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Long-distance trade in Hackmaster

Related links

https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2018/03/hacktrade.html

https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2019/08/hackmaster-social-conflict.html

Here's my system as-is for a party running a long-distance caravan in Hackmaster 5 (Kalamar setting).

The foundation of this trade system is that a person can buy a good where it's cheap and haul it to where it's expensive and sell it. Complications such as preferential trade deals, swindling and slander, and harassment by governing factions are to be mixed in alongside this basic framework.

General Journey Structure

The player characters acquired a wagon full of commodities (random crap that they're keeping only to sell). If they want to profit a lot, here is the basic step-by-step structure. These events do not include sidetracking the party into some dungeon crawl, monster festival, or prolonged war. They can though if you feel like writing / adapting one and the party feels like abandoning their caravan and doing something else. This system is half for players who want to go trading and half so you know what NPC merchants are up to.

• The players pick a town that their characters would know about.
• Based on the characters' knowledge, including their skills, proficiencies, past adventures, and backgrounds, the GM tells them:
• • Which of their commodities are in high demand in the selected town
  • Which of their commodities are very difficult to sell in that town
  • What can be bought easily and cheaply in that town: prices and weights/unit.
  • (A sample pricing guideline is at the bottom of this page).
• The PCs decide their next stop.
• • If the entire party is completely ignorant, they may just follow the road somewhere, ask for directions, or ask someone to teach them about the local area.
• The PCs prepare their caravan to not-die of starvation, disease, or exposure.
• The party journeys.
• • The distance influences exhaustion of food and water, and the fatigue and dissatisfaction of beasts and hirelings.
  • The distance also influences the time that passes by, if you are tracking anything occuring in the campaign "in parallel" to the adventurers.
• Regardless of distance:
• • The party has 1d4p difficult encounters. (chart below)
  • The party has 1 normal encounter, which can be good or bad, and can usually be safely ignored. (chart below)
  • At the GM's option, the party has a region-appropriate wandering monster encounter.

*Rivers and coast-adjacent routes could use both land or sea tables.

Influencing prices

Negotiating

If players aren't happy with the price of a commodity they're buying or selling: once per session, one player at the table can attempt to use one of their character's skills to raise or lower the per-unit price of one good in one town for one season. The skill doesn't need to be a social or mercantile skill, and can represent a character's "domain knowledge". This is done with a contested skill check, and changes the price by an amount of tc equal to the difference. If resisted by the same skill, the price can be changed opposite of the character's intention. If resisted by Resist Persuasion, the price just stays the same.

Items made from the commodity see an immediate similar difference in price.

Negotiating example

The GM lays declares the following table for sample commodities in Daresido.

The PCs' waggon train has dragged 2000 iron ingots to Daresido at the end of summer (each is 10 pounds). The party can sell all of them to a skipper who can float them to Korem. The skipper's offer totals 30 tc per ingot (60 gold); the skipper wants to pay with 20 gold Korak coins and 5 tuns (~10,000 lbs) of rum.

To get a higher offer from the skipper, the party nominates their fighter Muk the Mariner to use her boating skill to raise the price of iron. Muk's boating is 32, and she rolls a 76: 108. Muk points out that the skipper's ship can hold 100 tons of cargo, thus 10 tons of iron is a "drop in the bucket", especially because it becomes free money in Korem.

The skipper contends with his own boating skill which is 78. He rolls a 40 for a sum of 118. He counters that his crew is always at risk of dying all the time and he has problems besides cargo load. The skipper is then allowed to lower the price of iron ingots in Daresido by 1 copper coin each for a season (118-108 trade coins), but he chooses not to, and his offer stays firm.

• If Muk's player pays enough honor to change the roll by 11, she could say "Yeah but that doesn't matter", and it would work, and she could raise the price of iron in Daresido by 1 tc, and the party would get an extra 2gp of stuff from the skipper.
• Any new price would influence iron derivatives immediately, like horseshoes, barrels, and weapons.

This negotiation system may need to be simplified and "eyeballed" a bit in actual play. Prices can be influenced by the oneupmanship talent, the style sense proficiency, and more.

Workshops

In trade towns, merchants have access to warehouses and workshops. These can be used to maintain caravan equipment, or turn commodities into other goods which might sell for more.

Mage spells

Wizard spells can be used in different ways for different things. Applications will vary with each wizard's particular personality and circumstance.

Investments/Developments

Rich characters with extra time can invest money, materials, labor, and expertise to make a new trade good available at a town, wherever it kind of makes sense.

Development Scenario Example

The town of Kabakosido uses bronze for most metalwork, because iron wears out quickly in the tropical climate. They purchase tin from nearby Pagalido, but copper is not available in the region, so it is bought from distant traders who frequently abandon their journeys, endure huge delays, or sell all their stock before reaching the region.

The very powerful "Eve the Elf" uses her geology skill to discover native brass 3 days away near the town of Balelido. Her business partner Dan the Dwarf knows how to separate brass into copper and zinc.

Eve wants to start a mine in Balelido, just so the option of buying copper low in Balelido to sell high in Kabakosido will exist for everyone. She doesn't want to oversee the mine even though this could get her free metal. She has motives in life besides processing copper, so it sounds tedious and dangerous. She finds a capable local to take her money and guidance, and they hire miners to start digging.

The startup cost for the mine totals 100 gold, which Eve gives away. It turns out, by running her caravan north and south buying and selling copper, she profits 1 copper piece from every ingot. If she sells 100 bars / year, the mine will pay for itself in a century.

• Characters can invest in products for the improvement of their own caravan
• • Woodworking/lumber stuff for damage-resistant wagons
  • trained guards
  • etc.

Resistance and counter-investments

Some NPC will always try to exploit the PC's new investment, sometimes at the PC's expense.

Violence

NPC's can use the development to create the tools to destroy it. The counter-counter measure is in the hands of the players.

Ex: Hauk the Hobgoblin buys bronze and timber in Kabakosido (both are cheap now, thanks to Eve). He wagons both cargoes to Gimbatagh. In Gimbatagh, some of the bronze is made into woodworking tools. The rest of the material he has slaves make into morningstars and shortbows. He sets off with 100 hobgoblin grunts to conquer Eve's mine. Maybe he kills a bunch of people or maybe they surrender peacefully I dunno.

Competetition

NPC's can incorporate the development into their own competing operations.

Ex: Gnorm the Gnome starts a cassiterite mine & panning operation north of Balelido. Gnorm builds a grand mule plankway, leading from Eve's brass mine to Gnorm's tin mine in the middle of nowhere. Gnorm stamps bronze ingots at his new mine and waggons them to Salireta. The Saliretans use Gnorm's bronze to make ships and helve hammers.

Gnorm steals most of the business of Kalamarans from Eve. [Eve isn't getting a cut of sold copper ingots]. If a group of merchants was purposefully colluding against Eve, they could turn her investment into junk.

Gnorm's development has other effects -- ships and metal goods become more accessible and affordable in Salireta.

Mutual Benefit

NPC's can try to use the investment in a scheme to make a lot of people's lives easier.

Ex: An unrelated travelling merchant named Hal the Half-elf buys Wendy the Leatherworker a house that is close to both a horse ranch and Eve's brass mine. Wendy gets dibs on dead horses that she can make into glue, horsehair, and leather. She uses the horse parts and the convenient brass to make halters. All traders in Balelido can buy Wendy's halters at a cheap price for their caravans, and can buy up more to sell elsewhere.

Claims

Most landowning people, (barons, dukes, guilds, rich people, certain priests, etc), will proclaim that they own whatever production facilities the character develops. If a character wants a rightful claim to the place they built, the party has to have people with Law, Persuasion, Oration, etc skills. If the party is extremely strong and wants a prolonged conflict, one available ridiculous option is to fight a noble's faction physically and also take them to court.

Trading on the road

Nomads

A caravan doesn't have to go to a fixed stop to trade with people. The party could cross paths with nomads who follow natural animal trails, barbarians who have money, pilgrims, or travelling hagglers. Their supply & demand depends on the nomads' seasonal activities, survival methods, and travel habits. Nomads currently moving probably won't want an extra 2000 pounds of any cargo.

Other traders

A caravan could meet another caravan and sell wagon-to-wagon (or ship-to-ship). They could also have fun gambling or wrestling together. Caravans can exchange warnings, stories, or juicy tidbits of information.

Pricing guidelines

Special Cases

Slaves

The price for one slave is their build points in silver pieces, minus the BP cost of their quirks and flaws. It's basically 7 gold plus 15 silver/level.

Food, Seeds, Livestock

Randomly selling tons of food in a foreign town should be particularly difficult. There is no way to reliably consisently sell food that no one asked for out of a stand or something. It's best eaten by your own crew. Otherwise it should be doable if you have pre-arranged agreements for herd drives or victuals.

Seeds are a similar situation. A bit can be sold to gardeners but selling all of them requires a preferential arrangement with a stable farm. Queen bees and other specialized hardware should be a special deal outside of this system.

Ex: Cali the Dwarf has a wagon full of a million raisins and some change: 3,000 lbs of raisins. This is enough raisins for 1 human to live on for 1000 days. He stops at a town with a population of 10,000. If 10% of the townspeople want to eat only raisins for a whole day, he could sell all of them. Maybe he can do it but it's tougher in lower-population areas.

Livestock can be bought to be eaten immediately, or cared for for hundreds of days to be eaten later. Livestock can also be bought just to be resold. Possible markets are keeps and outposts, butchers, and farmers with extra land and money. Drovers and shepherds could also take livestock off your hands, depending on what it is.

Generally, people can buy a critter if they have the land for it and know how to control it. Chickens are pretty easy to sell, bulls (or even pigs) not so much. A GM has to basically create and give the party a livestock buyer, possibly as an adventure reward. Any small sleight or coincidence could easily turn a livestock deal more sour or more pleasant.

Pets and Work Animals

Instead of coming up with rules for selling work animals, I have a table of reasons why people would want a donkey. It can be adapted for other helpful beasts of the field.

Tax

Caravans entering cities will likely be taxed (unless granted special exemption). The guidelines from the sourcebooks are something like 1 tc/animal and 1 cp/person. Cities in Kalamar are liable to charge triple. If the GM feels like it, he or she can also inflate the fair unit price for every commodity in tax-thirsty cities.

Sample commodity charts