Huge Wealth from Spec Trading

[PsiTraveller]

I am gearing up for ym Drinax campaign. One of the players is a merchant. He has a high Soc bonus, and hihg Influence. His two Allies give him a bonus to Broker and reduce the impact of the market knowledge roll.

The upshot of this is that he mapped out a trade exchange from Drinax to Clarke and is likely to multiply his wealth by about 5 or 6 times his investment.
The best result is an 8 fold increase in wealth, but he was not so lucky.

Has anyone else had merchant characters stack the purchase roll and then get lucky on the Sale roll?

Thankfully the ship can eat millions in profits for repair and upkeep, but in a regular game it could easily become the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

Anyone else had any issues with Merchant characters?

 

[aramis]

I am gearing up for ym Drinax campaign. One of the players is a merchant. He has a high Soc bonus, and hihg Influence. His two Allies give him a bonus to Broker and reduce the impact of the market knowledge roll.

The upshot of this is that he mapped out a trade exchange from Drinax to Clarke and is likely to multiply his wealth by about 5 or 6 times his investment.
The best result is an 8 fold increase in wealth, but he was not so lucky.

Has anyone else had merchant characters stack the purchase roll and then get lucky on the Sale roll?

Thankfully the ship can eat millions in profits for repair and upkeep, but in a regular game it could easily become the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

Anyone else had any issues with Merchant characters?

I've had players buy a load 10T of computers for 30% and sell for 400%...under CT Bk2. At MCr10 per ton base... I've had this happen in a couple different campaigns.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Well this is not that bad, but he clears 1.5 million in the first jump. By the time the route is over I expect he will will have made enough money to repair the ship, or put a downpayment on another one.

He got the 25% Purchase and something ridiculous for the Sale price, not as good as the 400%, but nice.

 

[rancke]

I had an experience similar to Wil's. We bought 68 computers at 30% of base cost (special deal offered by the ref who expected us to buy the three or four we had the cash for; instead we took out a loan on our (fully paid up) ship) and jumped around until we could unload them all on a world with population level 4 for 300%.

With the CT trade system, the key is to have a nest egg to tide you over bad die rolls. Wait until you can buy low, and then just wait until the dice provide a good deal on selling.

I haven't tried the MgT version and can't say if it suffers from the same problem. Be on the lookout for it, is my suggestion.


Hans

 

[PsiTraveller]

The Allies he has help(he has 2, and he rolled for them right in front of me, so no cheating).
The first gives +1 to Broker Skill and the second reduces the roll from 1d6-3 to 1d6-1 for the buyer/seller knowledge check. This means the worst that can happen is a 0, and the rest of the time it is a positive number.

If he uses his Influence he can get a +3 bump to the 3d6 roll. Soc bonus is +2, so all in he can get +8 to +13 before the 3d6 roll. If he handles everything in home system. This lets him get a ridiculously low price for Purchase.

Selling is not as bad, but he will invest in ever more expensive tonnages until he is moving those computers you mentioned.

 

[pendragonman]

I am pretty sure anyone who has been running a version of Traveller for any significant amount of time has experienced this.

Of course, any experienced GM knows various ways of draining PC bank accounts as well, and without having to repair battle damage.

Instead of sticking to roll playing the purchase/sale exchange for everything in the hold, one of my favorites is to require that a quarter of the spec trades must be role played. I make a secret roll for the purchase price of some non book standard shipment of widgets, and a secret roll for the sale price (both without any modifiers). Then the merchant character must negotiate, negotiate, negotiate!

Oh, and the PC must sniff out those scams the a decent scam artist will play on the stupidly rich...

 

[Timerover51]

Is he traveling with the cargo? If he is, then have it eaten up in prohibitions to exporting funds off world without paying a transfer fee of say 30%. If he is not, and the ship does not return immediately, then he waits a while for the funds to be transferred, if they ever are.

 

[Galadrion]

Huh. Well, first of all, I wouldn't allow such a character to get the full bonus from multiple allies. I'd allow the full bonus from one, but any more than that give a reduced bonus, if anything. (Call it duplication of effort, or something similar.) Also, each ally is going to be limited to a certain zone of influence - once your merchant character travels beyond that zone, that particular ally is going to be of somewhat less help. (You may have the ear of a mercantile kingpin on one world, but when you're five parsecs away, he's a bit out of reach for convenient consultation.)

Other things that can reduce the impact of such a character... what circumstances are there in-game which can limit his scale of operation? Is he limited in how much cargo space he has? If he only has (for example) fifty or so displacement tons of cargo room, that's going to limit the (financial) damage he can do with each jump.

If you're using the Merchant book rules, then a given broker is only going to have so much cargo of a given type available for purchase - this acts as another natural limitation for scale of operations. A player can get around this by sticking around to wait for supplies to renew, but that's another week or so they're sitting around, not making profits. They can also try to locate additional brokers to give them more lines of supply, but I give my players penalties on their cost rolls for this sort of thing - they're buying up enough of the local production that they're starting to drive up the prices.

What about taxation/fees/licensing/other governmental (or other) interference? If any particular merchant starts showing signs of getting too profitable, the local equivalent of the Infernal Revenue Service or Inland Revenue or Customs is going to get interested and is going to want their bite. And a foreign trader isn't going to have a lot of friends at court, unless the players come up with some way of their own to get the local powers that be on their side. (A great handle on the party for getting them embroiled into side adventures, by the way...)

Yes, it's possible for players to stack the deck so that they can generate huge profits, but it's also quite possible for a referee to stay within the rules and still limit the damage such characters can do. And, after all, there are many circumstances in which the number of credits a character can lay claim to simply doesn't make a lot of difference - having more financial clout than the entire local economy still isn't going to allow the character to buy something that doesn't exist locally, for example.

 

[simonh]

"Nice cargo of computers you've got there. Latest tech, very valuable. It'd be a petty if something 'happened' to it. Myself and my associates would be pleased to offer our services to ensure something 'unfortunate' does not occur, for a fee. Say, 10% off the top."

If the character doesn't pay up maybe all those nice shiny computers might end up in a warehouse that somehow cought fire, or on a grav truck that had a nasty accident. But if the character does pay up, now he's involved in an anti-mob probe by the local police because he's helping fund organised crime.

And then later...

"Unfortunately, it appears our costs have increased significantly since we made our little arrangement and we're going to need to re-negotiate. Say, 30% off the top."


Simon Hibbs

 

[rancke]

"Nice cargo of computers you've got there. Latest tech, very valuable. It'd be a petty if something 'happened' to it. Myself and my associates would be pleased to offer our services to ensure something 'unfortunate' does not occur, for a fee. Say, 10% off the top."

If the character doesn't pay up maybe all those nice shiny computers might end up in a warehouse that somehow cought fire, or on a grav truck that had a nasty accident. But if the character does pay up, now he's involved in an anti-mob probe by the local police because he's helping fund organised crime.

And then later...

"Unfortunately, it appears our costs have increased significantly since we made our little arrangement and we're going to need to re-negotiate. Say, 30% off the top."

See, that's roleplaying. But the various Traveller merchant games are not roleplaying (with the arguable exception of GT: Far Trader). The various RAWs do not include criminals, corrupt officials, brokers with inflated reputations, or any of that sort of stuff. Indeed, they don't have room for any of that stuff. Anything like that is in the realm of explicit adventures. And a referee that uses adventures to confiscate money from his players without giving them a fair chance to 'win' the adventure and avoid the loss is IMO a bad referee.

Any of my players would either engage in busting up that gang or, if I made it clear that this was not possible, take their computers away to another world. And the second time such a no-win scenario came up, they'd walk out on me.

And quite rightly too.


Hans

 

[Condottiere]

Wow, eBay has really become aggressive in business retention in three thousand years.

 

[DickNervous]

See, that's roleplaying. But the various Traveller merchant games are not roleplaying (with the arguable exception of GT: Far Trader). The various RAWs do not include criminals, corrupt officials, brokers with inflated reputations, or any of that sort of stuff. Indeed, they don't have room for any of that stuff. Anything like that is in the realm of explicit adventures. And a referee that uses adventures to confiscate money from his players without giving them a fair chance to 'win' the adventure and avoid the loss is IMO a bad referee.

Any of my players would either engage in busting up that gang or, if I made it clear that this was not possible, take their computers away to another world. And the second time such a no-win scenario came up, they'd walk out on me.

And quite rightly too.


Hans

The wonderful part of being the GM/Referee/All Powerful Being in role playing games is that you can change things. Don't want to have someone run a protection scheme to keep the players wealth in control? No problem. just have some natural disaster strike the planet they were going to sell on that greatly reduces the demand (and price) for the goods they are selling.

Or perhaps the planetary banks have stability problems due to underwriting billions of credits in questionable loans that are all suddenly in default leading to a global recession. One that will send waves or repercussions throughout the sub-sector.

Of course you could always go with civil war breaking out, a plague killing half the population, new religious cult that demonizes people who possess whatever they are selling, etc. Plenty of options. :devil:

 

[RandyB]

Or, you could let them enjoy their wealth (the character has the skills to generate it, after all, which to some degree reflects player preferences) and adjust the game to the presence of that wealth. Not everyone likes playing "resource scarcity"-based games.

 

[atpollard]

One of the players is a merchant. He has a high Soc bonus, and high Influence. His two Allies give him a bonus to Broker and reduce the impact of the market knowledge roll.
The upshot of this is that he mapped out a trade exchange from Drinax to Clarke and is likely to multiply his wealth by about 5 or 6 times his investment.
The best result is an 8 fold increase in wealth, but he was not so lucky.
Has anyone else had merchant characters stack the purchase roll and then get lucky on the Sale roll?
Thankfully the ship can eat millions in profits for repair and upkeep, but in a regular game it could easily become the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.
Anyone else had any issues with Merchant characters?

Well this is not that bad, but he clears 1.5 million in the first jump. By the time the route is over I expect he will will have made enough money to repair the ship, or put a downpayment on another one.
He got the 25% Purchase and something ridiculous for the Sale price, not as good as the 400%, but nice.

The Allies he has help(he has 2, and he rolled for them right in front of me, so no cheating).
The first gives +1 to Broker Skill and the second reduces the roll from 1d6-3 to 1d6-1 for the buyer/seller knowledge check. This means the worst that can happen is a 0, and the rest of the time it is a positive number.
If he uses his Influence he can get a +3 bump to the 3d6 roll. Soc bonus is +2, so all in he can get +8 to +13 before the 3d6 roll. If he handles everything in home system. This lets him get a ridiculously low price for Purchase.
Selling is not as bad, but he will invest in ever more expensive tonnages until he is moving those computers you mentioned.

It seems unfair to penalize players for playing to the strengths of their characters ... would you add extra difficulties for a character with a high marksmanship skill, an accurate sniper rifle and a high-tech scope when he attempts to make a shot?
[Oh, look at that, you alone got a bad batch of bullets, and the sun is glaring in your eyes, and a jackalope leaps in front of the man that you were shooting at. ]

The characters are what they are and the game will be what it will be ... yes, highly skilled merchants make lucrative trade deals just like highly skilled snipers make very accurate shots.

But the goal is to have fun, so what do those rolls and bonuses really mean?

What does a friend with "Broker skill" actually do that sweetens the deals?
What does a hired Broker do?
If the hired broker does not keep all of his FEE as 100% profit, but some of it goes to paying actual expenses, then the friend with Broker skill will probably need to spend some money (and time) on similar activities and expenses.
Now you have some roleplaying and potential action.

What is involved in "reduce the impact of the market knowledge roll"?
Is it a simple 'psychic' ability that just works by elfin magic (like Keebler cookies)?
Does it involve some time and money spent buying access to data services, meeting with local brokers over lunch, or data-mining the last 12 months worth of market reports with expensive computers and propitiatory algorithms that the character created himself and needs to adjust to local market variables?
Once again, now you have some roleplaying and potential action.

What does that SOC bonus (+2) actually entail?
Do people just sense that you have 'gravitas' and instantly drop their prices just for you?
Or perhaps, a little networking is involved. Going to the right places and socializing with the right people to get some piece of information or contact name or introduction that is not available to the general public.
Are you updating your wardrobe to keep up with local fashion?
Are you staying at the hotel where people of your position stay?
Does that gentlemen's club (in the 19th century tradition, not the 'Hooters' tradition) have a membership fee? require sponsorship?
Are you hosting a little get together for 100 of the local who's who?
Now you have some roleplaying and potential action.

What does it mean to "use his Influence" (+3)?
Does that involve a little 'quid pro quo'?
Might someone of influence be coming to you for a favor?
Is there a nephew who wants to become a pilot and needs a sponsor at the Merchant Spacer's Guild and some starship experience? You wouldn't mind taking him under your wing would you?
Now you have some roleplaying and potential action.

And do not forget the roll itself.
Why is that cargo selling so cheaply?
It could be a local market glut just correcting the supply and price imbalance (so you just got lucky).
It could be blood money ... you are picking over the corpse of someone whose life's work has just come crashing down ... "We use child slave labor to cut our prices to the bone; that isn't a problem for you, is it?"
or perhaps there is some disagreement over the legitimate ownership ... "you probably want to leave with those parts before Monday, when my EX-partner can file an injunction blocking the sale." ... or "Yeah, it is deeply discounted because I sort of lost the receipt, so do you want to buy it or not?"

Why are they willing to pay so much?
"Well with the organized crime gangs having gunfights in the street, I think that we can get you top dollar for those weapons and body armor ... but you might want to add some security because things are sort of crazy on the street and that price is for 'delivery to the compound'."
Who would have thought that food would bring such a high price ... just try not to make eye contact with the starving people begging from the other side of the security fence.
The regular shipment is going to be delayed six weeks (repairs on the 10 kiloton freighter), so local companies are desperate for whatever parts they can get to keep the production lines operating ... there are nine men waiting to start a bidding war for those parts ... one man has offered one of your friends a private 10% kickback to get you to sell to him at a mere 200% of base price.
Now you have some roleplaying and potential action.

Conclusion:
I tend to operate under the assumption that "there is no free lunch."
The ref is not out to get the players, but great deals have reasons ... sometimes as simple as the luck to be in the right place at the right time ... usually, involving some risk ... occasionally, you find that you have a tiger by the tail.
That's the fun of a Merchant Game.

And if you do well, then eventually somebody will come to you looking for a patron ... and someone else will come looking for a piece of your action.

 

[McPerth]

I am gearing up for ym Drinax campaign. One of the players is a merchant. He has a high Soc bonus, and hihg Influence. His two Allies give him a bonus to Broker and reduce the impact of the market knowledge roll.

The upshot of this is that he mapped out a trade exchange from Drinax to Clarke and is likely to multiply his wealth by about 5 or 6 times his investment.
The best result is an 8 fold increase in wealth, but he was not so lucky.

Has anyone else had merchant characters stack the purchase roll and then get lucky on the Sale roll?

Thankfully the ship can eat millions in profits for repair and upkeep, but in a regular game it could easily become the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

Anyone else had any issues with Merchant characters?

Even so it's a huge improvement from the Merchant Prince rules used in CT:LBB 7 and latter versions (MT, TNE, T4...), where profits were also huge at no risk even without brockers and connections...

See this post and this one (mostly the seccond part) for examples.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I do not mind the wealth, although it may make them less likely to be pirates, and instead focus on the positive side of the Trading aspect. This is all well and good for the campaign. (Join our Mercantile empire, great products, great prices and if you join the tax rate is lowered 5 percent for your ships!)

Both are empire building activities (piracy and the selling of protection, or merchanting and the creation of a space navy to police the lanes of pirates.)

We tested the trading rules the other day and I rolled up the goods available, also used Traveller Highport. I described his rolls in my first post. Running a trade cycle, even without choosing destinations to maximize the Purchase and Sale Dm's will net a huge return. (and thanks for liking those other threads!)

 

[Cryton]

In the games I have run in the past, my players have struck it rich doing spec trade.

Rather than do something to sap their hard won funds, I let them sap their own funds paying off their ship, and buying a new ships. As they continued to make Credits like there was no tomorrow, and were now in effect members on the Nomenklatura (Idle Rich), I then shifted gears and began running intrigue, exploration and mystery based adventures. They did a lot of work for various people for "favors" that could be called in at a later date. Heck, in one case they were even invited by a friendly Baron on Safari, it was a trip that proved to be more than they bargained for. At the end of that campaign (It lasted a summer), the players retired their characters as the board of directors of a small interface shipping company with half a dozen ships that operated in and around Tarsus in the Spinward Marches.

Sure it wasn't the "scrape up the next payment" style, "we are broke and need cash" merchant game, but it was a LOT of fun to run, and my players still talk about it to this day.

 

[RandyB]

In the games I have run in the past, my players have struck it rich doing spec trade.

Rather than do something to sap their hard won funds, I let them sap their own funds paying off their ship, and buying a new ships. As they continued to make Credits like there was no tomorrow, and were now in effect members on the Nomenklatura (Idle Rich), I then shifted gears and began running intrigue, exploration and mystery based adventures. They did a lot of work for various people for "favors" that could be called in at a later date. Heck, in one case they were even invited by a friendly Baron on Safari, it was a trip that proved to be more than they bargained for. At the end of that campaign (It lasted a summer), the players retired their characters as the board of directors of a small interface shipping company with half a dozen ships that operated in and around Tarsus in the Spinward Marches.

Sure it wasn't the "scrape up the next payment" style, "we are broke and need cash" merchant game, but it was a LOT of fun to run, and my players still talk about it to this day.

Textbook case of "doing it right". Bravo!

 

[aramis]

I've always done a bit of "Noble Extortion" when players get to the "forming a fleet" level of wealth. Namely, when the same character owns more than one ship and hires a captain for the second... Each subsector duke gets a 1% stake in the venture in exchange for the LIC. Operate in one subsector, that's 1%. Operate in 3, that's 3%. Sectorwide, it's 5%, plus whatever subsectors you were operating in. Domain wide, 10% to the archduke.
Imperium wide, at least one archducal endorsement and 10% to the Imperial House.

Half of these assets are attached to the title. The other half are disbursable... usually in exchange for various greasings.

The world of registry gets a cut, too, from a line. Usually 1%, but usually more if also the subsector or sector capital.

Plus, each receiving noble only holds 98% of his shares and 98% of the disbursables... the other 2% gets forwarded to the archduke and emperor.

Just the cost of doing business, y'know?

This is part of why MTU doesn't have all those huge merchant ship fleets... Everyone is disincentivised from expansion due to having to disburse large chunks of ownership... Expand slowly, and you stop owning your line. Expand too rapidly, and collapse, sure you're out less, but the nobles pissed off at you are further up the chain.

Of course, an extra 10% to the Archduke or Emperor usually also gets a new noble title... after a few years of steady profits.

 

[simonh]

The various RAWs do not include criminals, corrupt officials, brokers with inflated reputations, or any of that sort of stuff. Indeed, they don't have room for any of that stuff. Anything like that is in the realm of explicit adventures. And a referee that uses adventures to confiscate money from his players without giving them a fair chance to 'win' the adventure and avoid the loss is IMO a bad referee.

Any of my players would either engage in busting up that gang or, if I made it clear that this was not possible, take their computers away to another world. And the second time such a no-win scenario came up, they'd walk out on me.

Ok, but equally I don't like the idea that the game where characters have adventures, and the game where the characters engage in trade as being like separate games, with some kind of firewall between them. It's all part of the same game.

It's not that I've got anything against the characters getting wealthy either, this is not a no-win scenario. Even if the players did nothing pro-active, the absolute maximum the situation I presented could do to them is take away maybe 30% of their profit, on an extremely lucrative deal. If they are pro-active and negotiate or resolve the situation some other way, that could be significantly reduced. I'm not talking about driving them into bankruptcy or stealing their toys, just introducing a complication and making them work to earn their money. If the players arrived at a planet and the trading system turned up no useful cargos, I might introduce a PC with a 'special cargo' they need to have taken somewhere at a good rate, but have some complications go along with it. Maybe it's stolen goods, or people-trafficking in cold sleep, etc. Trading rolls might get modifiers due to campaign events such as war, disease, a 'gold rush', etc.

I see the trade system as a tool, not an inviolable set of universal laws. In fact I'd be tempted to hide the entire trade system from the players completely and use it purely as a referee's aid. It depends on the game. In one game I might do that, in another I might run it completely open and see where it goes. It depends on what I and the players want to get out of that particular game.

Simon Hibbs