So an Initiate of Hyalor and an Initiate of Issaries go into business

[starwarsdrip]

To preface this doesn't exactly require cults in the title, but these examples are perhaps most fitting, especially once the Cults book is released. One player character with a focus in Riding, and another with a focus in Bargain are what's really important, as well as their characters ambition to make some silver. What i'm trying to uncover with this thought experiment is player business and making money outside of simply following the Occupation role.

Deciding to go into a Horse-training/trading partnership, the Hyalor horse trainer, and Issaries merchant take out a loan for 200 gold. Interest is 3d6+6 (Core rules pg. 406), lets assume worst case scenario 28% interest on a one year loan for an overall 256L of debt. At sacred time they go to a city and purchase 5 Daron meat horses for 40L each, 200L overall.

Using the training times from weapons and equipment, the Horse Trainer spends his five weeks of time not adventuring to train each meat horse into a riding beast. The merchant spends negotiating buyers with the Bargain skill for market price during this time. Selling 5 Daron riding horses for market price will net 375L, 200 of which will be spent on 5 new Darons to train next season, with a profit of 175L .

Repeat this for 4 seasons, leaving sacred time free, and you'll have 700L at the end of the year. Pay taxes, 20% to be left with 560L, pay off your debt, down to 304L, split it between partners, 152L each, pay 60L for living expenses, and you've both earned 92 additional silver for your work, and still have 5 Darons to start over in the spring!

Next year without debt, you'll go from 92L after taxes, living expenses etc, to 220L each, a small fortune.

Where this gets, either exciting or absolutely broken (i'll let the forum inform me which way they see it) is in hiring followers in expanding the business. Assuming a follower who has riding at 50% they can train a meat horse into a riding animal on a 50% roll, give them 2 weeks to each animal, make them work 8 weeks and not go on any adventures, pay them 60L for their service, and they're training 4 horses a season. That is, 388L a year after taxes and paying them. Hire a bodyguard to protect each apprentice horse trainer, and its still 328L to the business or 164L per player.

Get five followers, five warriors to guard them, you're looking at around 820L from the apprentices, and the 220L from the player horse trainer, for a total of 1,040L a year PER PLAYER.

Obviously, these players would have to deal with raids, jealous rivals over their new wealth, and more. I guess the question is would anyone allow a pair of players to try this scheme, and if you have any thoughts on a similar idea for crafters or redsmiths?

[David Scott]

It's age old problem that the rules are a model for creating adventures and adventurers, not an accurate model of economics in Glorantha. 

• Page 406, says Some temples make loans (my emphasis). That's your call as a GM, but I would certainly limit it to those who have actual cash (Issaries, Etyries, Lokarnos) and further limited to what the the Loyalty (Temple) or Loyalty (priest) is, or other prerequisites.
• This is now not a series of normal adventurer transaction, but now a business game. 
• I'm not a horse person, but I'm pretty sure that the Horse trainer will need to use their Evaluate roll to select the right horses (at double skill). I'm almost certain that the seller will have done the same thing to select if they can be trained up...There is actually a category of untrained riding horses At the gamemaster’s discretion these beasts may be less expensive if untrained (W&E 37), and I'd charge 50-60L more for those (likely 50L as they've got potential). Traders aren't generally stupid. I'm not saying you can't train up meat horses, but it's not a straightforward as it appears.
• Failing the Evaluate roll will yield at least a couple of duds (based on the old you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink). These are effectively untrainable.
• The trainer is going to have riding at 90%, so time wise, they are more likely to get better levels of success. Note that it actually says the cost of a trainer varies depending on the temperament of the animals being trained. In theory the trainer using their evaluate skill has selected meat horses with a good temperament, but those with bad temperament that have slipped through due to failures are going to be the untrainable ones. I'm sure there are a few people on this board who can tell stories about bad tempered horses (my partner certainly can).
• As this now a business game, I'd introduce sickness and injury on failed rolls. They need land to graze the horses, and depending on the season supplemental food. Is it their land? Do they need to repurposed land? Where is the land? Do they have stables. Don't forget to charge them for tack and rope. And of course there is the adventure where a few of them escape.
• The training rules say it takes one week to train one horse. It doesn't give times for multiple horses. I'd suggest one week per horse, as they clearly need individual attention. Those more familiar with horses on this board could provide further information I'm sure. They are probably going to have a family member helping them, as in all the TV I've seen, there's always somebody feeding the horses, mucking them out if they have stables, etc. Are they an extra, are they on the payroll.
• But let's assume they managed to train five horses per season. And do that for four seasons (there are five seasons including sacred time).
• Selling the five horses at market price is likewise part of the business game. Where are they going to sell these horses, there is clearly already a horse seller where they bought the horses from? They're gonna have to sell them somewhere else. How many do they sell? Who to? Is there even a market for extra horses?
• Assuming they sell the five horses at market price. This where it gets complicated. The two individuals will run through the Sacred Time section, so I'd split it between the two for ease. This money is included in their occupation. I'm not sure what the occupation of the horse trainer is, but note that Ride (their main skill) is not part of any Occupation. It's up to you how you resolve that. I'll just do the Merchant.
• The merchant will need to have their 350L in goods as their income is 10% of the total of their stored goods. They start with 500L, so let's assume it's that plus their share of the horses. So 850L, gives an income of 85L, then roll for Income using either Bargain or Manage Household and let's say they succeed giving 85L. Then
• 10% Cult tithe leave 76L 5c
• Standard of living 60L leaves 16L 5c!
• Pay off interest... I'll let you do that

6 hours ago, starwarsdrip said:

Assuming a follower who has riding at 50% they can train a meat horse into a riding animal on a 50% roll

 

They really need to make more money to hire trainers (from where?) 

[Nick Brooke]

There are better business games, if you like fantasy spreadsheet sims. RuneQuest is essentially a game about heroic bronze age adventures. Nobody else is writing horse sim adventures or sourcebooks, so you'll have to roll your own. You could even sell them on the Jonstown Compendium when they're finished: there might be a market for this. (Stranger things have happened)

[Eff]

10 hours ago, starwarsdrip said:

Get five followers, five warriors to guard them, you're looking at around 820L from the apprentices, and the 220L from the player horse trainer, for a total of 1,040L a year PER PLAYER.

Obviously, these players would have to deal with raids, jealous rivals over their new wealth, and more. I guess the question is would anyone allow a pair of players to try this scheme, and if you have any thoughts on a similar idea for crafters or redsmiths?

Well, the player in my current game started out as a jeweler...

But we took a different approach, and completely hacked off the economic subsystems very early on. I think, though, that if actual players are proposing this, that there are three basic options here, which you can present to the table:

1) Fold this in as the basis for the mythological and legendary play. Becoming preeminent horse traders and trainers means that now the players interact with horse spirits and godlings, with donkey, mule, onager, zebra, and quagga spirits that might want to know just how fluid the lines can be between categories of being- can they become as swift as a horse? Can the zebra change their stripes to racing ones? Perhaps even Praxian cattle spirits become relevant. And of course you'll be thrust into the world of the Feathered Horse Queen, of Galanini and Pentan shamans traveling from afar, and Char-un equine eugenicists.

2) Turn the game into an economic one and keep the scenarios going based on more low-key fantasy challenges to the aspiring expert horse trainer. Eventually they end up oversaturating the local market for riding horses, so they have to start looking further afield, or perhaps (especially if you have PCs with other elevated communicative skills) making their own markets by talking people into building up a "pony express" courier service, or a force of "dragoons", or outright cavalry (proceeding into training up warhorses).

3) Decide that the game's economics rules are inadequate to represent the realities of running a horse-training enterprise with a nose-to-feedbag margin, and that proceeding down this road will inevitably lead to it proving a bunch of horse feathers, and either backing away from the proposal or leaning into it as a source of farce or moderately black comedy.

I think that the collective horse sense of your table will guide you to the option that works best for what everyone wants to play.

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, Eff said:

3) Decide that the game's economics rules are inadequate to represent the realities of running a horse-training enterprise with a nose-to-feedbag margin, and that proceeding down this road will inevitably lead to it proving a bunch of horse feathers, and either backing away from the proposal or leaning into it as a source of farce or moderately black comedy.

 

I vote for the third!

[Joerg]

While I have one solo-play Gloranthan character who dabbles in horse breeding and having those horses trained, that's a hobby project of his where he burns extra funds from adventuring or successful training rather than a source of wealth...

6 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

RuneQuest is essentially a game about heroic bronze age adventures.

It can be, as Nick proves with "Duel at Dangerford" and "The Black Spear", but for many GMs RuneQuest is one of the best games for pedestrian (or in this case equestrian) roleplaying with attention to small details. RuneQuest excels at the grit of fairly detailed while still somewhat manageable combat where the dice and the abilities allow both a reasonable forecast how an encounter will play out and where extreme rolls can alter the outcome dramatically. The game comes with world building advice that goes beyond what many other as or more (economically) successful games offer.

 

I have played in experimental multi-year heroquest games both Greg and Jeff have run on conventions in Germany where economy was presented as opposition of varying difficulty to be dealt with alongside other ongoing projects. In these games, that mundane challenge was mainly another problem to be overcome while the cool stuff went on.

That said, I love myself games where you simulate building things up, where you face a challenge while leaving your imprint on the world. And Glorantha is such a place, look what the Founders like Pavis or Sartar did, look at how Belintar took the ruined conquest of the Kingdom of Night and turned it into the Holy Country. Heck, look at what the EWF achieved before they lost their ways irredeemably and the dragonewts had the experiment terminated in 1042.

 

RPG designers seem to dread player (characters') plans that succeed (for a while) and make life better, not just for the player( character)s but also for their society. And Chaosium in particular is known for creating games in which everything is getting worse and worse - even King Arthur Pendragon is doomed to end in failure and misery.

What is the problem about player characters enjoying hard earned resources that do better than break even? Prosperity and having a chance at "world domination" provides challenges of their own.

 

I tried my hand at a character with a similar idea, a human Argan Argar worshipper planning to buy food category trollkin for clearing forests or debris from roads and tunnels (feeding the material to the trollkin), with the idea to find those trollkin too smart and uppity for their own good who get lumped into that category, giving them a chance to become the (somewhat respected) foremen or mother figures of that venture. Needless to say, the GM wasn't too happy to let such a venture develop. But hey, possibly an interesting NPC for the JTC even with the limited amount of gametime the character saw.

 

For the assumption above, here are a few of my thoughts:

Meat horses are basically the drop-outs from someone else's attempts to upgrade them, a recovery of failure cost. At a guess, the horses sent to the meat market are geldings or infertile mares too hard to break into good mounts (or draft beasts). That's how the trollkin in the food category who aren't too deformed end up in that category. Nobody goes about breeding beautiful food horses with further potential.

Still, playing a horse whisperer undoing the damage earlier attempts at training the beasts left behind is a cool concept, and might be workable. Finding a steady flow of cheap horses to make such a project profitable might be harder. Easier if you have providers of masses of horse flesh for a wealthy buyer, like the Lunar Cavalry Corps. IMG Fazzur Wideread has a family business (run by cousins) that provides horses, horse-tack, and other such military equipment to the Cavalry Corps. Still, such mass operation (similar to that you outlined above) will have its dropouts, specimen that are unsuitable as cavalry or even riding horses. And that's the kind of horse that ends up in the meat category.

Some of these horses may have an evil temperament that cannot be handled by just about any rider. These horses might be good candidates for warhorse-hood, but that is two whole other levels of work a trainer needs to put in.

 

Domestic horses in our world all are the offspring of the Sintashta breed from around the Uralic Mountains, some time inside our very own Old World Bronze Age away from the Fertile Crescent. Even the mustangs of North America which lead a feral lifestyle are ultimately the product of selective breeding to make horses trust humans as riders. While there may have been way earlier successes at riding horses, possibly as early as the Botai culture (a historical culture that may have earned the name "Pure Horse Tribe" based on their diets of horse meat (easily identifyable from bone remains) and mares' milk (a lot harder to infer from residues inside ceramic vessels)), these horses were no "mounted warrior" cultures. Prior to the SIntashta breed horses were trainable to pull chariots and to be ridden in non-combat situations, possibly for herding, but leaving the rider with no time for horseback antics like couching a lance or drawing a bow in stressful environments.

Horses of the Daron breed are similarly long domesticated and generally selected for usability.

It we are talking mares, non-breakable mares without body defects will be bought up for a little better than meat category prices and mated with donkeys to provide the Issaries cult with its mules. The bastard species has a different inherited character and will serve as beasts of burden or riding beasts by inclination, although with a certain amount of resistance inherited from the donkey parentage. Daron mares for mule breeding will produce extra powerful mules. There is a business behind that, and it is run by the Issaries cult.

That leaves geldings and the few stallions that people attempt to break for the saddle. And for whichever reason, the breeders and their trainers who raised these 3 to 4 year old geldings from colts to prepare them for the saddle botched up their job, leaving these horses as unprofitable to tame for their standardized methods, probably after handing them off to another trainer of similar skill to see whether they are salvageable. Raising horses for 3 or more years from the colt in a sedentary culture is more expensive than raising children in the same amount of time, and the previous owner will have given it a few more tries before selling them basically under cost. Horse nomads feeding their beasts mainly on migratory pasture will have less actual cost, but will have to migrate, and I doubt that the Daron breed will survive such a nomadic life-style as well as the mustangs left behind by the Spanish invaders in a territory without direct competition for horse-specific food.

Some of the worst tempered stallions will be employed for horse-fighting, earning their keep or a mercy slaughter. But that means that the worst temperament has been selected out, unless you get your horses from a breeder who breeds for  horse-fighting rather than riding and left you with those too timid to compete in horse fights. Snip snap, although too late, and you will end up with an unmanaged gelding.

So, what went wrong in those earlier attempts? There you even have some potential for roleplaying, investigating those trainers.

 

Now imagine your horse trainer has skills near the abilities of the Horse Whisperer played by Robert Redford in that movie (which I haven't seen, BTW - my niece is the horse maniac in the family, not me). Assume that somehow you get the debris of someone else's basic training approach to make your and your investor's somewhat cosy family life. Or you could put this skill into the service of a local, maybe regional big player, become a valued retainer living in palatial luxury much of the time doing the same kind of work on the highest category specimen. What would your choice be?

 

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Joerg

[Eff]

Now, going by Weapons and Equipment, that 1040L per year per player means that they could maintain a palace apiece, or a stone keep apiece, or share a palace plus many other improvements, or a stone keep and fortified community. However, building a palace takes a minimum of 10000L, so a minimum of 10-11 years to build up the cash. A stone keep would take less time to save up for- 8000L, so 8-9 years. So this scheme ultimately seems entirely in keeping with the player-facing options for using their money, and is perhaps entirely in keeping with the rules text around money and prices.

[Darius West]

On 10/17/2022 at 2:32 PM, starwarsdrip said:

Get five followers, five warriors to guard them, you're looking at around 820L from the apprentices, and the 220L from the player horse trainer, for a total of 1,040L a year PER PLAYER.

Obviously, these players would have to deal with raids, jealous rivals over their new wealth, and more.

The simple fact of the matter is that being a horse breeder has always been an extremely lucrative profession, and still is today (racehorses are worth millions).  In fact, when the Roman Empire suffered hyperinflation, it was the Equites, who owned country estates where they raised horses, who were best able to weather he financial crisis as they were able to trade their animals to the Army, and provide cavalry service in lieu of tax, creating the basis of the future Feudal system where the Equites became Knights and Lords.  Horse raising is a great way to become rich, but horse trading is synonymous with used car dealerships for trustworthiness.  Big money attracts scammers.

There are issues with the horse market however.

1) Upkeep.

Something my Praxian characters really hate about living and doing business in New Pavis is the cost of agistment for their animals.  They need pasture, regular feeding, exercise, water, combing, veterinary services etc.  Anyone who has ever owned a horse irl knows they are a major financial burden, crudely equivalent to keeping a child in private education. Of course that is for someone who doesn't own land, a water supply, stables, etc.  The fact is, a horse is only an asset when it is sold; normally it is a substantial liability.  Remember that you will likely need to have paid staff to look after your business while you are away adventuring.  Staff are another running expense.  Worse still, can you trust them?

2) Demand.

In a bad economy people cannot afford the upkeep on a horse, much less to buy a new one.  Even food like hay and oats will become unavailable during a famine period like the Great Winter.  Worse still, during times of war, when trade is limited, you may find your own rulers requisitioning your horse stock (this actually happened to my Great Grandpa during WW2, twice no less on the Eastern Front. Eventually Partisans killed him over his last horse.).  This makes horse raising intensely political.  The fact is, a horse trader wants to get a regular contract with the military, because they have a steady demand for horseflesh, whether warhorses or even just pack animals.  The problem is, unless you have cultivated reliable relationships with the people in power, you won't get their protection, but in wartime, if you've chosen the wrong side you'll get looted and go broke.

3) Bad Stock.

The classic problem with horse trading is that you need to be able to tell a good horse from a bad or mediocre one.  You need to be a good judge of an animal's health, their age, their physical characteristics, and their temperament (not something the RQ rules cover).  Most of this will be covered by a Herd skill check.  You also need to make damn sure that the animals aren't stolen property (unless you want the associated complications).  Bad bloodlines can ruin your stock, and wind up cutting your profits immensely.

4) Other Stuff.

Tricksters are a running issue.  They will often find ways to steal livestock and on-sell them illegally.  It's a classic grift.   Obviously broos are a huge issue, as are the diseases they bring.  While crop failure doesn't sound like a problem for a herder, if your feed crop dies, so do your animals unless you take them on the road to greener pastures.  Put simply, agriculture and pastoralism are fraught, and there are dozens of small things that can go wrong between when a foal is born and when you finally get cold silver in your hand for the beast.  Mostly however, raising horses is a great money making venture.

[AndrewTBP]

Never mind the economics!

The Narri clan and the Enhyli clan are going to be really cross with you.

😉

[soltakss]

On 10/17/2022 at 4:32 AM, starwarsdrip said:

Obviously, these players would have to deal with raids, jealous rivals over their new wealth, and more. I guess the question is would anyone allow a pair of players to try this scheme, and if you have any thoughts on a similar idea for crafters or redsmiths?

In a Bronze Age game, horse trainers and traders could become really rich.

However, there are other factors. Why would someone buy from them when there are Grazelanders nearby who sell proper horses? What about the Pol Joni, they have horse traders? Same with Elmali and so on. Who would buy from a two-man outfit, unless they proved themselves as being good horsefolk?

[Darius West]

11 hours ago, soltakss said:

In a Bronze Age game, horse trainers and traders could become really rich.

However, there are other factors. Why would someone buy from them when there are Grazelanders nearby who sell proper horses? What about the Pol Joni, they have horse traders? Same with Elmali and so on. Who would buy from a two-man outfit, unless they proved themselves as being good horsefolk?

There are many reasons you might buy locally rather than go to the Grazelands or the Pol Joni.

Firstly, travel is dangerous.  You can run into a lot of trouble on your way to Richpost.  Second is price.  Sure, Goldeneyes are the best breed, but they also have an eyewatering price tag.  Now the Elmali or Yelmalio horse breeders are going to form your primary local competition, but really you and they will often be in the same boat politically, and will likely wind up buying stock from each other repeatedly.  As for the Pol Joni, well, that's a long walk into hostile territory to meet up with semi-bandits who might sell you some horses, or they might just rob you and sell you into slavery at Pimper's Block.

20 hours ago, AndrewTBP said:

Never mind the economics!

The Narri clan and the Enhyli clan are going to be really cross with you.

😉

Up to a point.  The Narri and Enhyli clan might become very friendly when they need to replenish their stock after too many raids or some disaster.  Horse breeders understand this issue.

[radmonger]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Firstly, travel is dangerous.

I think the original plan was to train the horses while travelling through wilderness. Certainly there is no spreadsheet entry for stabling fees and fodder.

You can do anything once as an adventure, and if you succeed, make money from it. But few groups will want to want to run the same adventure over and over again. But you also can't abstract it out assuming success. Otherwise you could just do some calculations to say 'every three months, we clear out a new set of ruins, each netting _this_ much money, which we spend on magic items which allow us to clear out more profitable ruins, and then ...'.

If you want earn more than the profession-rules income stably and repeatably, you are going to need land. In this case, land to safely graze and exercise the horses, to grow winter fodder. Which requires you to defend that land, and so provides you with all kinds of obligations and plot hooks.

You could imagine there being a RQ:G version of Pendragon's Book of the Manor; a full rule system for being a land-owning noble. But most GM's will find it easier to just wing things; take the 'noble' profession income and bump it up or down depending on campaign circumstances.

 

 

[Baron Wulfraed]

8 hours ago, radmonger said:

I think the original plan was to train the horses while travelling through wilderness. Certainly there is no spreadsheet entry for stabling fees and fodder.

You'll still going to have to put up with untrained animals unless you are, yourself, buying them from a breeder after they reach training age... And what level of training are we talking about? The little on horse training in the books reads like "breaking a mustang by cowboys" given the short duration required.

Warhorse? (granted, not to the level of late medieval/renaissance/mid-1800s level*) should take a lot longer, and likely with older /mature/ horses, not juveniles.

 

* Most of those skills are retained by the Austrian Riding School Lipizzaners. The school obtains FOUR YEAR OLD stallions from breeders, and takes SIX YEARS to train them -- they basically don't perform until they are past ten years of age, and then work into their twenties.

• longe lead training in a ring to learn basic walk/trot/canter voice commands
• training with reins, trainer walking behind, to learn rein signals for left/right/start/go commands
• training with empty saddle, followed by adding weights (still no actual rider)
• training with rider, and at some point the double-bit (and so far it has all be BASIC training)
• training on-the-fly lead changes (canter/gallop have notable "lead": one front foot moving backwards while other three move forward, lead change requires animal to go from, say, single right front to single left front without coming to a complete stop)
• while we've no doubt seen rearing horses in reruns of Zorro or Lone Ranger, those of basically straight up, skeletal structure of hind legs supporting the weight. The school teaches low rears, where the horse is nearly sitting on the ground -- these require the muscular system to support the weight. This position leads to training a front hoof attack, as it places the front around head height of infantry, or hip height of an opposing rider.
• vertical jump with all legs tucked under/protecting the belly -- possibly useful against charging infantry (who may get trampled when the horse returns to ground)
• vertical jump with a rearward kick at the peak -- again putting hooves at head height of ground troops

Probably some time spent in rudimentary jumping over fences/hedges/etc.

It is possible that the trainer then becomes the permanent rider for that horse...

 

[Darius West]

On 10/19/2022 at 7:29 PM, radmonger said:

I think the original plan was to train the horses while travelling through wilderness.

Okay, that makes things super risky, as you cannot guarantee everything horses need under such circumstances, try as you might.  It also means trouble, as untrained horses don't deal well with imagined threats, let alone real ones.  Horses have been known to become spooked over a mouse and bolt for miles, even throwing and killing their rider, and those are the supposedly trained ones.

On 10/19/2022 at 7:29 PM, radmonger said:

Certainly there is no spreadsheet entry for stabling fees and fodder.

There is a lovely game called Harn with a very useful supplement called Harn Manor that covers such things. that can be retrofit into most games without any problems.

On 10/19/2022 at 7:29 PM, radmonger said:

You can do anything once as an adventure, and if you succeed, make money from it. But few groups will want to want to run the same adventure over and over again. But you also can't abstract it out assuming success. Otherwise you could just do some calculations to say 'every three months, we clear out a new set of ruins, each netting _this_ much money, which we spend on magic items which allow us to clear out more profitable ruins, and then ...'.

You say this youngling, but you are not yet a grognard.  You have not had your players decide to occupy and rent out a dungeon, or decide that they all want to play Lunar bureaucrats...  This too will come in time...

On 10/19/2022 at 7:29 PM, radmonger said:

If you want earn more than the profession-rules income stably and repeatably, you are going to need land. In this case, land to safely graze and exercise the horses, to grow winter fodder. Which requires you to defend that land, and so provides you with all kinds of obligations and plot hooks.

Agreed.

On 10/19/2022 at 7:29 PM, radmonger said:

You could imagine there being a RQ:G version of Pendragon's Book of the Manor; a full rule system for being a land-owning noble. But most GM's will find it easier to just wing things; take the 'noble' profession income and bump it up or down depending on campaign circumstances.

The RQ:Gcore rules plus RQ:Weapons and Equipment goes a long way towards this without getting too fiddly about the details.  I like the Manage Household skill, as it tells players that while THEY (the player) may have a great idea, their characters may not have the skill to pull it off, management-wise.  To answer other questions, Book of the Manor is a good source, and so is Harn Manor, as it goes into more detail about agronomy.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Darius West

[Squaredeal Sten]

 

I just found this thread and it's great!

As far as RQ being a game of heroic adventure, from a gamesmaster point of view  I don't really see a difference between plow-farming your hide of land and having heroic adventures, and horse farming the same hide of land and having heroic adventures. 

Except that you can do this on less fertile land that will only grow grass: See Weapons & Equipment guide pages 105-106 and the Random Features table there - there is no reason the GM can't have Adventurers get a hide of land that is poor for plowing and sowing.  There is no reason the experienced Adventurers can't invest their hard-won loot in a horse farm just as they can invest in other improvements listed in the table on page 110 of Weapons & Equipment.

There is no reason that a horse training business can't be gameable as well as profitable in Glorantha,  as Joerg and Eff have said above.  You have been provided with plenty of adventure hooks which can be attached to it.  Doing the training while traveling does seem like a flaky idea, especially for a two man team, because while your trainer is training one horse someone needs to be herding the other five, and that plan  must necessarily slow the speed of travel, and the two man team in the wilderness is going to be subject to rustlers and predators. 

Let their initial five horses get rustled and eaten down to two if you want, but don't just reject the whole idea of training horses.   There is no reason that they shouldn't be able to do this in civilization, where there is more security, instead of on the road.  Yes the clan will want something, but they will also give protection.  Require the players to have a GOOD business plan for the adventurers, not just any old top of mind business plan.  Some of the obstacles mentioned by previous posters, like feeding the horses, are significant and will significantly reduce the profits.  But in the end horse training should come out as a profitable business in good times.   And in bad times ... well the Gloranthan background and timeline says that in this period there is evolution to Argrath's army being dominated by mounted forces.  That means mounts are selling well.  And in time of war, horses get used up, prices go up.  It's not really a bad idea.

if you look at the RW bronze age, it was under-capitalized and an investment could make a lot of money. 

So YOU spreadsheet it out, don't just let the players run on their back of an envelope idea.   Bring them down to earth, or down to Ernalda and Eiritha - but don't just trash the idea.

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
spelling / typing

[scott-martin]

On 10/16/2022 at 11:32 PM, starwarsdrip said:

5 Daron meat horses

I would let them do it because from the Hyalor point of view this is the seed of a revitalized covenant between riders and the rode that gives the most literally wretched members of the larger community a bigger reason to live beyond the stew pot. Extending training to these animals liberates them from what would otherwise be a failed existence and in the process elevates the entire horse world just a little toward grace. This might start out as a business but it can easily become a religious crusade.

Finding out whether the Issaries can fully participate in this vision produces great gaming moments. As you point out the real scale chokepoint is training additional trainers willing and able to rehabilitate rejected horse flesh. You need to initiate a new kind of Hyalor horseman, a sort of society of the horseman's word as it were. Real whisperers. The establishment might not welcome the sudden competition, which again naturally produces the kind of complications that make entrepreneurial schemes interesting in play. And in the meantime maybe one of two of those rejected animals will reveal a talent for flight.

[Agentorange]

if you want to make it really hard, have some morokanth players trying to build a  herdmen business in mostly human surroundings
" Take your stinking hooves off me, you damn dirty tapir ! "

[Darius West]

On 1/4/2023 at 9:34 AM, Agentorange said:

if you want to make it really hard, have some morokanth players trying to build a  herdmen business in mostly human surroundings
" Take your stinking hooves off me, you damn dirty tapir ! "

Now THIS sounds like a game I want to play. 👍