The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. Understanding the process of how and why those decisions are automatic and obvious most of the time enables the GM to manipulate the decisions to deliver the PCs to whatever and wherever the story is.

It must be noted at this point that the whole concept of Trade in Fantasy has to serve three or four or five masters, simultaneously, and sometimes they get in each other’s way.

1. It has to cope with the concept of the PCs being employed by someone else in some capacity relating to the purchase, transport, and sale of cargo.
2. It has to facilitate the concept of the PCs engaging in trade, buying cargo, traveling with the cargo to its destination and selling it.
3. It has to cope with the concept of the PCs operating a corporate entity that has NPCs do the buying, transportation, and selling of cargo on the PCs behalf – perhaps while they are off adventuring. That’s a more challenging set of circumstances, from the storytelling / GM’s point of view.
4. It has to scale easily and be sufficiently abstract that it consumes a minimum of screen time.
5. It has to operate as completely in the background as possible, only intruding on game time when it intersects with a plotline.
6. It has to contain enough realism to simulate all the possible financial concepts that humans (a perversely inventive lot) have been able to come up with throughout history – without being intrusive about it.
7. Inevitably, it has to manage personnel administration under all of the circumstances listed in 1-3 as adroitly and seamlessly as 4-6 handle cargo.

That’s an ambitious program. I think this system will pull it off, but it’s not what I think that ultimately matters – it’s the readers that will decide whether or not this series meets those targets.

Sometimes, though, when I’m writing it, I find myself switching gears from one perspective to another. Certainly, specific parts of the text target one of the sets of circumstances listed in 1-3 directly and have little or no relevance outside of that. Most of (1) can be taken as an implied outgrowth of (2) or (3) – so the latter two are where the series focuses its attention.

This text will form part of the introduction to the e-book, but I wanted to make sure that it was clear what the goalposts were when I got down to the nitty-gritty, so I’ve mostly held it back until this post.

Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay, hastily edited at the last possible minute remove a plastic bag that had completely escaped my attention, somehow.

Credit where it’s due:

The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower). Dragon #1 is by Parker_West. And, Dragon #2 is by JL G. All three images were sourced from Pixabay.

Table Of Contents: Today’s Post

2. Trade Units

2.1 Characteristics Of A Trade Unit

2.1.1 Conceptual Basis
2.1.2 Value Of A Trade Unit
2.1.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit
     2.1.3.1 “Standard”
     2.1.3.2 “Solidity %”
          Swords
          Horseshoes
               Deferred Depth
               Size
               Packing Strategy
                    Two Sizing Techniques
               Back to the Depth question
2.1.4 Sell-by Date / Preservatives & Refrigeration
     2.1.4.1 Old-School preservation techniques
     2.1.4.2 Alchemy & Preservatives.
     2.1.4.3 Refrigeration
     2.1.4.4 Worldbuilding

2.2 Purchasing A Trade Unit

2.2.1 Metagaming The Purchase and Sale
2.2.2 Price Of A Trade Unit
2.2.3 Optioning A Trade Unit
2.2.4 Packing A Trade Unit
     2.2.4.1 A Rational Approach
          Populating The Table
2.2.5 Licenses
2.2.6 Sales Tax & other Gotchas
2.2.7 The Profit Metric

Next week, in part 2 of this chapter:

2.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit
2.4 Contents Of A Trade Unit
2.5 Movement & Sale of A Trade Unit
2.6 Virtual Trade Units – The Futures Market

And, in future parts:

3. Routine Personnel
4. Mode Of Transport
5. Land Transport
6. Waterborne Transport
7. Spoilage
8. Key Personnel
9. The Journey
10. Arrival
11. Journey’s End
12. Adventures En Route

2. Trade Units

Describing cargoes as ‘Trade Units’ strips away almost every specific detail to leave an abstracted representation of those cargoes.

2.1 Characteristics Of A Trade Unit

In fact, as a general rule and in an ideal world, you only need to know three things about a Trade Unit to fully describe it.

• Its value less costs, i.e. the potential profit that it represents;
• Its bulk, i.e. how difficult (and how expensive) it is to transport; and,
• Its sell-by date, i.e. the maximum time that can be expended in getting it to market. The default assumption is that this is infinite, but in the case of many commodities (especially fresh produce), that is not the case.

Of course, each of these simple concepts gets complicated by reality. For example, the actual sale price might bear little resemblance to the theoretical sale price. But simplifying cargo down to these three facts enables those nuances to be incorporated to whatever level of detail the GM desires as facilitating whatever the actual adventure is supposed to be.

That, of course, is the whole point.

2.1.1 Conceptual Basis



Image by Wolfgang Schropfer from Pixabay

I was walking in the shopping district of my suburb a few weeks ago when something brought the image to the right to mind and connected it with my old “Trade In Traveler” article.

You see, cargomasters loading freighters don’t care what’s in the containers; what they care about is how much they bulk (so that the ship is not overloaded, and is balanced), and how long they have to get it to wherever it is going. The owners don’t especially care what the contents are, either – just how much they will get for selling those contents.

The same is true when it comes to loading freight aircraft, but they also have to be careful to balance loads front-to-rear as well as side-to-side.

This was the epiphany that led to the entire “Freight In Fantasy” series. Everything else in the series flows from this central abstraction. Every issue or question that comes up in relation to this activity, pursued in-game, has been considered through the lens of this concept.

I think it important to explain that up-front, for two reasons:

• First, it gives important conceptual context to everything that follows, making it that much easier to explain and understand; and
• Second, gets readers thinking in those terms, so that if a question or issue comes up that I’ve overlooked or skimmed over too quickly, readers can devise their own solutions.

2.1.2 Value Of A Trade Unit

The first of the three key values in describing a Trade Unit is how much it’s worth, relative to how much it cost, in other words, how much potential profit it represents.

In an ideal world, that’s all you need to know in terms of finances. In reality, it gets more complicated, because costs and values change with location. Moving a cargo to a different destination where it is worth more than you paid for it is a fundamental concept of trade, but moving it an extra amount to somewhere where it is worth even more than that is the difference between success and mediocrity in trade. Both costs and sale value are relative terms, and the system needs to be able to cope with that.

So the reality is that “Value” is such an inconsistent numeric indicator that it is almost always necessary to track Potential Sale Price and Costs separately.

Nevertheless, in terms of bottom-lining and simplifying the actual practicing of Trade in-game, the more you can work with the “Profit” value – the difference between those two sub-terms – the better.

Even if the ‘reality’ of fiscal management is that a cost increases, it’s better to handle that as a reduction in the level of profit if you possibly can. Adjust the profit up for the change in location and then down for the change in transport costs etc, if you possibly can. Sometimes, you can’t – the ownership structure of the enterprise might demand more detail – but this is the ideal to always look towards.

Section 2.2 will have more to say on this subject.

Oh, and one more note: A given cargo doesn’t have to be a whole number of Trade Units. There’s nothing wrong with trading “0.7 trade units” or whatever.

2.1.3 Bulk Of A Trade Unit

Like Profit, Bulk is comprised of two sub-values that may need to be known in order to assess the Bulk – but the more that you can ignore those sub-values in favor of the more abstract “Bulk” score, the better.

Bulk = Weight × Volume / Standard

          also,

Bulk = Density × %Solidity (Volume)^2 / Standard

Bulk dictates how much of a commodity can be carried by a given method of transportation, how long a cargo takes to load and unload, how fast the transport can move it, and so on.

Later in this post, I’ll compare a couple of different cargoes – grain vs flour vs timber vs weapons & armour and so on. But I want readers to right now take a moment to contemplate the relative Bulk of those commodities in general, because that will showcase the usefulness of this measure.

2.1.3.1 “Standard”
There are a couple of other sub-values mentioned above that need clarification before I continue. The first is “standard”. This simply translates the Bulk value into an easy-to-use relative number, and should be defined by the lowest maximum a standard pack animal can carry.

In many worlds, that may be a mule, or maybe a horse. Or it may be a cart, or a dragon, or a runnerbeast, or even a slave. It’s the normal maximum that can be carried by the normal transportation methods.

There are many nuances and available standards to choose from – the gold standard, the iron standard, an ore standard, the wheat standard, the flour standard. Which one the GM chooses will depend on the transportation methods available in his game world. I will use a standard based on reality as much as I can, but it might not apply to your game world – and you will have to make adjustments.

Any such adjustment will also apply to the value & cost, because you are redefining how much of a commodity is in a “standard trade unit”. So it’s a powerful and fundamentally important number to get right, if you are going to simplify Trade as an in-game activity as much as possible.

The reason to get you thinking about the relative impact on bulk of the different types of commodities are so that you are thinking about what standard to use.

2.1.3.2 “Solidity %”

Images used in this section are from Clker.com, modified by Mike.

Using the Density of some product can be a convenience. But it means that you have to take into account how solidly that product can be packed into a given volume, and that can be more complicated than you think.

Swords


Take swords, for example. These pack more or less flat by laying one on top of another, nose-to-tail. The thickness of the crosspiece plus the thickness of the blade tip at hilt-length from the tip defines the vertical thickness. The image above shows this. So you might think that the total volume of these swords, when packed, would be L × w × (h1 + h2). And, if they were all packed like this, you would be right. Let’s put some real numbers in: 55 cm × 8 cm × (2 cm + 0.5 cm) = 1100cm^3, or 550 cm^3 per sword. But clearly, there’s a lot of empty space – almost 3/4 of that total volume. Packed this way, the Solidity % would be around 25%.



But you could pack four swords like this – L2 is maybe 1.5 cm, and W2 is 3 cm, so the four swords would occupy (55 + 1.5) × (8 + 3) × (2 + 0.5) = 1553.75 cm^3, or just 388.4375 cm^3 per sword. Packed in this more efficient way, the Solidity % will be about 30%.


 
 
 
 
 
 
If we continue to lay swords in this fashion, as shown to the left, eight swords will occupy (55 + 1.5) × (8 + [3 × 3]) × (2 + 0.5) = 56.5 × 17 × 2.5 = 2401.25 cm^3, or just 300.15625 cm^3 per sword. Four sword-widths of blades and 2 × 1.5 + 3 × 1.6 for the gaps (estimated visually) gives a total of 4 / (4 + 3 + 4.8) = 4 / 11.8 = 33.9% solidity.

The larger the plan area of the crate that can be accommodated, the more we can take advantage of overlaps this way.



Four such layers fits 32 swords into 7910 cm^3, the same density per sword, and the same Solidity %, as shown.



Is that as good as we can do? Heck, no!

If we have enough stacks that we get (L1 + L2) height at 2.5 cm each stack – so 56.5 / 2.5 = 23 stacks (rounding up), we can insert more vertically to make a latticework packing arrangement. For the modest price of another L3 or less, we can get another 15 pairs of swords into the space.

So that’s 23 × 8 + 15 × 2 = 214 swords into (55 + 1.5+ 1.5) × (8 + [3 × 3]) × (2 + 0.5) × 23 = 58 × 17 × 2.5 × 23 = 56695 cm^3, or only 264.93 cm^3 per sword.

We had 33.9% solidity, i.e 66.1 % empty space. It looks like roughly half of that is now filled, so the empty space is now 33.05%, and the Solidity % is 66.95%.



Even that isn’t the absolute limit; if the cross-pieces were just a little smaller, or the blades a little longer, we could fit an extra row of pairs in the middle, giving 224 swords – and the extra L2 has vanished, no longer necessary. 224 / 214 × 66.95% × 58 / 56.5 = 71.9% solidity.

Or a longer blade again would permit another 5 pairs – 234 swords. But we’re approaching the limits at this point – of assembled weapons, at least. For the real ultimate in packing density, ship the blades, pommels, and hilts separately and assemble them at the destination.

But if you’re already getting 72% solidity, you would have to be sure that the gains were worth the effort and the risks. That certainty would only come with a large order – a couple of thousand weapons, at least. We’re talking about equipping an army. Most people rarely have to do that – you would have to wonder why they aren’t already equipped, and the possible answers can be a little disquieting. (Hint: No-one increases the size of their army massively without good reason).

Horseshoes


Let’s look next at Horseshoes. With straight edges like Swords, it’s fairly easy to estimate spacing – I could see at a glance that the gap to either side of the examples above were about 1 1/2 times the width of the blade. As soon as you introduce even the simplest of curves, that changes. It’s ten times harder to be accurate, ten times easier to make a mistake, and ten times more likely that any mistake will be significant.

Your best way out of this difficulty is with an image. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crude outline that you draw yourself or if you find an image on the internet, or even have a real life example to use as a template.

So I picked out a fairly rough image from the internet – deliberately choosing something fairly low-resolution.

Deferred Depth
Fortunately, horseshoes will pack fairly flat. The flatter an object, the more you can simplify and treat it as a two-dimensional object.

Size
Looking at the image of the solitary horseshoe, it appears to be about 3 inches wide and maybe 4 inches long. Right away, that doesn’t sound quite right to me – I would expect something more square, 3 inches × 3 inches, based on what I’ve seen in real life.

So I’ll come back to size in a minute.

Packing Strategy
I can also see right away that there are two possible packing arrangements (other than just putting a bunch of horseshoes side by side).

The first one places the tine of one horseshoe against the middle of another one, so that most of that tine is occupying space that would otherwise be empty. But there is no room in this arrangement for more; everything would happen in pairs.

The alternative separates the two horseshoes a little more and matches the concave of one horseshoe to the convex of another. It seems fairly obvious that the additional space makes a row of three fairly inefficient, but the larger the number of rows, the more efficient this is likely to be.

The burning question is whether or not there is a threshold number above which the additional space required is compensated for, or is the 2-by-2 the most efficient choice?

To answer that, we’re going to need some more precise measurements than my mark-1 eyeballs.

Two sizing Techniques

Fortunately, there are a couple of really simple techniques that can be used to get a more accurate measurement, no matter how complex the shape is.

The most precise divides the object up into a grid, and you then estimate how much of each square is covered by the image, writing the result as a decimal (so 25% would be written 0.25). Add up all the totals, set a size for each cell, and multiply the two together to get a really accurate measurement.

Here’s an example of using that technique:



This uses a 10 × 11 grid to determine the % complete of portion of a Roman Tesserae. The bulk of it is contained within a 10×10 grid, but there’s a bit of overflow at the top. It’s roughly 1000 times more accurate than estimating by eye.

But sometimes, we don’t need that level of precision. There’s a rough-and-ready alternative that is even simpler in some ways, though it’s a little fuzzier.



The process starts by drawing a rectangle around the object. Use a bright, distinguishable color.



Next, in a more neutral color like blue, I draw a square. I duplicate it and place them one beside another until the whole object is covered by a row of them. I then combine that row into a single image. In this case, having decided that the horseshoe was roughly 3 inches across, I used squares that represented 1/2 an inch, so I do six of them and scale the row to be the same width as the horseshoe.

Then I duplicate that row, aligning them one row at a time until the whole horseshoe is covered. And, when you do that, you find that eyeball-estimates are wrong and the horseshoe is in fact, 3 inches × 3 inches.



I repeat the same trick with a lighter color to subdivide the blue squares. If those larger squares had represented an inch, I might have used a four-by-four pattern to get 1/4 inch small squares, but with 1/2 inch larger squares, a five-by-five grid gives tenths of an inch.



In each square that is fully covered by the image, I put a red dot, like so. In fact, 90% covered is good enough to get ‘dotted’ – errors will tend to average out.



In the same way, I look for squares that are about 3/4 filled and put an orange dot. Then half-filled, yellow dots; and finally, 1/4 filled, a white circle.

One small square (i.e. one 5-by-5 grid at a time), one row at a time, I count the number of dots of each color. As each grid gets done, a white stripe from one corner to the opposite corner is used to tell me that it’s been counted. I’ve done only the first two rows in the illustration so that you can see the process taking place.

The complete count is:

     Top Row: Red 50, Orange 9, Yellow 11, White 4
     2nd Row: Red 77, Orange 14, Yellow 11, White 7
     3rd Row: Red 50, Orange 10, Yellow 4, White 1
     4th Row: Red 44, Orange 9, Yellow 6, White 3
     5th Row: Red 41, Orange 9, Yellow 6, White 7
     6th Row: Red 36, Orange 13, Yellow 5, White 6
     7th Row: Red 10, Orange 1, Yellow 1, White 8

Add up the counts for each color and multiply by the ratio shown at the bottom of the figure.

     Red: 50 + 77 + 50 + 44 + 41 + 36 +10 = 308, × 1 = 308
     Orange: 9 + 14 + 10 + 9 + 9 + 13 + 1 = 65, × 0.75 = 48.75
     Yellow: 11 + 11 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 1 = 44, × 0.5 = 22
     White: 4 + 7 + 1 + 3 + 7 + 6 + 8 = 37, × 0.25 = 9.25

Add up the results and you get 388 out of 30 × 32 = 1024 squares, each 1/100th of a square inch in area and 1/10th of an inch to a side. The horseshoe is 3.88 sqr inches in surface area and 388 / 1024 = 37.890625% solid.

Okay, with that done, we can get back to answering the burning questions. Having done it once, we don’t need to get anywhere near as fancy when it comes to comparing the packing patterns. Pairs first:



As you can see, arranging them in this way fits the pair into a space of 3+0.5+0.14 by 3+0.5+0.46 = 3.64 × 3.96 = 14.4144 sqr inches. Two horseshoes × 3.88 = 7.76 sqr inches, so that leaves 6.6544 of empty space. And 100 × 7.76 / 14.4144 = 53.835% solid.

Take one last look at the illustration to the left, specifically at the second horseshoe, the one on the lower right. Everything that’s within the purple line is formerly wasted empty space!



I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough space on the right for the measurements, so I aligned everything to the right-hand-side in this image. It can be a little hard to see what’s going on, so I’ve thrown in a couple of enlargements of the bottom corners. In this image, there are three horseshoes and more can be added, interlocking like a zipper’s teeth. What we need to know is how the different dimensions of the overall figure are affected by adding a pair of additional horseshoes to the chain – once we have that, we can run the numbers. Right now, the big empty spaces on the outside keep staring back at me, vast gulfs of inefficiently wasted space.

The short axis measures out at (3+ 0.4 + 0.08) = 3.48 inches. That’s not going to change, it’s a fixed quantity.

The long axis is where the money is. (4 + 0.5 + 0.3 + 0.03333) = 4.833333 inches. That’s up from a straight 3 inches, so the two extra horseshoes have occupied 1.833333 inches between them, even though they are a total width of 6 inches. That’s pretty encouraging!

3 horseshoes:
     Area used = 4.833333 × 3.48 = 16.8199884 square inches.
     Area occupied = 3 × 3.88 = 11.64 square inches.
     Solidity = 100 × 11.64 / 16.8199884 = 69.2034%.

That’s better than I expected. It will only improve from that beginning.

5 horseshoes:
     Area used = (4.833333 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 6.66667 × 3.48 = 23.2 sqr inches.
     Area occupied = 5 × 3.88 = 19.4 sqr inches.
     Solidity = 100 × 19.4 / 23.2 = 83.6207%.

7 horseshoes:
     Area used = (6.66667 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 8.5 × 3.48 = 29.58 sqr inches.
     Area occupied = 7 × 3.88 = 27.16 sqr inches.
     Solidity = 100 × 27.16 / 29.58 = 91.82%.

9 horseshoes:
     Area used = (8.5 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 10.333333 × 3.48 = 35.96 sqr inches.
     Area occupied = 9 × 3.88 = 34.92 sqr inches.
     Solidity = 100 × 34.92 / 35.96 = 97.108%.

11 horseshoes:
     Area used = (10.333333 + 1.833333) × 3.48 = 12.166667 × 3.48 = 42.34 sqr inches.
     Area occupied = 11 × 3.88 = 42.68 sqr inches.
     Solidity = 100 × 42.68 / 42.34 = 100.8%.

Okay, that’s just ridiculous. Clearly, I’ve reached the limits of accuracy of this methodology, and some rounding error somewhere has become amplified to the point of gross observability.

That doesn’t matter. We can allow for that by simply knocking off 1% Solidity. The point is that this method of structuring the cargo is a LOT more efficient than the 2-at-a-time method right from word one, and only improves in effectiveness with additional ‘teeth’ in the zipper.

I’m also interested in the amount by which this Solidity increased each time –
     from 3 to 5 horseshoes: +14.4173%
     from 5 to 7 horseshoes: +8.1993%
     from 7 to 9 horseshoes: +5.288%
     from 9 to 11 horseshoes: +3.692%.

Each time, a smaller increase. It’s not a straight geometric progression; the ratios also get smaller each time, from 1.758 to 1.55 to 1.4323. This is also not a geometric progression, which I thought it might be. But based on these numbers, I would expect 13 horseshoes to yield a +3.692 / 1.31 = +2.82% increase, and 15 to yield a +2.82 / 1.25 = +1.88% increase, very roughly.

Part of the problem in the real world is that no two horseshoes would be exactly the same in size and shape – that comes with industrial process, not an artisan working with his hands. And I suspect that the resulting variability would quickly swamp all other considerations, and make it impossible for more than 5-7 horseshoes to be ‘interlocked’ this way in a row.

Back to the Depth question
I’ve seen horseshoes that were only 2-3 mm thick (a little over 1/10th of an inch)- but they were at the point of needing to be replaced. In general, I would expect new horseshoes to be between 1/2 and 1/4 of an inch thick, and was all set to use 1/3 of an inch as the value, but several thoughts then occurred to me.

First, with uncertainty about where a blacksmith could be found to replace worn horseshoes, the would be changed more often when the opportunity permitted, even if there was still meat on the bone. And that would encourage thicker horseshoes in the first place, just to increase the likelihood of them lasting long enough for a replacement to be sourced.

Second, a lot of travel would take place off tamed and manicured roads, especially if you were an old-time adventurer, i.e. a PC. And that would encourage thicker horseshoes, too.

Third, the metals weren’t as good back then, and that would have made them softer and faster to wear. And that would encourage… you know the rest of the litany.

And fourth, all of the above would be even more true if you’re talking a bronze-age culture and not iron.

Put all of those together, and I would surmise that iron age / medieval horseshoes would have been 4/10 to 1/2 an inch thick, and bronze age, 1/2 an inch to 6/10 thick – when first shooed. But that’s only an opinion.

2.1.4 Sell-by Date / Preservatives & Refrigeration

This topic was a last-minute addition to the outline. It does a trader no good to arrive at his destination only to find that the produce he has lovingly shepherded across the miles has gone rotten on him.

Far better to stop short of the perfect destination, price-wise, and be assured of having produce of marketable quality.

For some cargoes, this isn’t an issue. Their lifespan would be measured in decades if not longer. Swords and rivets and nails, for example. Wooden tools, too – axe handles are less likely to go off than axe heads, which might be prone to rust spots after a while, especially near the salty waters of a coast. Slate shingles – breakages might be a problem, but going off is not.

Leather wouldn’t be quite so durable, but it wouldn’t be far behind, either – not if properly cured. Ditto cloth. In both cases, moisture and mold are the enemy, and they will take time and poor handling to really make a mark.

But it’s all downhill from there, because then we enter the world of foodstuffs. Without some preservation treatment, they might last a month in some cases, a fortnight in others, a week? Less?

A factor to consider is that we are used to an entire crop being harvested at almost exactly the same time. That’s far less likely to be the case in a Fantasy setting – instead, the harvest might be distributed over s period of days or weeks, and whatever was harvested that week or half-week would be shipped out ASAP – because rotten produce earns nothing for anybody. That means smaller transports more often.

2.1.4.1 Old-school preservation techniques
Shifting the balance of probabilities in the favor of the producer and the consumer are the old-school preservation techniques every GM and player has become familiar with – salting and brining, pickling and drying, wax-coating and even baking / roasting – and, of course, live transport.

In fact, it’s fair to suggest that until a perishable commodity has an associated preservation technique, it will be a rarity even locally and probably regarded as commercially unviable – which merely means that its cultivation would be a mark of privilege and wealth, something available only to the gentry and nobility.

Such techniques can extend a product’s lifetime from days or weeks to months or years. Not everything can be preserved in this way – in particular, herbs and spices lose flavor surprisingly quickly. But they almost always do something to the flavor or consistency, which may make them less compatible with the usage options.

This passage was set to conclude with the statement that every cargo should come with a sell-by date attached, one that ensures that at least 90% of the produce being salable. Thereafter, the rule of halves would apply – half again as long and that 90% becomes 60%, half of that again and it’s 30%, and half of that again and it’s at best 1-2%, and with the observation that this can have a profound effect on how far produce can be distributed.

But then a thought or two intruded…

2.1.4.2 Alchemy & Preservatives
Modern preservatives, for all that they have acquired a bad reputation in recent times, really are miracles of chemistry, keeping produce consumable for three-to-five times as long without altering the nature and quality of the produce unduly.



Here’s a simple diagram of nested circles. White represents one week, red two, yellow three, green four, and blue six, assuming speed of transport remains unchanged.

And then there’s a second set over the top of those, showing how great the increase in area is for a three-fold increase in travel time, and then a third, showing a five-fold increase.

Can you see the innermost white circle? I can barely make it out, and I Know it’s there!

Let’s tackle this point – about the power of geometric expansion – from a different direction. Let’s call the inner white circle, one week of travel from the source, “1 market opportunity.”

     White 1 = radius 1 = area 1 (by definition) = 1 market opportunity
     Red 1 = radius 2 = area 4 = 4 market opportunities
     Yellow 1 = radius 3 = area 9 = 9 market opportunities
     Green 1 = radius 4 = area 16 = 16 market opportunities
     Blue 1 = radius 6 = area 36 = 36 market opportunities

     White 2 = radius 3 = area 9 = 9 market opportunities (same as Yellow 1)
     Red 2 = radius 6 = area 36 = 36 market opportunities (same as Blue 1)
     Yellow 2 = radius 9 = area 81 = 81 market opportunities
     Green 2 = radius 12 = area 144 = 144 market opportunities
     Blue 2 = radius 18 = area 324 = 324 market opportunities

     White 3 = radius 5 = area 25 = 14 market opportunities
     Red 2 = radius 10 = area 100 = 100 market opportunities
     Yellow 2 = radius 15 = area 225 = 225 market opportunities
     Green 2 = radius 20 = area 400 = 400 market opportunities
     Blue 2 = radius 30 = area 900 = 900 market opportunities

So, here’s the point: Any alchemist seeking to fund his experiments in transmutation (or whatever) could do far, far worse than to develop a better method of preserving food than the old-school methods.

If it makes three weeks seem like one, it’s a 9-fold increase in the market potential of everything grown in the Kingdom. If it makes five weeks seem like one, it’s a 25-fold increase. If it makes ten weeks seem like one, that’s a 100-fold increase in the marketplace competing for your product.

To rephrase that last point: Your Yellow-scale produce could travel for 11 weeks and still be fresher than local produce produced three weeks ago. (radius 15-radius 3 = 12, and 11 is less than 12). Whose produce is going to be favored by the marketplace? And, for every market that a local farmer without this treatment has available, you have 25 to pick from.

The social and medical impacts alone would make this a revolutionary breakthrough.

2.1.4.3 Refrigeration
Refrigeration was the real game-changer though. We aren’t talking a paltry 5-fold increase in edible lifespan, we’re talking 90-to-120-fold. 8,100-to-14,400 times the market scope.

Sea-fish used to be available no more than a day or two’s travel from the coastline. Call it 25-50 miles. (It’s worth noting that nowhere in England is more than 75 miles from a Seacoast). Suddenly that’s 2250-3000 miles.

Chicago, Illinois is only about 2850 miles from Anchorage in Alaska.
San Francisco is 2983 miles to Chicago – about the same as Rome to Tajikistan or Tucson to Honolulu or Los Angeles to Haiti. It’s a HUGE distance.

It has all kinds of secondary effects – people grow accustomed to everything they want to buy always being available. There’s less reliance on seasonal produce. Retailers have to change stock levels and even what they stock. Supply lines become a lot less critical, because if there’s a disruption, there’s plenty of time to look for an alternate source. People keep less in reserve, and supermarkets do likewise. In the 1850s, London had enough produce in the city to feed its population for about 3 weeks; the last time I looked (about 20 years ago), that was down to about three days.

Enter your friendly neighborhood Wizard with an Ice Wand of some kind. Or a tame (employed) water elemental (some of them have the right abilities). Or a White Dragon. There are no end of the possible ways of replicating refrigeration in a Fantasy Environment, even without Gnomes and their tinkering.
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2.1.4.4 Worldbuilding
Every game world is going to be different, but the logistics of food distribution are going to be a concern in all of them. Someone will have had ideas along these lines, and as part of their world-building, the GM has to consider (a) What they tried, (b), whether or not they succeeded, and (c) what the impacts have been since – social, political, economic, and in trade.

It can even be argued that the stock-standard fantasy world that has none of these needs explanation if not justification, so ubiquitous would be attempts to solve these problems.

2.2 Purchasing A Trade Unit

Buying a Trade Unit is very simple – the GM tells the players how much, they deduct that from their available cash, and show up with means of transportation on the agreed-upon date so that loading can begin. There may be some roleplaying and some I’s to dot and T’s to cross, but that’s essentially all there is to it.

At least, in theory.

The practical reality can go one of two ways:

1. The GM extends the players credit, hand-waves most or all of the encounters, and skips ahead to the next interesting development in their lives. When they get to wherever they are going to sell the Trade Unit, the GM doesn’t have to worry about the purchase price or the sale price, he can simplify everything down to the difference between the two, i.e. the Profit. This is the roleplaying ideal for a lot of players. For the price of skimping on the GMs showing off of his world and it’s verisimilitude, the players have to agree to forego the ability and right to challenge the GM’s bookkeeping shorthand. They can’t ask pointed questions about the sale price, or whether they should sell in Longshoreland instead of Shortshanksville, or anything like that. They have to agree to Trust the GM.
2. The alternative is for the players to actually pay the costs up front, to know exactly how much ready cash they have on hand, to make all the purchasing and selling decisions, to get told at the end of it all how much the cargo sells for, and have to distribute that wealth after paying any outstanding debts. There are times where this is appropriate – for example, when there have been no ground rules established, so to speak, because this is the first time they’ve tried something like this, or because the details are how the GM is going to offer up the day’s adventure to the players. But unless there’s a specific good reason for it, and the players don’t insist, option (1) is by far the better choice for all concerned. Really clever players will recognize this (especially if the GM tells them its so), and pay closer attention anytime the GM doesn’t hand-wave the minutia.

Probably the big key is the establishment of those Ground Rules that I mentioned, and that’s a really good place to start.

2.2.1 Metagaming The Purchase and Sale

At the heart of bypassing as much minutia as possible is a simple agreement between the players and the GM.

The GM promises not to screw the players over any more than he would if they had insisted on doing things the hard way. They will, for example, get a fair price for their goods at the end of the day, they will get an appropriate warning in advance if there’s any reason not to expect to make a reasonable profit, and so on.

The Players have to accept that promise at face value, and in return promise to give up a measure of control over the minutia so that the GM can hand-wave things. This also requires that they accept three core principles:

1. That the GM realizes that habitually screwing over the players will leave him with an empty table sooner rather than later, and neither side wants that; and,

2. That the purpose for which you have gathered is not called “Bookkeeping & Commerce 101”, it’s adventure, or (at the very least), Roleplay, and that the minutia is irrelevant unless it facilitates one of those two purposes; and,

3. That the name of the game for everyone is to have fun, and anything that gets in the way of that will be obliterated through mutual cooperation. It is not for the GM to show off their world-building skills or his ability to play farmers or anything else, unless those things are in service to this primary purpose.

There are some corollaries.

4. Thief characters don’t get to steal any of the money involved. No “I was just playing my character” nonsense applies. And that goes for NPCs, as well. If it’s part of the plot that an NPC wants to ‘appropriate’ the cargo, or might want to do so, it becomes an encounter to be roleplayed along the way – unless the whole process is being run by NPCs on the PCs behalf (see Chapter 3), in which case the news of the day is simply the outcome, and rule 1 above applies.

5. Chaotic and Evil characters don’t get to mess with the transactions or processes. No “I was just playing my alignment” nonsense is permitted. By either side, for the same reasons as above.

And that’s about it, really. Players will be inclined to accept the GM’s promise until proven false – and see rule (1) should the GM break that promise, or even look like it.

There can still be nuance. There’s a similar set of rules in place in my superhero game regarding equipment and businesses and lifestyles and so on: If the character pays points for something, the GM can take it away but has to replace it or return it or give the PCs a golden ticket to the E-ride that lets them replace or return it. If the character pays cash for it, the GM is free to return none, some, or all of that cash, but whatever was purchased with it is fair game. And any player that tries to rort the game system gives the GM carte blanche to completely ruin their character’s lives, regardless of the preceding rules.

Most fantasy games don’t have points-based purchases, and some people think this means that everything defaults to the “fair game” scenario – but rule 1 implies that the default should be the equivalent of everything being “points-buy”, unless an item is expended in achieving the purpose for which it was obtained or used, of course.

2.2.2 Price Of A Trade Unit

The price of Trade Unit, if it’s still relevant, is the price of harvesting / mining / gathering / assembling / making the amount of cargo described as that Trade Unit.

Since a Trade Unit is a fixed commodity in terms of bulk, it follows that it is NOT a fixed commodity in terms of price. Apples are cheaper than swords – but you should be able to acquire and sell many apples for the price of a single good sword. I’ll go into that further in section 2.4, Contents Of A Trade Unit.

It’s all about relative productivity. It takes the farmer so long to harvest enough apples to make up a single trade unit, and he might have (say) 2.4 of them at the end of a week’s harvest – or 1.5, or 0.7. The cost is how much his apples cost (wholesale and in bulk) and how much it costs him to prepare them to be treated as cargo – which means picking them and placing them in some sort of suitable container, like a barrel. It includes the cost of making or buying those containers, but it does not include the cost of growing those apples in the first place – that comes out of his ‘cost per apple’.

The GM should not bog down in minutia about how many apples are in a trade unit – he should simply set what seems to be a reasonable price for enough apples to fill a Trade Unit, and then multiply that by however many Trade Units the farmer is selling.

The GM might decide that 1 barrel of apples is one trade unit is 100 GP in price, and will sell for 140gp, on average. Or he might decide that 1 barrel of apples is one trade unit is 40 GP worth of profit. Or simply that 1 trade unit is however many apples are needed to reach the bulk set as a ‘standard trade unit’ (without deciding on how many that actually is) and that it’s worth a profit of 40.

The price of a trade unit depends on the commodity, in other words, and the GM should maintain a list of commodities and the assigned prices. He doesn’t have to figure these out in advance, he can simply make up the numbers as he goes along – so long as he records them for future reference.

2.2.3 Optioning A Trade Unit

Players who have some experience in the real world, or who are too clever by half, may decide that they want to Option a Trade Unit. That means that they pay a certain amount – usually 10-20% of the expected price – to have first dibs on purchasing that Trade Unit when the commodity is available.

When the time comes, they rock up at the supplier’s location and ask what his price is. If they like it, they pay the difference between their deposit and the producer’s demands, and get a date when the shipment will be ready for loading. Actually loading it, or hiring the personnel to do so, may be their problem, or the producer might offer a side deal. And, in general, it is up to the purchaser to obtain the necessary transportation, though (again) a side-deal may be struck. It’s the same story with teamsters / employees to actually operate the transport method.

If the PCs decide not to take up the option, they don’t get their money back – they paid for first dibs, they got first dibs.

I’ll deal later with the way things would unfold if the producer doesn’t actually have the cargo ready on the promised date. Suffice it to say that the risk of that happening is shared equally between the parties, i.e. the PCs would get half their money back – at least in theory. This cam get really messy really quickly, there are all sorts of ways one party can try and cheat the other. And they all make the foundations of a fair adventure.

What’s that? Someone at the back wants a couple of examples of such adventure plots?

Okay, try these on for size:

1. A purchaser options a commodity and then has it stolen before the date due. Result: the producer can’t deliver, and the purchaser is reasonably entitled to half his option back. But he also has the cargo, or most of it, so he’s ended up buying it for a (relative) song. When the PCs show up to bargain for an option the next year, the wary producer refuses; the only way to get what they want is to track down the bandits (who have a year’s head start), get proof against them, and turn it over to the appropriate authorities. Do that, and they may get a multi-year option, or even a lifetime option, and it won’t just be from this producer, either. Business Empires have been founded on less.

2. A simpler variant: Bandits steal the goods that the PCs have optioned. They can either demand half their money back (souring goodwill), write the loss off, or go after the bandits to recover the cargo – with the understanding that if they do so, the rightful owner will quote them a really good price (since he otherwise has nothing to sell, either).

3. A producer is being blackmailed by Organized Crime into giving someone else the Option that was promised to the PCs. I certainly wouldn’t want them to get away with that if I were operating one of those PCs!

4. A producer gives the PCs a really good option that he never intends to honor, planning to ask an outrageously high price for his goods so that they go away empty-handed. He will then sell to a second party from whom he has also accepted an Option, pocketing the extra paid by the PCs. He figures the PCs have this coming because they “is furrinerz”. While he might get away with this a time or two, it won’t be too long before the PCs figure out what’s going on (a chance encounter with the ‘Factor’ i.e. the real purchaser’s agent can spell it out for them if necessary) – and then it’s on like Donkey Kong, mate!

When they work as they should, Options are a good deal for all concerned. It gives the producer immediate capital, which they might need in order to actually deliver, or to do even better next year, or whatever. It gives the purchaser of the option first dibs on the cargo, taking some of the uncertainty out of the business. And, at the end of the day, everyone makes a fair profit.

There’s a deeper principle on show here, however, and it’s one to which this entire game supplement / article series is devoted: Trade is nothing more nor less than a delivery vehicle for interesting adventures. If everyone keeps that in mind, all will be well at the end of the day (even if the PCs have some uncomfortable moments in between).

2.2.4 Packing A Trade Unit

Defining a Trade Unit in the way that I have also brings a couple of other advantages to the whole concept of Trade – it permits the GM to establish a set of standards for the packing of a Trade Unit, that is the loading and unloading of the cargo, in time, in manpower, and in price – to some extent.

There are a couple of factors to take into account when setting such standards.

1. Better workers should cost more, but save time. Overall, the price will be relatively fixed.

2. More workers should cost more, but save time. Overall, the price will be relatively fixed.

3. If there are lots of available workers to hire, the price will go down. If there is a scarcity of labor, the price will go up. The time and manpower will be relatively fixed.

4. The larger the nearest population base, the larger the available labor pool, all things being equal.

5. The larger the nearest population base, the more the price of labor will go up.

6. The greater the distance to the nearest population base, the smaller the available labor pool unless recruiting at that population base and transporting them to the job site.

7. Workers will expect to be paid something even if they are just sitting in a wagon en route to a job. In fact, workers will expect to be paid more for each and every inconvenience.

8. If the economy is good, especially locally, the labor market will be smaller. If the economy is bad at the place of recruitment, even if it is good elsewhere, the labor market and will go up and the price will come down.

9. Employers with a reputation for generosity and/or fairness will find it easier to attract labor than Employers with a reputation for harsh treatment or unfair pay practices.

10. If the work is likely to be easier than the work generally available to day laborers, it will be easier to attract workers, and vice-versa.

11. The easier it is to attract workers, the less they will charge, and vice-versa.

That’s a lot to take in, and some of it is hard to quantify in general terms, differing from world to world, season to season, and year-on-year.

2.2.4.1 A Rational Approach
In keeping with the general principles being advocated, I recommend a generalized approach that abstracts all of the above as much as possible. I’d offer a specific set of guidelines, but game worlds would differ too much to make one practical.

The best approach, in my view, is a spreadsheet. Here’s the design I would use:



Click the image to download a zip file with (blank) tables in A4 & Letter sizes, ready for use, in .ods, .xls, and .pdf formats.

Population: I have recommended using sizes -50, -100, -200, -500, -1000, -2k, -5k, -10k, -20k, -50k, -100k, -200k, -500k, -1m, and 2m+. But I’ve also left three blank sets of cells in the files offered so that the table can be extended if necessary.

Good Workers: There’s a column for number available and pay.

Bad Workers: There’s a column for number available and pay.

3 adjust: In the ‘available’ column, write the base number you think would be for hire given the population size. This could be a range. If there are lots of workers available of the given type, add a % pay decrease. If there are few, add a % pay increase.

4, 5 adjust: Adjust the number of available workers to the number who are going to already be employed on any given day, and adjust the pay of the rest, accordingly.

6: There are four rows depending on how far away the nearest population base is. Adjust the number available to reflect how many of them would accept work that far away from home and add extra pay to cover travel time to and from the job. The rows are under 1 day, 1-2 days, 2-4 days, and 1 week or more. Those are for each-way travel.

7 penalties: Add an amount here for other inconveniences, if any should arise. This would include hazards of being out in the wilderness, the risk of encountering monsters, food and lodgings if needed, etc.

8. There are three rows – one for a good local economy, one for an average local economy, and one for a bad local economy. Adjust availability and pay scales accordingly.

9. Looks very similar to (8), with rows for a Good Reputation, an Average Reputation, and a Bad reputation. Adjust availability and any pay demands / flexibility accordingly.

10, 11: three rows for these variables regarding how hard the labor that’s usually available is compared to a loading / unloading job. Adjust availability and any pay demands / flexibility accordingly.

Populating the table:
I would deal with one variable at a time for all population levels. I would also do all values for bad workers and use those as a guide for the values for good workers. This makes it easy to set up progressive values that change predictably from one population band to the next.

But you don’t have to use progressive gradual changes; you can divide entries up into however many bands of the same value as you like, and even have the changeover be different for each adjustment. That’s all up to you.

When specifying an adjustment, don’t just write “+X” or “-X” or whatever; actually total these as you go. This makes the tables a little harder to set up but a lot easier to use.

2.2.5 Licenses

There are all sorts of licenses required before certain commodities can be bought and sold, at least in the modern world, permissions that you have to purchase (and sometimes that you have to also earn with tests). Those things generally weren’t there in the historical time periods that inspire most Fantasy, and the term sometimes is given an entirely different meaning as a result.

Sometimes, a “License” means that you are permitted to sell certain products to the Nobility (it uses the term in the sense of an “Exclusive License”), and they are to come to you if they have any particular requests or requirements; only if you fail to provide whatever it is that they want can they go elsewhere (and often appoint a new license to provide that specific commodity, explicitly carving back your own remit). These are usually free to the seller of Licensed commodities, issued at Crown expense – but there is always scope for corruption and kickbacks and greed, so even that might not be a universal rule.

And sometimes, a “License” permits hunting and/or fishing on Crown Lands (usually specifically named) and those, too, are sometimes called a “License” or a “Warrant” (not to be confused with the modern “Arrest Warrant”, which authorizes and requires law enforcement to apprehend you should they notice your presence). Heck, even being present on Crown Lands can require such permissions – and your paperwork had better be in order if you are found on such land if this usage applies, because otherwise it’s considered to be stealing from that nobility! There are times when this has real meaning, and times when it’s just a formality that anyone can apply for (which may, again, require the payment of a fee either once or on a regular basis).

A variant on this grants the authorized holder permission to carry out certain specific activities that are otherwise forbidden – hence we get “Fishing Licenses” and “Cart Operating Licenses” (equivalent to our Driver’s Licenses), and so on.

The term can even be used in more than one of these senses at the same time, requiring context and grammatical nuance to identify which is the relevant interpretation. Or different races might use the same term to refer to different things (appropriately translated into their different languages, or simply appearing in multiple languages essentially identically but having different meanings).

The person who gets to make these decisions is you, Mr GM, Sir! This is a nuance of world-building and terminology that is often overlooked. I get to pontificate on the subject for these few paragraphs because of the first three interpretations, both of which are absolutely relevant to the buying and selling of commodities.

Of course, if you have to pay for permission to sell or transport something, especially if it’s potentially dangerous or subject to abuse, those fees, from time to time, will have to come out of your profits.

The other consideration that you should be clear about is the scope of the License. Does it apply everywhere, or only in selected parts of the nation?

There have even been times when people took it upon themselves to issue “Licenses” that they didn’t actually have the authority to control.

2.2.6 Sales Tax & other Gotchas

History shows that people excel at finding a way to extract a pound of flesh or otherwise regulate almost anything that can be regulated. In real life, these can be phenomenally complicated, aimed at ensuring that the authorities (and nobility in particular) get paid a share of everything that happens in their domains.

I strongly advise the simplest possible tax code, on the basis of avoiding bogging the game down in minutia. But guild fees and taxes are a reality in most fantasy games. Sometimes, they are a percentage of income; sometimes, they are a percentage of revenues; and sometimes they can be both. There can be multiple levels of taxation.

All such fees and gotchas also have to come out of your profits or earnings. Especially greedy administrations can tax money both coming and going – the business pays taxes on their profits before those get distributed to the ownership of the business, and that distributed wealth is then subject to personal income tax on top.

2.2.6.1 Guild Fees
A Guild is a professional body that regulates, or is willing to regulate, a particular type of professional activity – that they get to define. They charge members a fee, usually once a year, to represent the profession at Court. One of the first things they try to negotiate is usually exclusivity, so that only Guild members may practice the profession; this makes the guild a single point-of-contact for the regulation of the industry they represent, making administration far more efficient from the Crown’s point of view. Some have even gotten away with charging the Crown a fee for that “public service”. It’s a fairly good racket – for the Guilds.

But that’s not to say that the Guild Members get nothing from the deal; when you have the backing of the Guild in a grievance or request of the Crown, it’s not just you, it’s every member of your profession standing beside you (even if they’ve never heard of you before). That gives the Guild real leverage to exert on your behalf.

With such authority, corruption is rarely far away. When two members are in dispute, it not only signals a need to regulate another aspect of the industry so that members can’t tread on each other’s toes, the Guild may support the member with the deeper pockets. Where Guilds are self-appointed, they may use strong-arm tactics to force others to join. Some Guilds may permit local sub-branches to charge additional fees for the right to pursue an occupation within the domain administered by that sub-branch. And members should never, ever, expect to back 100% of a Guild’s decisions on ‘their behalf’!

Some such activities are networking, politicking, making friends and allies of the heads of related Guilds, scratching someone’s back in expectation of calling the resulting favor due at some point.

2.2.7 The Profit Metric

When you put everything together, it’s easy to see why – with so many calls upon a trader’s income – it becomes much easier to simply track profits and deduct all these relevant fees and expenses from them. It may not always be possible, but it’s always preferable whenever it can be handled that way, boiling everything down to a simple bottom line.

And with that, I’m right out of time – and can see that this chapter is already roughly as long as the two that preceded it, put together. There’s a lot more to come, I’m just getting started!