merchant Infinite Earth campaign is impossible!

[Jacob Marley]

My advice is not to get too caught up in real-world econimics. If your GMing the game, you can arbirarily set prices and control the fluctuations. Plus, a lot of the agruments revolve around commodities. Personally, I'd find a campaign focused on commodies about as fun as a trip to the dentist. What I'd be more interested in is a campaign were most of the trading is on alternate earths, so you don't need to worry about prices for, say, steel knives on homeline, you can sell them to a low-tech world where they are worth a lot more. The only requirement is that, somewhere along the line, you have to convert the goods into some form of currency that is accepted on homeline. You would never actually have to worry about the problem of selling onto homeline (where you probably could not compete with the big corps. anyway), just bringing the money home. In short, I think the problem is that you are overanalysing rather than just setting the parameters so it works and running with it.

If you really want to add spice the the campaign, set things up so that it is impossible to make ends meet unless the players push the boundries of legality (or occasionally break them). Then they get the fun of avoiding the notice of both the law, and the established criminal enterprises (who won't appreciate a newcomer getting in on their action!)

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Byteknight

I'm sorry Mark if I offended you in any way.

Oh, I wasn't offended, it just seemed that we were giving you "easy" ways out, and you weren't listening to them. I understand why, now.

But, as Jacob Marley says:

Originally Posted by Jacob Marley

My advice is not to get too caught up in real-world econimics.

I work for a security company (as do several of my gamers) and know how security systems actually work because I work directly with technicians and programming (whereas most of my gamers don't). I use some of that in my games, but only to help add a bit of realism. I don't use my knowledge to make a fool-proof security system in a game, I use what I know happens in the real world (which I'm not about to discuss on public forums).

Human beings are remarkably socially adaptive creatures. When the potential for profit comes up, they will find a way to make a buck from it.
And this is just a game. I am a big physics/science monkey and when I get too serious my friend, Monkeyfist, always reminds me:

Originally Posted by Monkeyfist

"Whenever you apply real-world physics or science into a discussion about Roleplaying games or comic books God kills a Catgirl. Think of the Catgirls, please!"

[GoodGame]

Originally Posted by Byteknight

Yes, true, but how does a GM measure this in an alt earth setting? In homeline dollars? In a commodity like gold (that is increasing in supply) ?

Let's set up the triangle:

Earth A
I sell steel knives on a TL 3 world and get 10 lbs of gold.


Earth B

I buy artwork on a TL 4 world with the 10 lbs of gold.


Earth C

I exchange the artwork on a TL 7 world for $1000 earth-c dollars, which I use to buy cheap steel knives.


I go back to earth A, B, and C and repeat the process until, on the 10th return trip, I have $10,000 Earth-C dollars.

Before I go back to Homeline, I buy $10,000 (in Earth-C dollars) of gold back to Homeline, say 24 ounces (gold on our world is about $420 an ounce).

The price of gold on Homeline is $100 an ounce (thanks to everyone else flooding Homeline with precious metals), which means I get $2,400 homeline dollars.

I repeat the process, but find when I get home that gold on Homeline is now $99/ounce. You can see what's happening. My revenue in Homeline dollars is shrinking.

No, commodity trading won't work unless the GM can prop up some excuse about why the flood of goods to homeline is not lowering prices.

The triangle won't work unless you bring back unique stuff that is not decreasing in price, like works of art and such.

But then if everyone brings back works of art, those prices will fall also and your revenue will decline.

PCs then will have to find something else to bring back or wait until the price of a commodity like gold has stabilized temporarily (as everyone is flooding Homeline with Art and such), to bring back gold.

It's a helluva way to do business. But the good thing from a game point of view is that player will have to continually search for exotic stuff in other Earths just to make the payments. The bad thing from a game point of view is the GM has to continually price such exotic stuff, but not too high as you don't want your merchant PCs to get rich overnight.

Ignore exchange rates and realize that it makes a heck a lot of sense to pool rare resources between timelines, as long as it is a reciprical trade. It's exactly parallel to a space sci-fi scenario, like a hunt for Diluthium crystals, and trading it for culture, or lightbulbs or something else. Recipricality of rarities is the only concern, not profit, since it's not to point of a free-market, but international trade agreements.
Once the trade develops to the level of including finished goods, it may become free market, and then you have multiple 'planets' to judge exchange rates and which items are common (low price) and which are rare (high price). At that point, it's like any other sci-fi trading game. A simple model of specialities would suffice---e.g. farm world, tech world, mineral world, etc...

In the case of timelines that are very close, the trade will start at nearly singularity anyway, and the homogenzation that would occur by trade would quickly make the trading timelines reach a singularity (the economies would unify, so trading would be equivalent to buying a Coke in Timbuktu, or Detroit, with the choice being based on shipping and handlingl costs). Like do you want to shop at the store down the street, or ship from an internet store, or visit a store in another country as part of your vacation?