Trading ?

Dartson

Mongoose
Just started a campaign with a group of friends I haven’t played traveler with since college, so it’s been a minute to say the least. As we started jumping around pursuing this new adventure, gave some light trading a shot to make some $ with our scout ship.

Found the trading rules in the core rulebook a little convoluted as we are working through them in real time. Has anyone developed a spreadsheet or workflow with the tables that will make this less tedious as we execute the process at each starport? Did some research on here and online but haven’t really found what I’ve been envisioning. Thoughts?
 
 
As a Referee I like to make a few bargains using the Trading table as a guide and offer it to the Travellers.

Example: Banasdan to Amber Zone Noricum along with its Naval Base.
Advanced Electronics will go for 200% of price for the Naval Base.
Also Advanced Weapons at 80% on Banasdan and 120% on Naval Base.

If Smuggling the Amber Zone will make it very profitable for many things.

I also try and put faces to the trade. The Electronics could be from a small, starting up firm that wants to make a splash in the market.
 
Just started a campaign with a group of friends I haven’t played traveler with since college, so it’s been a minute to say the least. As we started jumping around pursuing this new adventure, gave some light trading a shot to make some $ with our scout ship.

Found the trading rules in the core rulebook a little convoluted as we are working through them in real time. Has anyone developed a spreadsheet or workflow with the tables that will make this less tedious as we execute the process at each starport? Did some research on here and online but haven’t really found what I’ve been envisioning. Thoughts?
I love mixing in Trading with a Traveller game. It can showcase the players as negotiators and is a way they can meet parts of a planet's society they would normally miss by just sitting in the Starport or hanging out at the Spacebar. Not that there's anything wrong with going to the local Cantina!
 
Sorry for stealing this thread but I have a question about traiding.
When I'm determining purchase price I need to roll 3D and add (among others):
Traveller's Broker skill.

Traveller has Broker 2 and INT 13 (+2)

does it mean I add raw skill or also relevant atribute (i.e. INT +2)
 
Sorry for stealing this thread but I have a question about traiding.
When I'm determining purchase price I need to roll 3D and add (among others):
Traveller's Broker skill.

Traveller has Broker 2 and INT 13 (+2)

does it mean I add raw skill or also relevant atribute (i.e. INT +2)
You add only the Broker skill value and not the attribute DM as this is not a skill check.
 
Sorry for stealing this thread but I have a question about traiding.
When I'm determining purchase price I need to roll 3D and add (among others):
Traveller's Broker skill.

Traveller has Broker 2 and INT 13 (+2)

does it mean I add raw skill or also relevant atribute (i.e. INT +2)
SOC and EDU are listed as the relevant modifiers for finding a supplier/buyer. I would not use INT. But I would use the attribute modifier, since it is used in any other check involving a skill.
 
I've always taken it literally: skill only.

Mainly because if you find a characteristic modifier to use in your favour (you - or the Player - would likely insist on whichever one was at least +1 and then try to justify it), then the trade system inches towards the progressive enrichment of the trader, and millions of credits soon follow. As it is, it feels like Broker 2 and some intelligent cargo-picking is required to consistently make money at it with a standard-ish ship. If someone had Broker 3 and INT 12 - for a +5, then unless you make some colossally misguided trades or have very high expenses, you'll soon be buying fleets of ships and the referee will have to keep coming up with larger and larger Deus Ex Machina to keep the campaign balanced. Unless you want to run an Merchant Empire campaign.
 
I've always taken it literally: skill only.

Mainly because if you find a characteristic modifier to use in your favour (you - or the Player - would likely insist on whichever one was at least +1 and then try to justify it), then the trade system inches towards the progressive enrichment of the trader, and millions of credits soon follow. As it is, it feels like Broker 2 and some intelligent cargo-picking is required to consistently make money at it with a standard-ish ship. If someone had Broker 3 and INT 12 - for a +5, then unless you make some colossally misguided trades or have very high expenses, you'll soon be buying fleets of ships and the referee will have to keep coming up with larger and larger Deus Ex Machina to keep the campaign balanced. Unless you want to run an Merchant Empire campaign.
Well, you are supposed to be subtracting the opposing broker's skill, so give them a similar boost in competence.
If players are making out like bandits, give Class C ports a 2, B a 4 and A a 6, or whatever brings them back down to reality.
Better markets should have senior, more competent brokers.
 
Well, you are supposed to be subtracting the opposing broker's skill, so give them a similar boost in competence.
You are correct. That was added in the 2022 update and I forgot about it:
(p.243)
Purchasing:
–the supplier’s Broker skill (this is assumed to be Broker 2, but may vary)
and selling:
Deduct the purchaser's Broker skill (this is assumed to be Broker 2, but may vary).

Need to update a spreadsheet...
Looking at my notes on that update text, I had suggested an opposed Broker check with Effect as the resultant DM (probably not added as too complex) , and if it was a contest of skills, then a characteristics DM would be appropriate, but then the opposing Broker's characteristics would need to be considered... yep, too complex.

Bottom line, I'd still say skill only, but the risk (?!?!) of getting rich is less if there's basically a DM-2 to all the rolls. Gotta be good and clever to get ahead or need to seek out mediocre brokers to transact business with (though they will either get better or go out of business in all but the smallest ports).

Kind of a meta thought: The pricing reflects short distance trades in a mature interstellar society. If you look back at early trade voyages in the 16th and 17th century, (sorry, mostly useless History degree creeping into my thoughts) then you could buy whole ships or fleets or retire off one successful trading run. Which might also take years. Or kill you and/or wreck your ships. So the point of this aside is just that if you're dealing with a different milieu, like perhaps the T4 early years of the Third Imperium, or anything during the Long Night or the post-Virus post-Empress Wave period, then speculative trade might (and probably should) have considerably larger potential rewards. Though in those cases, every trading run should literally be an adventure, not some incidental dice rolls on the way to the main event.
 
Handle it however you like, but consider this. Any commodity cargo that is available at a discount would be snapped up by an incumbent, unless there was a complication that might make it less palatable. So, consider any cargo that is available for the PC's to purchase to be potentially problematic. The problems can occur anywhere along the line of the transaction. From the purchase end, getting the cargo to/on the ship, transporting it to its destination, finding a buyer, delivering the cargo, to getting paid for it and getting back off-planet.

I'm sure one of the third-parties that produce such things can come up with a D66 chart for each phase of the transaction for potential complications. Roll on a chart for number of complications based on discounted price, then roll on the requisite chart, and go!

For your free trader just scraping by, they might not mind taking some additional risk that the paperwork isn't all in order, or half of the shipment of Silowakin Bog-Fruit is going to germinate and create a toxic gas mid-week, or that the local mafioso thinks they own the cargo, or that it was sold to more than one ship owner, etc.

If left to the players to handle with a series of dice rolls, most systems of trade can be made to produce a good, or great, profit . It gets worse once they've got some money and have the luxury of holding onto a few tons of high-value cargo through several jumps until a great deal can be made. If the referee isn't there to deal with the little "complexities" that come with great deals on commodities, the PC's will make fat stacks of cash. We have discovered that players can often be distracted from adventure, and plots, and time-tables by potential fat stacks of Cr, so speculative trade can't simply be an automated thing that just happens in the background, or it will quickly overcome any main story you think is going on.

I had a character cross a sector and a half with another person, with no ship. Start with Cr60,000. Pay for passage for both people and have MCr2 by just after the midway point. Had I played it straight, I would likely have had MCr10+ by the time I arrived at my destination. That wouldn't have worked for the story, so I didn't play it straight, I threw multiple deals, spent a big chunk of cash on gear for the Scout-ship I was going to pick up, etc. I played it as a solo game, using Zozer's SOLO rules, and made things interesting, stopped for a couple of weeks every so often, took some suboptimal deals occasionally, and wrote up a nice narrative for the journey. I invite you to conduct a similar exercise, take careful notes, write up a log of your travels. 😉
 
Interesting. I always taken Spec. Trading goods, to be over saturated goods. There no means for Travellers to compete with domestic traders, so anything left over is what spec. trading is.
 
Lots of different ways to trade! In my campaign the Travellers have made a special reward of chocolate cupcakes for their cryogenic passengers. These became so popular that other passengers and buyers for the goods in their hold have made special orders for the delicious desserts.
 
Spec Trade goods could be over-production and market saturation, but then you've got the problem of needing to transport them far enough away to markets that aren't oversaturated.
 
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