So, in my last post's comments, we got into a small discussion about this question:
Why do adventurers risk death in dungeons instead of robbing the merchants, who, demonstrably have the money to buy the loot off of the adventurers?
In my games, anyway, what holds them back is combination of personality constraints, law, armed force, and long-term economic interest. None of this applies to monsters - it's generally legal in my games to kill off dangerous critters and recover lost or stolen goods and keep them.
Personality constraints - not everyone is purely greed motivated, and robbing Balto instead of sacking the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord just isn't an option for them. Paladin-types won't rob the merchants. Neither will priests of the Good God. Maybe the Settites have a strong orderly streak reflected in your Code of Honor or Vow or (for D&D types) alignment. Maybe they are purely greed motivated but have a strong line of separation between "doing a dangerous but profitable job" and "robbing businesspeople in town."
Law - it's illegal to rob the merchants, and so you suffer the threat of legal repercussions. In any legal system, too, resisting imposition of the law is also illegal, so you just compound the charges if you don't cease and desist and take your maiming or branding for robbery like a man. Scoff at the law? Well, the law has . . .
Armed force - even a badass can get swamped with numbers, and the townsfolk will have numbers. They may even have experience dealing with adventurer-types. And if they live near monsters they might have some reserve firepower to deal with it (siege engines, Greek fire, magical one-shots). They may include retired or current adventurer-types. Local weapon instructors might enjoy jumping in on a fight. They might even hire Toshiro Mifune and six of his buddies to kill you next time you ride on by to rob them. Even if they can't beat you in a fight they can make you a pariah, which sucks even if you are wealthy. Spend it on what, basically, if you're an exile from society?
And if you survive this, expect a bounty on you. Maybe not a huge one, but it'll be there, and it won't help you any. The bounty hunters don't come after you when you're ready to kick ass, they come after you when you're sleeping off that hellacious fight with the demonic lich-troll or out of arrows after fighting the orcs. Think repo-men. They don't carjack you, they come drive it or tow it away while you're asleep. You do want to be able to sleep soundly, right?
Finally, Long-term economic interest - aka greed. You could rob the merchants, but then what? In the long run, stealing (legally) from monsters and selling the take to merchants is a stable enough way to make money. A one-shot grab that makes it impossible to grab more isn't a good long-term idea. Don't burn the furniture. A merchant might have 4,000 sp for the 40% resale value of your 10,000 sp jeweled box but he probably doesn't have 10K . . . you won't get much more than selling him the stuff. And you can keep coming back, if you don't rob him.
There are other reasons why robbing them might not even be worth it.
Merchants might lack cash on hand. Maybe you sell you 10,000 sp jeweled box to them for 4,000 sp, but that doesn't mean you get 4K all at once. Maybe it takes a couple days to scrape the cash together, or it takes a couple of merchants to put the cash together. Or a consortium buys the big items - that would make sense, and explain why most RPG rules (and sane GMs) play out one transaction and say "that's the best price you find in town."
Or the money is stored at some local guildhouse or bank or whatnot. Maybe they issues letters of credit on big sales ("take this note to Bleign the Banker, he'll give you the money.") So maybe it's not even worth robbing them.
Of course, there is the old reliable "everyone is a retired high level adventurer" solution. That makes all of the above irrelevant - you can't rob Balto because he'll be tougher than W E R D N A. But I prefer the PCs to be the Conans and Elrics of the world, not go to them to sell their trinkets.
Finally, if you want to play of game of thieves and looters, that's totally fine. But it does mean sacking dungeons is probably not where your interest lies. If you really want to plunder the Ancient Tomb of Evil & Gold, it's best to not shit where you eat by killing the merchants.
One other thing: in the traditional endgame, the PCs become the law. Unless you want to become a bandit lord, knocking over merchants left and right will not really help your Barony and Master of High Sorcery (or whatever) ambitions.
ReplyDeleteWell, sure, that's the traditional endgame for D&D - but I'm being a bit more broad. GURPS doesn't hand you followers at high level. ;)
DeleteBesides, plenty of historical guys dealt with problems like "I used to rob merchants and default on loans" with "but now I'm rich and in charge." Someone will sell to you in that situation. But you probably won't get to be in charge by starting out robbing merchants. You have to get to the "sack cities" level before that's a viable road, I think.
One thing I'll also note, though, that that two of the five examples of NPC reactions to PC assaults in the DMG are the PCs attacking civilization - openly assaulting a town, and assaulting a fortress. This problem must have come up early and often!
Does Dungeon Fantasy have endgame mechanics, or is that more or less up to the referee?
DeleteUp to the referee. "Standard" DF even gets rid of concepts like social status and jobs, since they aren't really important in later versions of dungeon-bashing games (video games especially). It's GURPS so it's trivial to add that back in, though.
DeleteSorry about bringing up this topic but things become complicated when the PCs are evil. Anyway, there are a lot of interesting ideas presented so thanks. I have been thinking about this and when reading Ars Magic: The Church it gave me ideas. The Church is very powerful in Ars Magica because they bring the message of God. The church is *very* powerful and those crossing it will be in very deep trouble. So I thought about the concept of Divine Rule by the king and that he is supposed to be in place by the will of God and thus the king is thee legal extension of God the same way the church is the spiritual extension. The laws of the kingdom must be enforced and and any lawlessness will be quickly stopped because if the king allows lawlessness then God may very well depose him. Thus any PCs who rob and murder innocents in the kingdom will be quickly brought to justice by knights and other enforcement agencies.
ReplyDeleteDon't be sorry, it's worth considering. I think that evil characters still have to deal with the consequences, though - they just are more likely to consider the tradeoff.
DeleteIn a deeper game, yeah, it makes sense to have militant orders who deal with problematic adventurers. :)
The PC's may be evil, but evil was there first. The merchant pays off the guards and the local crime syndicate. Hitting a big easy target like Balto the treasure merchant gets you made an example. And if you're good enough, maybe they don't kill you. They take the goods, and now you owe them a job. You have to take the suicide mission into the proving grounds anyway...
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's awesome, you'll want to make them go all Dirty Dozen into the dungeon. That's the plot behind C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness, even.
DeleteAnyway the easy money is in organized crime, not petty merchant-robbing. It's in your fencing, your slaving rings, your brothels, and your gambling operations. If you need some extra cash, you hit the adventurers not the merchants - sure, they're more dangerous, but they're outsiders and are likely to leave after they kill some people other than you and then get assigned to that suicide mission. ;)
When the PCs are evil and they are in an evil town to deal with merchants then having the merchants be connected to a syndicate or mafia is a given. But my problem occurs when there is a small town like Hommlet where it is out in the middle of nowhere and there is no way they could defend themselves from the high powered PCs of DF. I guess the king or nobility would lose money if the merchants were attacked and killed and their property stolen. In this case PCs might not only be stealing from the merchant but also from the nobility (lost taxes or whatever) This would likely be another reason why it would be a bad idea to rob and kill the merchants.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely true. When somebody robs a village in a feudal world, he robs a noble with much social power. If someone survives attack, he probably would be able to describe the robbers. Even if no one survives, there's divination magic left.
DeleteEven in non-feudal world, if no one lived through the attack, and there's nobody outside the village who would avenge the victims, there's d20's Caller in Darkness left.
The way I look at this, you've got evil PCs -- which is to say, they'll do whatever is in their best interest given their desires. Since you're (presumably) running GURPS DF, this is a function of character disadvantages, orientation of cleric/holy warrior types to "evil", and general play style. I envy you, in part because I've always wanted to run the evil group. Not necessarily long term, but possibly. It leaves all sorts of possibilities out in the open.
DeleteSo they've come to the remote town, they've sacked all of the surrounding dungeons, and they really don't need this town any longer. They look at it, and realize that it's open for easy sacking. Then, the calculus done, they simply sack the town. Part of what's needed is containment -- it's bad for them if their foul reputation gets around, worse if the king/church/legal authority/etc. finds out about them. Foul reputation equals no one doing business with them, so you're stuck in the "town closes gates, people won't trade, good luck" scenario. Shop in Tortuga, or nowhere. If the LAW finds out, your PCs have bounty hunters, law enforcers, and eventually (if they're good at eluding them, yet still manage to flaunt the law) a small ARMY after them. In the end, they lose.
But if they can contain news of their exploits, they can get away with it. Go for it! Sounds like fun. As always, the only thing stopping them from getting away with murder is much the same as what keeps anyone from it: those in power vs. the murderers' ability to cover up/elude those in power.
Maybe GURPS DF: Trading Post or Merchants could be a useful book. It could have some random tables like the one one the previous posting so that the DM could randomly determine what items are available in with merchants depending on how many people are in the town or city. It could also have some interesting ideas for the merchants like maybe they are part of a syndicate or they are even working with the dungeon and ratting out the PCs. Getting stuff for adventures and also trading in loot has always been sort of undefined. Maybe GURPS could make a book about this part of dungeon delving and then even people using other game systems would buy it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe something more generic with DF support? With some locations detailed, such as a caravansary, a trading post, a small trade town. Or even, as you say, a complete DF resource. Wonder if they'd bite. I'm not in a position to write it. I'm going into the rabbit hole working on my game world, though I've done SOME of this. Alas, it's gameworld specific enough and "fact checked" only by online research.
DeleteMaybe after I've run enough of my city I can do something like that - but it'll be even less "fact checked" and a lot more "it worked in my game." Even that is a long way off.
Delete"It worked in my game" coupled with some thrilling historical (or even pseudo-historical) details and some more generic playtesting is really all that's required for a DF supplement. That could work well. Unfortunately, I'm no longer running a DF game, so I want something that feels more authentic and fits better with the world. I have caravansaries and trading posts along a very lengthy trade road. It is "merely" part of the world, and provides a great way to infuse a campaign with "oddball" characters that players often want to play -- "I came from the East along the Jewel Road" is a legitimate background allowing for atypical character types.
DeleteI'll keep it in mind as I play, but I'm not planning on multiple cities and travel at this point, just buying/selling in one place.
DeleteTo be fair, though, everything I write for my own games is done with an eye for eventual publication (and vice-versa). It's why I write so much of my stuff with SJG publication formats, point cost out obscure powers, and write tables in d6s. :)
I like the idea that you write up your games with an eye for publication because one thing I think GURPS needs more of to have stats from actual gaming situations as opposed to the typical generic rules only stuff. Dungeon Fantasy could use some organic type source books (for inspiration, cool ideas etc.) of along with the more staid rules books.
DeleteWell, in time maybe a handful of us can pool our resources (i.e., what we've done in games) and put something together. I'm trying to stat out my towns and cities using the City Stats mechanism, as needed. I think something similar could be done for trade posts, caravansaries, etc.
DeleteI've been thinking a LOT about the caravansary and seasonal mercantile complex outside of the town I'm rebooting my campaign in. Questions like law and order, how to house all the caravans, how many are expected at any one time and at what times they're most busy, how big are the caravans, etc. If I try to extrapolate those to a more generic fashion, do some more internet research, and then come up with gameable approximations, that might be a good start for this sort of thing. And worth it, since that road often draws people off to adventures. Even if it doesn't draw them far afield, each trade town/post/caravansary, is a hub for local trade networks, which can be interesting in and of themselves. For this, Fantasy is a good starting point. No effort should be made at doing a complete economic analysis -- GAMEABLE is the key, including your mechanism for what might be there, refined for what type of resources are traded, what's local, etc.
@b-dog: Sadly, most of my stuff is crunch, not fluff. Boring ideas well executed, at my best. The most setting stuff you'll see from me is monsters and the occasion very specific location I'm afraid.
Delete@ulfgard - that kind of stuff would be useful to me, too, but we'll have to see how this games goes. I'm really pushing "beer and pretzels dungeon bashing" over "serious campaign" so I don't need travel/trade information. That's partly why I don't have City Stats for my city. Yet, anyway.
We'll see what I end up generating!
A note on the part where the merchant doesn't have the money to pay for items:
ReplyDeleteIn a fantasy book I read once, when the adventurer main character went into a town after an adventure, she had some old/foreign money and jewels/jewelry/jeweled items appraised by the local moneylender. The one who was in the moneylender's guild, not the other one. The moneylender noted that some of the items he wouldn't be able to pay as much for as if the items were sold in the nearest big city, and spoke about issuing letters of credit in the guild. Some of the coins were only worth the base value of the metal, for example.
That's a good approach, too - you'll get more elsewhere, or you can take a better price on credit.
DeleteI've played enough video games where I had to buy stuff from the merchant to give him enough funds to afford to buy my stuff off me!