Trade goods

ballonger · Post by **ballonger** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:20 pm

I didn't see this discussed anywhere else, but something that I think is rather important is that some valuable items should keep their value when they're being sold back to a merchant. For example:

Ordinary, non-magical rings, necklaces and so on should always be worth the same amount of coin. In the case of jewelry it would be the weight of the metal plus a little extra for the exquisite workmanship or whatever. If you buy a silver ring you can sell it for the same amount of coin you bought it for.

Gems normally don't lose value (see the entry about money in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for exceptions). Gems are more commonly used as payment in southern lands in Faerûn, which can be a potential character trait to use (if your PC hails from or have ties to a southern nation for example).

And last but not least, trade goods. In the equipment chapter in the Player's Handbook there is a table handling certain items often used for trading. For example one pound of salt is worth five gold pieces, a pound of pepper is worth two gold pieces, a cow is worth ten gold pieces and an ox is worth fifteen gold pieces. These are also items that normally keep their value between transactions, unless for example the cow gets sick for example.

Also of note is the fact that smaller items are more easily sold. For example almost anyone with the coin could buy a ring from another person, unless they really didn't need a ring, and if it wasn't a ring but rather a cow, you'd actually have to find someone who wanted a cow, to get your ten gold pieces since a cow is not a commodity you buy and stuff away in a drawer in wait for a buyer.

This is something that, in my opinion, should've been introduced in ALFA a long time ago.

Well, that's about it. Toodles.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:57 pm

A guy who buys and sells gems for a living (or jewellery) will *not* give you as much money for it as he expects to sell it for. It should be close, but it won't be the same, otherwise where is he making his profit?

ballonger · Post by **ballonger** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:54 pm

Well, normally people don't sell and buy gems for a living. They do something related, like cutting the gems or setting them into jewelry. Also, a cut gem is more valuable after cut than before for obvious reasons, since it's been worked, and normally it's the work that's been put into it that they charge you money for. If you take a look at how the gem trading works in modern day in our world there are certain companies controlling the market. For example they only let out a certain amount of diamonds on the market every year. If you are interested in buying diamonds you can sign up on a list and now and then you get an offer to buy a small amount of uncut diamonds. You can then either accept or decline, but you won't get a new offer until the next round. This is done only to keep the price of diamonds up. If you compare the amount of diamonds that are mined each year to the amount that is sold on the market this is an easy calculation to make. So what happens to those huge amounts that aren't getting sold directly? They're locked away in a vault somewhere.

So what conclusion can we draw from this? Well, either the diamonds in Faerûn are fewer, or the value vary with location (cheaper diamonds closer to the mines), or simply cheaper diamonds all over. Perhaps that's why they're in the same category as other gems in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.

My take on the rules is that few people handle such large sums of money that the more expensive types of gems as payment never become relevant (if you're self sufficient according to the rules, ie repair your own shoes and so on, you can live off of three gold pieces a month). Perhaps you can buy something with a bloodstone (average value about 50 gold pieces), but if you pay with a starsapphire (average value many times more), you'll have to buy something pretty expensive if you're expecting to get any change.

ArchAngel_G · Post by **ArchAngel_G** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:00 pm

Isn't one gem easier to steal than a handful of coins?

ballonger · Post by **ballonger** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:01 pm

Yes, but on the upside one gem weighs less than a handful of coins.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:18 am

The assumption here is that gems can be used in place of local currency. As it is, NWN makes the assumption everyone is using the same currency, even though that is not actually the case in Faerun. As well, gems are not of the same value throughout. What should be looked at, before examining whether gems can be utilized as currency, is whether ALFA intends on 'keeping' the one currency system.

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:51 pm

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm

Selling Loot
In general, a character can sell something for half its listed price.

Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself.

...

If PCs find a pound of saffron still of merchantable quality (15gp), static merchants like a smith might not buy that kind of item, and one caravan-intense merchant (static'ly) might recognize things with a trade-goods tag and offer something approaching true value. Doesn't have to be 100%. Just saying the DMG provides a starting point for ALFA to consider.

Currently this can and does get achieved through DMs from time to time... if you want to sell a 50gp bolt of silk to an herbalist for 10gp, go right ahead. If instead you look for a tailor or someone else bound to be interested in silk, maybe you'll be able to grind out a few more coins, although if they notice you're a dirty bloody swordsman who has lucked into the silk and doesn't recognize its full market value, expect to get snaked on price.

Note that many trade goods would turn into crap in a monster lair, or if dragging them out of a dungeon or something. Water damaged silks, spices that have gone mildewy, books that had pages torn out to start fires, whatever.

ballonger · Post by **ballonger** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:41 pm

I, for one, would very much enjoy seeing different kinds of currencies, as Whitey is hinting about. It's something I utilize when I DM my PnP games, and it adds to the atmosphere. I also agree fully with Brokenbone, but in my experience you have to either have a DM online to sell something at a realistic price, or you've had to sell it to another player. And how many PC merchants are there at any given time?

Veilan · Post by **Veilan** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 5:00 pm

When weight for coins was added,

admin actually promised, among other things, the implementation of 100%, or near 100%, buyback rates for gems (jewelry is a different matter, as it can easily be magical).

I don't see a reason to change this, if anything, we should push for a more common implementation of that... it does seem to be intended by the original game too, after all.

Sure, there can be many interesting aspects of moneychanging and all the intricacies of medieval trade - however, I think it is totally sufficient to keep them to being voluntary when it is RP-friendly (if you want to play a gem merchant, you can work something out). We're still not playing a complete simulation, is the bottom line, but an adventure game.

Cynon · Post by **Cynon** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:44 pm

I always loved the idea of being able to use gems to trade aswell as money. Everry gem I aquired, i kept and spent a good amount of time seeing how much they where worth at full value in the shops and also what I could sell them back to a jewler shop for.

What I tended to do was if i had to pay another character or NPC for something I would tally up a few gems at the value they could be sold back to the jeweler shop and give them as payment. Some people loved it, some not, I think not everyone trusted my blackguard. I'd say it was metagaming but he dressed like a blackguard didn't he.

Suffice to say, trading with gems is awsome fun.

I'd never go out and buy gems to use for trade of course, what os the point if you only get back a portion of their value. It would have been nioce though if they could have been used in the same way as trade bars.

What I personally would love to see done and it's something that would need to be done now before all these servers pop up all over the place. Standardise a set of Forgotten realms gems of ranging values and implement an across the board jewler merchant who sells and buys back gems to a similar % differential as we had with trade bar merchants. e.g. diamond shards you could buy for 500 gp each and sell back to him for 475.

Around a 90% buyback value I think that is. Perhaps gems could be made toa 95% buyback to make them more valuable and more attractive trade objects than tradebars. That way we'd all be collecting up all those greenstones and malachites rather than selling them and only keeping the expensive gems. Gem collections could become a PC's pride and joy.

To me it takes away from the how many gold pieces does your PC have? I have 'this much' ha ha I'm richer then you! kind of mentality. It also seems a lot of people are completely paranoid about the wealth of other players. Wealth, use of, and trade is a lot more RP and less quantifiable if people arn't completely aware of how much they have all the time due to the fact that their wealth isn't a figure it's a collection. Only the Dm's would ever really know how much someone really had by waving the wand at them and their gem bag.

Also another bonus of having all these hundreds of gems of different values is that until you aquire one and/or you go to a gem shop and see how much they are all worth you will never quite know if someone is trying to give you a fair price in gems for somethign you are selling them. Knoledge of gem values will come with experience. Although usable on all servers, some gems are regional and will be only available to find or buy on certain servers. So when they are brought from The frozen north to Amn or whatever people may not have seen them before. Inter PC trade could be a real game of bargaining and tricks.

Such RP would reward the honest paladin for his status, never taking more than is fair, but being someone people will trade with, without fear for his trustability. The dodgy rogue who trys to deal with you on a street corner however, he really wants to swap your rainbow obsidian collection for his moonstones and those invisibilty potions... hmm? is he trying to rip you off?

Any concerns about people being wealthier because their gems are worth more is a load of rubbish, Wealth is controlled at the distribution phase. Cheap gems should be common as dirt, malachites on zombie corpses and greenstones in the old chest you found in the sewer, the pricey gems are the party reward for slaying the ogre that decided it wanted to live int he druid garden in the woods. It would also be nice if low level statics were dishing out the cheap gems as rewards rather then gold because then it starts players off with their gem collections.

It would also be nice if gems were tradable in all basic shops at a lower buyback than the jeweler shops. That way if your in a small town away from the bigger city and there is no gem shop but you do really want to buy something that is not going to be in the shop later and you don't have enough in coins, you gonna have to give the shop keeper effectively more for the item if you pay him in gems. Damn country folk and their awkward ways!

Final comment, bring appraise into this all and it starts getting real fun. After all, what are those strange red ones worth mate?

i don't think it's that much surely?

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 9:51 pm

DM involvement in any treasure other than plainly countable coins I've found a common experience, whether as a PC or a DM.

Folks who've blown ranks for their PCs on persuade/lore/ bluff/appraise/sense motive (ok I hate lore but I like the bardic version of it) might reasonably come out on top of a negotiation over three similar green colored gemstones, vs. the other PC who has never spent a rank on any "merchantlike" skills, but who has a player who knows the gem list from the toolset and local stores inside-out. Uber merchant ends up with a greenstone and a malachite, and the other guy ends up with a perfect emerald. Oops better luck next time.

Some stuff will be dead obvious to average intelligence beings too though. If given a choice of a 5lb bar of copper, bar of silver, or bar of gold, even a dumbass peasant will point at the gold as their choice.

Anyhow, having a DM around to adjudicate if people say "I want to estimate the value of this painting/art object / tradegood we found" can make sense in an adventure (quick round of dicerolling to realize the ivory unicorn is a cheap piece of humanoid art, and may actually be bone and not ivory, but that the painting a lost masterpiece), although accidentally volunteering to be a customer service rep for a fantasy economy is to be avoided.

In absence of a DM, current methods to have a merchant "recognize" some stuff as good includes making a dialogue action where the NPC, if it sees items with a particular tag on you, offers to buy them at some set price (even their toolset price if required). Even if all of a silver hairbrush, ivory whistle, Kozakuran pillow book and a jade frog have the tag "TRADEGOOD" (resrefs are unique, not tags), whammo, the merchant can offer you a fortune for them, yours to take or reject.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:06 pm

If given a choice of a 5lb bar of copper, bar of silver, or bar of gold, even a dumbass peasant will point at the gold as their choice.

DMs are also useful for short term pricing spikes, ie if the region is infested with werewolves, a heartless war (wolf?) profiteer could make a killing trading silver for gold.

Really profit minded characters may go so far as to create an infestation if they have a lot of silver to unload.

ballonger · Post by **ballonger** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:12 pm

There should be magnifying glasses (for gems) and scales (for precious metals) that can be used on an item in the game. When used it rolls an appraise check for you and gives you a message of the value of the item following the rules for failed appraise checks detailed under the appraise skill in the Player's Handbook.

I wrote some about it here, though perhaps that wasn't necessary.

Imagine you're in the middle of nowhere and someone offers you a gem for that old vintage from Amn that you've been carrying around. You take out your magnifying glass and look at the gem.

-"Hm. That should cover it. The bottle is yours."

HEEGZ · Post by **HEEGZ** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:04 am

I have always liked the idea of gems as currency, using a barter system with a DM or something. I try to drop gems as DM given loot as often as practical though I've yet to have any sort of follow up by players using them. Probably would up the odds if I DM'd more frequently though.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:39 am

Alright, one ground rule would need to be in place if gems are going to be treated as 'equal' to gold coin. L3wt drops would need to be adjusted to consider gem retail values being as they are, and not provide expensive gems that normally would sell for 50% or less. This, essentially, means that gem obtainment will be decreased substantially, or at least the 'full' value of said gems decreased substantially.