Wednesday 2 October 2019

Looking for feedback: ocean trading

I've been quietly plugging away at Jar of Dirt, my own selection of rules for a pirate wavecrawl. It's my favorite bits and pieces from the GLOGosphere, collected in one document for ease of use. I'll be posting it in a couple of weeks. Right now I'm looking for feedback on a subsystem for ocean trading that I wrote up myself. Gotta stock those boats!

Like it, hate it, want to tinker with it? Hit me with your thoughts in the comment section.

This, ad infinitum. (from)

QUESTIONS I NEED ANSWERED DURING PLAY

At some point, PCs with their own ship are going to capture cargo and try to sell it. So what's that ship carrying in the first place, what's it worth and where is the best place to sell it? This system should quickly answer questions as they pop up duing play. It also contains enough under-the-hood logic that I can use it to generate stories during session prep. You'll get the underlying tables first, the table-ready tables are at the bottom of the post.

Player questions:
  • We've boarded a fat merchant ship, what are they carrying?
  • We're in a crazy new port, what do they sell here?
  • Where do we get the best price for this liberated equipment?
  • Where do we buy stuff at the lowest price?

DM questions:
  • Where's this ship coming from, what's it carrying and what's that worth?
  • What are the big trade routes on the world map and on the regional maps?
  • What's the local demand for the cargo?
  • What do the locals really want and what do they have to offer?
  • (How many more rounds until the Kraken attacks?)
Cross-section of a Spanish galleon, Stephen Biesty (from)

MY APPROACH: STEAL FROM THE BEST, DETAIL THE REST

Expand Skerples' ship ship system. Ships have a limited number of inventory slots for cargo, you can go over that limit in return for harsher travel events, and you can roll to see what's in a passing ship. I'll keep his ship types (adding a couple) but will rework the cargo types and values to match my restocking tweak.

How to determine cargo values? I started from Yoon-Suin's system, but wanted something both more granular (in terms of what each region offers/wants) and more general (in terms of prices per individual item). Yoon-Suin offers a nice source/demand framework. I end up assigning goods to general cargo categories, each with a fixed low and high base price. Rum and tobacco are both low value vices with the same price; opium and red honey are three times as valuable, and so on.

Keep the cargo lists as short as I can. I've resisted the completist/simulationist temptation to include nine kinds of timber or fifteen different spices, each priced differently. If this system becomes unwieldy, I'll just end up not using it at the table. Collapse those trade goods into general categories and shine a spotlight on the weird and exciting. 

Detail a supply and demand table. Every region on my world map gets a list of goods it Sources (base price), Desires (premium price) and is uninterested in (buy at low price, don't sell). All other cargo will be Traded at a price between Source and Desire. I decide against doing this for every individual port in each region. Can work out differences from the baseline during play if it comes up.

Update: to clarify, this is what a wealthy trader in the area would be willing to pay for the cargo. If no such trader exists because the party moored their ship in a tiny fishing hamlet, offer less or don't go for the deal at all. I'm not going to write down purchasing power per port (P^4); just too much hastle for something I'd much rather improv off this general system.

Alternative option: I could just have set the buying price for a cargo type in each port only depend on its base price x months of travel from the nearest source. But then I'd end up with the low-tech Isle of Dread being quite interested in books or porcelain, where I think rum and firearms make more sense. What's more, every time I want to find out the going price for an item, I'd need to pull up the world map and count travel times. Too much hassle.

Write up encounter tables for types of ships. The big supply/demand table I've got going is nice, but a pain to lay out and use quickly at the table. I decide to write up stocking tables for different kinds of ship missions. One spice trader might be hauling different things than the next, especially depending on whether they're outbound or incoming, but both will carry very different cargo than a local trader or a colony supply ship. This encounter table can quickly generate cargo types and still has enough variety to it.

Cloves. Steal a cargo hold full of this and you are 1) rich 2) hunted.

ENOUGH WAFFLING! SHOW US, MAN!


Update: Ancalagon_tb points out in the comments that it'd be good to have costs as wells as rewards for shipping. I'm leaning for a cost to outfit for a 2 month journey equal to 50 gp x (masts + cargo units). Masts run 0-3 per ship, cargo units run 1-6. Short trips can earn money off of lower value cargo; but if you're hauling merchandise from Yoon-Suin all the way to the Old World, you had better be hauling spices.


Example trade
The pirate sloop Jonas captures a cargo unit each of citrus and rice off the Spice Islands (to be published). The Spice Islands are a Source of both, so selling them here would net only (5+15) x 0.5 = 10 gp.

Sailing on to the Maelstrom Islands, the Jonas finds the locals uninterested in rice (sell for 5 gp) and willing to Trade for citrus (sell for 3x 15gp = 45 gp). They dump the rice and sail on.

In the Mehabara, citrus is actually Desired, for 10x 15 = 150 gp. The Jonas could trade it for rum (70 gp) and still earn 80 gp.



Cargo types and base prices
This is in cargo units (1-6 depending on ship type). No matter the type of cargo, a cargo unit always takes up the same amount of space/weight/hassle/careful packing/feed&care.

Update: cargo units are not any one specific mass or size - intentionally so. I’d hate to have to figure out the relative mass and space that a couple of horses, boxes of muskets or bales of spice take up! Even more so when you consider extra food or careful packing. Still, it’s odd (as Ancalagon_tb points out) that a merchant ship has only 6x the cargo capacity of a tiny row boat. Quick solution: drop the cargo hold in the row boat. That shifts up the abstract size of a cargo unit for all other ships. Lazy way out? Hell yes! Recall that I want something simple and functional, not a complete and proper trade simulator.

I know that there's people in this table of cargo. Paying passengers as well as slaves. The slave trade was a horrific chapter of our history - I'm not editing it out. I will treat the sensitively during play. Not going into explicit details but will soberly state that conditions are horrific.



Animal
farm (15 gp)
5 cattle, 100 chickens, 5 horses, 15 sheep

exotic (45 gp)
10 feathered snakes, 5 flying monkeys, 5 sea turtles, titan lizard
Food
basic (5 gp)
grain, rice, salt

luxury (15 gp)
citrus, mango, sugar
Goods
basic (50 gp)
tools, household items, worked cloth

luxury (150 gp)
medicine, porcelain, specialist tools (including books)
Materials
basic (10 gp)
cotton, timber, wool

metals (30 gp)
copper, iron, tin
People
(100 gp)
5 dignitaries, 10 travelers or marines, 30 slaves



Spices
valuable (350 gp)
cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, ginger, ginseng, nutmeg, pepper

treasured (1000 gp)
cardamom, vanilla
Vices
simple (70 gp)
coffee, rum, tea, tobacco

exotic (200 gp)
opium, red honey
Wealth
precious (100 gp)
jade, obsidian, pearls

treasure (300 gp)
gemstones, gold and silver, indigo, silk
Weaponry
personal (40 gp)
50 firearms, 150 melee, gunpowder

naval (120 gp)
cannon (18lbs)




Market demand
Offload a captured cargo of citrus in the Maelstrom islands or sail on to the Mehabara? Each region prefers different goods and sets their prices accordingly. 

Merchants will offer Trade prices for any goods except those noted under Source, Desire or uninterested. Goods may also be swapped with only the remaining value being paid in coin.

  • "Buy for" gives you the price to buy a good off a local merchant.
  • "Sell at" is the price you'll get after selling something here. The difference is a matter of taxes, fees for go-betweens, bribes to ignore stolen goods, a fence willing to take hot goods for a reduced price, etc. It all ends up at 1/2 x the buying price.


buy for
sell at
Source
1x cost
½x cost
Trade
6x cost
3x cost
Desire
20x cost
10x cost
uninterested
N/A
1x cost






Source: Animals (exotic except titan lizard), firearms, cannons
Desire: Animals (basic, titan lizard), medicine, rum, red honey, gunpowder
uninterested: specialist tools, Materials (metals), Wealth

Source: Animals (exotic except f. snakes), mango, salt, Goods (basic), copper, iron, timber, slaves, coffee, Wealth (treasure except silk), melee weapons
Desire: Animals (basic), Weaponry (except melee), grain, Goods (luxury), Vices (opium, red honey, rum, tobacco), silk

Source: feathered snakes, titan lizards, mango, slaves, copper, cocoa, vanilla, Wealth (except indigo, silk)
Desire: Goods (basic, medicine), rum, Weapons
uninterested: flying monkeys, Goods (luxury except medicine), cotton, iron, timber, tin, Vices (except rum), silk, indigo

Source: grain, salt, worked cloth, wool, red honey
Desire: Goods (except worked cloth, porcelain), iron, tin, slaves, rum, tobacco, Weaponry
uninterested: Animals (exotic), mango, rice, Wealth (except gold and silver,  pearls)

Source: sea turtles, sugar, cotton, timber, rum, tobacco
Desire: Food (basic, citrus), exc. worked cloth, porcelain, iron, wool, slaves, coffee, Weaponry
uninterested: titan lizards

Old World
Source: Animals (basic), grain, salt, Goods (except porcelain), wool, Weaponry
Desire: Animals (exotic), Food (rice, luxury, rice), porcelain, Metals, Spices, Vices, Wealth
uninterested: slaves

Spice Islands
Source: timber, slaves, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, pearls
Desire: Animals (exotic), Food, basic tools, medicine, worked cloth, jade, silk, Weaponry
uninterested: titan lizard, copper, cotton

Yoon-Suin
Source: rice, salt, Goods (basic, porcelain), slaves, tin, ginger, ginseng, opium, tea, Wealth (treasure except gold and silver), Weapons (melee)
Desire: Animals (exotic), medicine, specialist tools, iron, red honey, gold and silver, indigo, Weaponry (except melee)
uninterested: grain, sugar, wool, coffee, tobacco




Cornelis Verbeeck, a Naval Encounter between Dutch and Spanish Warships (wiki)



Stocking a passing ship
Ships carry two types of cargo: roll d12 to pick the type of ship and 2d10 to determine its cargo (multiplying results x 1/2 number of cargo space), or hand-pick from the list above.

Example
A caravel with 4 cargo units of hold space could be [d12]=11: heading out on the spice run, carrying [2d10]=1&6: 2x10 marines and two cargo units of medicine. Maybe they're reinforcing an Old World colony on the way to Yoon-Suin, or maybe they're preparing to defend a rich return cargo.


d12
d10
1-2
Colony supplies
3-5
Colony production
6-7
Local trader
8
Limited route
1
Animals - farm
Animals - exotic
Animals - farm
Animals - exotic
2
Goods - basic
Animals - exotic
Food - basic
Salt, rice
3
Materials - basic
Food - exotic
Food - exotic
Tropical fruits
4
Materials - metal
Food - exotic
Goods - basic
Household items, tools
5
5 dignitaries
Materials - basic
Materials - basic
Porcelain
6
10 colonists
Materials - metal
Materials - metal
Cotton, Wool
7
30 slaves
5 dignitaries
10 travelers
Copper, iron, tin
8
30 slaves
Vices - basic
Vices - basic
30 slaves
9
Weaponry - personal
Wealth- precious
Wealth- precious
Coffee, rum, tobacco
10
Weaponry - naval
Wealth - treasure
Spices - valuable
Jade, pearls, silk




d12
d10
9
Explorer - outbound
10
Explorer - returning
11
Spice run - outbound
12
Spice run - returning
1
Animals - farm
Animals - exotic
10 marines
Porcelain
2
Food - basic
Food - exotic
5 dignitaries
Worked cloth
3
Goods - basic
Goods - basic
Tropical fruits
Citrus
4
Materials - basic
Materials - metal
Goods - basic
10 travelers
5
10 marines
nothing
Medicine
Vices - basic
6
5 scholars
nothing
Medicine
Vices - exotic
7
Rum
Vices - basic
Specialist tools
Spices - valuable
8
Rum
Wealth- precious
Specialist tools
Spices - valuable
9
150 melee weapons
Wealth - treasure
Wealth - gold, silver
Spices - valuable
10
50 firearms
Spices - valuable
Wealth - indigo
Spices - priceless



7 comments:

  1. Ooh! So useful. Though I might add a bit more detail to the tables; they feel bare for the purposes of at-table improv.

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    1. Thanks! Good advice and should be fun to write up. I've been trying to keep down the page count, looks like I need to give myself more space :)

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  2. So I told you in the OSR group I would look at this, and here I am.

    I'll start by saying I'm very interested in this kind of stuff. I like sea travel, I like trade, I like Yoon Suin and Skerples's work, I'm really happy you are working on this. My dream result would be a system that is reasonably simple, but a bit more robust/rigorous than what Skerples initially proposed. So if I seem a bit critical at time, rest assured that this is meant with the best of intentions!

    The first comment is that trade can get stupidly complicated. So a prime goal should be that the system should be complex enough to represent trade, but with a strong emphasis towards simplicity and ease of use. So the decison of using "cargo units" is good (although more on that later), as is the decision to keep the list of trade goods short. Valuable and treasured spices - that's complex enough! (although detailing which spices are valuable and which are treasured is great btw).

    I also note that I think that trading rules also need a "cost to run the ship" system running in paralel. This doesn't have to be complicated. It could be "X gp/week + X sp/crew/week" to run ship Y. But it needs to be there otherwise trading is "free". Shipping has a cost in other words.

    So do the numbers work? this is more difficult than I realized at first, because I use the "5e money scale", and this makes it hard for me to "crunch numbers" if you are using a different pricing list (I think you are based on past discussion). This is also made difficult by the abstract nature of the cargo unit. How much *is* a cargo unit anyway?

    I would caution about the use of the Yoon Suin cargo unit and the Skerple cargo unit as being equivalents, mainly because the ships are not of the same scale. I'm not an expert on river trade, but after doing a bit of research, I decided that the typical Lamarakhi river boat can carry about 5 tons of cargo. An ocean vessel on the other hand, can have anything from a few dozen tons to *thousands*. This is what bothers me about the cargo unit in skerple, the *range* is too narrow. A row boat can carry 1 cargo unit? Sure. But a mechant hauler carries 6 - only 6?!? THat's like saying "well, the average dog is 40 pounds so an elephant must be... 400 pounds?" Now maybe we don't want as wide a range as real naval ships (huge merchant ships has a tonnage of 2000, but there were plenty of smaller vessels too), but 1-6 is not enough.

    Knowing what a cargo unit is can also be very important, because there will be time where the players will want to convert that cargo in usable stuff - as simple as taking a cargo unit of rice and turning it into food for the crew, how much is that?

    Another element I would mention is purchasing power. A small colony may want all the spices it can get... but it may not be able to afford it. A quick "reality check" would be the GDP of a place (which can be easily calculated by taking population X 220 gp X some wealth factor if needed) - clearly a colony can't purchase or sell more than its GPD.

    This... is really a deep topic, and probably too long for a mere comment. I will be happy to collaborate further on this.

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    Replies
    1. Hey, like I said on the Discord, thanks for going into such detail. It's helping me clarify my choices.

      I'd be happy for you to take this bare-bones stuff and expand on it - looking forward in fact. My own desire wasn't to have something that faithfully represents trade, Economics is my total weak & disinterest spot, I just needed something to generate cargo values for the next ship my guys board :)

      In effect, this system is a separate equipment list that runs off a separate coinage. (I'm thinking 1 gp = 100 sp = 1000 cp, so most personal costs are in cp/sp, and ship outfitting/cargo is counted in gp.) Abstract, but it solves the problem of needing to figure out how many PC-scale items in one cargo unit and vice versa. Cargo units can weigh few to many tons: it doesn't really matter except if you want to build a realistic simulator of ship carrying capacities, item weights etc.

      What I especially like about Skerples' system is how it abstracts supplies and cargo sizes so that you don't /need/ to track individual rations and water for the entire ship's trip. Lovely. I like your idea of converting cargo to food (or supplies to repair the ship!). 1 cargo = enough to reset the supply table or repair serious damage like a broken mast, I'd say. Or just a couple of weeks on a deserted island to make repairs and improv a mast, like Skerples originally laid out.

      You're right that it's good to have a cost as well as a benefit to shipping. I'll publish my full document later this month. My pick is a cost to stock for a 1-2 month trip equal to 50 gp x (cargo capacity + masts), in other words 50 x (1-9) gp. With 5 of those 2 month legs from the Old World to Yoon-Suin, a spice run out and back would cost 4500 gp; a 6-unit merchant ship could earn 10x (desired) x6 (cargo space) x 100-to-300 = 6000-18000 gp off the trip, without counting the profit for selling their outbound cargo.

      I wouldn't want to go into more detail than that. Which is why in the end, I didn't try reconciling the Yoon-Suin trade table and Skerples' system - one works off a base price, the other is the sales value, weights are different - I used them to get a scale, then matched numbers to work with the cost to restock.

      Finally, I agree that the range between a row boat and a merchant galleon should be way bigger if these units should fit real life cargo holds. Easiest way out is to add some intermediate ship types (upcoming!) and set the row boat to 0 cargo, Although inflating the range to, say, 1-10 cargo units presents an interesting choice for smaller 1-3 capacity ships that manage to capture a 10 cargo ship.

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    2. I should be going to bed but a few details:

      1-10 is definitely better, and I would be tempted to 1-20 (but no more than that!)

      I will repeat again how important the supply demand table will be. It doesn't have to be complicated - yours is great really - but it's essential.

      Supplies for crew and passengers also take space. A huge crew on a tiny ship can't go far. This should be kept simple, like 1 cargo of supplies per X persons per month. So the cost should be "supplies" + generic repair. Your idea of having the cost being dependent on the cargo hold is good... but usually merchant ships had more cargo (because less guns, which are heavy and take room) but were cheaper to run than military ships, which had little spare cargo and were stuff with men, guns and supplies.

      Speaking of repair, maybe have a "repair supplies" so that repairs can be effectuated? Riggings, sails, spars, planks nails, tar... Every ship comes with a "free" one but you can add more in your ship as cargo? Heck, both ship food (ie preserved food) and repair supplies could be types of cargo.

      Lastly, not having enough cargo space to capture all the goods from a captured ship was common. What do you do? You lock the other crew under the deck and you put part of your crew as a prize crew to sail the ship to a friendly port to be sold. That's how the Royal Navy did it! Of course, among pirates this is a risky proposition....

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    3. I like your thinking, hope to see your variation on a trading system on your blog! Repair supplies, ship food, it's hugely attractive to delve into that kind of detail for me. Which is one of my weak spots - overdetail a system and then end up not using it at the table because it doesn't fit into my head anymore. So, for once, I'll stick with something barebones myself ;)

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    4. Some other comments about shipping:

      Packaging. Some things doesn't require a lot of packaging, some requires a *lot* - like shipping porcelain must be done in carefully stowed, straw-filled crates. However, instead of seeing this as another thing we have to worry about, I see it as opportunity. We don't have to be *exactly right*, any discrepancy can be hand waved away.

      This is important because it can help reduce the value of a single cargo unit - which matters because holy crap you can make a lot of money off that stuff if you just cut it and run.

      I come back to the value of a cargo unit and why I care about it, it matters because if you have an xp system tied to gold...

      Lastly, historically the value of gold was about 10-15 that of silver on average, and copper far less. But if you want to have that exchange rate... why not? Just a minor quibble.

      My post is 50% written, but it's just the "let's talk about this" part. Putting numbers to it, that's hard. And pricing the goods will be particularly tricky because … pricing is hard. But I will definitely use your prices as a starting point.

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