Trade and Markets in Glorantha

[Darius West]

On 11/11/2016 at 6:49 AM, Mark Mohrfield said:

This is getting a little OT, but HeroQuest can be every bit as gritty as RuneQuest, it just depends on how the GM applies the credibility test. Likewise, Runequest can be quite superheroic (people hurling lightning bolts and sunspears). Any rules system is a lens through which Glorantha is perceived; neither is any more correct than the other in defining how the inhabitants actually live. 

My essential problem with HQ is the XP system.  It provides too much skill advancement too quickly for players, which is fine if you are playing a superhero, but doesn't leave much room for most people who by the age of 25 may have a professional skill at 18 if they are lucky, another skill or two, maybe your cult affinity, at 15, a smattering at 10, and many more at 5.  HQ lets you stack into cult feats and primary weapon in a way that RQ never did, leading to top heavy characters who have "professional skills" as warriors that they can superimpose onto things via the use of making up silly mythic feats on the fly.  Want to boost your ability to spot things?  Use the "Orlanth Peeps Through the Giant's Keyhole feat at 5W2 and add X points to your Warrior skill, because being alert is a warrior skill.  Nothing says you can't take the "Jack of All Trades And Master of All Trades" skill at mastery as a beginning HQ character.  You actually have to nerf the system to make it workable.

[Darius West]

Thanks for that David Scott, I have misplaced my copy of Strangers in Prax atm.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Darius West

[Mark Mohrfield]

Darius: This getting even more OT, but I feel an obligation to set the record straight. HQ allows for powerful characters, but in no way necessitates them. In fact, its actually easier to have a mixed power level party using HQ than most rpgs because the ability ratings represent how the character affects the story rather than some supposedly objective scale of how powerful they are. Samwise "loyal to Frodo Baggins" ability can be just as high and as useful and Gandalf's "fire magic" or Boromir's "kill things".

The problem of overly broad abilities is addressed by the specific ability bonus/broad ability penalty rules.

Take a look at the new Coming Storm book. It's meant for characters who are locally powerful, but not world-shakers.

[Tindalos]

On 10/11/2016 at 9:19 PM, soltakss said:

But, one of the quarries in the Big Rubble is flooded and the dwarves have not been able to empty it.

That quarry was flooded intentionally, due to them wanting to float parts of the Faceless Statue to the river. It's possible they could empty it if they needed to. (Of course a flooded quarry would also make a good place to dispose of unwanted items. Like enemies of the cult)

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

My essential problem with HQ is the XP system.  It provides too much skill advancement too quickly for players, which is fine if you are playing a superhero, but doesn't leave much room for most people who by the age of 25 may have a professional skill at 18 if they are lucky, another skill or two, maybe your cult affinity, at 15, a smattering at 10, and many more at 5.  HQ lets you stack into cult feats and primary weapon in a way that RQ never did, leading to top heavy characters who have "professional skills" as warriors that they can superimpose onto things via the use of making up silly mythic feats on the fly.  Want to boost your ability to spot things?  Use the "Orlanth Peeps Through the Giant's Keyhole feat at 5W2 and add X points to your Warrior skill, because being alert is a warrior skill.  Nothing says you can't take the "Jack of All Trades And Master of All Trades" skill at mastery as a beginning HQ character.  You actually have to nerf the system to make it workable.

Depends on how you view things. On page 33 of HQ:G, there's a sidebar about how you can run High Level Campaigns, without inflating the ratings.

Likewise, if you want your PCs to be normal people, you can do that. Just make the difficulties more appropriate. An easy challenge to a legendary hero would be very difficult or almost impossible to your average warrior.

If you think that using a warrior keyword to spot things is a stretch (which makes sense) then they get a penalty to that (-6 according to page 103, and major and complete victories count as minor victories.)

If they think that it's still something they want, then maybe they could mention how their warrior acted as a scout for their clan's weaponthanes, or was a scavenger in the big rubble, giving more appropriate, and more specific abilities (Scout and Rubble Scavenging in these cases.)

And sure, you could take Jack of All Trades or Polymath as an occupational keyword, they sound like good flavourful names for a generalist crafter or scholar. Of course, because they didn't specialise, they won't be as good as a specialist. (Yeah, you can say master, but as it says on page 46 "You can’t make your hero better than others by taking an ability like Best Swordfighter In Dragon Pass, Never Loses At Gambling, or Indestructible. You will lose sword fights, at gambling and be proven only to some extent indestructible, when you suffer defeats in contests of those abilities. Better to just take the abilities Swordfighter, Gambler, and Hard to Hurt, and not suffer the embarrassment when your actual capabilities fail to live up to the hype.")

Edited November 12, 2016 by Tindalos

[Darius West]

Where does it say what type of timber the giants use for the cradle? Does it actually specify what they use anywhere?

Edited November 13, 2016 by Darius West

[Darius West]

13 hours ago, Tindalos said:

And sure, you could take Jack of All Trades or Polymath as an occupational keyword, they sound like good flavourful names for a generalist crafter or scholar. Of course, because they didn't specialise, they won't be as good as a specialist. (Yeah, you can say master, but as it says on page 46 "You can’t make your hero better than others by taking an ability like Best Swordfighter In Dragon Pass, Never Loses At Gambling, or Indestructible. You will lose sword fights, at gambling and be proven only to some extent indestructible, when you suffer defeats in contests of those abilities. Better to just take the abilities Swordfighter, Gambler, and Hard to Hurt, and not suffer the embarrassment when your actual capabilities fail to live up to the hype.")

Look, I know you guys like HQ.  That is fine. Having played it, I think it is a system which fails to describe a working world and lends itself to abuse, and so I find it clumsy and I don't like it.  If you want to discuss this further, that is fine but I don't think this is the right part of the forum to do it.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Darius West

[g33k]

31 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Look, I know you guys like HQ.  That is fine. Having played it, I think it is a system which fails to describe a working world and lends itself to abuse, and so I find it clumsy and I don't like it.  If you want to discuss this further, that is fine but I don't think this is the right part of the forum to do it.

So far as I understand, though, it is:  "Glorantha" is the forum.

Compare/contrast Glorantha under RQ rules, vs Glotantha under HQ rules,is 100% spot-on.  Ummm... in the spirit of which, is that "1W" under HQ???

Edited November 13, 2016 by g33k
snark

[Noita]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Where does it say what type of timber the giants use for the cradle? Does it actually specify what they use anywhere?

I dont think anywhere. It's is made from whatever you want. Boot wood, Cradle wood, original Green Age oak.

[Darius West]

53 minutes ago, g33k said:

So far as I understand, though, it is:  "Glorantha" is the forum.

Compare/contrast Glorantha under RQ rules, vs Glorantha under HQ rules,is 100% spot-on.  Ummm... in the spirit of which, is that "1W" under HQ???

Yeah, shouldn't we be discussing this in a more rules based part of the forums?  It is a separate topic to "trade and markets" at very least.  I am happy to keep going, but not under this topic heading.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Darius West

[Darius West]

On 11/11/2016 at 7:49 AM, Quackatoa said:

As an aside, I just came across something from ten years ago that we came up with for a PBEM Rory did. I was playing a Lunar merchant that was part of an exploratory expedition down into Resettlement-ish-era Dragon Pass. This is what he took along with him as hongo to trade with whomsoever he found there... (Created by the other players and myself.)

I have to say that I thought your cargo manifest was brilliantly detailed, I loved it.  As a GM I am always struggling to come up with this sort of material on the fly, and sometimes you run out of ideas.  Merchants are potentially very interesting characters but there are few GMs who seem willing to run games based around them, and in most games the merchant winds up playing second fiddle to some fool with a poleaxe.  I think there is tremendous potential to develop a resource or supplement for running a merchant based game in Glorantha to help GMs who have no background in such things come to terms with how to do it.  BTW, what sort of prices did you ultimately get for the various items?  What sold?  What didn't?  Did the horrible smelly barbarians hurt Hongo?  Would he return to Dragon Pass or was it a bust?

[Stew Stansfield]

Thanks, Darius, that's very kind. It was truly a group effort, in that everyone chipped in with their own ideas and detail - so there wasn't much 'scraping the barrel', so to speak. I'm not sure I can help much with reminisces, sadly, as my memory's rather fuzzy a decade on, but it was great fun! Knowing Keith, I'm sure he'll have been fine, though as to us...

[Mark Mohrfield]

9 hours ago, Darius West said:

If you want to discuss this further, that is fine but I don't think this is the right part of the forum to do it.

Actually, I tend to agree, but you did bring up the subject in the first place.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Mark Mohrfield

[Noita]

One of the pcs in my current RQ game is a Rhino rider trader, his Pavic mother runs a caravan between the city and Sartar, which his father had been a guard on. He has some interesting stuff on his spare Rhino, taken/traded from looted places and folk the group have come across during their travels. 

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Actually, I tend to agree, but you did bring up the subject in the first place.

Sure, I started the topic, but I think it would be a mistake to keep going here.  I would happily adjourn it to either the HQ or RQ parts of the forum at your pleasure gentlefolk.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Darius West

[hkokko]

On 11/12/2016 at 11:05 AM, David Scott said:

@hkokko, you have metal from the Wastes as one of the common items. The nomads have no metalworking abilities at all and the area has no metal sources (hence the nomad need for it).

Thanks @David Scott for spotting the error. It has now been removed. Has been busy autumn in RW - did not notice the comment earlier

[hkokko]

Lovely chain - thanks all

[David Weihe]

On 12/18/2016 at 3:37 AM, hkokko said:

Thanks @David Scott for spotting the error. It has now been removed. Has been busy autumn in RW - did not notice the comment earlier

What about the Copper Sands, created when Genert had to transmute part of his army to let the rest escape from a Chaos army?  Admittedly, by the late Third Age, much of the easy "deposits" might have been shipped out, but I would expect that there would still be enough to make it worthwhile to gather it.  I would think that the nomadic problem with working copper or copper ore would be the lack of fuel available to smelt the metals.  Metal working required ready access to a lot of wood (assuming no coal) to turn into charcoal furnaces.

[Noita]

I would say it was taboo to collect.

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, David Weihe said:

What about the Copper Sands, created when Genert had to transmute part of his army to let the rest escape from a Chaos army?  Admittedly, by the late Third Age, much of the easy "deposits" might have been shipped out, but I would expect that there would still be enough to make it worthwhile to gather it.  I would think that the nomadic problem with working copper or copper ore would be the lack of fuel available to smelt the metals.  Metal working required ready access to a lot of wood (assuming no coal) to turn into charcoal furnaces.

The Copper Sands are much more than a physical resource. They are actually part of Genert's remains and as such will be required to remake him when the end of the Third Age is reached. You should be able to find Greg's post about how Genert's is to reconstructed somewhere on the web. As such they are fiercely protected by Storm Bull above and as @Iskallor says are taboo for Praxians. The Praxian lack of metal working is not a technologically issue, they could actually do it, however it is a forbidden activity, part of the raiding setup that keeps Praxians lean and nomadic in their harsh setting. This is not to say that others haven't tried to use the resource. They are likely cursed if they remove some. With spirits of retribution appearing etc. I'd treat it it the same vein as Pele's curse in Hawaii.

[soltakss]

On 12/20/2016 at 10:05 AM, David Scott said:

The Copper Sands are much more than a physical resource. They are actually part of Genert's remains and as such will be required to remake him when the end of the Third Age is reached. You should be able to find Greg's post about how Genert's is to reconstructed somewhere on the web. As such they are fiercely protected by Storm Bull above and as @Iskallor says are taboo for Praxians. 

Are they really? I thought that these were the Copper People that Genert turned to dust to stop the Chaos Army, rather than part of Genert himself.

[David Scott]

23 hours ago, soltakss said:

Are they really?

Yes

23 hours ago, soltakss said:

I thought that these were the Copper People that Genert turned to dust to stop the Chaos Army

Yes

23 hours ago, soltakss said:

rather than part of Genert himself

They are derived from Genert, an aspect if you like. In any case, the sands are needed to resurrect Genert. Once the mould is made and lined with Hyena Skins, the dry sands are poured in then the Hyena's start vomiting in on top. I'm sure other parts get placed inside at strategic places. Like the magical objects inside a mummy. Many will be the Great Magics of Prax, others will be other found magics.

Further info:

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd10/2004.08/0820.html

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd10/2004.01/0033.html

[Darius West]

On 12/28/2016 at 3:34 AM, David Scott said:

Yes

Yes

They are derived from Genert, an aspect if you like. In any case, the sands are needed to resurrect Genert. Once the mould is made and lined with Hyena Skins, the dry sands are poured in then the Hyena's start vomiting in on top. I'm sure other parts get placed inside at strategic places. Like the magical objects inside a mummy. Many will be the Great Magics of Prax, others will be other found magics.

Further info:

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd10/2004.08/0820.html

http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd10/2004.01/0033.html

The trick is in feeding every hyena in Prax the correct dose of syrup of ipecac for the ritual.  The volume of hyena vomit required to resurrect a dead continental giant deity is considerable

[hkokko]

Time to think about the value of cargo. 

Based on various Gloranthan sources: 

A typical merchant ship can take 10-80 tons of cargo (on the lower end Xebec merchant, on the higher end Huge Haragala Merchant) . Triremes seem to take 1 to 2 tons. 

Based on GtG following items might be carried from/to font or within Fonrit

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0J20AZXw-hDcGZZWGdFVE1BeUE/view 

 

Some gloranthan say that it can take 2 silver per 100 km in ocean per ton for transport cost and much more than that for river or overland. 

Based on another source saying that 200 slaves in poor conditions could be put on 120 ton approx 24 meter long ship (Henriette Marie) we can then calculate human cargo for this game world. 

Nonhuman cargo: 

What would be 10 tons worth of Herbs worth when it is common. It might be several times worth of that when it is rare (in real world some sources say  it might have been 60 times the cost of transit from India for the spices). . Provided there is market for that. 

How about wool, wine, ivory, metalworking, cloth, bronze per ton :-)

Afraid my campaign will move to sea and piracy is always an option....

[Joerg]

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Time to think about the value of cargo. 

It's all about location. You'll have a buying price where the product is produced or delivered (e.g. from inland, via river transport), and a selling price at your destination, and "I'll take it off you if you ask me nicely, but I am not really interested" prices elsewhere.

If you ever played one of those sandbox first person space transport computer games, you will know what I mean.

If you salvage some cargo (whether abandoned or forcibly abandoned), you won't usually be able to sell it at top selling rates.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Based on various Gloranthan sources: 

A typical merchant ship can take 10-80 tons of cargo (on the lower end Xebec merchant, on the higher end Huge Haragala Merchant) . Triremes seem to take 1 to 2 tons. 

Triremes can either be fit for fighting or they can be fit for express deliveries, although I wouldn't use a ship design used for optimized ramming speed but rather one for long sustained speed - a bireme or monoreme (basically an upscaled penteconter). Much of their storage capacity is used for provisions for the crew, but above deck you can pile up stuff you want to deliver.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Based on GtG following items might be carried from/to font or within Fonrit

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0J20AZXw-hDcGZZWGdFVE1BeUE/view 

That list is missing the ubiquitious items of luxury pottery, glass, textiles, dyes, and ship requirements like seasoned timber, ropes, leather, canvas, dowels, nails, containers (chests, amphorae), pitch...

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Some gloranthan say that it can take 2 silver per 100 km in ocean per ton for transport cost and much more than that for river or overland. 

Downriver transport may be as cheap when cargo is strapped onto rafts of marketable timber.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Based on another source saying that 200 slaves in poor conditions could be put on 120 ton approx 24 meter long ship (Henriette Marie) we can then calculate human cargo for this game world. 

Masloi or Thinokan outriggers may use that human cargo as propellant, too - paddling keeps them fit and healthy, and exhausted.

Fonritian warsails probably have belowdeck cages as a default installation.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Nonhuman cargo: 

What would be 10 tons worth of Herbs worth when it is common.

10 tons worth of herbs of one type sounds like a year supply for the port and its hinterland, even if we are talking about mass-marketable stuff like tea or kafl leaves.

If you have 10 tons of a highly specialized good at your hands, you will have to peddle it off in small portions over a number of ports of call - basically you become a distributor.

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

It might be several times worth of that when it is rare (in real world some sources say  it might have been 60 times the cost of transit from India for the spices). . Provided there is market for that. 

That's the problem. Medicinal herbs or substances useful for dyeing may be exported from the Veldt, but hardly in complements of 10 tons.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

How about wool, wine, ivory, metalworking, cloth, bronze per ton :-)

If you have the option to have it sold to the original recipient of the cargo, you'll be in luck.

Of the above, wine and cloth are the only bulk items that I see. Salt, durable foods (whether lentils, grain, salted or dried fish or meat), beverages, oils may qualify as bulk cargo. Bronze ingots and other metals are good additions to the ballast, as are stones sought for milling, masonry, or carving.

Bulk grain may be transported in closed below-deck compartments, but will require constant work airing and re-balancing. (At least that's how Hanseatic grain merchanters operated.)

Most of the time a trader will just exchange his cargo for some other local cargo, some bulk and some more valuable special, small volume cargo, and "cash in" only at his home port(s) through established outlet chains. Some of the procedings will of course be left as cash to the local service industry at the port. Mercantile sailors in port are hardly distinguishable from pirates enjoying a few days off in port.

 

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

Afraid my campaign will move to sea and piracy is always an option....

A pirate's booty doesn't calculate in exchange rates, but in days of spendthrift debauchery in the next friendly port. It is different for captains, ship-owners, and ambitious wannabes, though.

More often than not your ship-to-ship pirate will go cherry-picking targets designated by a merchant who knows exactly what the ship has loaded, and who has the channels to sell that stuff at a profit. That merchant will offer you credit or even investment options (which might lead to owning part of the ship you are sailing on). The deals will stink compared to the profits made by the merchant, but will still pay better than random cargo collected from random targets.

Most piracy is of the Viking kind, though, raiding coastal settlements and trading sites, often for daily life essentials and human cargo. 

Piracy might extend to smuggling, blockade-breaking or targeted armed burglary.

[M Helsdon]

5 hours ago, hkokko said:

Triremes seem to take 1 to 2 tons. 

Triremes have little to no cargo capacity. In fact, they would rarely carry enough water and food for more than a day. To make them troop or horse transports, the Classical Greeks had to give up one or two levels of oarsmen, meaning that the ships had no capacity for ram-based naval warfare. It was the older ships that tended to be used in this way; as for animal transports often two levels of benches were removed.

Pirate ships preferred to capture a merchant ship, and its cargo, crew and passengers; pirate ships always carry large numbers of crew to not only swarm defenders in boarding actions but to crew the captured ship. They would rarely move the cargo to their own ship, which again wouldn't have much cargo space.