those assets transferable?

(raises his hand)

What makes you "less convinced" that international banking used letters of credit in the Age of Sail?  Letters of credit and bills of exchange existed in the freaking twelfth century.  I know we have this modern prejudice that international banking was a product of the 18th century or so, but sophisticated systems and instruments were in place nearly a thousand years ago.

Quote from: Ravenswing;695552(raises his hand)

What makes you "less convinced" that international banking used letters of credit in the Age of Sail?  Letters of credit and bills of exchange existed in the freaking twelfth century.  I know we have this modern prejudice that international banking was a product of the 18th century or so, but sophisticated systems and instruments were in place nearly a thousand years ago.

Ah yes, I forgot those tales of pirate booty involving travelers cheques, El Dorado the lost city of interest rates, etc, etc, etc

Interestingly, lack of faith in the credit is associated with the collapse of the Second Imperium:

QuoteThe -1776 date for the end of the Rule of Man is arbitrary, and it notes the financial collapse of the central government, which occurred when the Treasury at Hub/Ershur refused to honor a monetary issue of the branch treasury at Antares. The resulting lack of confidence within monetary circles marked the end of large-scale interstellar trade and of effective governmental power within the Rule of Man. Although the Imperium did not completely fall apart for many years, the Rule of Man had effectively ceased to exist as a viable interstellar community, and the period known as Twilight had begun.

Quote from: Garnfellow;695685Interestingly, lack of faith in the credit is associated with the collapse of the Second Imperium:

Sweet!  Okay, so that would imply a certain heresy in not trusting it.

Real question, though - what's your source and how do I plug in to that?

Quote from: mcbobbo;695706Sweet!  Okay, so that would imply a certain heresy in not trusting it.

Real question, though - what's your source and how do I plug in to that?

I pulled it from the Traveller Wiki, which should be your best friend next to the Traveller Map. But the wiki's source is Supplement 11, Library Data.

Great fiction on the history of modern banking concepts (a fine adventure too) by Neal Stephenson: The Baroque Cycle.

But back to that definition of the value of a credit: The cost of moving 1 gram of cargo through 1 jump? Nothing could be more variable, surely? The cost of moving cargo has to range all over the show based on the volume of the ship (unlike the energy expended to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius -- which is what the definition sounds like). Even the definition of the calorie goes on to specify pressure as a codicil.

And what is the cost measured in? It's a self-referential definition. Even if you measured the actual theoretical cost in ergs of shifting any mass (is it based on weight or volume -- a gram of lead is much smaller than a gram of pepper), the cost of producing energy varies widely based on the technology used.

I would agree with the initial supposition that whether they had a central bank or not, the issue of currency and exchange rates would be a huge problem for the Imperium. Locally it would function as it does here on earth, but interstellar flight would allow clever captains to make an absolute killing on new technology developments in one sector before they became widespread.

It's the same problem they had when Columbus discovered the Americas and brought back all that silver. Silver in and of itself has no monetary value. It is a medium of exchange. If you double the quantity of silver in a system you do not double the wealth, you halve the value of the silver that was already there. The wealth stays about the same -- with the possible exception of the silver smiths who now have cheaper metal to make jewelry out of, and thus actually get richer, because what they are really selling is the the value add of their skill, which they can now spread farther because the medium costs less. But the first dozen or so ships to sail into Cadiz loaded down with silver made everyone think they'd doubled their money. It took years for the values to readjust to reflect the new relative availability of the precious metal.

Just my $.02

The problem with your scenario, Teagan, is that it's 20:20 hindsight.  Indeed, there've folks who've spread advanced technology to new areas who made out like bandits.  There've also been a lot of folks who lost their shirts trying ... where the technology didn't work as well as advertised, where it was too expensive to catch on, where it was quickly supplanted by something even newer, where the locals were just too resistant to change, where the entrepreneur wasn't a good enough businessman to make the effort work, where ruthless rivals trumped them, where governments shut them down.

Quote from: teagan;695714I would agree with the initial supposition that whether they had a central bank or not, the issue of currency and exchange rates would be a huge problem for the Imperium. Locally it would function as it does here on earth, but interstellar flight would allow clever captains to make an absolute killing on new technology developments in one sector before they became widespread.

An alien touches down with a hold full of inexplicable technology vastly in advance of anything you can produce. You are the ruler of that world. Do you....

A) Bid him welcome and invite him to sell his goods to the highest bidder, including your rivals.
B) Allow him to sell select, comprehensible portions of his goods to the general public, regardless of the enormous disruption it will cause in your local economy and current power structure.
C) Inform him that he's going to get X local credits for his wares, which he will sell to you exclusively, and if he doesn't like it you really don't mind if he never comes back.
D) Kill him with your 1,000,000-to-1 advantage in numbers, take his stuff, and use it to entrench your rule.

The alternative that results in the merchant becoming fabulously wealthy is, one would surmise, the least likely to happen. Unless there's a real physical danger in abusing merchants, most planetary rulers have very few downsides to screwing them over. Which means merchants have to convince the locals that it's really in their advantage to play nice, and such efforts need not always bear fruit.

Quote from: estar;695409It takes a minimum of a week to travel between systems and there is a minimum size on Jump capable ships. so no Jump Torpedoes to automate the process.

The big problems doesn't show up until you get beyond your subsector 8 parsec by 10 parsecs. It take over a year to cross the Imperium from one side to the other.

Yeah but check it out (http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/69/1/87/F1.expansion.html), that's the time it would take to get from England to Australia circa 1800, and the pound still held its value in the prison colonies.

Actually I see a huge untapped potential for adventure here, high frequency traders made a killing by being seven thousandths of a second (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/24/traders-may-have-gotten-last-weeks-fed-news-7-milliseconds-early/?tid=pm_business_pop) ahead of the Fed's announcements recently, probably illegally - imagine the fortunes to be made by being able to delay financial news by an hour, or a day - interstellar corporations could rise and fall overnight on such information.

The possibilities for espionage, dirty dealing, and skullduggery at every level from the street to the board room is immense. Gain a minute, hell gain a second on the newsboat in some backwater system and you could multiply your wealth tenfold. Of course the empire would probably take countermeasures by sending out unmarked ships secretly to release information to several parsecs simultaneously, among other things, which only opens more vistas of clandestine goings on.

I dunno, maybe I'm talking out my ass, I'm not overly familiar with the setting. But it feels interesting - I'm tinkering with a setting based on Alastair Reynolds' slower than light space milieu and economics get truly messed up when it takes centuries to travel between stars. A year isn't much to worry about.

Quote from: The Traveller;695823Actually I see a huge untapped potential for adventure here, high frequency traders made a killing by being seven thousandths of a second (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/24/traders-may-have-gotten-last-weeks-fed-news-7-milliseconds-early/?tid=pm_business_pop) ahead of the Fed's announcements recently, probably illegally - imagine the fortunes to be made by being able to delay financial news by an hour, or a day - interstellar corporations could rise and fall overnight on such information.

The possibilities for espionage, dirty dealing, and skullduggery at every level from the street to the board room is immense. Gain a minute, hell gain a second on the newsboat in some backwater system and you could multiply your wealth tenfold. Of course the empire would probably take countermeasures by sending out unmarked ships secretly to release information to several parsecs simultaneously, among other things, which only opens more vistas of clandestine goings on.

See this bolded stuff? Pay Attention To It!

   

Quote from: The Traveller;695823I dunno, maybe I'm talking out my ass, I'm not overly familiar with the setting. But it feels interesting - I'm tinkering with a setting based on Alastair Reynolds' slower than light space milieu and economics get truly messed up when it takes centuries to travel between stars. A year isn't much to worry about.

You are not talking out of your ass. You have hit upon a core element of adventuring in Traveller.

There is also the flipside, to be the bounty hunters/mercs, hired by the bank to kill/capture the person/people that have been ripping them off. Trav is nice for being a sandbox.

Quote from: The Traveller;695823I dunno, maybe I'm talking out my ass, I'm not overly familiar with the setting. But it feels interesting - I'm tinkering with a setting based on Alastair Reynolds' slower than light space milieu and economics get truly messed up when it takes centuries to travel between stars. A year isn't much to worry about.

Just be careful of infinite money machines. There are certain combo of planets that are instant profits in one jump for classic Traveller Trading rule. Just go back and forth and harvest the cash.

Quote from: estar;696039Just be careful of infinite money machines. There are certain combo of planets that are instant profits in one jump for classic Traveller Trading rule. Just go back and forth and harvest the cash.

Which can be fun when the wealth of the Players starts to get noticed by pirates, hijackers, tax collectors, and rival corporations.

Quote from: jeff37923;696042Which can be fun when the wealth of the Players starts to get noticed by pirates, hijackers, tax collectors, and rival corporations.

Yep, that's the invisible hand of the market looting the wreckage of your merchantman!

It's a bit like the triangle trade route of yore, every step increased profits hugely. That sort of thing rarely lasts for long though, the free market brings lots of competition as word gets out, then markets get saturated, profits drop, and it eventually becomes just another wobbly-headed-doll caper.

I can see a whole subgame in finding these markets while they're still hot though, like gold rushes for those who know how to read the signs.