09-29-2017, 05:42 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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The price of Ore
Hello I have PCs that are about to enter an area of the world in a mountain range that is rich in iron, as well gems. In a nearby trading city near the dwarven mines, I know they will want to purchase ore for the PC smith and maybe some gems for the PC wizard.
My questions is, how much should Ore cost right at the source? Or steel? Or fine quality steel bars? And the gems as well? If a gem goes for 175$ per caret on the open market, does that mean right at the source is may be 50$ per caret for an example? And how to stop the breeding of economic chaos for the game? If a PC travels, buys 1000 in gems that he knows he can sell it back home for 3000 lets say. Or is that simply the way real things work? thank you |
09-29-2017, 05:56 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: The price of Ore
Pyramid 87, Low-Tech III has an article in it that is one of my favorites, Medieval Sea Trade by David Pulver. It has a list of common trade goods, priced by the ton, plus a system for trading those goods. You can find all your questions answered there. If the PCs want to be traders, instead of dungeon crawlers, it is a great source.
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09-29-2017, 06:41 PM | #3 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: The price of Ore
Quote:
The question is, why aren't other people doing the same thing, in large numbers, and collapsing the price differential? The only really likely answer I can see: very few people can do so, at least without it costing around $2000 in transport expenses. This might be because it's an arduous trip, it might be because nobody knows about the opportunity, it could be because it requires limited special resources (be that long-range ships or trade licenses issued by the Dwarf-king) too rare for demand to be saturated.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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09-29-2017, 09:39 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2011
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Re: The price of Ore
If you follow the traditional gem company model it's because of careful cultivation of a monopoly using economic incentives, bribes, political advantage, and outright violence.
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09-29-2017, 10:02 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: The price of Ore
For a location where there is regular trade, one way to estimate the cost for ore, gems, etc, is to estimate how much it would cost a merchant to ship goods out, including the profit for the merchant. The cost in the mountain range will be the normal cost minus this. This means for bulky and heavy materials like iron ore you could probably get a pretty good deal, but for light easy to transport materials like gems there is probably not much of a difference, unless there are other factors involved (like if it is dangerous for merchants to travel to the region).
In some locations it might not be possible to buy items direct from the suppliers like this. If you walked up to a diamond mine in modern South Africa and said you wanted to buy some uncut diamonds, they would probably tell you to go to Antwerp like everyone else. |
09-30-2017, 02:11 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: The price of Ore
Cost plus 50% extra for each set of hands is passes through is a simple rule I have used before.
Say pepper is produced at a cost of $100 a pound and passes through 11 sets of hands to get to your corner of the world. Farmer, broker, spice merchant, shipping 1, shipping 2, spice merchant 2, shipping 3, shipping 4, spice merchant 3, shipping 5, spice trader. The end result is pepper is worth something like $8650 a pound after traveling down the silk road. (Which might be a bit cheap historically).
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Waiting for inspiration to strike...... And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn |
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