Banestorm: Wandering Merchants campaign concept

[whswhs]

My current fantasy campaign, which I've been running since before I moved out of San Diego in 2016, IS merchants in a fantasy world: two nixies, a selkie, a ghoul, and a troll sailing around the great sea trading (occasionally buying and selling, but not all the cultures they encounter have money).

During the first year or so, the players kept track of the volume of their cargo (for whether it would fit in the holds), the weight (for whether the ship would float), and the value. But after the shakedown cruise, when they visited known lands, they asked to handwave that stuff. So instead I let them make Merchant rolls to find suitable cargo and have things they could trade for it, and treated it all as adventure narrative. And then when they finally got back to their home port, I had them make a Merchant roll (assisted by complementary skills) for how well they did at selling their cargo, with the voyage being good for a certain multiple of the original value, and each point of success or failure giving ±10% to the final value.