Shchenya said:
When buying speculative trade goods, if the players buy weapons, what is stopping them using the weapons or armour in the crates?
In Merchant Prince for example it says if the players remove the locks from Prototype armour, the supplier is unlikely to sell to them again. Was wondering why this is the case if speculative trade is buying the goods outright? Perhaps the party are buying in on a share of the final sale price rather than buying the goods? Kinda like multilevel marketing's product thing?
I have thumbed through a copy of Merchant Prince so can't say for certain but I believe the rule is there regarding speculative trade that is going to be resold.
If the goods are not resold it should not matter much and even if for some reason it does, who is going to report back to the supplier. Unless you tell them yourself, they wouldn't even know what happened to their goods after you purchased them.
If the goods are being resold as new, here are a couple thoughts just off the top of my head.
- If opened, used and sold "as new", the product could start getting a bad reputation from customers that realize the product is not new and the seller/manufacturer might not want their product or even their entire company to get a bad reputation and perhaps reduce sales.
- The person the goods are sold to might report the receipt of the fraudulent/tampered with supply and require it to be replaced or perhaps opt not to purchase from this manufacturer again.
I'm not sure, but I don't think speculative trade covers selling used goods.
In regards to taking a portion of a larger package of goods. If you go to the store would you buy a package that normally contains 6 pairs of tube socks if it is open and one pair is missing? The other 5 pair are perfectly fine. Perhaps if it is discounted - and more than by just 1/6th for the missing pair, otherwise I'd just buy a full, untampered with package. Again, while this type of sale may be possible without incurring disfavor from the supplier, it probably isn't something covered.