How to run a Trader Game

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, because it puts you outside the law, and not everyone wants to play people whose adventures involve being outside the law. In both my campaigns where the PCs were merchants, the main point was to explore strange new worlds (or islands and waterfronts) and encounter new cultures. If they wanted to come ashore and enrich themselves without worrying about local property rights it would have been a pirate campaign, or maybe a conquistador campaign, which isn't the same thing.

Okay, so an explorer game with trade-and-profit trappings?

In that case, you might go as far as to simplify goods (for rules purposes) into 'trade goods' and 'exotic goods' - trade goods are what you buy in home ports and sell in foreign ones, exotic goods the opposite. Add flavor text and legal/ethical/social complications to taste.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Merchants aren't characters in Star Wars, really, but it doesn't pretend that they are.

Well, what I'm suggesting, really, is that merchants aren't suitable characters for space opera. Norton's Solar Queen stories, Heinlein's Free Traders, Anderson's van Rijn/Falkayn stories, Cherryh's Alliance/Union, Vinge's Qeng Ho—none of them were doing swashbuckling adventures, nor for the most part action/adventure broadly defined. Cherryh's Chanur books verge on it, but there's a lot about species behavior and intercultural understanding and political alliances that doesn't really fit.

Of course an SF game can be about merchants. But it won't be a space opera game, any more than a fantasy campaign about the trade in unicorn horns and moly and basilisk eggs is a dungeon fantasy campaign.

The TV series that comes perhaps closest to this, Firefly, is really a series about capers, which is a different genre. And "capers in space" might be a workable model for an SF boxed set, and one that GURPS could do well, with the tools from Action playing a big part. But it wouldn't be "space opera," either.

[chandley]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, what I'm suggesting, really, is that merchants aren't suitable characters for space opera.

And "capers in space" might be a workable model for an SF boxed set, and one that GURPS could do well, with the tools from Action playing a big part. But it wouldn't be "space opera," either.

Ah... I was not commenting in the context of space opera OR "the next great boxed set". Hence my confusion over this subthread of "my players didnt want to play traders when we decided to play traders".

I think you can have a perfectly fine game of gritty traders. But it is probably no more than a splat book to a space box set.

[Anthony]

I think the only things I've seen in SF that were really about trading, as opposed to stuff that uses trade as a background to justify why the characters are in whatever weird situation they are in, had to do with new products and market; e.g.

• You are exploring poorly known location X and discover that they make a MacGuffin that can be sold somewhere else. Your goal is to actually set up a trade for the MacGuffin, while dealing with other people who might want to prevent the trade, or to take over the trade for their own benefit.
• You are encountering a culture that, for whatever reason, is not currently a significant trade partner, and are trying to persuade them to open up (at least for you), typically while dealing with people who prefer the status quo or have a different plan for the future.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, what I'm suggesting, really, is that merchants aren't suitable characters for space opera.

Thats a good point. I think a Trader game would work but cargoes need to be obtained through roleplaying without boring the uninvolved players or use quick die rolls. However its really rare for it to be Space Opera.
Andre Nortons Zero Stone, Crystal Singer, Star Wars (the first one) and a few others involve cargo/passengers that are important to the story but there more McGuffins or background and the negotiating is minimal.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Norton's Solar Queen stories, Heinlein's Free Traders, Anderson's van Rijn/Falkayn stories, Cherryh's Alliance/Union, Vinge's Qeng Ho—none of them were doing swashbuckling adventures, nor for the most part action/adventure broadly defined.

I have to question this: I think you're confusing backstory with what actually occurs in the text. I've been re-reading the Solar Queen novels recently, and I assert on the contrary that swashbuckling action/adventure is all they do (on-camera, at least): foiling plots by evil actors, primarily.

Similarly, the Polesotechnic League stories are about clever escapades; their profitable outcomes are the happy result of the "clever" part, rather than central to the narrative. Heinlein's Free Traders and Cherryh's Merchanters are social groups first and mercantile operations strictly second; their stories tend to be about survival in the face of long odds. The Qeng Ho as a civilization don't do swashbuckling, but the stories that Vinge tells about them are certainly action-oriented.

You could argue that none of these are acting very much like merchants during the course of their adventures, but that identity drives their skill sets and goals (both initial and ultimate, once the crisis du jour is past) -- often specifically in contrast with military personnel, spies, or scouts around them.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I think the only things I've seen in SF that were really about trading, as opposed to stuff that uses trade as a background to justify why the characters are in whatever weird situation they are in, had to do with new products and market; e.g.

• You are exploring poorly known location X and discover that they make a MacGuffin that can be sold somewhere else. Your goal is to actually set up a trade for the MacGuffin, while dealing with other people who might want to prevent the trade, or to take over the trade for their own benefit.
• You are encountering a culture that, for whatever reason, is not currently a significant trade partner, and are trying to persuade them to open up (at least for you), typically while dealing with people who prefer the status quo or have a different plan for the future.

At least one Liaden Universe book definitely had trading as a real element, though I don't remember what the main plot was.

I recently read The Sculpted Ship, which reads very much as Traveler-inspired. It doesn't really deal in trade, as such, but does spend good deal of time on business, finance, and documentation to do with operating a private starship.

I agree that there are few stories about doing mercantile business, or really about doing almost any sort of business...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by thrash

Similarly, the Polesotechnic League stories are about clever escapades; their profitable outcomes are the happy result of the "clever" part, rather than central to the narrative. Heinlein's Free Traders and Cherryh's Merchanters are social groups first and mercantile operations strictly second; their stories tend to be about survival in the face of long odds. The Qeng Ho as a civilization don't do swashbuckling, but the stories that Vinge tells about them are certainly action-oriented.

* What to my mind is the definitive van Rijn story, The Man Who Counts, is almost exactly an anti-swashbuckling story. We have the young, handsome engineer who repeated does incredibly feats of technological improvisation on a remote planet, in a story told from his viewpoint, while the older, greasy, self-indulgent merchant lies, cheats, manipulates, and blusters—and at the end, the beautiful space princess (who is also a smart space princess) tells the engineer that the merchant is the better man, and she's going to have his child. In her view, if van Rijn, the merchant, had been on the planet by himself, he would have had a good chance to get home, but if she, or the engineer, or both, had been there without him, they would have ended up dead.

And even when the outcomes do turn on scientific ideas, coming up with clever scientific ideas isn't very swashy, is it? The appeal is more to wiring-diagram sf than to sword/starship or blaster/starship adventure sf.

*I only know of one Qeng Ho story, the novel A Deepness in the Sky. And yes, action does take place—the entire last third of the book is a sustained dramatic climax. But I don't think much of it is about adventure-story antics. Really it's about Pham Nguyen using his cybernetic brilliance and his capacity for scheming to outsmart the Emergent leaders; that is, it's more a caper story than an adventure story. And really what happens among the Spiders is also largely about cleverness as well, though in their case we aren't dealing with a mainly mercantile culture.

*I remember Citizen of the Galaxy well, and Captain Krausa pulls off a clever manipulation to rescue Thorby from Jubbulpore. But he does so reluctantly, an with no desire to take risks or have adventures or even be noticed by the Sargon's forces, on the principle that debts must be paid and his people owe a tremendous debt to Thorby's foster father Baslim. When Thorby actually engages in combat he does so at a distance of thousands or even millions of miles, by solving equations—and not losing his concentration (and he later tells his grandparents that it was the proudest moment of his life, to their appalled horror). But I do remember the crew of Sisu using silent auction to trade on an alien planet, and the teenage boys discovering that their pinup pictures are in demand (no one ever finds out why) and eagerly swapping single pictures for single gemstones.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by ericthered

This is one of the things that causes a huge disconnect for me. When someone says a "traders" campaign, it seems to often mean a "criminal" campaign. Is this a fair assumption? Are most traders games about folks more or less on the outs with the law? is "smugglers" or "illicit dealers" a better name for this type of game?

Since you were responding to my comment I want to note that I was using Traveller: Interstellar Wars. And in that setting, trade between the Vilani and the Terrans was technically illegal. However, it was regularly done in many Vilani planets...just in the black market. So the PCs, engaging in trade have to do it through the black market...but they weren't really criminals. While I tempted them with some illegal cargo that had some great profit margins, they never took me up on the offer and stayed with legal cargo. So it was definitely not a criminal campaign. They were not on the outs with the law or illicit dealers. That said, at one point that had to smuggle someone off of one planet...but they were operating on the side of the good guys for that mission.

Also, they were interested in the trading aspect.

I contemplated making a computer program that would automated some of the trading elements....I never finished it because I moved away before the campaign could finish. But I think I'll go back into it. Because...in the future...they'd have a computer to help them track their cargo and personnel and ship expenses.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What to my mind is the definitive van Rijn story, The Man Who Counts, is almost exactly an anti-swashbuckling story.

It's been much longer since I read this one, but my recollection is that van Rijn and company are in almost constant motion. Each resolution propels them to the next location, where they find a new solution that moves them on again. Structurally, at least, this fits my working definition of "action/adventure," even if the individual beats are thinky or talky rather than swashy. As I recall it, the David Falkayn stories were even more direct, although that's also a result of the short story format. Contrast this with, say, Dune, where the action is mostly secondary to the machinations leading up to it.

I only know of one Qeng Ho story, the novel A Deepness in the Sky. And yes, action does take place—the entire last third of the book is a sustained dramatic climax.

I was including A Fire Upon the Deep and The Children of the Sky in my assessment, but I admit I don't recall whether the humans in them were originally from the Qeng Ho themselves or not.

I remember Citizen of the Galaxy well, and Captain Krausa pulls off a clever manipulation to rescue Thorby from Jubbulpore. But he does so reluctantly, an with no desire to take risks or have adventures or even be noticed by the Sargon's forces.

This is what I mean by Heinlein's Free Traders being a social organization foremost. When your ship is not only your home, but home to all your family and close relatives, it tends to put a damper on adventure in all but the most desperate circumstances. In this case, however, I think they need to be evaluated as an episode in Thorby's story: a connected subset of the exotic locations he visits on his hero's journey.

On the other hand, look at how Cherryh handles characters that need to assimilate into Merchanter crews. Do they learn the language and gradually find common ground? No, they mostly get beat up and then coincidentally become vital to the ship's survival, after which all is forgiven on both sides. That smacks of action heroism to me.

I won't claim these are "space opera," as that would require defining the term. But I submit that these examples are narratively closer to action/adventure pulps than to more cerebral flavors of science fiction.