I am using my own caravan rules and with this, I want to come up with some kind of fairly simple check to see how much profit/loss the party makes on selling/trading goods in a particular town.
I want to keep this pretty simple -
For example, the PCs load up their wagon with $1,000gp in generic goods. One of my PCs owns a lumber mill, so some of the goods will be lumber. They get to a town and decide to sell their goods.
What would be a cool way for me to decide how much profit or loss they made without making it too complicated, but at the same time, giving them a couple of choices.
Skills that seem relevent here are diplomacy, bluff, and appraise. Maybe I could make a check for each of these skills somehow?
Their max profit I think would be maybe 100% margin (but this would be hard to achieve). And it is possible they could lose up to 50%.
Also along they way, they might lose some of their goods to raids, so even at a high margin, they may have some loss of material in route.
Thanks for the ideas.
I came up with a spreadsheet I would like to share, but I don't konw the best way to do this.
Sure, I'll take a crack at some ideas for trade. Trade really comes down to the following:
1) Buy (or produce) at a low cost
2) Transport the goods by the most efficient manner
3) Sell at a high price
You can run step 2 as a more conventional adventure, but step 1 and 3 should be skill checks. That said, I wouldn't put much emphasis on the actual sale. You need a pretty epic diplomacy roll to convince someone to buy from you when a competitor is undercutting your offer by a substantial margin, and if there is no such competitor you're already getting a killer price. I'd say let them attempt a DC 25 diplomacy or bluff check for an extra 5% and that's about it. So I'd more emphasize the skill check to determine an appropriate location to sell to.
So basically, the PC's make a check to determine the best place to purchase or sell their good. Appraise, knowledge (local) and maybe knowledge (geography) would be the most appropriate skills.
I'd have the PC's make their skill check. I'd then make a secret "opposed" roll using a +0 modifier. Subtract my opposed roll from their result and this gets the base price modifier. I'd start with 100% and either add or subtract the PC's results depending on whether they're looking for a good place to sell or a good place to buy. I'd be inclined to have a modifier based on how far the PC's are willing to travel, but I'm not sure what it should be. I'm leaning to a "base" distance of 100 miles, and +1 for every 20 miles beyond that.
I came up with a spreadsheet I would like to share, but I don't konw the best way to do this.
Google Docs?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-10hm5sbsNpdmoyd3RHQl9sY0k/edit?usp=shari ng
OK, hopefully with the link above you can see my caravan stats. Basically, the party will buy a wagon of their choice. Then travel to the next town. As they travel, I will encounters prepared for them that they will face that is focused just on them and their actions. (they are part of a bigger caravan, but the rest of it is mostly for role play).
During the encounters, they may lose some of their goods. When they make it to town, they can make either a Bluff, Diplomacy, Profession/Merchant or Intimidate check to see if they make money or not. There is a different range of risk and reward for each type of check.
This is not meant to be a big part of my game - just something they can do 4 or 5 times maybe as they travel to different encounters that are driving the story.
Thanks for checking it out and letting me know what you think.
Diplomacy check. A friendly merchant gives them an extra 5%, helpful an extra 10%
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Profession: Merchant seems the easiest way to go to me.
Profession: Merchant seems the easiest way to go to me.
I wanted merchent to be the best option to reward a player for taking it. There are not very many occasions in games I have run where a player gets to take advantage of that skill.
I think the wagons might be a little expensive - still thinking about that.
Profession: Merchant seems the easiest way to go to me.I wanted merchent to be the best option to reward a player for taking it. There are not very many occasions in games I have run where a player gets to take advantage of that skill.
I think the wagons might be a little expensive - still thinking about that.
If anyone is interested in this idea for Jade Regent - let me know. I ran it last night and it was a big hit - check the spreadsheet. I ran caravan encounters focusing on the PCs and they made market checks to sell stuff at 4 stops along the way. They were excited to make money.
Should be able to work something up from that
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I made some additional caravan trading rules for our Jade Regent campaign. You may find useful here. Good luck! I could see rewarding someone for taking profession merchant with a bonus, would need to work that in.