Questions about Merchant Prince

[Armethious]

Hello all!

Just getting back into travelers. I had originally played it with the GURPS system, this is my first time with the classic rules. I have been reading through the Merchant Prince because I want to run a business on the side for kicks. After reading it a couple of times, I still have some questions, and I am hoping to get some help here.

Q1: Skills - On page 34 it states, "Depending on the Ranks found in the Leadership of the company, these skills can be raised to a maximum of level 6.

Is this just the initial maximum or the permanent maximum? Essentially I am asking if I can later through skill bonus from increasing rank or training, can I raise a skill above 6?

Q2: Hired Leaders - On page 34 it states, "It should be noted that the number of Leaders involved with a Commercial Entity reduce its Wealth rating on an increasing scale. Too many Leaders being paid profi ts will hurt the company in the long run."

I can not find where in the rules this occurs. The only time I could find where the leaders you hired affect the company is when you are calculating Profit Sharing and Wages for the Leaders. If this is the only place where it is used, how is this affecting the wealth rating? Am I missing something?

Also, can you later fire hired leaders and hire different ones?

Q3: Founder Investment - On page 35 it talks about the initial investment options. Can a player later invest more? For example, When he gets his profit sharing, can he choose to reinvest that money back into the company at the ratio of 1 wealth per 25,000 investment?

Q4: Initial ranking - If an entities initial wealth and employee pool would qualify it for Rank 1, does it still have to go through the first quarter as Rank 0?

Q5: Hiring Employees - There are two sections describing how to spend wealth to hire employees. There is option A on page 36 where you just spend wealth and get 1d6 employees per wealth spent. And there is option B on page 46. Obviously option B is a more efficient use of wealth to hire new employees, but if an entity still needs more employees, or is unable to make the skill roll to do option B, can he still elect to hire employees via option A? My reading of the rules, it seems to be a yes, but I would like confirmation.

Q6: Entity Characteristics - Is there a max that a characteristic can increase to? Also I assume it follows the same DM table as in the core rules, but if there is no cap on them, do I just extrapolate the DM for characteristics beyond 15 or is there a specific table somewhere?

Q7: Step Eight - This part is rather unclear to me. It states these things happen at the beginning of the following quarter, so should you calculate your new ranking before rolling these various skills?

Also I do not understand the significance of the weeks assigned to each skill. How do they come into play? Are the supposed to be some limiting factor as to how many skills you can attempt in a given quarter?

Can I use a given skill for a given action more than once? For example, can use the Agency skill to "Initiate a Hiring Campaign" twice in order to hire more employees?

Thanks for everyone's help!

 

[DFW]

A very short answer to your Q's.

GURPS has, by FAR, the best "merchant" system of any Traveller version. Just adapt it to MGT.

 

[Armethious]

What is the name of the book?

 

[DFW]

Far Trader
Profit and Pitfalls Among the Stars

 

[Galadrion]

Hello all!

Greetings!

I'll try to take a shot at answering your questions. Bear in mind that I have no official connection with Mongoose or Mr. Miller; these are the ways I would handle situations in MY Traveller universe. Your mileage may vary.

Q1: Skills - On page 34 it states, "Depending on the Ranks found in the Leadership of the company, these skills can be raised to a maximum of level 6.

Is this just the initial maximum or the permanent maximum? Essentially I am asking if I can later through skill bonus from increasing rank or training, can I raise a skill above 6?

Generally, I am NOT a big fan of arbitrary caps; I prefer my game systems to be open-ended when possible, although a rising scale of advancement can be used to place an effective limit. (To put it simply: if the costs of advancing to a new score double or otherwise increase exponentially, there will exist a level beyond which most players will not bother to advance; the benefits no longer outweigh the costs. This can serve as a limit without placing a hard cap.) So the way I play it, those limits (skills AND attributes) are an initial limit. Raising them is expensive and difficult enough that, beyond a certain point, players are going to have to work to increase them, and they'll have other things they want to spend their time and money on. This is essentially a non-problem.

Q2: Hired Leaders - On page 34 it states, "It should be noted that the number of Leaders involved with a Commercial Entity reduce its Wealth rating on an increasing scale. Too many Leaders being paid profi ts will hurt the company in the long run."

I can not find where in the rules this occurs. The only time I could find where the leaders you hired affect the company is when you are calculating Profit Sharing and Wages for the Leaders. If this is the only place where it is used, how is this affecting the wealth rating? Am I missing something?

Also, can you later fire hired leaders and hire different ones?

The profit sharing/dividends rules are the place in the rules where hired leaders and shareholder investors affect the bottom line. The statement that they will hurt the company is a bit misleading: they affect the end-of-quarter payout that the leaders receive, but they don't actually affect the profits of the company itself. (This can induce the directors to sell off resources to increase the payout, however, which could wind up affecting the company. This is an indirect circumstance, though, and doesn't directly apply.)

As far as getting rid of/adding hired leaders, I would rule that these were experts brought on board through stock awards, so the only way to get rid of them would be to buy them out. I also see no need to bring others on board after initial start-up, because the whole point of bringing such people on in the first place is to boost initial skill points. Once play has begun, skills are primarily boosted by training. A new hired gun isn't going to boost skills company-wide enough to justify diluting stock shares.

Q3: Founder Investment - On page 35 it talks about the initial investment options. Can a player later invest more? For example, When he gets his profit sharing, can he choose to reinvest that money back into the company at the ratio of 1 wealth per 25,000 investment?

I would say yes, but that's largely up to the players. I'm also toying around with a more detailed "shareholder" system to track who owns what percentage of the company, which would be affected by additional buy-in... and would also allow better tracking of additional investors, such as the nobles the board can court for additional investment under "Skill Use", the Noble skill action. It also would allow for some things which should be available in an economically oriented game which are left rather vague right now - proxy fights, buyouts, consumer investment, etc.

Q4: Initial ranking - If an entities initial wealth and employee pool would qualify it for Rank 1, does it still have to go through the first quarter as Rank 0?

I would say not, but it should be extremely rare that a starting company should be able to qualify for anything higher. Financing a starting company well enough that it can qualify for Rank 1 is very expensive.

Q5: Hiring Employees - There are two sections describing how to spend wealth to hire employees. There is option A on page 36 where you just spend wealth and get 1d6 employees per wealth spent. And there is option B on page 46. Obviously option B is a more efficient use of wealth to hire new employees, but if an entity still needs more employees, or is unable to make the skill roll to do option B, can he still elect to hire employees via option A? My reading of the rules, it seems to be a yes, but I would like confirmation.

I'm away from my books at the moment, but if I recall correctly, option A is part of the initial company set-up procedure. If so, I'd rule that it applied only during initial start-up. Option B is the procedure for increasing human resources during play.

Q6: Entity Characteristics - Is there a max that a characteristic can increase to? Also I assume it follows the same DM table as in the core rules, but if there is no cap on them, do I just extrapolate the DM for characteristics beyond 15 or is there a specific table somewhere?

Again, I am no fan of arbitrary limits, and if I recall, a few of the example companies have attributes which exceed the limits given in the set-up rules. This implies that attributes are, at least, on the 15-point scale, if it's not open-ended. That point could be argued either way, and really has little effect on game-play. As a quick solution, I'd consider capping attributes at 15, and if something happened to raise one above that, the excess gets converted to Wealth on a one-for-one basis. Skills, on the other hand, I see no reason to place a hard limit upon. The costs for raising skills increase on a marginal basis (each additional skill point is more expensive than the one before it), so that's an exponentially rising cost and therefore inherently self-limiting.

Q7: Step Eight - This part is rather unclear to me. It states these things happen at the beginning of the following quarter, so should you calculate your new ranking before rolling these various skills?

I can see arguments in favor of either way, and I don't think it really matters much. I'd leave that up to the individual referee, but strongly suggest that he decide at the outset and remain consistent. As long as you don't arbitrarily change the rules around, your players are not going to object much to what they are - if you're doing your job, they're going to be too busy swearing about the plot points you're throwing at them to complain about procedures.

Also I do not understand the significance of the weeks assigned to each skill. How do they come into play? Are the supposed to be some limiting factor as to how many skills you can attempt in a given quarter?

This puzzles me as well. I don't tend to use it except if players are going to be carrying out some such action as an adventure - if they're just rolling for "the company" to do it, it gets folded into business as usual. And even when it is adventured out, I just use the time given as a suggestion/guideline; if the players manage something spectacular, they can shortcut a lot of it... or lollygag around and extend things out.

Can I use a given skill for a given action more than once? For example, can use the Agency skill to "Initiate a Hiring Campaign" twice in order to hire more employees?

Again, judgment call for the referee. For the most part, I'd say "no" except for certain actions - hiring and training being the two big ones, resources allowing. Even so, if the players push things too far, I'm likely to impose penalties if they make sense to me - let's say they're trying to double their labor pool: I'll let them know that they're in danger of diluting their workforce skill levels (-1 to all skills to a minimum of 1) if they actually do double their number of employees. Note that I'll warn them of the consequences before they try it; if they decide that it's worth the cost and go ahead with the attempt, that's their choice. Ultimately, that's the referee's job: provide the players with meaningful choices. If they decide to do something you regard as suboptimal, well, they're the ones making that call. See how it plays out...

Thanks for everyone's help!

No problem. Have fun!

 

[Armethious]

Thank you so much for your help, but I do have a few follow-up questions.

Generally, I am NOT a big fan of arbitrary caps; I prefer my game systems to be open-ended when possible, although a rising scale of advancement can be used to place an effective limit. (To put it simply: if the costs of advancing to a new score double or otherwise increase exponentially, there will exist a level beyond which most players will not bother to advance; the benefits no longer outweigh the costs. This can serve as a limit without placing a hard cap.) So the way I play it, those limits (skills AND attributes) are an initial limit. Raising them is expensive and difficult enough that, beyond a certain point, players are going to have to work to increase them, and they'll have other things they want to spend their time and money on. This is essentially a non-problem.

With the current in game system, it is too easy to raise skill, and skills above 6 allow you to make an insane about of wealth. For example, following the rules as written, I can start from rank 0 and have a rank 6 company within 5 quarters. I am thinking about changing the initial rank to 4 and instead of having to pay the new skill level in wealth, you have to pay the new skill level squared in wealth. Lastly with the current system the difficultly roll to increase from skill 0 to skill 1 is effectively the same as raising from skill 5 to 6. I am thinking about adding an additional -1 to the roll every 2 levels starting at 5. Meaning if you are trying to go from 4 to 5 you have to roll 1 higher than the rules say. Thoughts?

I would say not, but it should be extremely rare that a starting company should be able to qualify for anything higher. Financing a starting company well enough that it can qualify for Rank 1 is very expensive.

Well, it is not that hard. If you go into the Navy career, a Ship's Boat is one of the mustering out benefits. The Market value of a ship's boat is 16,000,000. Assuming you sell the boat for your start-up capitol, you can easily hit the 500 wealth mark before starting play. You only need 12,500,000 out of the boat to hit 500, and you need even less if you have any other funding sources.

I'm likely to impose penalties if they make sense to me - let's say they're trying to double their labor pool: I'll let them know that they're in danger of diluting their workforce skill levels (-1 to all skills to a minimum of 1)

Excellent idea. I have found the limiting factor in growing the company is your employees, so putting a practical penalty in place seems like a good idea to me. I am thinking for double -1 to all rolls, triple -3, quad, -5, etc. Then I would have the penalty go away by 1 each quarter they do not exceed the hiring limit. Thoughts?

 

[Galadrion]

With the current in game system, it is too easy to raise skill, and skills above 6 allow you to make an insane about of wealth. For example, following the rules as written, I can start from rank 0 and have a rank 6 company within 5 quarters. I am thinking about changing the initial rank to 4 and instead of having to pay the new skill level in wealth, you have to pay the new skill level squared in wealth. Lastly with the current system the difficultly roll to increase from skill 0 to skill 1 is effectively the same as raising from skill 5 to 6. I am thinking about adding an additional -1 to the roll every 2 levels starting at 5. Meaning if you are trying to go from 4 to 5 you have to roll 1 higher than the rules say. Thoughts?

My first thought is that it's not quite that easy to grow a company - it may be theoretically possible to go from rank 0 to rank 6 in under two years, but the odds are strongly against it. Especially if the referee has other companies out there who may oppose a new upstart...

As to the rules alterations, by all means. Just work out what you're doing ahead of time, not on the fly. How's this for another option, though? Use the current cost of training, times the company's rank number, minimum multiplier of 1 for a rank 0. This takes company size (and the size of the labor pool, a factor of rank) into account. As to the roll, make it a Control characteristic roll (not a skill roll!) with a target of 6 plus the current skill level. This will increase the difficulty as skill level increases, without making advancement utterly impossible.

Well, it is not that hard. If you go into the Navy career, a Ship's Boat is one of the mustering out benefits. The Market value of a ship's boat is 16,000,000. Assuming you sell the boat for your start-up capitol, you can easily hit the 500 wealth mark before starting play. You only need 12,500,000 out of the boat to hit 500, and you need even less if you have any other funding sources.

That's a matter for the referee to exercise control over, again - although it occurs to me that a player should not be able to sell such things for full value. At best, a vehicle/small craft/spacecraft should be able to fetch about 50% of its showroom-new value if sold... and quite possibly not that much. But wealth is only part of that equation - the company also needs an employee pool of at least 101 people. That means that the company will probably be spending at least some of their starting resources increasing their employee numbers as well... and it's somewhat of a gamble. As I said, it's likely possible, but probably very expensive.

Excellent idea. I have found the limiting factor in growing the company is your employees, so putting a practical penalty in place seems like a good idea to me. I am thinking for double -1 to all rolls, triple -3, quad, -5, etc. Then I would have the penalty go away by 1 each quarter they do not exceed the hiring limit. Thoughts?

Mm... for what I'm talking about, that's too steep a curve on the penalties. I was talking about a permanent reduction in skill level - at least until the skill gets trained up again. The reduction doesn't go away on its own. Given that stipulation, I'd go along with the penalty increasing by 1 for each multiple the employee pool grows by in a single quarter, again, to a minimum skill level of 1 - in other words, growth will not eliminate the last point in any skill. I'd also waive the penalty if the company started below a certain size - say, twenty-five employees - to allow a very small start-up to grow. But again, that's a situational judgment call on the part of the referee.

 

[locarno24]

Well, it is not that hard. If you go into the Navy career, a Ship's Boat is one of the mustering out benefits. The Market value of a ship's boat is 16,000,000. Assuming you sell the boat for your start-up capitol, you can easily hit the 500 wealth mark before starting play. You only need 12,500,000 out of the boat to hit 500, and you need even less if you have any other funding sources.

That also assumes you can sell it. A mustering out benefit might often be tied to you by licenses or some sort of formal agreement with the navy; I can't imagine them handing over a multi-million credit ship's boat for free without one, unless it was otherwise headed for the breaker's yard.

In which case you will not be getting 12.5 MCr for it.....

It's the same reason you can't sell off ship shares against the value of a ship (or get ship shares, buy a ship, sell off the ship to pay off the mortgaged element and hence 'realise' the value of the shares against a several-hundred-MCr light warship).

 

[DFW]

That also assumes you can sell it. A mustering out benefit might often be tied to you by licenses or some sort of formal agreement with the navy;

Actually, per the rules, the only mustering out physical object you don't own and can't sell is a Scout Ship. You can sell the boat you get from the navy.