GURPS Felltrader: Trade & Trading in Felltower

In our game on Sunday, the PCs made peaceful contact (!) with some intelligent apes and monkeys and traded with them.ful

Let's talk about trading in Felltower.

Trading in General

Trading in the last session was interesting. I wanted to avoid the "price list" approach of "find out what everything sells for here, and we'll find out what it sells for in Stericksburg when we get back, and then come back and trade." Prices fluctuate a lot, as does supply. Besides, the merchants are making a price exchange on the fly, here. They're not list pricing pepper and tea and leather products and so on; they're trying to make a deal based on their current supply and what they think they can or need to move. Maybe for "standard" gear a price list works, but it's hell on a trading situation in a game . . . and besides, if I did standard pricing, any price differences would be permanently exploitable or I'd need to adjust for supply and demand anyway, one or the other. Or prices would flatten out and trade would be impossible. The way I did it was a lot less work. So I went with this approach: decide what you want, and they'll make an offer. Prices are final unless you want to dicker with Merchant skill (Exploits p. 13 and p. 16 or Dungeon Fantasy 2 p. 4 and p. 15) and take your chances.

Also, trading was interesting because no one has Merchant skill. So no one had a good way to assess purchases. A lucky (literally Luck-y) roll by Gerry allowed for a good purchase and sale. Even then, since no one has Wealth, and these goods would then sell for 40% . . . that made it vastly more amusing.

Wyatt had a great idea of buying a few things as samples and then creating a demand by marketing them . . . and then filling that demand. Lacking Merchant and other appropriate skills, though, this is very likely to fail. It's a good idea with a character lacking the knowledge to really take care of all of the nuances and negotiations. Execution trumps idea, or that guy Tom on Friendster would be richer than that Facebook dude, as an example. Plus, developing a demand will take time and timing. You'll need to put in a lot of time to do it, try and fail and try and fail until you try and succeed . . . and then you need to be able to fill it. That's nice for potentially putting money in the pockets of PCs but it's hardly as fun as them going into dark tunnels and fighting monsters.

Which brings us to . . . XP and trading.

XP and Trading

For this initial session of trading, absolutely, trading profit was worth XP. It was a new experience, and a risky venture, and it took place in a "dungeon" related adventure.

But will it apply in the future?

This is neither a blanket no, nor a blanket yes.

We all have no interest in playing a trading game. Yet purchasing and sales can be fun. It's fun when the PCs explore and find something they can exploit for profit in a way that doesn't require swords and HP as much as coins and cleverness. It's not fun when everything they run into, or any civilized group it all, come with "my guy keeps an eye out for anything that's selling for less than 40% of the list price in Stericksburg" and it turns into a backhand trading game. I could bust out GURPS Traveller: Far Trader and have a lot of fun with a fantasy trading game. But we won't. Because that's not really as fun as the going into dark tunnels and fighting monsters.

So I may provide XP for trading profit in the future, if the circumstances (or perhaps just the goods) are new and interesting. But I won't routinely just say "profit is loot." By that theory, really, the PCs could actually just spend 10,000 sp to get 2,000 sp and divide up 5-6 ways and have everyone make their threshold, just like when they use $10K in potions to take home $2K in final sale value of enemy weaponry. Or I could say trading never gives XP. But then why do it instead of slaughtering the merchants and taking their stuff, which then amounts to more XP for your paper man?

Giving XP when it's novel, and making it clear when it's no longer novel (like going back to buy and sell spices and river rocks with the apes), seems to be the way to go.

So we'll be doing that.