It was recently
suggested that I write up more details on my trade system. Since I
spent a chunk of the last week writing up my procedures for handling
travel it seemed like a natural next step. I'm going to skip all of
the world building that went into the base of the system although
another polite request might get a thousand words on that as well.
So the world
exists. Raw materials exist. In places. Limited by biome,
rainfall, manpower, altitude and a few other geographical factors.
The OTHER thing that exists is my spreadsheet(s.) Before we begin I
need to credit my inspiration, Alexis
Smolensk. I return to his material daily for guidance and
inspiration. A dozen other writers provided insight, ideas and
inspiration: for h in
hexes , Red Ragged
Fiend and others you'll find over there in Appendix N.
Just realized I
have NO idea where to start. So I'll send you back to Alexis's.
That's a rough starting point for the travel stuff. We then use
THAT table to calculate how far each and every shipping point is
from “Our Town.” Divide the amount of something that's produced
“far away” from the distance and you get a number reflecting how
much of any given item is available here. He uses the example of
elephants from Burma to Norway. That's 300 units of travel. His
math further determines that 144.55 of the beasts are available in
Norway. That's the number of elephants moving through this town of
2,500 in a year. Or COULD be, if anybody wanted to ship pachyderms
through Norway.
All of that is
pretty much a straight adaptation of Alexis' with a few corners cut.
I then do the same thing with “Storefronts.” Manufacturers.
Trade people. People who convert raw materials into stuff … and
the people who convert that stuff into other stuff, etc., until it
ends up in the PC's backpack. Short version: Cow to stockyard to
butcher to tanner to leather worker to armorer to Ranger as leather
armor. Or sheep to shearer to spinner to weaver to tailor to Druid
as that sweater to weather this winter's long journey. By using the
same formulas for Storefronts as for Raw Materials I can generate
another decent number to calculate finished goods reflecting the
rarity and difficulty of the labor which goes into it.
The question that
was bugging me was what are the caravans hauling into and out of a
given place. Here's what I'm testing. Spreadsheet. Column 1: all
raw materials. Column 2: Amount of each resource in “Our Town.”
This represents what is produced locally AND can be shipped in.
Column 3: amount of resource produced locally. Anything with more
than .25 units produced is considered for export. (This may change in
future iterations as it's a work in progress.) Column 4 is Column 2
less column 3 (total available less locally produced.) Another way
to phrase it is amount available for importation. If it qualifies
for export I won't import it and if there's less than .25 units for
importation it's rare enough that it rarely gets here. I take what's
LEFT and look for what's most available, by type. I consider the
three most prevalent types of timber. Our current location imports
maple (used for handles), chestnut (utensils, tools and furniture),
linden (furniture), and yew (sometimes art but in this case, bows.)
We export iron ore but have to import clay, salt and construction
stone (hence why most homes are wood.) Livestock? We export hogs,
ponies (!), freshwater fish, and chickens. We import sheep (for
wool) and saltwater fish (salted of course.) Carrots and
turnips come in as well. Using the same system I can tell you the
woods are full of moose and elk, along with fox for a good trapper.
But it was at this
step that I hit a wall. Shelby
and I discussed this almost a year ago when considering rarity
and availability. I'm omitting a lot of the reasoning that went into
the following tweaks. In short, in order for later stage production
to occur the inputs must exist. Let's make a pair of cowhide shoes.
In our current location there are plenty of cows. A butcher (or
tanner) needs to separate the hide. The tanner tans it (turning it
into finished leather.) It can then go to a leather worker or a
cobbler. Cobbler turns it into shoes and we're done. But without a
tanner, there's a problem. Why would a cobbler exist in a village
with hides, but no tanner? Potential solutions: a) make existence
of a cobbler dependent on existence of a tanner. b) allow for
“fractional tanning” via cottage industry in small locales . c)
admit this is a bridge to far and hand wave it away. Hate C.
Increasing number of tanners lowers cost of their labor. Decreasing
number of cobblers increases the cost of shoes. Much of our math so
far is based on “support population.” But perhaps rather than
just looking at how much population it takes to support one tradesman
we should (also) be looking at how many lower level tradesmen it
takes to support a later stage. A little back of the envelope math
indicates that (roughly) one tanner can support eight cobblers. So I
rewrote the formula. Calculate tanners. Calculate cobblers. If
“cobblers*7” > tanners, cobblers equal tanners. If
C*7<tanners the cobblers equal cobblers. CAN have tanners w/o
cobblers. As I find similar occurrences I'll use a similar
corrective. Not going to chase them down.
Note:
When calculating the cost of a manufactured item we take the cost of
the raw materials divided by a labor factor and add the cost of raw
materials again (A/B)+A. The labor factor is the cube root of the
available references.
As we approach a
thousand words I'll end this lengthy (for me) post. PLEASE ask any
questions. I'll gladly fill in any gaps I've left, and I've left
quite a few.
